· It is a historical fact that almost everyone recognizes whether they believe that He was who He said He was nor not, that Jesus of Nazareth existed and lived in Israel over 2000 years ago
· It is also a historical fact that this same Jesus was crucified by the Romans at the hands of His own people, the Jews.
· He was arrested and was shuffled around in trials by both the Romans and the Jews all throughout the night before he was crucified, and during this time, he was beaten until He would have been physically exhausted.
· Then, Jesus was brutally punished by the Romans with a scourging that itself killed many people before they could be crucified and left the victim’s back and sides ripped open, exposed and bleeding painfully
· Jesus was then made to carry His own cross but He was too exhausted to do that and was unable to walk with it.
· Already exhausted and near death, Jesus was stripped of his clothes and His hands and feet were driven through with nails and he bled slowly from His wounds.
· In His weakened state, He could not pull Himself up to take a breath and He would have suffocated to death
· The man whose job it was to execute prisoners and who would have likely been put to death for not doing his job checked to make sure he was dead by piercing Jesus’ side with a spear, and when he did, we know that he pierced the pericardium – the sac around His heart- because pericardial fluid – which looked like water, along with blood, gushed out.
· There is no question that no human could have survived this ordeal at the hands of the Roman executioners, no matter what – especially after they were then laid in a cold tomb for several days with no food, water or medical treatment, enclosed behind a large stone that sealed the entrance and kept in place by the elite Roman guard at the entrance of the cave where he was laid.
· It is no question that the historical Jesus died.
· But it also is no question that the tomb was empty on the third day.
· The very fact that the Jews circulated false reports that the disciples had stolen His body away proved that His body wasn’t in the tomb.
· No one ever found His body despite the overwhelming reasons to look for his body if it was truly missing.
· Then, Jesus appeared in physical, bodily form to His disciples.
· Thomas who was very skeptical after all the other disciples had sworn they saw Jesus , saw Jesus himself, and after placing his hand in Jesus’ wounds, believed and declared that Jesus was indeed his Lord and God Himself.
· His disciples went from being timid and afraid of persecution and punishment, to boldly proclaiming His name and being persecuted and punished.
· Most of His disciples died for Him – which none of them would have done if He had not truly been risen. They had nothing to gain and everything to lose if they were lying about the resurrection.
· Not only did Jesus appear to His disciples but He appeared alive again to over 500 people in the course of 40 days.
“It was therefore impossible that they could have persisted in affirming the truths they had narrated, had not Jesus actually risen from the dead, and had they not known this fact as certainly as they knew any other fact” - Harvard law School professor Simon Greenleaf, in his book, “Testimony of the Evangelists Examined by The Rules of Evidence Administered in Courts of Justice”
Main Idea: Because He is risen, we can have hope in this life and hope in the life to come
“if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain”… and in verse 15, he goes on to say, “We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ”…1. Because He is risen, we can trust what the apostles taught is true (v14)
· The entire teaching of the New testament rests on the fact that the resurrection is true.
· Since the resurrection is true, we can trust what the apostles taught us. It is reliable and trustworthy.
· The apostle Paul was dramatically converted on the road to Damascus, on his way to persecute the Christians, when the resurrected Jesus appeared to him
· Paul went from notoriety and being a leader in Jewish circles, with power and influence to being an itinerant preacher who was persecuted and punished, shipwrecked and stoned and left for dead – all to preach the good news of Christ’s resurrection.
· For Paul, if the resurrection wasn’t true then everything he had done and taught and suffered for was in vain and he was a fool.
· We can trust that what Paul and the other apostles wrote was true and it wasn’t in vain.
· We can trust that the basis for our faith is real and we don’t need to doubt.
· We can trust that the message that we’ve been given to carry to others is reliable and it is live changing and life-giving.
· The message of the gospel has been proven true by our resurrected Savior and we can have confidence as we go into all the world, making disciples of Jesus Christ by teaching what the apostles taught.
·
· But, because He is risen, we can trust in Jesus completely
2. Because He is risen, we can trust in Jesus completely (v14,17)
· If the resurrection wasn’t true, then Jesus’ very identity as God would rightly be called into question and everything He taught would be suspect at best.· If Jesus wasn’t resurrected then He wasn’t even a good moral teacher, at best He would have been a confused, deluded man
· If He wasn’t resurrected then at worst, He would have been a deceiver and a liar who was proved wrong. He would have been the biggest source of dashed hopes in all of mankind.
· But, because He is risen, our faith is not in vain – it isn’t empty and our faith is neither futile nor hopeless.
· Since Jesus was resurrected by God, He proved He was who He said He was. He is the only One who is completely faithful and true and whom we can depend upon for our very lives.
· In fact, Jesus is the giver of life. He is the way, the truth and the Life. Jesus is the only way to God, as He said, “No one comes to the Father except through me”
· And what Jesus told Martha, the sister of Lazarus, whom He raised from the dead was true. He said “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”
· The question He asked of Martha was “do you believe this?”
· And today, in light of the fact that Jesus proved He was who he said he was, this is the most important question in history that we are all faced with – do you truly believe this?
· You and I can trust in Jesus completely. The question is, are we actually trusting in Him?
· Jesus’ resurrection proved that all of His claims about Himself were true.
· We can have confidence in Jesus and no matter who fails us; no matter what comes, we can be sure of one thing – we can be sure that Jesus will never leave us or forsake us if we put our trust in Him – and we can trust in him completely.
· Verse 17 tells us, if Christ has not been raised… “you are still in your sins”
· But, because He is risen, we can be forgiven for our sins
3. Because He is risen, we can be forgiven for our sins (v17)
· Verse 22 reminds us that in Adam all die.· What Paul is saying is that since the very first man Adam sinned in rebellion against God, all of us, as his descendants, are born corrupted by sin, inheriting his sin nature.
· The book of Romans tells us that every one of us is sinful - in fact there is no one who is righteous, no one who does right – not even one and everyone is deserving of the wrath and punishment of God.
· We know deep down that apart from being changed by God, we are not who we were made to be – who we should be.
· Everyone is fully deserving of God’s right and good wrath against sin. Everyone deserves punishment for disobeying God and rebelling against Him
· But because Jesus paid the price for all of our sins completely, we can be forgiven for our sins, no matter how bad, no matter how debased, no matter how willful and no matter how long and how far you may have run from God.
· For the Christian – our daily hope is that because He is resurrected, it is proof that God accepted Jesus as a substitute for us.
· God has poured out His full wrath on Jesus in our place and He completely accepted the sacrifice of Jesus for all of our sins.
· Our daily hope is that our resurrected Lord is proof that our justification has been made completely.
· For anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ; trusting in His death for the forgiveness of sins and His resurrected life for our life, you can be saved from the wrath of God and forgiven of all your sins.
· If you are a Christian, you know that although you have been given a new nature and made alive to God in Christ, you continue to be tempted and you fail and sin even when you don’t want to at times.
· But thanks be to Jesus Christ, there is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus our Lord.
“for the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. 3 For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, 4 in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” - Romans 8:2-4
4. Because He is risen, living life for Him now is meaningful (v19)
· In verse 19 of the scripture this morning, it says, “If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.· Christians are indeed not to be pitied most of all – because our life is based on the truth – on the resurrected life of Christ and His resurrection is the guarantee – the first fruits of our own resurrection.
· He has already begun the process of making us like Him, He has given us His life and everything we do in this life is meaningful now.
· Our decisions matter. How we live matters.
· We can make a difference in this life now through Him, as we tell others about Him and glorify God by enjoying Him here and now.
· When we honor God and live for Him, He will reward us for all the sacrifices and choices we make for His sake and the gospel.
· We don’t have to live for things that will fail us and for false hopes like money, which in the end will not satisfy.
· We don’t have to live for the false hope of the approval and acceptance of others. We don’t have to live for the false hope of worldly power, which will one day only result in someone else being more powerful.
· You don’t have to live for the false hope of worldly beauty or put your hope in your physical appearances, which will only one day fade and sag and give way to gray hair, wrinkles, arthritis, weakness and death.
· You don’t have to live for the false hopes found in getting drunk or getting high – that only results in pain and confusion and addiction and the nightmares of dashed dreams and failed aspirations.
· You don’t have to live for the false hope of physical gratification and be ruled by a never ending lust that will never fulfill and be harder and harder to quench.
· Hoping in anything or anyone else, including ourselves in this life is really the life that is most to be pitied. Living hoping in something or someone other than Jesus is a life to be pitied most of all.
· In a world full of false hopes and dashed dreams, we can have hope in Jesus for this life – no matter how unstable it may be.
5. Because He is risen, life in Christ does not end in death (v20-22)
· The resurrection of Jesus Christ is just the beginning of a larger harvest, of all those who are in Him.
· If we are found in Him, having died to ourselves and not having a life that is our own but been made alive to Him, then we will also surely be raised with Him
· Because of sin, death entered into the world – for Adam and every person born afterwards.
· Death is the natural consequence for sin now – our very bodies have been corrupted by sin and will die now.
· And death has the power to hold all sinners. In the death of Jesus, we see the results of sin.
· But because Jesus completely paid for all our sins, the grave could not hold Him and He was risen victorious over death.
· In His resurrection, Jesus triumphed over sin and death
· Now, for those who are trusting in Him, this means that one day, we too will be resurrected from death like Him and live forever, because sin and death no longer has dominion over us
· For those who trust in Jesus Christ and have life in Him, who belong not to the old creation and old order of things but who now are children of the promise through Jesus, then all who are in Christ shall be made alive and spend eternity with God.
· The resurrection of Jesus assures us of the forgiveness of sins and freedom from bondage and enslavement to sin.
· The resurrection of Christ is our hope to live a new life to Christ, in which we are continually being made more and more like Him.
· The resurrection also brought the first-fruits of the redemption of our bodies and we can pray for God to heal us now, as His kingdom has already come and he has begun to redeem all things to Himself and make things new but not yet completely until He returns again.
· Because of the resurrection, we have forgiveness, redemption and healing
· Because He is risen, we can have hope in this life and hope in the life to come
Potential Application Questions:
1. How does the fact that the resurrection is true affect our faith?2. How does the resurrection give us confidence when sharing the gospel with others?
3. Since the resurrection proved that Jesus completely paid for our sins, how do we apply this to our lives when we are faced with condemnation?
4. Since we are no longer in our sins, how does the resurrection give us hope for fighting against temptation and sin?
5. How does the resurrection make your life meaningful now?
6. How is our hope for this life tied to the resurrection?
7. Are there any false hopes you are living for now (money, power, prestige, physical gratification, etc.)
8. How does knowing that one day, we too will be resurrected give you hope?
