Will you kindly turn in the Word of
Scripture to the passage that was read for
us by Mr. Lowe, and we are going
to take as our text this evening the
first verse in that section, namely verse 12,
though we shall be looking at it in
the context immediately preceding and following.
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?
The Apostle Paul is there referring to a
philosophy that was current in the Corinth of
his day, which clearly disbelieved in the supernatural
generally, and in the resurrection very particularly.
And somehow or other this pernicious philosophy had
found its way, dare we say, into the
church of Corinth.
At least there were those among the Christian
community who were apparently giving some acceptance to
it at this particular stage.
How far they had gone, we cannot say.
Paul has reminded them, you remember at the
beginning of the chapter as we heard this
evening, he has reminded them that it was
part and parcel of the gospel that he
preached, that Jesus died according to the Scriptures,
that he was buried, and that he rose
again according to the Scriptures.
He implies there, of course, that it was
foretold that the Messiah would die.
Jesus fulfilled that prophecy.
It was foretold that he would rise again
from the dead.
Jesus fulfilled that prophecy.
And this, says the Apostle Paul, is the
gospel that he himself first received, and having
received it, proclaimed it in Corinth.
This, therefore, he says, is the gospel by
which he was saved.
It is the gospel of a Messiah sent
by God, of whom the Scriptures spoke before
he came, and who in his life, death,
and resurrection fulfilled what was said concerning him.
Now, that was the church at Corinth, so
it means that every individual of that church
had professed faith in the Christ who died,
and was buried, and rose again.
But the hearing of this theory, this philosophy,
seemed to have tickled the fancy of some
of the community.
The Apostle Paul doesn't really, at this stage,
he doesn't treat them as enemies, he doesn't
call for excommunication, and that means that probably
these people are just playing with the truth.
They have not altogether embraced it, but they're
about, maybe, to embrace it.
He warns them most clearly, and in the
process of doing that, he gives us this
very remarkable chapter, which we have in our
New Testament, concerning the resurrection of the dead.
Now, there are a number of things that
emerge here, and tonight I just want to
begin something that will continue next time.
We begin by looking at the offending proposition
that was announced by this offensive philosophy, this
speculative philosophy, and it appears, from what a
number of New Testament scholars tell us, that
the phrase, the sentence, there is no resurrection
of the dead, represents a cliché, which they
kind of banded around.
There is no resurrection of the dead.
And it became a kind of theme song
at a certain point in their teaching, whoever
they were.
To get the real feel of the intellectual
position they're represented, I think it may be
necessary for us to translate the Greek a
little bit more literally, and then I think
you will see the point, or at least
one of the main points, that emerge here.
Let me do that.
Taking it a little more literally, the Greek
could well be translated something like this, but
if Christ is announced that he raised out
from among dead bodies, or corpses, how do
some of you say, asks Paul, how do
some of you say there is no resurrection
of dead bodies, or corpses, and it does
not happen?
Now, the reference to dead bodies, or corpses,
immediately pinpoints the real issue.
Paul is not talking about resurrection generally, that
could have reference to a spiritual resurrection.
The pointed issue here is not the spiritual
resurrection, but the physical resurrection of our Lord
Jesus Christ.
We'll come back to that, we'll come back
to that in a moment.
But let us note from this twelfth verse,
the sheer contradiction between the clear testimony of
many witnesses on the one hand, and this
philosophical cliche on the other.
You remember that last time we were looking
at the evidence of the witnesses as brought
forward here by Paul.
Interestingly enough, I didn't say so last time,
but I'm sure you have all noticed it,
that Paul did not amass all the witness,
all the evidence that he could have done.
He doesn't refer to certain people in the
New Testament whom we know saw the Lord
risen from the dead.
But he brings forward sufficient evidence, particularly according
to Greek and Roman law, more than adequate
evidence, in order to prove a point.
He could have called upon more people, as
it were, to bear testimony, or have indicated
that they were available, but he doesn't do
that.
The fact was so self-evident to the
Apostle Paul, and to the early Christians, that
Jesus was risen from the dead.
Now, says the Apostle, this philosophical tenet, this
cliche that is being bandied around, it's quite
contradictory to the facts as we know them.
I find that very often I have to
tell myself, in reading some theological books, I
have to keep on telling myself that the
only Jesus we know anything about is the
Jesus to whom the Apostles bear witness.
We don't know anything about any other Jesus.
The only Jesus we know anything about is
the Jesus who died on a cross, and
was buried in a tomb, and rose again.
And all the evidence that we have concerning
Jesus of Nazareth says the same thing about
it.
It isn't that there are a number of
other sources, a number of other books that
talk about a Jesus other than this.
Far from it.
All the witnesses in the New Testament affirm
of Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God,
the promised Messiah, that he died according to
the Scriptures, rose again.
Now, says the Apostle Paul, this theory of
yours contradicts the facts witnessed.
I've brought forward, or rather, I've referred to
a whole series of people who were witnesses
of his resurrection.
He says it just doesn't tie up.
If it is preached that Christ has been
raised from the dead, how can some of
you say there is no such a thing
as the resurrection of the dead?
But let me return to the other point
that we wanted to make.
It needs to be seen that the real
issue related to the physical resurrection of our
Lord Jesus Christ.
If you go to your libraries today and
pick up a book on the resurrection, written
by some theologian or other, you may very
well find that the resurrection they refer to
is simply a spiritual phenomenon.
That is, by resurrection many believe that what
is implied is that Jesus was a great
person.
And then he came to a sudden and
a terrible end, and he was buried.
But the memory of Jesus seemed to come
to life again.
And the influence of Jesus, even though he
had been buried, lived on.
And the spirit of Jesus, even though he
is gone, it is still here.
Well now, all that is true, of course,
but that's not what Paul is talking about
here.
The resurrection at issue here is something infinitely
more than that.
It's the physical resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth,
the man who was crucified on the center
cross, who was buried in Joseph's borrowed tomb.
He rose again from the dead.
That's where the battle is waged.
And of course, in the Greek context, in
the context of Greek culture and Greek philosophy,
there were very few who really denied the
principle of resurrection, that is, resurrection of the
spirit.
Indeed, Greek philosophy, generally it would appear, looked
forward to the fact that one day they
would move out of the body because the
spirit is immortal and the spirit will live.
And they spoke of the body as that
which cramps and imprisons the soul, and they
look forward to death because they believe then
the soul will come to its own.
That was a pagan philosophy, but they believed
that.
And so to talk about the resurrection of
the body to them, it was to talk,
I'm sorry, about the resurrection of the spirit,
would be talking about something they all believed
in, but not so the resurrection of the
body.
And this is really what ired them, and
this is what fired their opposition, and this,
this is the pernicious teaching they're trying to
introduce to the propagators of the gospel, to
the heralds of the gospel that brought into
existence, by the grace of God, a church
on that ancient dunghill, Corinth.
They held up this doctrine of the physical
resurrection to great scorn and contempt.
An illustration of this may be given by
quoting from Celsus at the end of the
second century.
This is what he said about it, and
it indicates, I believe, the kind of way
in which they scoffed and scorned at the
very idea of physical resurrection.
Celsus wrote, really, he says, it is a
hope of worms, for what soul of man
would wish any longer for a body that
had rotted?
And that's the way they talked to Christians.
Now, that spirit of unqualified skepticism then was
threatening to invade the church of Jesus Christ,
and so Paul warns them, great pastor that
he was, he warns them of the peril
of it, and he doesn't shrink from giving
an exposure of it, and that's what he's
doing here.
He had warned the Colossians, you remember, of
the danger of the philosophy of this world.
See to it, he writes to the Colossians
chapter 2 and verse 8, see to it
that no one takes you captive through hollow
and deceptive philosophy, which depends on human tradition
and basic principles of this world, rather than
on Christ.
In that same spirit pervaded Corinth also, it
would seem, that is outside the church anyway,
and was threatening to invade the church, and
I think it is reflected in Paul's earlier
reference in chapter 1 and verse 20, where
he says, he refers to the wisdom of
this world.
Now actually, of course, and I think we
need to stress this, there's need to stress
the fact that there is no necessary argument
between philosophy per se, and the Christian faith
or the Christian church.
Not everyone will appreciate that, perhaps, but I
think that that is so.
What is philosophy?
What is a philosopher?
Well, etymologically, at least, a philosopher is a
lover of wisdom, and historically speaking, the philosopher
has been a person who looks at common
beliefs and examines them under the scrutiny of
his intellect, and tries to see whether they're
reasonable, whether they're reasonably best.
He is a person who will work out
the thesis that is accepted, and attempt to
say whether this is reasonable.
If it is not reasonable, well then, of
course, he himself will not accept it, and
he will advise everybody else not to accept
it.
Now there is nothing per se, there is
nothing in philosophy per se, that need be
at loggerheads with the Christian church, and with
the Christian faith.
The whole of the Bible is addressed to
the mind, to the intellect.
The call of the Bible in the Old
Testament and the New Testament is, come now
and let us reason together, saith the Lord.
He gives us his word, and he asks
us to look at it, and to ponder
over it, and to live according to it,
and that means we must think about it.
So there is no necessary battle between philosophy
per se, and the Christian faith.
Where the trouble begins is where philosophy cuts
away from the creator of the universe, and
the redeemer whom the creator has sent, and
says, I in and of myself, my reason,
my powers are sufficient to judge truth from
error, right from wrong.
We don't need a god or god, we
can stand on our own two feet, and
like the humanism, the humanist philosophers, they say,
there is nothing other than man, there is
no one, man is alone, there is no
god, there is no supernatural.
Now it is at that point that we
have to cross swords, when philosophy steps over
the line, deems itself to be self-sufficient,
severs its connection, as we've said, with the
creator and with the redeemer, and becomes so
arrogant and self-sufficient.
This is so, of course, because philosophy per
se does not accept the doctrine of original
sin.
Philosophy per se believes that man is a
very good being, perfectible, generally, or at least
that man certainly has not experienced the kind
of thing which the Bible speaks of, and
theology speaks of as the fall.
Man is not a fallen being, and therefore
he can reason things out himself without the
aid of anyone.
Now, of course, the Bible takes another view.
The Bible tells us that God made man
on his own image, and therefore man is
the highest of all the creatures.
Nevertheless, man, as God made him, has fallen,
and something infinite, something radical has happened to
man, to the whole of mankind, in consequence
of which even our minds are darkened, and
we have a leaning towards evil, and we
love darkness rather than light.
Sin has completely ruined the inner man, not
in the sense that there is nothing that
we can do that is acceptable or has
any goodness in it as judged by our
fellows, but what it does mean is this,
that there is nothing that we can do
that does not bear the taint of sin
as seen by God.
And so, philosophy refusing to accept this revelation
of the human character and of the human
nature, and of human nature, it takes views
that are unacceptable to the Word of God.
Someone has said that in his fallen condition,
man is as incapable of the knowledge of
God as a slug or a snail is
unqualified to appreciate a Rembrandt.
Well, now, that may be an exaggeration, I
wonder.
Hence the reason why man did not discover
God by dint of philosophical argumentation and reasoning.
You remember that the Apostle Paul makes much
of this in verse 21, for example, of
the first chapter of this letter to the
Corinthians.
Since in the wisdom of God, he says,
the world through its wisdom did not come
to know God.
God was pleased through the foolishness of what
was preached to serve those who believe.
Do notice that in the wisdom of God,
God so arranged it that through its own
wisdom, the world did not find him out.
I believe, as others believe, that in the
providence of God, it was necessary that Greek
philosophy should have reached its apex, its glory,
at the heights of its glory, before the
incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ.
And the reason is this.
Philosophy came to the full bloom, as it
were, there in ancient Greece, but it did
not discover God.
Greece, like Rome, was without the knowledge of
the true God and of his Son, Jesus
Christ our Lord.
There was no knowledge of God in Corinth
when Paul went there.
There was no knowledge of the true God
in Athens when Paul went there, or in
other Greek cities.
With all their wisdom, all their philosophy, and
even in the cradle of science and of
politics, they did not know God.
God, in his own wisdom and in his
own providence, allowed philosophy to bloom and to
blossom and come to full bloom.
And then, in his own inscrutable wisdom, he
caused a virgin to conceive by the interposition
of the Holy Spirit, and a babe was
born.
And in and through the babe who was
born in a manger and died on a
cross and was buried in a tomb and
rose again, God chose to make himself known
to men.
And so he baffles the wisdom of this
world.
Now, the philosophical tenet propounded extensively in the
Corinthian world then, and capturing the minds of
some Christians was subject to great limitations and
ignorance.
Now, the next thing I want you to
notice is this.
To believe this kind of thing, says the
Apostle Paul, to believe this kind of thing,
to believe what these philosophers teach, has very
serious consequences.
And he begins to deal with these in
verse 12, and there's a whole series of
them there.
We shall look at the series, but I
just want to deal with the first of
these tonight.
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?
I'm sorry, it's in verse 13.
If there is no resurrection of the dead,
then not even Christ has been raised.
And if Christ has not been raised, our
preaching is useless, and so is your faith.
Now, I want us to look on to
that 14th verse tonight and see the first
of the consequences, what the consequences would be
if this philosophy were true.
Let's look at it again.
Look at the general principle underlying Paul's criticism
here.
The main point, says Paul, is this.
If there is no such a thing as
the resurrection of the dead, you have this
in verse 13 and then 16.
If there is no such a thing as
the resurrection of the dead, then not even
Christ has been raised.
And then verse 16, if the dead are
not raised, then Christ has not been raised
either.
Now, what's he saying?
Well, you see, he's answering the philosophers in
this way.
He's saying, now look, he says, if this
is a valid principle that you have embodied
in your cliché, there is no such thing
as the resurrection of the dead.
If that principle is true and valid, then
of course, he says, it follows.
There could not have been anyone at any
time raised from the dead.
And he relates that specifically to Christ, whose
gospel was preached in Corinth.
If in principle there can be and there
has not been a resurrection of the dead,
Jesus was not raised.
But you see, Paul puts this in a
setting where he has referred to those who
are still alive, who were able to bear
witness to the fact that Jesus was alive
from the dead.
Now, what are these consequences?
Well, I want us to look at the
first.
Paul says that if this were so, if
there is no resurrection of the dead, then
not even Christ has been raised.
And if Christ has not been raised, our
preaching, to quote the MIV, is useless.
And then he adds another, to which I'm
not going to refer tonight, and so is
your faith.
We'll come back there.
Our preaching is useless.
Literally what he said is this, our preaching
is empty.
Our preaching is an empty thing.
It's a bottle.
It's a spent cartridge.
It has no power.
The announcement of a dead Savior has no
power to save.
Now, you and I know that.
There are people who preach religion, but they've
never, in the course of their preaching or
their teaching, seen men and women raised from
the death of sin to the life which
is in God.
And one reason is this, that the Christ
whom they preach is not the crucified and
risen Christ of the Scriptures.
If Christ is not raised, he says, our
preaching is empty.
There's nothing to it but words.
And brothers and sisters, haven't we, haven't we
to confess that there is much preaching that
is nothing else but words?
You notice how the Apostle Paul expected something
more than that always.
I have no time to go after it
now.
I was tempted to do so, but it'll
just take us away from the main argument
tonight, and I will abstain.
But Paul does that in many, many places.
He refers it in the letter to the
Thessalonians, for example.
He did not simply preach in word only,
but in power and in demonstration of the
Spirit of God.
In other words, the Spirit of God gave
power to the message, sealed it, made it
effective, made it real, made it powerful.
Not in word only did Paul preach.
In order to appreciate the real implications of
Paul's affirmation, of course, it is necessary for
us to understand what is meant by death.
Now, this may sound irrelevant to you at
first, but I trust you will see that
it is exceedingly relevant.
There is no gospel that can deal with
the exigencies of death as biblically understood, other
than the gospel of a crucified and risen
Christ, as biblically proclaimed.
Scripture everywhere shares in Paul's view that death
is something terrible, terrifying.
For one reason or another, we so often
fail to appreciate this, and we lose so
much in terms of understanding of the Scriptures
when we do not recognize the terror of
death as biblically conceived.
Death is more than the way off stage,
as someone has put it.
It is more than the mere exit from
the scene of life for the snuffing out
of the candle of conscious existence.
Of course, it is all that, in a
sense, in a sense only, of course.
But death is infinitely more than all that.
Were it only that, it would be as
natural for humans as for animals of all
kinds.
But that's not so.
In human experience, death has a dimension that
is altogether confined to humans.
The animal world knows nothing at all about
it, according to our Christian understanding.
It is altogether unique according to the Christian
understanding and to Christian experience generally.
You see, death has a sting in its
bosom for us humans, and it's a very
real sting.
However much we try to evade it or
to avoid it, neither is it simply confined
to our greater sensitivity than the animal kingdom
to the matter of separating from our families.
A dog when it dies may or may
not feel the separation with other dogs.
A bird when it dies may or may
not sense the separation from other birds.
Humans have an acute sense of the terror
of separation.
That is true.
But there is infinitely more than that to
the terror of death.
All that pales into insignificance alongside the feeling
that death, like a glorified officer of the
law, ushers us into a sphere that holds
ingredients of horror for the guilty and impenitent
transgressors of God's law.
Death may well be a biological necessity, but
it is more, it is infinitely more than
that.
What then is it?
Well, divine revelation sees it as a composite
of certain distinctive features, which it has assumed
specifically because of sin.
Even if God meant man to exist on
this planet for only a specified number of
years, and the end or the termination of
that life could be designated death, that kind
of death, the mere exit from this life
into another, is something altogether different from death
as biblically understood as the experience of the
race.
And it is sin that has given to
death the form and the features of its
present guise and its present character.
Death as we know it and experience it
is the consequence of sin, so that a
Savior who presumed to save us from sin
must save us from death.
Death in all its phases, death as a
composite entity, death in its totality, sooner or
later he must be able to do that.
Otherwise we are not saved from sin in
its totality.
Now there are at least three major characteristics
of death that I think are relevant here,
and we must look at them very briefly
in order to see the point that Paul
is making.
If Christ has not risen, then our preaching,
what we preach, is empty.
We have no real Savior.
We may talk well, we may be able
to spin the arms, and we may be
able to talk and capture the imaginations of
people, but we can't save the last.
There are at least three major characteristics of
death according to the scriptures.
One, death is the result of a just
sentence by the just judge of all mankind.
When God made man, he said, you are
free to eat any tree of the garden,
but you must not eat from the tree
of the knowledge of good and evil, for
when you eat of it, you will surely
die.
Now I've not time to deal with this.
I would love to take the time, but
I must not.
Paul assures us that death is the carrying
out of that threat.
Death, he insists, is the very wage paid
for sin.
It's not an accident.
It's not something that has just happened.
It's not just the fading away of life.
Death is the wage paid by sin or
for sin.
And he adds, sin entered the world through
one man, and death came through sin.
And in this way, death came to all
men because all sinned.
Now the disregarding of the creator's warning and
the violation of his commandment resulted in God's
just execution of his threatened consequences.
This is one element in death.
Brothers and sisters, we die because we're under
the judgment of God.
And that's not the whole truth as far
as Christians are concerned.
There is forgiveness and there is justification and
there is acceptance.
But death is part and parcel of the
fact that we have fallen and have sinned
and are under judgment.
One day we shall be saved even from
the ravages of death.
That's involved in our Christian gospel.
But that's what death is.
In the first place, the just judge of
all the universe is executing his law.
And who are you and who am I
to argue with him?
The Holy One, our Creator.
In the second place, death is also descriptive
of a state of condition of being, a
state or condition of being within our own
souls, within the sinner's own heart.
Now this is something quite different.
Paul refers to this when he writes to
the Romans in Romans 8, 6.
He says, the mind of sinful man is
death.
Did you get that?
The mind of sinful man is death.
And then he adds a little later, because
the sinful mind, he says, is hostile to
God.
It does not submit to God's law, nor
indeed can it.
This is one reason why the philosophers, you
see, without the aid of divine revelation and
the Spirit of God always go astray.
The state of spiritual death expresses itself in
an antipathy to God.
Instinctively, when things go wrong, who's the first
person we blame?
Well, if he's not the first, God is
usually the second.
The state of spiritual death expresses itself in
an antipathy to God, and thus to all
his representatives.
Whether it be his word, we quarrel with
his word, his spirit, we grieve his spirit,
his servants, his church, whatever.
All the true representatives of God we quarrel
with.
We do not like the authority that comes
through God and his agencies, and we will
not bend to the law of God.
We want our own way.
We're hostile, says the apostle Paul, and all
of us know something of this.
The third element in death, of course, goes
beyond all that, and I haven't said the
half about the first two, neither can I
about the third.
Death is not only a sentence carried out
and a state of soul that exists, it
is still something more.
What more?
Well, I can only give you the language
of the New Testament without attempting to expound
it, but death is something infinitely more.
I read in Revelation of the second death,
Revelation 2.11, it starts there, you have
it elsewhere.
He who overcomes will not be hurt by
the second death.
Now, you notice what John is saying there.
The people addressed there were in very difficult
circumstances, living in the midst of enemies and
foes of all kinds, but John urges them
to overcome at any cost.
Why does he argue that it is worth
paying the price to overcome?
Well, he says it's worth paying the price
to overcome, were it only for this.
There's more than this, but were it only
for this.
The second death will not touch them.
A second death is something that defies, defies
description.
Elsewhere in scripture this seems to be described
as a banishment from the presence of God,
as for example in 2 Thessalonians 1, where
Paul says they will be punished with everlasting
destruction and shut out from the presence of
the Lord and from the majesty of his
power on the day he comes, to be
glorified in his holy people and to be
marveled at among all those who have believed.
To go back to Jesus himself, he refers
to a future experience of those whom he
classifies as goats in his parable, the parable
of the sheep and the goats, you remember,
Matthew 25.
In this way, then King will say to
those on his left hand, depart from me,
you who are cursed into the eternal fire
prepared for the devil and his angels.
John speaks of a lake of fire and
Jesus again of outer darkness.
Now I simply cannot take all these things
in, but if you and I are honest
with scriptures and we bring one alongside of
the other, you can dimly see something which
constitutes this other aspect of death in its
totality.
The imagery varies, but death includes all these
three features.
Death is not complete when you are buried
or cremated.
Death is not done with when you lie
motionless in a casket.
There is an aspect of death which takes
us beyond the here and now.
Now the practical import of all this as
far as our text is concerned is this.
Paul would have us realize that the only
gospel that can save men and women from
death in all its totality requires a savior
who is lord of death in all its
features.
And one of those features is the body
buried decomposed.
And unless Christ is master over that and
somehow or other can call the atoms together
again and raise the dead and give us
a new body as he promised, he's really
no savior from death.
And if he's no savior from death, he
can be no savior in life.
If he were not able to do this,
then we would not have a savior at
our most vulnerable point and where we need
him most.
In anticipating death in the future and in
walking through the valley of the shadow into
the reality at last.
But of course it is the great insistence
of this chapter that we have such a
savior.
Norse is this philosophy.
There is no resurrection of the dead.
Asked as the apostle Paul, there are witnesses
here and many of them are still alive.
They've seen him.
They've touched him.
They've handled him.
The very existence of a church in Corinth.
Where did you come from men and women?
He says, in effect, how are you here?
What's made you the men and women you
are?
Was it a dead savior left in the
grave to rot?
The very testimony of a saint, if it's
a true Christian experience that he testifies to,
means that it could not have been effected
by anyone less than a son of God
incarnate who bore our sins away and rose
again to perform his own saving work in
the hearts and lives of men.
Now, my friends, I conclude.
But I want to conclude with this note.
Jesus knew full well that it was necessary
for his disciples to understand this and that
it was necessary for his disciples, for all
his followers, for his church, that he should
rise again from the dead.
And from Caesarea Philippi onwards, he not only
insisted on telling his disciples that he was
going to die, but also that he was
going to rise again from the dead.
Take the, for example, three statements by which
Mark records, which Mark records in three successive
chapters.
He tells us in chapter 8, 9, and
chapter 10, almost identically the same things.
He began to teach them that the Son
of Man must suffer many things and be
rejected by the elders, chief priests, and teachers
of the law, and that he must be
killed and after three days rise again.
You have the same kind of thing in
chapter, Mark 9, 31, and then Mark 10,
33, and 34.
He recognized the need that he should rise
again, and then he pledged himself to fulfill
that need by rising again.
If he did not rise again, we have
no gospel at all.
I hope you can see that.
Jesus is not authoritative as a teacher unless
he rose again.
He said he was going to.
He said he was able to, and it
was part and parcel of his program as
he enunciated it to his disciples.
If Jesus is not risen, then I can't
trust him as a teacher, nor even a
good man.
For he makes mistakes, and if he can
make a mistake about an important feature such
as this, we can't trust him.
But more than that, we cannot trust him
as Savior.
For he cannot save us out of the
totality of the consequences of the curse that
sin has brought into our lives.
But because he's risen, because he's risen, he
is able to save to the uttermost those
that come to God by him.
The Ephesians to the Hebrews tells us, because
he ever lives, he is able to save
those that come to God by him.
He is able to pardon our sins and
take them away, and take us away from
our sins.
He's able to come between us and our
darling idols.
He's able to change our hearts.
He's able to transform our spirits, and by
the working of his own Holy Spirit within
us, he's able to give us hope that
we can look into the teeth of physical
death itself, and know that we are more
than conquerors, through him that loved us.
Yea, you and I may be buried, but
we shall rise again, for he is but
the firstfruits of them that slept.
He's the first of the harvest, says Paul.
I'm sorry I'm going ahead of myself, but
it's very important.
He's the first chief of the harvest, and
the first chief means there's a whole harvest
to gather in, and the church is the
harvest.
He's the first fruit brought in.
We, by the grace of the God who
sent him, will one day by his angels
be gathered from the north and the south
and the east and the west, and the
graves will give up their dead, and the
saints will enter their full inheritance, and that
includes the salvation of the body from the
ravages of hallelujah.
Are you trusting him?
Are you praising him?
Worshiping him?
Serving him?
Telling others about him?
Oh, what a difference it would make to
our fellow citizens in this great city, if
every man and woman who has a vote
were to know Jesus risen from among the
dead.
And how can they know, unless you and
I tell them?
Let us pray.
Blessed Lord, we bow before the amazing wonder
of your love.
We cannot attempt, we cannot profess to be
able to take it all in.
Times there are when it simply overwhelms us,
like the tide coming in and overtaking us,
and we are swamped by it.
But, oh God, we thank you for these
truths.
We thank you for revealing yourself to us,
your creatures, to the fathers, to the prophets,
and the law.
And in the last of the days of
your activity in revealing yourself, you revealed yourself
to us in your son, coequal with yourself,
who when he had made possible the purification
of sins, sat down at the right hand
of the majesty on high.
Oh Lord God Almighty, we thank you for
the Savior, and we pray that you will
bind us ever closer to him.
Make us servants of yours in proclaiming him,
and in living Christ among men under the
sentence of death.
We ask it in his holy name.
Amen.