12 – But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
13 – If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.
14 – And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.
15 – More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that He raised Christ from the dead. But He did not raise Him if in fact the dead are not raised.
16 – For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.
17 – And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.
18 – Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.
19 – If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.
20 – But….Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
21 – For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man.
22 – For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.
For several house this past Monday I sat in a hospital waiting room in Laurel along with most of Sue’s family….while her sister, Debbie, was undergoing surgery. Doctors had told Debbie that tests had revealed a suspicious mass on one of her ovaries. They had warned her that it could be cancer and that if this proved to be true the surgeons would probably have to go ahead and do a complete hysterectomy. So we sat and waited and waited…and if you have ever spent any time in one of those surgical waiting rooms then you know how time drags by there. You also know the kinds of thoughts that go through your head as you brace yourself for bad news.
Well, fortunately the surgeon emerged sooner than had been expected! He had a big smile on his face!
He had found no cancer, just a harmless benign growth. Only one ovary had to be removed and Debbie could go home from the hospital in a day or two. When the surgeon said those words we all breathed a collective sigh of relief. Shoulders that had been sagging-straightened. Smiles replaced worried expressions. There were tears but tears of joy for we had heard GOOD NEWS!
And if you have ever gotten GOOD news like that then you know how wonderful it feels! A couple weeks ago Hugh and Steve and I met for breakfast with Bill Wehunt and we thrilled to hear him share the GOOD NEWS that his lymphoma was in remission! We toasted him with coffee mugs at BOB EVANS! GOOD NEWS like this is such a welcome thing whether it’s a good report from your doctor or a phone call from your auto mechanic informing you that the costly repair your car needs is covered by warranty or a straight A report card brought home by your child or a call from your tax accountant informing you of a huge refund! It is GREAT to be on the receiving end of good news! One of the reasons this is true is because GOOD news is so rare in our fallen world. I mean, in our life times we hear much more BAD news than GOOD. In fact, I think it would be more accurate to refer to those nightly network newscasts as BAD news casts for that is basically what they are. Good news is unique. Often it is all that keeps us going in a bad news world.
Well, as you know, TODAY Christians like you and me all over the world are rejoicing over the BEST GOOD NEWS ever heard the report that on the third day-that first Easter morning-Jesus Christ rose from the dead! This morning I want us to really enjoy this…the BEST NEWS EVER HEARD….by focusing on three reasons that Jesus’ resurrection is an event that brings us such joy. James Montgomery Boice suggests them in his commentary on this text and the first is this:
1. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is good news is BECAUSE IT IS TRUE.
We tend to be somewhat pessimistic about good news because life has taught us that many times we get reports that SOUND like good news but later prove to be disappointments because the facts of the reports were wrong. This past week on ER there was a man who came into the hospital thinking he had had a heart attack and doctors did tests that showed he had no heart problem. They said he was perfectly healthy….GOOD NEWS! But later further tests showed he had acute leukemia and was only months from death. It is terrible when we get good news like this that we later discover to be false or flawed. But this was not the case with the news of Jesus’ resurrection. It really happened. THIS good news was totally true! In fact, there is a lot of evidence to prove its validity…
a. And the first is found in the nature of the Gospel narratives themselves…
As you know, there are four INDEPENDENT accounts of Jesus’ resurrection. And, it is obvious to anyone who reads each of them that these four writers did NOT get together to come up with this story because they contain a number of seeming contradictions. Matthew says that two women came to the tomb while Mark lists three and John only one. Luke and John report that there were two angels present. Matthew says there was only one and he was sitting on the stone outside the tomb while Mark says he sat inside the tomb. Now when you look at these different accounts closely you see that they don’t really contradict each other. In fact, when put together they tell a more complete story of what happened that morning but the point is that those apparent discrepancies would have been eliminated if the writers had gotten TOGETHER to make up a story. And its also apparent that they did not make the stories up separately (independent of each other) because, if they had done that, there would never have AGREED on so many points. The setting and the characters are the same…the sequence of events makes sense, and so on.
Well, then, if they didn’t COLLABORATE on the accounts and if they were not made up SEPARATELY, then the only remaining possibility is that they were not MADE UP at all. That is to say, the nature of the accounts proves that it really happened. We should also note that it is not unusual for independent accounts of a true story to be slightly different. Even today eyewitnesses can report the same event differently…as any investigator worth his salt knows. The earliest sources telling of the great fire of Rome offer far more serious conflicts than this…such as who or what started the blaze and how far it spread. Some claimed that the whole city was scorched while others insisted that only three sectors were reduced to ash. Yet the fire itself is historical; it actually happened.
And the resurrection of Jesus is historical. It really happened. The various differences in the resurrection report support rather than undermine its authenticity. They demonstrate that there were independent factual reports stemming from the same event.
b. The second proof that this good news is true is the evidence found at the tomb itself.
That morning the tomb was empty. The stone was moved. The grave clothes were undisturbed. Down through the ages skeptics have disputed this physical evidence of Jesus’ resurrection by stating their belief that either Joseph of Arimathea or the Roman or Jewish authorities moved His body. But not only was there no reason for them to do this; it would have been illegal to do so. They would have been violating an officially sealed tomb a criminal offense. Some have said that the women simply went to the wrong tomb that first Easter morning. But if either of these hypotheses were true, then all the authorities would have had to do to discount the disciples claim that Jesus had risen was to produce the body or direct them to the correct tomb. Others have suggested that the disciples themselves stole the body of Christ and then fabricated His resurrection. But that is not likely because over the next fifty years these men were ostracized, beaten, and persecuted, without ever renouncing their conviction that they had seen Jesus bodily resurrected. In stark contrast, the Watergate conspirators couldn’t stand behind their lie for three weeks-much less 50 years.
Tradition tells us that eleven of the twelve not only stuck to their story for the rest of their lives. They died rather than recant their belief in the resurrection. Peter, Andrew, James, son of Alphaeus, Philip, Simon, and Bartholomew were crucified. Matthew and James, the son of Zebedee died by the sword. Thaddaeus was killed by arrows, Thomas by a spear, and James, the brother of Jesus was stoned to death. Even John died in exile on the isle of Patmos. I just don’t think these twelve would have died for a fabrication. I mean, would you die for a lie? History has shown that people WILL give their lives for what they believe is true, but not for what they know is false.
c. Another bit of evidence to prove the truth of this good news is the changed character of the disciples themselves.
Whatever happened that first Easter morning, turned them from disillusioned cowards into mighty proclaimers of the Christian message. Peter, who was once afraid of being exposed as a follower of Jesus was transformed into a lion of the faith. After the resurrection, James, the half-brother of Jesus who once scoffed at our Lord became a leader of the Jerusalem church and called himself, a bond-servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul, once a ceaseless persecutor of the growing church, became the chief proselytizer of the Gentiles. He described his own transformation in Philippians saying, Whatever was to my profit I NOW consider loss for the sake of Christ. In short…a small band of seemingly insignificant believers started a movement, that, in the span of a few hundred years, succeeded in turning an entire empire upside down. As someone once said, They faced the tyrant’s brandished steel, the lion’s gory mane, and a thousand deaths….because they were utterly convinced that they, like their Master would one day rise from the grave in glorified, resurrected bodies. The resurrection transformed these men and women as only a resurrection could!
d. Further evidence of the validity of Jesus’ resurrection was His post-crucifixion appearances.
Our risen Lord was seen…not just by one or two women in a garden under somewhat eerie conditions, but by a wide variety of people in a wide variety of circumstances. In I Corinthians 15:6 Paul says that the risen Jesus, …appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time….and then to James and all the apostles….and last of all he appeared to me also. And even today….nearly 2,000 years after His crucifixion, Jesus continues to appear to people. Over a billion people on this planet claim not only to have met Him but that He walks through life with them giving them His personal guidance. All these thousands of millions of people are not hallucinating. They are not part of some global conspiracy. They actually know Jesus and have put their faith in Him. And I am one of them! This is why you and I join with Christians all over the world in singing, MY FAITH has found a resting place not in device or creed: I trust the EVER-living One-His wounds for me shall plead.. By personal experience, we know that….He is risen! [He is risen indeed!]
e. But, one of the GREATEST evidences of the resurrection was the way it revolutionized the lives of the FIRST Christians…who were Jews.
Christian philosopher J. P. Moreland points out five amazing changes in the lifestyle of over ten thousand Jews who were the first believers, changes that took place only five weeks after Jesus’ crucifixion. You may remember that Nicki Smith of Jews For Jesus alluded to some of these changes in her presentation Wednesday night:
First off, these Jewish believers had been taught ever since the time of Abraham and Moses that they needed to offer an animal sacrifice on a yearly basis to atone for their sins. God would transfer their sins to that animal, and the sins would be forgiven so they could be in right standing with Him. But all of a sudden, after the death of this Nazarene Carpenter, they no longer offered sacrifices. Second, Jews emphasized obeying the laws that God had entrusted to them through Moses…In their view, this is what separated them from pagan nations. Yet within a short time after Jesus’ death these Jews began to say that You don’t become an upstanding member of their community by merely keeping Moses’ laws. Thirdly, Jews scrupulously kept the Sabbath by not doing anything that could even remotely be work on Saturday…this was their day to worship. That is how they would earn right standing with God, guarantee the salvation of their family, and be in right standing with the nation. However, after the death of Jesus, this 1500 year tradition was abruptly changed.
These early Christians began worship on Sunday….the day Jesus rose from the dead. Fourthly, they believed in monotheism-only one God. And while Christians teach monotheism, we say that Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are one God. This is radically different from what the Jews believed….they would have considered it the height of heresy to say someone could be God and man at the same time. Yet these Jews began to worship Jesus as God within the first decade of the Christian religion. And finally, these first Christians pictured the Messiah as someone Who suffered and died for the sins of the world, whereas Jews had been trained to believe that the Messiah was going to be a political leader who would destroy the Roman armies. So in a short period of time not just one Jew but an entire community of at least ten thousand became willing to give up these five key practices that had served them for so many centuries. This could only be explained by their belief that Jesus had indeed risen from the dead.
So,this good news WAS true….well-substantiated. As Thomas Arnold said, The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the best attested fact in history. Easter is not just a nice story that gives us an opportunity for a holiday once a year…it really happened! As Philip Yancey writes,this news was too good to be true…yet news so good it had to be true!
2. And then, the second reason the resurrection of Jesus Christ is good news is because it came after an apparent defeat.
Now a victory is always good news….but its even better when you think that you have lost. Just as salty things like french fries and potato chips taste better after sweet things like ice cream or chocolate chip cookies….good news is ESPECIALLY good after bad. When news of the result of the Battle of Waterloo first came to England there were of course no fast electronic communication methods. But everyone still knew that a great battle was pending and they were anxious to hear what would happen when Wellington, the British general, faced Napoleon. So a signalman was placed on the top of Winchester Cathedral with instructions to keep his eye on the sea. When he received a message, he was to pass the message on to another man on a hill. That man was to pass it on to another. So it was to go until news of the battle was finally relayed to London and then across to England.
Well, finally a ship was sighted through the fog, which on that day lay thick on the channel. The signalman on board sent the first word-Wellington…. and then the next word… …defeated… But then fog closed in and the ship could no longer be seen so, Wellington defeated was the message that was sent across England, and great gloom descended over the countryside. But in a few hours the flog lifted, and the signal came again-Wellington defeated….the enemy! And then all of England rejoiced.
Well, when Jesus died, His friends and followers plunged into sadness. It was an apparent defeat. And, on that dismal Friday and Saturday, men might have then cried, Christ defeated…. But on Sunday morning the fog cleared and the message came through: Christ defeated….the enemy! Jesus has risen! So the resurrection is especially good news because it came after an apparent defeat.
3. And then…the third reason that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is good news is because it proves many important things.
It verifies or validates the essential doctrines of Christianity.
a. First of all it proves that there is a God and that the God of the Bible is the TRUE God.
Do you remember what Paul wrote in our text? In verses 14 & 15 he said, ….if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that He raised Christ from the dead. But then in verse 20 He said, But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. So Christ’ resurrection proves that the God of the Bible…is the one TRUE God.
R. A. Torrey put it this way:
Every effect must have a cause…and the only cause adequate to account for the resurrection of Christ is God, the God of the Bible. While here on earth, our Lord Jesus went up and down the land proclaiming the God of the Bible, ‘the God of Abraham Isaac…..Jesus said that men would put Him to death by crucifixion, and He gave many details as to what the manner of His death would be. He said that on the third day after His death, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob would raise Him from the dead.
This was a great claim to make….an apparently impossible claim. For centuries men had come and men had gone, men had lived and men had died…and as far as human knowledge founded upon definite observation and experience was concerned, that was the end of them. But this man Jesus did not hesitate to claim that His experience would be directly contrary to the uniform experience of centuries. That was certainly an acid test of the existence of the God He preached….And His God stood the test……the fact that Jesus was thus miraculously raised makes it certain that the God Who did it really exists and that the God He preached is the TRUE GOD.
b. And then…the resurrection of Jesus Christ also proves the deity of our Lord.
When He lived upon this earth Jesus claimed to be equal to God. In John 10:30 He said, I and the Father are one. If He was wrong in that, then His claim was either the raving of a deranged man or blasphemy. But if He was right, the resurrection would be God’s way of substantiating the claim. This is why Paul, who knew that Jesus had been raised, writes that Jesus was declared with power to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead. (Romans 1:4 ) And that IS good news, for…if Jesus Christ is God, then it follows that God must be like Jesus! The resurrection shows that God is not distant, arbitrary, or unreal. As Paul wrote in Galatians 2:20 ours is a God Who …loved us and gave Himself for us.
c. The third essential belief that the resurrection proves is that all who believe in Jesus Christ are justified before God….
it proves that His sacrifice adequately atoned for our sins. Paul teaches this in Romans also, for he states that Jesus, was delivered over to death for our sins and was raised to life for our justification. (Romans 4:25 .
You see, Jesus claimed that His death would be a sufficient sacrifice for mankind’s sin. He said that He had come, to give His life as a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:28 ) But the question still remained: Could it be true that the death of this Man would be an acceptable sacrifice to God for the lives of others? I mean…suppose Jesus had sinned?.
Well, in that case, He would have been dying for His own sin rather than for the sins of others for the Bible says that the wages of sin is death. Well when Jesus rose on the third day He proved that His atonement was valid! By raising Jesus from the dead God had shown that Christ was sinless and that He had accepted His Son’s atonement for our sin. As I Corinthians 15:21 says, since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead also comes through a man….for as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive!
d. And then, the resurrection of Jesus Christ also proves that Christians can have victory over sin in this life,
for Jesus lives to provide the supernatural power required. This is what Paul was talking about in Philippians 3:10 when he referred to, the POWER of Jesus’ resurrection. You see…as I said last Sunday, all who believe in Christ are linked to Him in such a way that His power becomes available to us. We may be weak and utterly helpless, unable to resist temptation for a single minute. But Jesus is strong, and He lives to give us the strength to live in a way that pleases Him. Four men were once climbing up the most difficult face of the Matterhorn.
There was a guide, a tourist, a second guide, and a second tourist, all roped together. As they went over a particularly difficult place, the lower tourist lost his footing and went over the side. The sudden pull on the rope carried the lower guide with him, and he carried the other tourist along also. Three men were now dangling over the cliff. But the guide who was in the lead, feeling the first pull on the rope, drove his ax into the ice, braced his feet, and held fast. The first tourist then regained his footing, the guide regained his, and the lower tourist followed. Then they went on in safety. So it is for us. As the human race ascended the icy cliffs of life, the first Adam lost his footing and tumbled headlong over the abyss. He pulled the next man after him and the next and the next, until the whole human race hung in deadly peril. But the second Adam, the Lord Jesus Christ, kept His footing. He stood fast. And all who are united to Him by a living faith are secure and can regain the path. Our risen Lord gives us the power we need to live and serve Him.
e. Finally….the resurrection of Jesus Christ also gives proof of our own resurrection and that we will live forever with Jesus in glory beyond the grave.
Remember, in John 11:25-26 Jesus had stood outside the grave of Lazarus and promised his sister, Martha, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me will live even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in Me will never die.
Well, His resurrection proved that promise to be true. Since Jesus defeated death…we know that we can as well. You know…one thing different from us and animals is our awareness of eternity. As Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, God has, …set eternity in the hearts of men… So we have a sort of sixth sense. We see that there must be life after death but we also know we can’t get there on our own. We have eternity in our hearts but mortality in our bodies. This reminds me of the true story of a man named Floyd Collins. In 1925, Mr. Collins was exploring near mammoth Cave in Kentucky when he got stuck in a fall of rock while he was only 55 feet from the surface. Icy water was dripping in his face. Rescuers came in and diverted the water and they talked with him, they calmed him down and brought him food, but they couldn’t get him out. As days went by….and he was still stuck…he began to become emotionally unglued. He was able to see the light, able to see where he wanted to be, he heard voices outside, but he was stuck and he couldn’t get out.
So he slowly began to have raving lunacies about everything from chicken sandwiches to angels in white chariots. The newspapers got in on it and ten thousand people came to see him. They sold hot dogs and popcorn. It was a side show. But…seventeen days later Floyd Collins died in that hole, able to see where he wanted to be but not able to get there. You know…before Christ’s resurrection we were in the same situation as Floyd Collins, aware of the light of eternity with no way to get there. But now we have a way….for Jesus IS the way…the truth….the resurrection and the life….and that IS good news!
So you see today we celebrate the BEST NEWS EVER HEARD….He is risen! [He is risen indeed!] You know, there is some news that by its very nature is restricted. It applies to one or two individuals but not to everybody. A promotion is good news to the man who receives it but not to the two or three others who failed to get the job. The results of an election are good news to the winning party but not to the losing party. Even the report of a reduction in federal income taxes is good news only to those who pay taxes or who live in the country where the reduction is to take place. Almost all human good news is restricted. But the good news of the resurrection is for all of us.
The question this Easter morning is have you responded to this news in personal belief and faith? Have you trusted in the risen Lord? Have you given Him your life? We close now to allow you to do just that. If you are here and are not a Christian then I urge you to embrace this good news….claim it as your own. Invite Jesus into your heart and life and come forward and share that decision with me or Steve. If you are here and are already a Christian, God may be calling you to join this church….to work with us in spreading this good news with the world.