Alive Again - the Golden Thread of Life From the Dead — Major Ian Thomas

Just a word, too, before I begin the message, and that is a word about Jim Wright, of whom Richard has been speaking. We live about just almost 9 ,000 feet up in the Rocky Mountains at Estes Park, where we have our North American headquarters and the Torchbearer Ascension Bible School, one of the two in that country.

And there was a lady living up the mountain, a godly woman, but she didn't know God. That is to say, she had been religionized and she was not insincere. She attended church regularly, but wasn't a Christian.

But she wanted to serve God, and so she did what she thought was the logical thing to do. She quit her job and she went to a theological seminary. And in the 12 months that she was there, she never had to open her Bible once.

She was not asked to, nor was it necessary, because nobody referred to her. Well she was intelligent enough to realize that that was for the birds. And she knew there was a funny little place called Ravencrest Chalet, which is our Torchbearer Center there in Colorado.

She didn't know quite what it was all about, but she slipped in one morning, sat in on a lecture. And the lecturer was Jim Wright, who attended Capernaum Bible School some years ago. Wasn't quite what he had expected.

It shocked him somewhat, and he decided to quit. But my older boy, Chris, who is now the principal and director, now working in Colorado, took him for a walk around the park and persuaded him to stay, and he did.

Nicodemus and the Necessity of the New Birth

And rediscovered Jesus Christ. And came alive. When he got back to the United States, being an oil engineer, he took two years off and studied on his own the Word of God for eight hours a day. And allowed the one who authored it to teach him what he meant by what he had said.

Then he took two more years off and did half a day's work and half a day's study. So he established his own Bible seminary and let God teach him. And God has given him an incredible ministry, and he's one of our best teachers in our Bible School.

He's still the owner and director of a large oil engineering firm, but he does that only to pay for his utilities. The rest of his time he's available for the Lord Jesus to communicate his life through him.

And I think he'll enjoy his ministry immensely. And while he was lecturing, this good lady, listen, and in passing, Jim Wright mentioned Nicodemus, a deeply religious man, utterly sincere, one of the best of the Pharisees, but he didn't know God.

But to satisfy his curiosity, in the middle of the night, you remember John chapter 3, he came to the Lord Jesus, we know that you're a teacher come from God, nobody could do the miracles that you do except God be with you.

And the Lord Jesus said, Nicodemus, except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. And explained to this theologian what it means to be born again. And he was. Well, at the conclusion, he had only mentioned that in passing, this lady came to Jim Wright and said, my name is Nicodemus, I don't know God, and I've never been born again.

So he laid it across. It took him about 35 minutes to do what, in the theological seminary, she hadn't begun to understand because nobody opened their Bibles. Isn't that sad? That's a commentary on a destitute, sterile Christianity that has departed from the one who must be central in your life and mine, because God created man to be inhabited by his making.

And Jesus came into this world on the basis of that redemptive act to put God back into a man. So that's a little word of introduction to Jim Wright, added to that which has already been given to you by Richard, of whom also you've heard a little bit tonight, and it may interest you to know that he's been awarded the highest scientific honor that can be given to anybody in the scientific world.

The Scarlet Thread of Redemption Through Scripture

He specializes in bugs. All right, we're ready to go. Yesterday, in our morning session, we took a panoramic view of God's redemptive purpose, what I call the scarlet thread of redemption, because the Lord Jesus, Revelation 13, was the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world.

In other words, that redemptive transaction was in the heart of God before ever the world was made. You see, when God created man, he created man differently from the rest of the animal kingdom, because he wanted in man to have a man that could love God back, but love cannot be compelled.

And that's why he vested in man the moral capacity to choose, and that was a built-in risk, a calculated risk. We've, some of us, been discussing throughout the week how God created the animal kingdom to be governed by a built-in computerized program called instinct, with a rigid interlock between that instinctive thrust and the animal behavior mechanism, the soul, mind, emotion, and will.

But when God created man, he created a creature who was not to be automatically governed by a built-in computerized program, but one who could exercise his free option, or as I put it yesterday, given the greatest privilege that God gave to any creature on this planet, the right to exercise the disposition of his choice as creature towards his Creator.

That was a calculated risk, because if God creates man with a capacity to say no or yes to his Creator, the possibility that he may say no. You might say, well that was very irresponsible of God. But God was not irresponsible, because ever before he created this world, or put man on it, he had provided in the eternal ages of the past a remedy should man exercise his option in his stupidity in the wrong direction.

The Lord Jesus, the Lamb slain before the foundation of the world. In other words, the redemptive purpose of God, and the regenerative consequence that he had in mind in restoring men to function, was fashioned in the heart of God before ever the world was.

But in foreshadowing the redemptive event, after man in his stupidity had believed the devil's line opted out of life into death, believing that he could be a man without God, all the way through the Old Testament there's the unfolding plan whereby God was preparing the stage for that little baby boy that would be born at Bethlehem as God Creator in co-equality with the Father and the Holy Spirit, fashioned in the borrowed womb of a virgin girl, conceived of the Holy Ghost, would be born in Bethlehem to accomplish that reconciling act that allows a guilty sinner to be at peace with God and be restored to life and function.

And we took a panoramic view of the unfolding story. The first public proclamation God made of a plan that had been fashioned in his heart in the eternal ages of the past, rebuting the devil in the day that man fell, he said I'll put enmity between you, Satan, and the woman, her seed and your seed, if the seed of that woman, Jesus, to be born of Mary, he will bruise your head, he'll destroy you.

But in the process you will bruise his head, bruise his heel, he'll hang on a cross. Genesis 3 .15. And from that first public announcement of God's plan that he had already decided upon, there's the unfolding story in the scarlet thread that weaves its way through the Old Testament Scriptures.

The shedding of the blood of that little lamb, Abel. In the fourth chapter, the shedding of blood for the individual. In the twelfth chapter of the book of Exodus, God commanded Moses to take the lamb, shed its blood, and paint upon the doorpost and the lintel of every family home.

And the angel of God's judgment would pass over the Passover lamb, shedding of blood for the family. The high priest going into the holiest of all, he alone, on pain of death, once a year, for the shedding of blood for the nation, family, as for the individual, and the nation.

And that scarlet thread leads us relentlessly to that lonely hill outside a city wall where Christ was made sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in heaven. For the blood of Jesus Christ, the blood of the lamb, cleanses us from all sin.

Resurrection as the Heart of the Gospel

Well, that's a panoramic view of the unfolding, redemptive purpose of God that found its glorious consummation in the birth of a little baby boy incarnate in the sinlessness of that humanity in which for thirty-three years he demonstrated the innocence of a pre-fallen Adam, man as God intended man to be, died, but rose again.

So in addition to the scarlet thread that weaves its way through the Old Testament Scriptures, there's a golden thread of life from the dead. So the Lord Jesus came, and he bore this testimony of the assignment that the Father God had given him, I am come, that you might have life, and that you might have it in an entirely superlative quality, more abundant.

It'll represent a joy unspeakable and full of glory, a peace that passes understanding and staggers the neighbors. You're going to reign in life by one Christ Jesus, more than conquerors, not getting by, but triumphant.

What kind of people need life? That he, God's dear son, came into the world to give, or dead people? So it's quite obvious, therefore, that he didn't come to give us physical life, because we receive it from the moment of our animal birth.

He came, as the only one who could, to restore to man that life man lost in the day that Adam fell, the day man died. So the heart of the gospel is resurrection, 1 Corinthians 15 and verse 14, if Christ be not risen from the dead.

My preaching, says Paul, is vain. It's stuff and nonsense. It's got no substance to it, even though I tell you about the cross, and stir your emotions. If Christ be not risen from the dead, my preaching is vain, and your faith is vain, and you're still in your sins.

That's how important, how imperative, was the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. So we're not surprised that we find that foreshadowed also in the Old Testament scriptures. I call it the power of the third morning.

We're not going to spend long, because we've got an immense amount of work to do this morning, a lot of territory to cover. And I don't apologize for asking you to think. It's quite a useful occupation on occasions.

Not like the lady, you know, who said, sometimes I sit and think, but other times I just sit. And when I go to church, I just sit. And people who go to church and just sit, normally go to sleep. That's why every now and again I have to shout a little louder, just to wake you up.

Abraham, Isaac, and Faith in the God Who Raises the Dead

We've been hearing from Peter McDonough of the covenant that God made, or confirmed rather, in Abraham, that in his seed should all the families of the earth be blessed. And of course, that seed was the one promised in Genesis 3 .15, the seed of the woman, Jesus.

But in the unfolding of God's divine agenda, he raised up a nation, that that nation, the Jewish nation, might become the womb of the incarnate word, as that Jewish nation was the womb of the written word.

And we owe much to that nation. But of that nation, of the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of the house of Judah, in the city of Bethlehem, the city of David, that little baby boy was to be born. And Abraham was to be part of that God's history.

He found it very difficult to believe at first, as all of us know, because God told him that he was going to have a little boy by his wife Sarah, who was already too old to bear, and all her days had been barren, physically incapable of having children.

And Abraham himself was well over 80 years of age, and yet he said, you're going to have a child by Sarah. Well, he thought that God was getting a little absent-minded. But with the best will in the world, and with no little sincerity, he thought he'd get God out of his jam.

First he agreed with Sarah that Eliezer, a servant, should be presented, and God said uh-uh. So after that, Sarah made a motion. She said, take the Egyptian bondwoman, whom Peter McDonough mentioned, and bear a son by her, and that'll get God out of his dilemma.

And God said, uh-uh. Was Abraham insincere? No, he was practicing religion, trying to serve God without knowing what it takes, the hidden factor, God himself. But the plan was implemented, and a little baby boy was born, and his name was Ishmael, father of the Arabs.

And God said, no thank you. We are told of this in the epistles of the Galatians, in chapter 4, where it says Abraham had two sons. One was born after the flesh. That is to say, not insincerely, but the best that a man without God can offer to God.

Religion, destitute of life. Christianity, without Christ. Then it goes on to say in Galatians, in chapter 4, two sons, Ishmael, born after the flesh, and Isaac, born of promise. All you needed, by way of explanation for the birth of Ishmael, was a man doing his best for God.

And God said, no, carnal sweat. A man trying to do for God what only God could do for and through that man. The other, Isaac, was born of promise. In other words, something God said he would do, was perfectly capable of doing, and did it.

But it took Abraham many, many years before he was prepared to let God be God in his life. Born of promise. The only possible explanation for the birth of Isaac was God himself. Ishmael, men in committee.

Isaac, God in action. That's the difference between a dead religion and a living faith. But God having given, by promise, that little boy to Abraham, in whom, said he, all the families of the earth are going to be blessed, in that he was the forerunner of the one who was to be born at Bethlehem, of the seed of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, of the tribe of Judah, the house of David, in the city of Bethlehem.

The promise. He said, of this little baby boy there is going to be seed as the stars of heaven, and like the sand of the seashore. And then God says, go and kill him. God said, take now thy son, you'll find it in Genesis 22 and verse 2, take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, what did God say?

Abraham might have interrupted God, then said, pardon me, I've got two sons. God said, not so far as I'm concerned. Your only son, Ishmael's your baby, not mine. Take thine only son, Isaac, whom thou lovest, get thee into the land of Moriah, offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains, which I will tell you of.

Well, you can imagine how Abraham felt. Here was this bright-eyed little kid, maybe around 12 years of age, his shrill little voice, and every time he entered into the presence of Abraham his heart thumped with excitement and joy, and God says, now take him up the mountain and slay him.

How would you have felt? Abraham rose up early in the morning and saddled his ass and took two of his young men with him and Isaac his son. He claimed the wood for the burnt offering, he rose up and went unto the place of which God had told him, with a knife in one hand and fire in the other, having loaded that little boy with the wood upon which he was to be bound and slain.

And all the way up the mountain a little voice in his heart was saying, Abraham, don't be a fool. You've got the blessing, hang on to it. This is God's gift to you, how can you slay him, keep him? But there was another little voice in the heart of Abraham saying, Abraham, keep moving.

You'll never go see the purpose of God realized until you get to the top and do as you're told. And he went to the top of that mountain. He bound his little boy on the bundle of wood. And in his heart he said, God, when you told me you'd give me this little boy, I didn't believe you.

I thought I was smarter than God, and I made a fool of myself. And I'm not going to make a fool of myself the second time. I don't understand where it's at. I don't see how you can make of this little child, see, does the stars of heaven stand by the seashore innumerable if I've got to plunge this knife into his heart?

But I'm not going to make myself a fool again for the second time. If slay him I must, then slay him I will. And God take the consequences. And a knife flashed in the sun. And at that moment God said, thanks, Abraham, throw the knife away.

That's all I wanted to know. That in your heart now, you've died to the blessing, and you've died to the gift, because you realize that the giver is greater than the gift, and the blesser is greater than the blessing.

And because you've done this thing, in blessing I will bless you, and your seed shall be of the stars of heaven, and the stand by the seashore innumerable. And on that day Abraham became God's friend, part of God's history.

Three times in the Bible he's called Abraham God's friend. That's how you become a friend of God, be told what to do and do as you're told. Even if you've got to plunge the knife into the thing dearest to your heart, I am crucified with Christ.

Nevertheless, I live, yet not I, Christ lives in me. I'm sharing his resurrection. So when did that happen? It tells you in the fourth verse of the twenty-second chapter of Genesis, on the third day.

That's when it happened. It's the power of the third morning, life from the dead. See how it's recorded very beautifully in the eleventh chapter of the epistles of the Hebrews. Hebrews chapter eleven, that portrait gallery of men and women of faith, God's friends, part of God's history.

It says verse seventeen of the eleventh chapter of the epistles of the Hebrews, by faith, that disposition that lets God do it, that no longer offers him an Ishmael, but lets God give him Isaac. By faith, Abraham, when he was put to the test, had already brought Isaac for an offering.

He who had gladly received and welcomed God's promises was ready to sacrifice his only son, of whom it was said, though through Isaac shall your descendants, your seed be reckoned. For he reasoned that God was able to raise him up even from the dead.

Indeed, in the sense that Isaac was figuratively dead, potentially sacrificed in the heart of Abraham, God did actually receive him back from the dead and gave him into Abraham's arms. That's the power of the third morning.

The Third Morning: Esther, Jonah, and Resurrection Life

You find this quite often in the Old Testament. There's a very beautiful story, Esther, fantastic, unfolding of man's relationship to God, how it all went wrong, and what God has done to put things right.

Getting the wrong man out and the right man in. The old Adamic nature to be replaced by the divine nature in a spiritual new birth called resurrection. Christ himself coming to re-invade your humanity and live his life on earth in your body as once he lived his life on earth in that little boy, that body that was born of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

You see, the Christian life today is the life that the Lord Jesus lived then in that body, lived now by him, the same Lord Jesus in your body and mine. Isn't that incredible? That's the Christian life.

The life that he lived then in his body, lived now by him, the same Jesus Christ, God the creator, redeemer, living that life in you. Missed that and you've missed everything. Missed that and you've never understood the gospel.

You don't know the character of the good news. And the beautiful picture given to us there in Esther, you see, is that she represents the human spirit. Not God's spirit, the human spirit. Mordecai represents the Holy Spirit and it was under his, the Holy Spirit's instructions that Esther was to go into the presence of the king unsummoned, to do which was to be already sentenced to death.

Nobody had to be tried. If they entered into the presence of the king unsummoned, they were already sentenced as good as dead. But said, Mordecai, go into the presence of the king and plead for your people because Haman, a tragic picture of the Adamic nature, the carnal mind that is at enmity with God, not subject to his law, neither indeed can be.

And he wanted to assassinate every Jew in the land because he hated their law, because the law they had was God's law. And Mordecai says, go into the presence of the king and plead for your people. Which to do was to be sentenced to death the moment she crossed the threshold.

She said to her servants, to Mordecai, fast and pray, three days and three nights. And on the third morning, I will enter into the presence of the king, unsummoned. And if I perish, I perish. God take the consequences.

But on that third morning, when a slip of a girl, her heart thumping like a sledgehammer, she hadn't resigned her throne as the queen, for the queen she was. She hadn't dismissed her servants, she hadn't given away all her beautiful clothes, but in her heart she was dead.

When she crossed into the threshold, unsummoned into the presence of the king. But on that third morning, the king held out the golden scepter, the only means whereby one sentence to death could be saved.

When did it take place? On the third morning. And as good as dead, as she entered into the presence of the king, she was alive again. God told Jonah to go to Nineveh. He wasn't inclined to be obedient, because he hated the Nineveh.

They were his own nation's enemies. The one thing he wanted God to do was damn them, destroy them, eliminate them. But God told him to go, and he ducked, you remember, went to Tarshish, and took a ship to run away from God, from the presence of the Lord, it tells us.

In the first chapter of the book of Jonah, God raised a great storm, and finally those who were on board the ship, the captain and his men, the sailors, recognized that Jonah was the object of God's judgment, and Jonah admitted it and said, I'm running away from God, and there's only one way that you can be saved from this storm, throw me in the sea.

And in his heart, Jonah died to himself, and his false ambitions, and his bitter prejudice, and his hate for another people, but God prepared a big fish, remember? And Jonah was saved. And I always have to be careful the way I say this, because I usually get the words wrong and put him in a whale of a belly, but actually it was the belly of a whale, but it was both.

You'll find it in the first chapter of the book of Jonah, you needn't turn to it, the last verse, and from the bowels, as he describes it, of the earth, he said, I cried to God, and said salvation is of the Lord.

And the whale wasn't of that theological persuasion, and vomited him up on dry land. Do you remember what day it was? The third morning. And Jonah was back on track. Fascinating, isn't it? The power of the third morning.

The Resurrection Proves Christ’s Finished Work

But what's the significance? Well if Christ be not risen from the dead, my preaching is vain, your faith is vain, you're still in your sins. You see, the evidence that God gave that Christ had accomplished the redemptive act, had the right to say, tetelestai, finished, paid in full, that's what it means in English, paid in full.

In biblical times, in Jerusalem, if you bought something in the shop and you wanted a receipt, they wouldn't give you a receipt saying, receive with thanks, they'd put tetelestai, paid in full. Today, if you go to Israel and buy something in a shop and ask for a receipt, they'll put tetelestai, paid in full.

That's what the Lord Jesus meant on the cross when he cried, Father, tetelestai, you sent me to pay the price to redeem a lost humanity, paid in full. And God demonstrated that that spiritual transaction whereby guilty sinners could be reconciled to a holy God had been accomplished to God's holiest satisfaction even before he died physically.

God restored to him the Holy Spirit, whom of his own pre-volition he had forfeited for your sake and mine, and to demonstrate that he was alive again spiritually for your sake and mine, God raised him from the dead three days later physically.

For he came back to that body that did not suffer corruption, a miracle, and in that body that did not in three days suffer corruption, though we are told of Lazarus, four days dead he stood. He appeared to his disciples and showed them in his hands the print of the nails, and in his feet.

And he is the one who will judge the world in righteousness. He'll judge the unredeemed, the lost, the unregenerate, to be eternally banished from the presence of a holy God, their rebellion to be confirmed by God, for he will seal their corruption.

It tells you that in the last chapter of the last book of the Bible, let him that be filthy be filthy still, forever, forever. Let him that be unjustified be unjustified, no peace with God, no redemption, no forgiveness, still forever.

You see, one day, if you're not a Christian, God's going to confirm your choice, forever. That verse goes on to say, let him that be holy, clothed with the righteousness of Christ, the wedding garment, let him be holy still, forever.

Let him that be justified, who has come to Jesus and recognized, God has accepted me just as if I'd never sinned, justified. Because on the cross, Jesus died just as if he'd committed all my sins. And when you come, guilty as you are, and receive the vicarious, substitutionary, reconciling act of Christ upon the cross, to which he was sent into this world, you're accepted in the beloved, and your sins will be remembered no more, forever.

That's the day when God will say, it's all over, man has had his last chance. I wonder where you'll be on that day? Which side of the cross? Now this was confirmed by God in that he raised him from the dead.

You'll find that in the seventeenth chapter of the book of the Acts. Acts and chapter seventeen, just glance at it, if you've got your Bibles, hope you have, because that, you see, is the source of truth.

The written word that introduces us to the one who is the truth, the living word. Verse thirty of the seventeenth chapter of the book of the Acts, the times of this ignorance God weeped at, but now commandeth all men, everywhere, to repent.

He tells us why in the nineteenth verse of the third chapter, always link those two together. Acts three nineteen says, repent and be converted, turn, that your sins may be blotted out. So God commands all men everywhere to repent, be converted, that their sins might be blotted out.

And, of course, inherent in that statement is the fact, if God is at all intelligent and commands all men everywhere to repent and be converted, that their sins may be blotted out, all men everywhere may repent, may be converted, and have their sins blotted out.

No limited atonement, no reservations on God's power. The work of the cross was all-embracing, for God is unwilling that any should perish. Jesus, we are told, suffered death. Hebrews two verse nine, for every man.

And the moral option is not his, but yours and mine. Because if God commands, only you can obey. God doesn't obey his own command, he expects those to obey whom he has commanded. Ever obeyed God's command to repent and be converted, that your sins might be blotted out?

If not, don't be surprised if one day God says, I'm going to seal your choice forever. You're lost. Without hope, without Christ, and without God. So the thirty-first verse then goes on to say, because he hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness, he'll judge the lost for condemnation forever, and he'll also judge the believer for reward.

And he'll do it in righteousness. And by that man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he, God, hath raised him, Jesus, from the dead. That's why the resurrection, you see, is imperative.

If there are those who, deceived by the God of this world, Satan, don't accept the fact that Jesus rose from the dead, just be very, very, very sorry for them. They have no hope. They'll be judged by the one whom God raised from the dead.

Easter, Pentecost, and the Unity of Biblical Revelation

Now, you'll see some interesting things in the Word of God. Look at Psalm chapter two, or the second Psalm, we call it, and the seventh verse. The seventh verse of the second Psalm. I will declare, or rather verse six, no, verse seven, no, verse six.

I just want to confuse you a bit, just to make sure, wait. In the sixth verse, yet have I set my King upon my holy hill of Zion. That was the Mount of Olives, in Bethlehem. I will declare the decree, the Lord hath said unto me, thou art my son.

This day have I begotten thee. This is what God said of the Lord Jesus. Thou art my beloved son, this day I have begotten thee. Now, where do you cast your mind back to? When you read that in the second chapter, the second Psalm, and the seventh verse.

This day have I begotten thee. Well, you might think that I was going to give you a Christmas message. Did you imagine that had something to do with Christmas? Well, you're wrong, but you've always got to let the Bible explain the Bible.

So, in order to understand that, you need to turn now to the thirteenth chapter of the book of Acts. So, keep your fingers licked, and with a plentiful supply of saliva in reserve. Because the Bible, you see, from Genesis to the last chapter of Revelation is one single, total revelation.

You can't just pick and choose, and say, I like this little bit, and we'll preach about that, and believe that, but I'm not going to turn to the rest, leave that on the side of the plate like a bone. When the Lord Jesus, on the road to Emmaus, met the two disciples, beginning at Moses, and in all the scriptures, and in all the prophets, he expounded unto them the things concerning himself, and their hearts burned within them.

He gave them central heating. And if you're cold on the outside, I trust that you'll get warm on the inside. As we turn to this amazing book, but in the thirteenth chapter of the book of the Acts, Paul is speaking, and he says this, Acts 13 and verse 26, men and brethren, children of the stock of Abraham, whosoever among you feareth God, to you is the word of this salvation sent.

For they that dwell in Jerusalem, and their rulers, that is the religious leaders of his day, his contemporary theologians, they that live in Jerusalem, and their rulers, because they knew him not, nor yet the voices of the prophets, because they repudiated the authenticity of scripture, and claimed the right to reinterpret Moses, and the rest of the Bible, to make it say what they thought was more rational from the human point of view.

Nothing new about that. That's been done all down the centuries. That's how men turned God into religion, and Christ into Christianity. Because they knew him, Jesus, not, nor yet the voices of the prophets, which are read every Sabbath day, they have fulfilled them in condemning him.

Can you imagine that? They read this book that foreshadowed the birth, life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus every Sabbath day, and fulfilled them in doing exactly what God said would do, they would do, as men who didn't know God.

They fulfilled them. Though they found no cause of death in him, yet desired they Pilate that he should be slain. And when they had fulfilled all that was written of him in the Old Testament, they took him down from the tree, laid him in a sepulchre, they put his body in a tomb.

But look at verse 30, this is the back of grace, but God raised him from the dead. And verse 32, we declare unto you glad tidings, this is good news, Jesus is alive. We declare unto you glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us, their children, in that he hath raised up Jesus again, as it is also written in the second Psalm.

Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. So when was that prophecy and promise fulfilled? When Jesus was born a little baby in Bethlehem. Well no, that glorious statement of God the Father in heaven concerning his son on earth, this day have I begotten you, referred to the day he raised him from the dead.

Not Christmas, Easter, Easter. And of course Christmas without Easter would be a dead loss. Just of course as Easter without Pentecost, the day when the risen Savior came to re-inhabit the redeemed humanity of forgiven sinners, even his resurrection would be a dead loss.

But you see we've turned Christianity into a calendar, and where have we put it? We've hung it on the wall, because we've lost Jesus, and substituted religion, Christianity, for Christ. Well this isn't the only reference to this fact.

You look at concerning his resurrection, Romans 8 and verse 29. Look at Romans 8, 29. Got your finger licks? God did for know. Recognize that God knows the end from the beginning. He lives in the present tense.

He doesn't know the past, he doesn't know the future, it's eternity. Isaiah tells us that God inhabits eternity. That's why he writes history in advance, and can tell you what is going to happen through people, even though they made the choice.

Because the eternal, timeless God who knows the end from the beginning, could read their thoughts then as he can read yours now. Whom he did for know, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his God's son, Jesus, that he, Jesus, might be the firstborn among many brethren.