The Resurrection: Jesus' and Ours

The Clearest Presentation of the Gospel and Resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15

So, as you know, we're coming up on Resurrection Sunday. And tonight, we're going to go over the Resurrection, Jesus, Jesus' Resurrection, and our Resurrection. So right off the bat, first question I have for you, where is the clearest explanation of the Gospel and the Resurrection in all of Scripture?

Who knows where the clearest presentation of the Resurrection is? First Corinthians 15.

Excellent.

So what we're going to do, we're going to just take a couple of minutes, read through most of it, and then start explaining it, okay? Because I don't want to start explaining it before we read it together.

So here we go. First Corinthians 15, verses 1 through 5. Now I would remind you, brothers, of the Gospel I preach to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preach to you, unless you believed in vain.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve.

Then He appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared also to me.

The Gospel According to the Scriptures, Not Another Jesus

Verses 12 through 19. Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.

And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in.

Vain.

We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

Verses 20 through 26. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.

For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all shall be made alive, but each in his own order. Christ, the firstfruits, then at His coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end when He delivers the kingdom to God the Father after destroying every rule and every authority and power.

For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. So what does Paul teach us in the first five verses of 1 Corinthians 15? Well first of all, he teaches us the gospel, right?

The gospel, right there, is that Christ died for our sins, right? So the gospel is repent, turn from your sins, trust in Christ who paid the price for your.

Sins.

So Christ died for our sins. After that he says it's received. He received it. I preached to you which you received and which you stand by, which you are being saved. Paul received it first when he went to Jerusalem to talk to Peter and the 12th.

And then when he received it, he brought it to the Corinthians. Now what he received is these first five verses in summary form and it became known as the first creed of Christianity. So the creeds have been around for a long, long time.

This was taken by Paul to the Corinthians. So he received it and then he passed it along to the Corinthian church. So he received it and then he passed it along. Next it was in accordance with the scriptures, okay?

I'm not going to dwell on this too long because there's another section that we're going to go through real quickly with this. It was the death, burial, and resurrection of the Christ. Look, right after the scriptures he says that Jesus was buried, then he was raised on the third day after he died for our sins.

So in the first five verses we see the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, again in accordance with the scriptures. How do you know who Jesus is apart from the scriptures? You don't, right? If somebody rose from the dead and people were making a big deal about it, you would say, well, who is he?

Well, we don't know.

He just rose from the dead and he claimed to be God. Okay, now what? It's going to be pertinent in a minute or two, you'll see. Then he appeared to witnesses. He appeared to Peter, then the 12, and then over 500 witnesses, then James, and then Paul himself.

So this is important. What he's laying out here is a summary of the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, who he appeared to, and the fact that it appeared in the scriptures. He's basically laying out the case for the resurrection.

Now you'd be surprised how many people go to this section of scripture and completely misinterpret it. So let's just go through real quick each of the things that he teaches. First, he teaches us the gospel.

Again, repent and believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. You must believe, trust in the Jesus of the scriptures. The one, he says in 1 Corinthians, who was prophesied, crucified, buried, and resurrected.

From the dead.

If you're believing in a different Jesus, that's a different gospel. Paul would later tell us, for if someone comes and preaches and proclaims another Jesus than the one we proclaimed, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or if you accept a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it readily enough.

The Mormons believe in Jesus, not the Jesus of the scriptures. Muslims believe in Jesus, not the Jesus of the scriptures. You have all different kinds of sects, so-called Christian sects, that believe in Jesus, but he's not the Jesus of the scriptures.

Jesus, in Mormonism, is the spirit brother of Lucifer. He's one of many gods. No such thing, right? In Islam, he's a prophet. He's Esau, but he's not the Savior and he's certainly not God in the flesh.

So, when we're talking to people on the street and they say, well, I believe in Jesus, the next question out of your mouth should be, which one? Which Jesus do you believe in? That's what Walter Martin used to ask when somebody said, I believe in Jesus.

Which one?

Which Jesus do you believe in? The one of the scriptures that calls you to repentance, who was crucified, buried, and raised on the third day? Or is he just one of a multitude of gods? Or maybe he's not God.

Or maybe he's a Unitarian version of God. He's not part of the triune God. So, Paul teaches it's specifically the Jesus according to the scriptures. The church teaches, historically, the Apostles' Creed.

And we repeat this the first Sunday of every month. And I'm very glad that we do because these are foundational truths that we need to hold to that are being rejected today by some apologists that we love.

So, in here, it says he was crucified, died, and buried according to the scriptures.

Right?

The creed is true in as much as it lines up with the scriptures. The creed is not infallible. The scriptures are. So, where this properly reflects the scriptures, this is true. This is a trustworthy guide.

He descended into hell, or Hades. The third day, he rose again from the dead bodily. That's what resurrection means. You go into the ground, you come back up, never to die again. Different than what happened to Lazarus.

Lazarus was resuscitated, not resurrected. Lazarus died again.

Right?

That's not resurrection. Resurrection is up and never to die again. He ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of God the Father Almighty bodily. From thence he shall come again to judge the quick and the dead.

There's a future judgment to come. Judgment hasn't been done already in the past in 70 AD. This is a future event that will happen. And I believe in the Holy Ghost. Okay, so that's pertaining to Jesus' resurrection.

I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and life everlasting. The same body as Jesus' body. So, the way Jesus was resurrected physically, we're going to be resurrected physically.

Another group is going to say, no, no, no, it's just a spiritual resurrection. Well, if we're going to be judged at the end, and that's when our resurrection comes, if you're born again, you've been resurrected already.

So what's it going to be, a second spiritual resurrection?

No.

Watch, we're going to go through it. Okay, the Bible teaches the resurrection affects everything. It affects every doctrine we hold to. And I pulled this out of Wayne Grudem's Systematic Theology. It says, Jesus' physical resurrected body affirms the goodness of God's original creation of man as a creature with a physical body that was very good.

After God made man, he said, it's all very good. And now, because man fell, there's a curse upon the earth. When Jesus comes back to a renewed earth, the curse on the earth will be lifted. And we will be perfect again.

We will be very good. Christ's resurrection ensures our regeneration. And if you want to look up, that's 1 Peter 1 .3. His resurrection ensures our justification. Because he's resurrected and we're united to him, we are justified.

And his resurrection ensures our perfect resurrected bodies as well, 2 Corinthians 4 .14. Christ's resurrection power in our lives should lead to obedience, focus on heavenly reward, and provide increasing freedom from sin in this life.

So because Jesus was raised from the dead and we now have the Holy Spirit living within us, we are now empowered to live lives of faithfulness and righteousness towards God. And you can't say that you're not able to do that because this passage is going to point you to 1 Corinthians 10 .13.

No temptation is overtaking you that is not common to man. God is faithful and within the temptation will give you a way of escape that you may enter through it. So if you have the Holy Spirit inside of you, you can't say, well, I can't do that.

You can. Why? Because Jesus was raised from the dead and poured the Holy Spirit into our hearts. After his resurrection, Christ ascended bodily to heaven. They saw him ascend into heaven where he received glory and honor that had not been before as the God man.

Philippians 2 .9 says, who being in the very nature of God, became a man. He took on flesh and humbled himself and became obedient to death, even death on a cross. So God in heaven takes on flesh, comes to earth, humbles himself, dies on a cross in our place.

That's his humiliation. His ascension into heaven and him being seated at the right hand of God the Father is his exaltation. In a demonstration of the completion of his saving work and his position of power, Hebrews 1 .3, Christ is now seated at the right hand of God the Father in his heavenly reign.

Christ's ascension foreshadows our future ascension into heaven with him. It gives assurance of our final home in heaven with him and enables us to already share in Christ's authority over the universe.

We're already seated in heavenly places. We still have work down here to do. So, Jesus, look at this, theologically, was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead.

His resurrection from the dead proves that his payment on the cross was acceptable to God the Father.

Okay?

So his resurrection is God's amen to Jesus. It is finished. It is finished.

Amen.

Raised from the dead. His payment was acceptable to God the Father, proved by his resurrection. This is what Paul doesn't teach. That Peter, James, and Paul elected to unhitch the Christian faith from the Jewish Scriptures.

There's a guy named Andy Stanley. He's actually Charles Stanley's son. And this is what he teaches. And I watched this ridiculous video for you.

Okay.

Actually, I didn't. But I've seen clips of it.

All right.

So what he's trying to say, his point is Christianity is based on the event of the resurrection apart from the Scriptures. Now, what I just taught you a minute ago is which Jesus. So some guy gets raised from the dead.

Why should I follow him? What makes him so special? Is it not possible that the devil can do lying signs, wonders, and miracles and bring somebody back to life? Do I follow that guy now?

No.

You need to know who Jesus was according to the Scriptures. If you unhitch yourself from the Jewish Scriptures, from the Hebrew Scriptures, you have no identity for Jesus. Which Jesus? Who cares? When you understand the Hebrew Scriptures, now you can have a New Testament.

Now you can have a Messiah because the Messiah was promised in the Old Covenant. You know he's going to be born in Bethlehem. You know he's going to be in the grave three days and three nights. You know not one of his bones are going to be broken.

You can go through the prophecies and figure out this is the guy who was prophesied. Amazing. He also says the Old Testament was not the go-to source regarding any behavior for the church. I'm trying to hold it in.

I'm trying to hold it in.

Okay.

See we believe in not just Sola Scriptura but Tota Scriptura.

Okay.

From Genesis to Revelation. So part of his problem is well you know if we start bringing up the Old Testament, people are going to say well you believe in Noah and the flood and you believe in a talking snake and you believe in two people who were naked in the garden and you've got to get through all that in order to get them to the resurrection.

We don't need that. We don't need the Old Testament. We have the resurrection. You are now setting aside the God-breathed Scriptures for your own opinion. So what would be a good presuppositional apologetic for the reliability of the Scriptures or for holding that the Scriptures are God's Word?

How do you know that the Bible is true?

Prophecy.

Yeah, it could be luck. The Bible says it's true. Don't you know anything about circular reasoning Al? So the Bible says that the Bible can be trusted. Is that a good argument? Yes, it's an excellent argument.

Because you want to ask that person how do you know anything is true? I use logic and reason.

Okay.

Prove to me that logic and reason are the way you can know something without using logic and reason.

And wait.

He just accused you of or I just accused you of circular reasoning. What is he going to be guilty of if he uses logic and reason? Circular reasoning. And worse, how does he know his reasoning is correct?

We have it on the authority of God's Word who is the ultimate authority that His Word is trustworthy and true.

Okay.

It's self-attesting. We also have the inner witness of the Holy Spirit that when God speaks it resonates in us. We have the power of a changed life. And we see the evidence, the outflowing of everything that happened in the Old and the New Testament in the world that we live in.

We see it play out amongst us. So the whole Old Testament. You don't need that. First Corinthians 10. Now these things happened to them, Israel in the desert, as an example. But they were written down, Old Testament, for our instruction.

If that was the only verse we had, that's enough to say we need the Old Testament. It was written down for our instruction.

Nah.

We don't need that. Luke 24, 25, and 27. And he said to them, O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets.

Prophets.

Old Testament or New Testament? Old Testament. Oh my goodness. And beginning with Moses, he's Old Testament. Beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted them in all the scriptures, the things concerning himself.

Ah.

So Jesus called them foolish for not believing what? Everything that the Old Testament taught them. Acts 2 .14. Paul says, Law and the prophets. Old Testament. What happens when we have a discussion and we have a difference in a theological point?

To the law and to the prophets. We go to the scriptures. Old and new. 2 Timothy 3 .15. You need to know that when Paul wrote the epistles, those were written before the gospels. So Paul is not referring to the gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John at this point.

He's just writing letters to the churches. And he's telling Timothy to hold on to the sacred writings he was acquainted with from childhood. Old Testament or New Testament? Old Testament. Don't unhitch yourself from the Old Testament.

That's God's Word. Make my point? Okay, good. Just making sure.

Okay.

Bodily Witnesses of the Risen Christ

What does Paul teach? The resurrected Jesus in bodily form was witnessed. Luke 24. So Jesus, after His resurrection, appeared to Peter. Simon Peter.

One witness.

Luke 24. So here He appears to the disciples and says, touch my body. What would He say to Thomas? Put your fingers in the holes in my wrists and in my feet.

Why?

Because He was physically raised from the dead. This isn't just a spirit that appears to them. He labors on and on. Jesus is hungry. He asks them to feed Him. He eats fish. Spirits don't eat fish. Humans eat fish.

Mark 16. So now He's even upset. He's like, they told you that I was alive. I rose from the dead, and you're not believing them. So He appears to them as well bodily. 1 Corinthians 9. Am I not an apostle?

Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Jesus appeared to Paul on the road to Damascus and then afterwards as well. So Saul, who became Paul, had an encounter with Jesus that he's relaying to us. So he also saw Jesus.

And this is a really important thing as far as witnesses go. It's an important fact about what Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15. His statements are falsifiable. In other words, you can easily prove his theory false by producing the body of Jesus and interviewing the witnesses.

If you produce the body of Jesus, Paul would be proved wrong and Christianity would be false. And then the whole event and the whole movement known as Christianity would be squashed over. You know what the one thing the opposition to the resurrection never once said?

Look in the tomb. There He is. See? He's right there. You know why they never said that? He wasn't there. It'd be real easy if He was dead in the tomb. Just go look in the tomb. He wasn't there. Go talk to the other people who witnessed Him.

This was written, again, early on. This was written before the Gospels. So it's somewhere around 52 A .D. So if somebody read this, they could easily have found the people that Paul mentioned in Jerusalem and say, did you see the risen Christ?

If they wanted to prove it. So basically, if Christ was found dead, Christianity would be found dead. There would be no such thing as Christianity if the body of Christ was found. Actually, Pastor taught me this a while ago.

It's called habeas corpus, produce the body or bring forth the body. It's a legal term. When you're bringing a case against somebody, you have to bring the whole body of evidence. All you need to do to prove Christianity wrong is produce the body.

You produce the body, the whole movement goes away. And guess what else? We should be most pitied above all men. We're still in our sins and we don't have a Savior. We don't have a faith. Our faith would be futile at that point.

See how important the resurrection is to everything? OK, including our physical bodies, which we're going to get to next. So what does Paul teach about our resurrection? It's one thing to know that Jesus rose from the dead.

It's another thing to know that our bodies will be raised from the dead. First Corinthians 15, 12 through 19. Now, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection from the dead?

But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God because we testified about God that he raised Christ.

Do you see what he's saying? He's saying God said that the Messiah would be raised. Jesus spoke to us. If Jesus didn't really rise from the dead, we're misrepresenting God. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised.

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, you're still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have also perished. If in Christ we have the hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

Joel Beek says it like this. Under the Spirit's wisdom, Paul then tells the Corinthians the consequences of disbelieving in the bodily resurrection of Christ. In verse 13 he says,. But if there be no resurrection of the dead, then Christ is not risen.

The apostle basically says,. If you do not believe in a physical resurrection and deny that the saints will once again receive a body like Christ, then Christ has not been raised. For he is the head of the body, and believers are members of his body.

It's not a spiritual body only, it's a physical body in addition to a spiritual body. You cannot separate Christ from his church. If the church will not be raised, then Christ is not raised either. If we believe only in a spiritual resurrection after we die, then we can only believe in a spiritual resurrection.

Is that making sense? Any questions? So if Christ was raised bodily, and the Scriptures say that we're going to be raised the same way Christ was raised, then we're going to be raised bodily, not just spiritually.

We're spiritually raised in this life. That's what John 5 calls the first resurrection. You were dead in your sins and transgressions, God quickened you, brought you to life. That's the first interior, internal resurrection.

You are now spiritually alive. But what else has to die? Our flesh. We go into the ground, and at the last day, when he comes back to judge the living and the dead, he's going to raise everybody physically.

That's what 1 Corinthians 15 is teaching us. Some are denying this. I'm going to go through a couple of Scriptures now. Verses 50 to 53, which we didn't get to before. I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.

Behold, I tell you a mystery, we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

He's talking about a physical body. If you're spiritually alive, would he say that that's imperishable? That's imperishable already. So he says we're going to be raised imperishable. Well, if we're raised spiritually, that's imperishable already.

This is with regards to the physical body. For this perishable body, not our spirit, this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.

Okay?

So there's going to be a physical resurrection of each person, believers and nonbelievers. Philippians 3, this is even more pertinent. We went over this a couple of weeks ago. This is Paul speaking. He says that by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead.

Now, if he was spiritually raised already and spiritual life meant the resurrection, why would he say that? He says by any means possible, I may attain the resurrection from the dead. He's talking about his physical body.

Next verse, he says, But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself.

Okay?

So Paul in Philippians is saying, Our bodies are going to be transformed into the same type of body that Jesus has. John 11, Jesus said to her, Your brother will rise again.

Right?

Lazarus. Martha said to him, I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day. Even Martha knew this. Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet he shall live.

And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this? So Jesus doesn't rebuke her and say, Oh, no. He will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

He's going to be risen again. 70 A .D. He says, No, on the last day. When's the last day? The last day when death is abolished.

Right?

And death is no more. John 639. This is the will of him who sent me that I shall lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my father, that everyone who looks to the sun and believes in him should have eternal life.

And I will raise him up on the last day. Now, if you're born again, if you're born of God's spirit, that's not the resurrection that Jesus talks about. Because each one of us, I bet we're born again, born of God's spirit on a different day.

How many last days is that? It's a lot of last days. He's talking about the last day when he comes back and there's a resurrection of the just and the unjust.

OK.

And he's going to take those on his right. His sheep come with me into my father's kingdom. Those on the left depart into the lake of fire. Acts 24. But I confess to you, according to the way which they call a sect.

I worship the God of our fathers, believing everything laid down by the law and written in the prophets, having a hope in God, which these men themselves accept that there will be a resurrection of both the just and the unjust.

So believers and unbelievers are going to be raised again.

Right.

If what he was talking about was a spiritual resurrection, which is what some people are saying, then how can the unjust have a spiritual resurrection? That would mean that they're born again.

OK.

So you have the just and the unjust, the believers and the unbelievers. Acts 17. The times of ignorance got overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.

And of this, he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead. Jesus was raised from the dead and will come on the last day to judge both parties. We can look at this in our confession. If you want to look, it's chapter 31.

Real quick, I just go through it. The bodies of men after death return to the dust and see corruption. But their souls, which neither die nor sleep, having an immortal substance, immediately return to God who gave them.

The souls of the righteous, being then made perfect in holiness, are received into paradise where they are with Christ. And behold the face of God in light and glory, waiting for the full redemption of their bodies.

And the souls of the wicked are cast into hell where they remain in torment and utter darkness reserved to the judgment of the great day. The last day. Besides these two places for souls separated from the bodies, the scriptures acknowledges none.

In other words, there's no purgatory.

Heaven. Hell.

Real simple. Questions?

OK.

Next, at the last day, such of the saints are found alive, shall not sleep, but be changed. And all the dead shall be raised up with selfsame bodies and another. Although with different qualities, which shall be united again to their souls forever.

So what's going to happen is we are going to resemble Adam. We're going to have a body and we're going to have a spirit. And it's going to be a glorified body like Jesus's body now. Jesus's body is imperishable.

Now, again, people who oppose this doctrine are saying, well, the judgment has passed. There is no future judgment. It's not a physical resurrection of the body we're looking forward to. That happened in 70 A .D.

They actually say that as Jesus ascended into heaven, his body dissolved. Without a shred of scripture to back that up. In fact, it contradicts the scripture. It contradicts the Hebrew understanding of death.

What is death in the Hebrew understanding? Separation, right? So the scripture says he will not let his holy one see decay. If Jesus is not in his body now, but is alive spiritually, well, then he's separated from his body and he died twice.

Heresy. No. He's seated at the right hand of God, the Father, ruling and reigning until he makes his enemies a footstool for his feet. We're still waiting for that. That's future. That hasn't happened in the past.

OK, so that's the resurrection of Jesus. And that accounts for our resurrection. Any questions with regards to those two things? OK, so what are the probabilities? What are the chances of a resurrection?

Or what are the probabilities of Jesus fulfilling some prophecies? Now, Pastor gave an illustration by Josh McDowell, and it's an excellent illustration. I use it in apologetic talks all the time. He has a man who he attributes with the probabilities.

His name is Peter Stoner. He's the chairman of the Department of Mathematics and Astronomy at Pasadena City College. He's also professor emeritus of science in Westmount College. So we find this is what he says.

We find that the chance that any man might have lived down to the present time and fulfilled just eight prophecies is one in ten to the 17th power. That would be one in I don't know what you call that number, but it's 17 zeros after the one.

It's a what?

A hundred quadrillion? OK, thank you, Alex. It's a hundred quadrillion. In order to help us understand the staggering probability, Stoner illustrates that by supposing that we take ten to the 17th silver dollars and lay them on the face of Texas.

They will cover all of the state two feet deep. Now mark one of these silver dollars and stir the whole mass thoroughly all over the state. Blindfold the man and tell him that he can travel as far as he wishes, but must pick up one silver dollar and say that this is the right one.

What chance would he have of getting it right? Just the same chance that the prophets would have had writing these eight prophecies, having them all come true in any one man from their day to the present time, providing they wrote them according to their own wisdom.

That's pretty minute. That's just eight prophecies.

Eight.

Let's see. Now let's consider 48 prophecies coming true. We find that the chance that any one man fulfilled 48 prophecies to be one in ten to the 157th power. You know what that number is?

OK, good.

That's a really, really large number, and it represents an infinitesimally small chance. Trying to visualize it, we'll use the silver dollar illustration. The silver dollar, which we've been using, is entirely too large.

We must select a smaller object. The electron is about as small an object we can know of. It is so small that it will take two and a half times ten to the 15 of them laid side by side to make a line single file one inch long.