Searching For Someone To Count On： Christ Is Truly Risen — Tim Conway

Salvation from Death and the Joy of the Gospel

What is the thing that makes people so joyful when they get saved? Is it not that they've beaten death? They've escaped it. The terrors of Hebrews 2, the terrors of death, they're not there anymore. They've been these captives, these slaves to this all their life long, the terrors of death.

I mean, hell, the realities of it, what I'm going to face when I die, the fear. Suddenly we escape from it. We don't preach about going to church, not primarily about morality or politics or social justice.

The Resurrection as the Foundation of Christian Faith

The matter of first importance is that Jesus died for our sins and arose triumphant. And if the main point of our preaching isn't true, you know what, we're just as vain as the media, just a bunch of jabbering liars.

Notice this, the end of 14. If Christ has not been raised and only is our preaching vain, your faith is vain. And you remember this, Paul said, you want to be saved? He said, you need to confess with your mouth what?

Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead. That is where our faith is planted. Paul says that because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, you see what he's saying? He's telling us from the heart, believe in Him who raised Jesus from the dead.

Trusting the God Who Raises the Dead

Aren't we all in that place where we want somebody we can trust with all our heart? With all our heart. That's what it says, believe in your heart. What? Something you can be confident. This God who doesn't lie, who raised Christ from the dead.

Believe that with all your heart. Folks, don't you agree, deep down in every one of our hearts, every one of us has this longing for someone we can count on. We all long for someone who won't fail us, somebody that's trustworthy.

Someone who doesn't lie to us. Somebody who's not going to let us down. Someone whose promises I can stand on. In Christianity, what do we have? It's like we saw in the book of Acts there, in Acts chapter 3, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and His Messiah.

Don't you feel this way? When we found the truth in this book, we finally found somebody that we believed that we can be confident with and isn't going to let us down. If Christ isn't raised, your confidence and my confidence is just dashed.

I might as well put my confidence in my favorite politician, or in an athlete, or in the British pound. I just put my trust in money. Notice verse 14, if Christ has not been raised. Verse 15, we are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we've testified about God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if it's true that the dead are not raised.

The Truthfulness of Scripture Depends on Christ's Resurrection

Imagine, just again, imagine, we come here today and the truth is, Christ did not rise from the dead. Do you know, the Bible has been penned by God's representatives. If His spokesmen are dishonest, or if they're in any way inaccurate, whether they mean to be or not, or they're just ignorant about what happened, even if they don't intend to be, and they're misrepresenting God.

You know what happens to the whole Bible? The whole thing's going crashing down. We have no foundation for truth. If God's misrepresented it, it means what? The authors of Scripture weren't carried along by the Spirit.

They're false prophets. They painted a picture of God that just simply isn't real, it's not accurate. Muslims are right then. Our Bible can't be trusted, it's full of errors. There's no way of knowing anything for certain.

There's no way of knowing how I can be right with God. It's everyone's opinions. Paul becomes just like every other mouth out there. If Paul is misrepresenting God, he's just like everybody else out there.

We can go down to the city center, and somebody's going to come along, and they're going to say, No, God never had a son. No, God's not a triune being. Nope, none of that. People are going to tell us all sorts of things.

Jesus isn't God. Everybody has their own opinions. God isn't real. And you know what happens? We're just lost, lost, lost in a whole sea of people and demons who misrepresent doctrines. Just lost, lost.

Forgiveness and the Resurrection

Look at verse 17. And if Christ has not been raised, if that's true today, he reiterates this, your faith is futile. We looked at that. Your faith is vain. But then there's this. You're still in your sins.

You're still in your sins. We've all sinned. God holds our sin against us. That's what hell's all about. The only basis for being blessed by God is that somehow or another God will not hold our sins against us.

Folks, all my hope, all your hope hangs on forgiveness. But if Christ has not been raised, you know what Paul's saying? You're still in your sins. You're not forgiven. How is Christ being raised connected with me being forgiven?

What's the connection there? I thought my sins are forgiven because Jesus died for my sins. What's a resurrection? How does that fit in there? Well, it is true. It is true that my sins, He died for my sins.

That's what it says in 1 Corinthians back up there in the first couple of verses. But what does the resurrection do? You remember what Paul said to the Romans? We looked at this yesterday in the men's.

We're not only justified by faith. The Scripture says that Christ was resurrected for our justification. How does all that fit together? Well, resurrection certifies that God accepted what Jesus did at the cross.

The Resurrection Validates Christ’s Finished Work

What proof is there that my sin's been paid for? If Jesus is dead and His bones are moldering in a grave over in Palestine somewhere, then there's no proof. You know what God did? He raised Jesus to validate His Son's work on the cross.

To show that it was sufficient. To show He accepted it. To show that Christ was victorious. Resurrection is God's seal of approval. And you can understand this. Why did Jesus have to die? Because He became sin.

But still, even though He became sin, if Jesus is God, couldn't He have figured out a way? No. His law demanded death. The wage of sin is death. But you know what? Once He paid, and He paid with His life, if He had no sin of His own, and He totally satisfied God for all of our sins, there was no longer any claim on Him by death.

The wages of sin is death. Once the wage is paid, death has no claim. It can't hold it. And if it could, that's the certain proof. We're still in our sins. Resurrection is God's declaration that the payment has been paid.

It's really finished.

This excerpt was taken from the full sermon, A Fact of First Importance, by Tim Conway. To listen to the full sermon, you can go to illbehonest .com or listen on Spotify or on the mobile application.