He Rose Again According to the Scripture

Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church

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Good morning, everyone. Pleasure to be with you this morning. Congratulations to the

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Conley family, the Owens family, on the exciting new arrival of Schiffer this week.

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And a pleasure to see many of you again. We're turning in God's word to the book of 1

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Corinthians 15. While you're turning there,

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I'll share with you that this is the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea this year.

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And that only comes once in one's lifetime. So I've been preaching through the doctrines of the creed at our church this past year.

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And this is where we are, the line in the creed that says that on the third day, he rose again according to the scriptures.

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And this statement in the Nicene Creed comes, really all the teaching of the creed comes from scripture.

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But this particular line is an actual quotation from the text of scripture in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 4.

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So in dealing with this theme of the resurrection, we'll read this passage. Please stand.

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And together, we will give our attention to God as he speaks to us now in the public reading of holy scripture in 1

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Corinthians 15, starting at verse 1. Now, I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel

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I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved.

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If you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.

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For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins 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, then to the 12.

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Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.

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Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

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For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

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But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain.

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On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is with me.

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Whether then it was I or they, so we preach, and so you believed.

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Now, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?

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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.

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We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised

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Christ, whom he did not raise, if it is true that the dead are not raised.

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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.

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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.

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But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

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Amen. We'll conclude that verse. Please join me in a word of prayer.

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Father in heaven, you have given your word through your holy apostle Paul. And we have it here by your care and providence preserved to us, transmitted in a language that we can readily understand.

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And this place has been provided for its reading, and now at the hearing of it preached.

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All this is your goodness to us. And we ask that you would crown your gifts with this particular blessing, that you would speak to us personally, vividly, and in a way that would bring your transforming grace directly into our hearts and lives.

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May we know you more personally and live for you more fully as we hear this word.

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We ask this in Jesus' name, amen. You may be seated. First Corinthians 15 is one of the great chapters of the

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Bible. It's one of those rare chapters where a chapter division is completely and perfectly appropriate.

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This is the resurrection chapter from beginning to end. And Paul deals with the whole doctrine of resurrection.

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Christ's resurrection, the resurrection of believers. That means dealing with history.

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It means dealing with the future. It means dealing with how to understand nature as it appears to us now.

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And as it is hidden from us in heaven, a whole range of Christian doctrine is connected and a wide range of practical application is made.

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This is a high point in the scriptures. We're only going to be looking at what we might call the keystone in the great arch of this chapter.

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A keystone, I hope you know if you're a budding architect and otherwise, maybe you'll just know that a keystone is not necessarily the biggest piece of stone in a building or a structure, but it's at the crucial point where the pieces come together.

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And so, especially in places like Europe where there's older architecture, more visible, there are some amazing stone constructions where stones are piled up and they get closer and closer and then right in the crucial spot, a stone with the right shape falls into place and keeps everything where it should be.

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And it almost looks impossible that it stays up, but the keystone is exactly right. And that's like the resurrection of Christ in all of Christian doctrine and in this chapter.

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So many themes come together with this doctrine right at the crucial point.

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We could stretch our mind way back to the doctrine of creation and see that the creation is good, that God loves it and that he loves the physical world as well as the spiritual world that he has made.

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And we see that reality reflected in the doctrine of Christ's resurrection. We can think about God's providence for the doctrine of Christ's resurrection, not only the doctrine, but the fact of it proves that God is certainly governing all his creatures and all their actions, fulfilling his covenant promises with sure and certain steadfast love.

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We can think about God's own attributes, think about his power, his wisdom, and his great love to sinners, that he would grant resurrection life in this way.

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We think about the person of Christ, that he's divine and human, that he is truly human, body and soul, and that he is humbled and now exalted.

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All of this is deeply connected to the doctrine and the history of his resurrection.

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We think about the church and the kind of life that we share together and what draws us together and the spiritual reality that we find even here in public worship, that we are gathered on earth as it is in heaven to worship the risen

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Christ, not a savior that we merely remember from history like Napoleon or Socrates or somebody like that, but someone that we currently wish to know and love and serve.

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And we think about the doctrine of the future and the great hope that we have for resurrection life, both at our own death to depart and be with Christ spiritually, and at the end of all things, to rise with new and glorified bodies.

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All this is woven together in Christian doctrine, not isolated, random bits and pieces of doctrine, but wonderful scriptural themes that unite, as I say, like Mason work around a keystone.

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And the doctrine of Christ's resurrection slots right into the middle of it all.

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And that's why it's fitting that it's in the creed. When the Nicene Fathers prepared the creed, they were especially dealing with a very controversial point of doctrine to do with the divinity of Christ and the doctrine of the

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Trinity. And some people will remember the Nicene Creed as a document that teaches the doctrine of the

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Trinity, and surely it is. But actually, the

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Nicene Fathers understood that the reason the doctrine of the Trinity must be clarified for the welfare of the church is that it is crucial to the gospel and crucial to the way that all of Christian doctrine fits together, and so they did not neglect other things that were crucial to the gospel.

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And this being one of them, they said, he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.

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And as I indicated earlier, in so doing, in adding that line to the creed, they quoted directly from 1

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Corinthians 15, verse four, where Paul lists this as one of the aspects of Christian doctrine that are of first importance.

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What he delivered to them after first receiving it himself, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.

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And so to that topic we turn, and we first of all see that the resurrection of Christ is a matter of history.

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It's very important to understand that it is history. Now, can we prove that the resurrection of Christ happened historically?

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Well, I believe that you can. I believe that the resurrection of Christ is one of the historical events in world history that we can be most certain about.

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If you can't prove this one, there are very few historical events that we should consider sure and certain.

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There is so much evidence for the resurrection of Christ. And the resurrection is especially evidenced by the witnesses who were present to see

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Christ risen from the dead. That's what Paul emphasizes here in verse five and following.

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He appeared to Cephas, Cephas is Peter. Then to the 12, meaning the

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College of Apostles or the group of apostles that Christ had called, excepting Judas, of course, it was really the 11 at this point.

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But they were known as the 12 because of their role in representing Christ's ministry as the new people of God, the new

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Israel. And then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, meaning there was at one case, which we don't read of anywhere in the

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Gospels, but Paul tells us about it here. There was one instance where 500 believing men, and it could be that there were their wives and children present also, so it could have been a truly enormous assembly, 500

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Christian believers who were men at one time saw the same appearance of the risen

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Christ. It would be hard to imagine that being anything other than a worship service, a preaching service of some kind in which

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Christ gave instruction concerning his own resurrection to his gathered church.

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So there's a great number of witnesses. There's more witnesses listed, James and then all the apostles in verse seven.

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And then, of course, to Paul himself. And Paul insists that his own resurrection, the resurrection appearance that God gave to him or Christ gave to him, which is recorded in the book of Acts.

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It happened on the Damascus Road. The story is well known. It wasn't the same in every respect as these other appearances of Christ, but nonetheless, it was an objective historical appearance of a risen person to his apostle.

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And Paul insists that that is just as much an appearance of the risen Christ as any of these others.

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So there's many, many witnesses. Crucially, the witnesses were available to Paul and his audience at the time of the writing of this letter.

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The first letter to the Corinthians was probably written in the late 50s AD. We're talking about 25 years after the events of Jesus' resurrection.

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And if there were 500 and some witnesses of the risen Christ 25 years earlier, it's not hard to believe what

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Paul said, that some of those people are still around. And you go to church with them. Or they go to some other church and you've visited and you've had coffee in the foyer with them or something like that.

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We know each other. Christians know each other. It's a small world, right? It's still a small world. Yeah, I don't know if you've ever had that experience.

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You visit some random church and all of a sudden, you realize that your wife's second cousin is the pastor and you had no idea.

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How much more tight -knit was the Christian church in the Mediterranean world in Paul's day when there was relatively small number of people in the church and it was in a smaller area as well?

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These people knew each other. And I've had this experience of having kids in my classes at school, teach a few classes at my kids' school, and I mention, well, it's kind of like 9 -11,

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September 11th, and these kids, I mean, they're not that young, but they have no idea what

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I'm talking about. And it makes, it's one of the first things that has made me feel truly old is that I vividly remember watching on TV the coverage of the attacks on the

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Twin Towers in New York and I watched as that building fell down. And you tell these kids and they hardly believe you.

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They think someone flew a plane into a building? That just doesn't seem possible. And I would tell, well, you know, it was only 25 years ago and there's so many of us around that remember it and you can check with other people.

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You don't have to just ask me and my friends. You can go around and ask anybody who was alive at that time and had a television and they'll tell you that they saw the same thing.

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And would anyone in their right mind deny today that the World Trade Center attack happened on September 11th, 2001?

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I mean, there are conspiracy theories about it, but none of the conspiracy theories that I have heard are that it didn't happen.

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That's not one of the theories. And surely there were various theories about Jesus' resurrection.

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You know, maybe the guards got bribed or whatever, but none of the theories were that nothing happened.

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It's really important to see. It's historical. Just as surely as what you ate for breakfast this morning is a matter of history,

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Jesus' resurrection is a historical fact and we should be confident about that. One final barrier to anybody wanting to disbelieve the history of the resurrection is the personal commitment of these witnesses.

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Cephas, James, and Paul, these were not people who had no skin in the game, so to speak.

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They were not just armchair resurrection witnesses speculating in some sort of punditry about whether the resurrection likely happened.

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They put their own neck on the line, quite literally. And it does not seem psychologically possible for any group of people who are otherwise not totally insane or part of a cult or on drugs or something like that, otherwise ordinary, upstanding, typical men do not give their lives for something that they don't personally believe is true.

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And to have one after another such man stand up and say, I will shed my blood to witness to this truth, it is completely unimaginable that they'd be willing to do that for something that could be falsified if just one of their friends accidentally spoke to a reporter.

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These men knew it was true. They could not have conducted their ministry otherwise.

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And then, beyond that, the people who heard them preach knew that they knew it was true.

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Paul draws attention to that. Whether it was I or they, verse 11, so we preach and so you believed.

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And the whole existence of the Christian church, the fact that people responded to the message of the gospel, the fact that people, for no other reason whatsoever, began worshiping

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Christ, it is impossible to explain such a development in the history of the world if there were not something real in the message and the reality the message claimed to be delivering was the resurrection.

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So we should be supremely confident that the creed, when it says that on the third day he rose again according to the scriptures, is not just perpetuating church doctrine, it's not just that the bishops said that people should believe this, it's not just that the apostles need you to believe it otherwise they're out of a job, it's nothing like that.

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It happened. It happened in history.

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A second big part of the doctrine of Christ's resurrection is not only that it's historical, but that it is scriptural.

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There's a very significant phrase that the creed, I'm very thankful, includes. On the third day he rose again according to the scriptures.

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And that's a little line, a little phrase that appears in 1 Corinthians 15, verse four. On the third day he rose again according to the scriptures.

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And it raises the question, what does it mean that he rose again according to the scriptures?

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It can't just mean that he was not breaking one of the 10 commandments. It's biblical, kids, for you to honor your father and your mother, right?

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It's biblical for us to gather for worship on the Lord's day. It's in keeping with Christian doctrine and in keeping with Christian morals.

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But there must be something much more specific meant here because in the nature of the case, it can't merely be keeping a commandment or doing something that fits with Christian doctrine in a general sense.

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There must be, in other words, a claim here that the Old Testament scriptures are fulfilled as prophecy in the resurrection of Christ.

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That's what it must mean. And we find, as we go back to the Old Testament, that indeed it is filled with prophecies of the resurrection of Christ.

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I have done a lot of trimming on this part of my sermon. Time would fail to tell of all the ways that the

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Old Testament witnesses to the resurrection of Christ. But to give you a few for you to meditate on and learn from,

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I can do that. One example is in Isaiah 53, probably the most famous chapter of Messianic prophecy in the

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Old Testament. Verse after verse after verse describing the sacrificial death of Christ in the place of sinners.

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By his stripes we are healed. On him was the chastisement of our peace. And then verse 10.

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When his soul makes an offering for guilt, there's his death, he shall see his offspring.

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He shall prolong his days. Now it doesn't quite say resurrection, but first he makes his soul an offering for guilt and then he'll prolong his days.

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That's death and resurrection. Even more clear is in Psalm 16 verse 10 where David prays to God, you will not abandon my soul to Sheol or to the grave or to the underworld or let your holy ones see corruption.

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And it certainly could be that David is praising and thanking God for his own eventual resurrection that he himself,

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God's holy one, his king, will not be left in his grave forever to see corruption. We might think that's the full extent of the meaning of that text.

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It's certainly part of the meaning. But how can David be sure that he's going to rise from the dead?

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Certainly everybody he knew was in the grave seeing corruption and whether or not there would ever be an eventual resurrection at the end of time, at present, their bodies are certainly decaying.

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David was surrounded by that reality. In the book of Acts chapter two verse 31, the apostle

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Peter preaches from this text and he says, look guys, David's tomb is here and he's seeing corruption.

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He can't be the main tentpole under this text. He can't be the main topic here.

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It could be that he's praising God for his own resurrection, but it must be somebody else on whom his resurrection depends.

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And Peter says plainly that David being a prophet, knowing that God had promised to give the kingdom to one of his sons, saw beforehand and spoke of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

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Where in scripture are we told that the resurrection will be on the third day? Because it says on the third day according to the scriptures.

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Isaiah 53, Psalm 16 both speak of resurrection and thus there are scriptural prophecies, but it seems that Paul is more specific that on the third day is also a biblical prophecy.

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Jesus makes this even more clear in Luke 24. He says that the Old Testament scriptures, that his disciples ought to have understood that he would rise on the third day from the

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Old Testament scriptures. He's very specific about it. Well, where do we find that in the Old Testament?

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We do find it in various places. One is in the narrative of Abraham offering Isaac in Genesis 22.

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I wonder if you know the story. It's one of the great narratives of the Old Testament, one of the richest theological statements in all of the

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Bible. Abraham is told to offer his monogenes, his only begotten son, to use the

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New Testament way of describing this narrative, and father and son walk hand in hand to an offering appointed by God, and at the very last minute, instead of Isaac, God appoints a ram to be his substitute.

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Here is a whole vista into the great spiritual realities of the gospel. And one of the big questions that we have about that narrative, naturally, is how could

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Abraham have brought himself to the point of being spiritually willing to obey God in this matter?

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It seemed so wrong. It seemed not only wrong ethically to kill an innocent child or an innocent son, but not only ethically, but also doctrinally, it was wrong because Isaac was the one on whom everything depended.

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Hebrews 11 tells us that Abraham reached that point of spiritual willingness by perceiving that the combination of God's promises and God's instruction could only be combined if it was

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God's intention to raise Isaac from the dead, which,

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Hebrews tells us, did actually happen figuratively in that substitution of the ram.

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It's a remarkable exposition of the text, and it says that Genesis 22 is a resurrection narrative, and you go back to the narrative, and you start at the beginning, and you notice a little detail that you never noticed before.

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They got to that mountain on the third day. Jesus said that Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days and three nights, and so he, the son of man, would be in the heart of the earth for three days and three nights.

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One other text is Hosea 6, verse 2. Hosea 6, verse 2 is a promise of God's spiritual renewal as a blessing to the exiles in the depths of their despair, and the specific way that the promise is given is significant.

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Hosea 6, verse 2, after two days, he will revive us. On the third day, he will raise us up that we may live before him.

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Now, certainly, that would be a good figure of speech for a smaller meaning like this, that in a short time,

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God will give spiritual renewal to the exiles in Babylon. He won't withhold his spirit's blessing for long.

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He will bring them to a lively, vigorous faith and a genuine joy in the Lord and his presence, and it won't take a long time, two or three days.

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Certainly, that general meaning is plainly present in the text, but Matthew Henry, just to give you one example of a commentary that addresses this text, points out that even the specific way, the specific figure of speech that God uses through Hosea here is perfectly fitting to look through that immediate fulfillment to the greater fulfillment on which every immediate

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Old Testament blessing depended. To just happen to use that phrase in two days and then on the third day to describe the blessing of God on his people, giving them spiritual life instead of death, is a remarkable preparation for a

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Messiah who would bring spiritual life to his people by rising on the third day.

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It's exactly well -prepared to be a witness to the Messiah's identity and glory.

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He has fulfilled the scriptures. He's the one to whom we ought to look for salvation.

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So one very important part of the doctrine of the resurrection is that Jesus has come to fulfill the

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Old Testament scripture. He's the fulfillment of prophecy. Don't minimize that aspect of his glory.

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If someone here were to claim, you know, there are books written about me hundreds and hundreds of years ago, you would think the guy was a maniac, a total lunatic.

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We actually have such an impoverished view of history in our day that we never even think about how significant it would be for someone to walk on the scene, and you know, these are the things that legends like King Arthur and stuff like that is made of, and say, as it was foretold, here

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I am. You know, it's like Lord of the Rings stuff. We don't really think about history that way in our newspaper -y kind of society.

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But one thing about being a Christian is that we need to see history as God's meaningful action in the world.

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And one of the ways God has meaningfully acted in the world is to give promise after promise after promise after year after year, century after century, that there would come a day when one person, the son of David, the son of God, mighty

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God, everlasting father, prince of peace, the wisdom of God, the promised offspring of Abraham, the seed of the woman, would die in fulfillment of prophecy and rise in fulfillment of prophecy.

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And once the prophecy has been fulfilled, that is the time to turn to him in faith.

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So I'd call on you not to think of Jesus as just another generation in the long list of generations in God's history, not just another in a long series of godly men.

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There's those books, A Long Line of Godly Men, and Athanasius and William Wilberforce and other heroes of the

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Christian faith. But Jesus is not just another in a long line of godly men.

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He is the one in whom all of scripture finds its meaning.

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Prophecy made, prophecy fulfilled. And his resurrection seals him as the great theme and center of the biblical message.

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Now, in the actual text of 1 Corinthians 15, one of Paul's great points is that the resurrection is vitally important for Christian doctrine.

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We've seen that it's important for history and important for scripture. It's also very important for doctrine. Think of this connection in verse three.

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Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, and then he was buried, and then he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.

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And I would just ask you, what would the cross be without Christ's resurrection? We might remember it as a martyrdom.

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An amazing display of bravery and perhaps fellow feeling in our misery and suffering.

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We might regard Christ as a kind of protest, a liberation theology style, raging against the

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Marxist capitalist machine. You know, exposing the corruptions of the

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Roman government, something like that. But that's as far as we could go.

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We would have to admit that Christ, like us, is stuck in the problem that afflicts the human race.

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And many people think of the cross that way. It's a sad story to tug at our heartstrings. It's kind of a sentimentally moving thing to meditate on.

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It's an example of how far we should go in doing what's right. Well, actually, it is all those things.

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But only if it is something else first. And that is a victorious triumph of a conquering king dealing with the root issue of the human race.

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If it is Christ's triumph over death, then it's the most moving story in the world.

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If it is Christ's triumph over death, then it is the most effective answer to the corruption of human government and all the rest.

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If it is Christ's triumph over death, it is the great example of Christian love.

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And so it is. Christ died for our sins to bear the wrath of God away, to put away our punishment, to clear away the penalty that we deserved, which is misery in this life, death in this life, and the terrible miseries of death in the life to come.

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And by dying in our place and rising on the third day in accordance with the scriptures,

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Christ has won. And he's won for you. And he's won for me. If you leave the resurrection out of the narrative, it all goes wrong.

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Another doctrinal connection is to the future. What would the future be without Christ's resurrection?

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Verses 12 and 13 are famously difficult texts to summarize because Paul seems to get it from the wrong way around.

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If Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, not even

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Christ has been raised. Basically, the issue here is that there were people in Corinth, much like in our skeptical society, who were saying, dead people don't rise, that's stupid.

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And there were various versions of that basic line of thought, but it's pretty much what they were saying. This is just dumb.

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People don't rise from the dead. Go get a science textbook, something like that.

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And some of these people were in the church professing to be Christian teachers even. And there we have early liberalism, don't we?

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The Protestant liberals who say, oh yeah, the resurrection definitely didn't happen, but I would still like to go to church,

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I'd still like to live in that nice manse that the church owns, I'd still like to get my paycheck as a minister, I'd still like to publish with all the

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Christian publishing houses, and let's just sort of redefine things a little bit and we'll keep the whole

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Christian church thing going even though there's no resurrection at the heart of it. Am I being too cynical?

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I'll leave that for you to judge. But the point is, these sciency types and these liberal types, they were there in the church in Corinth.

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And Paul's saying, okay, so you don't think resurrection's possible at all? Then Jesus didn't rise from the dead.

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Other words, there's a close connection between the final resurrection and the resurrection of Christ.

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You can't have one without the other. Later in the chapter, Paul states the connection the other way, that Christ is the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.

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That's the connection, the other direction, first Christ, then us. Here he's saying, if not them, then not him.

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But the point is, there's a connection. And I would just put it to you that if the resurrection is false, the atheists are right.

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They might not be right about everything, but there's one thing they are right about if the resurrection is false, and that is this, when you die, that's it.

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They're right. And why else would anything matter if they're right about that?

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What's the point? Why hang on to Christian ethics or things like that if at the end of the day, all we have is a little bit of time to eat and drink, and tomorrow we perish?

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Paul makes that very point later. Evil talk corrupts good morals.

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I'm not quite quoting that correctly. But the point is that the spreading doctrinal error about the resurrection will ruin people's

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Christian lives because it takes the knees out of God's law and God's gospel, leading us to live a life now that will be glorifying to God so that in due time, we could enjoy him forever.

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And I think this is why the doctrine of the resurrection is so massively significant in our modern world.

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In the country that I grew up in, in Canada, I read somewhere that in at least one

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Canadian province this year, 7 % of all the deaths in the province this year are anticipated to be deaths by medical assistance.

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7%. 7%. And each one of those medically -assisted deaths only 10 years ago would have been a life sentence in prison for the doctor involved.

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You see how big a shift that is. Why is that? Well, I would suggest it's because people don't have a doctrine of the resurrection.

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Because if it's true that when you die, that's it, death actually would be, in that case, an effective treatment for all our problems.

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It's like anesthesia when you're going in for surgery except it covers all manner of issues, and it works forever.

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And if the atheists are right about that, I think that's the whole game. There's nothing else worth, you know, we shouldn't bother trying to have a civilization.

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We shouldn't bother trying to have anything. Let's just eat and drink. That's all we've got. So actually, the great irony is that it's the glory of the

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Christian faith and of Christ, the king of the church, to be leading us, Christians, in the most effective answer to the regime of medically -assisted dying that's growing in my home country, but it's also present, you understand, in various US states, including ours.

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And the very people who believe that life after death is our greatest hope are the ones saying,

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I will not despair of life here and now.

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That's a strange thing to think about, but the reason is is because we have learned to set our life in the context of the grace of resurrection.

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And if there's no resurrection, the atheists are right. Just drink it.

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And then think about the apostles. Verse 14 to 16 makes this point. First Corinthians 15, 14 to 16.

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If there's no resurrection, we are found to be misrepresenting God. We testified about God that he raised

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Christ, and he did not raise him if it is true that the dead are not raised. In other words, if the doctrine of the resurrection is not true, the apostles are just a bunch of windbags.

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That's all they are. They're just a bunch of windbags. And even worse than that, they're liars.

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They misrepresented God. They lied about God. Now, again, if that's true, we've gotta swallow it whole.

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That means don't go quoting the Bible for your cultural things or your moral things.

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Don't call Jesus the greatest teacher who ever lived. Don't say you're so inspired by the apostle Paul and his moral and psychological insights.

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They are windbags and they are liars. It's either that or they're the heralds of the resurrection glory of Christ.

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Take your pick. So there's many doctrinal aspects that are very significant to the resurrection.

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It's important for doctrine. But here we need to land on this one point, and that it's important for you.

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It's very important for you. You look at verse 17 to 19,

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Paul makes this point. Here's what your Christian life would be like without the resurrection.

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If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins.

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Those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life, we are of all people most to be pitied.

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And you know, that's how the world thinks of Christians. Wow, look at those people whose faith is futile.

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Man, what a pointless thing to have, faith. They're still in their sins. They think they're so much better than us, but just like us, they're still in our sins.

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And they're gonna perish. You know, all those Christian funerals and things, they're so nice and picturesque, but all those people are just gonna perish.

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And they are of all people most to be pitied, because they won't join us in having any fun. Expose themselves to all sorts of risk and trouble for completely pointless cult activities.

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That's how the world thinks of Christians. And you know, some Christians kind of act a little bit like this.

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And here I'd like to challenge you a little bit. Is your faith futile or effective? Some of us have faith like a wet dish rag.

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It's just not very useful. We don't actually believe that much.

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Spiritual realities whip over our heads and we barely notice. Or, you know, we're still in our sins.

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There we are, still in our sins. We profess the name of Christ, but our life is not adorning the gospel.

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We grieve over those we've lost. And our grief is not punctuated by Christian hope.

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I remember meeting one Christian gentleman who was an example of this. He was actually an older man himself, and he said, ever since I lost my mother, life's never been the same.

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And I mean, this man had lost his mother in her 90s, and he was in his 70s, and he was showing up at church week after week saying, life's just never been the same.

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I lost my mother, I just can't go on. And you know, of course, it's sad to lose one's mother and don't want to be heartless at all, but you know, it is not death to die.

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At some point, our grief needs to be soaked in the hope of resurrection life. His mother, by the way, was a

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Christian, so I wasn't misapplying this point. And then, you know, there's people, and they're

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Christians, and boy, they sure act as if we are most to be pitied. Oh, I'd really like to do that, but I'm a

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Christian, so I can't, ugh, right? I'd really like to go to that thing, but I always go to church on Sunday because my pastor says

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I have to. Or kids, oh man, those other families are so fun because they're not

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Christians. Or residents of Silicon Valley, it sure is nice living in such a secular place where we get to do all the fun things.

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I wonder if you've ever felt that. It's nice that people here aren't so conservative and all the rest.

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Whatever it is, the doctrine of the resurrection should change this.

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Our faith is not futile. In fact, Christ has been raised, and he offers you forgiveness of sins, and if you will trust him, he will actually forgive you, and if you trust him to guide you through life, he will actually guide you, and if you go to his word, he will actually speak to you, and if you belong to his church, he will actually unite your hearts to his people, and if you trust him in life and in death, you will walk through fire, and you will not be burned, for he is the

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Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior, you are safe. Your faith is effective, which is why it moves mountains and why it builds things and why it changes things when people actually trust

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God, and you can live that way because the tomb is empty, and then you don't have to stay in your sins.

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You can actually stop. You can deal with the root issue, the pride, the anger, the bitterness, the envy, the resentment, the self -pity that curls your whole life around sin.

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You can unwind that because the tomb is empty, and there are rewards in heaven so far outstripping anything that you might miss out on earth by repenting of your sin.

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You can actually repent, and you know, those beloved brothers and sisters of ours who lie in the ground, they lie as if in their beds, waiting to be woken in resurrection life, and so we weep their passing, but we rejoice in their current holiness, and we aspire to live on earth as they are now living in heaven, free from the stain of sin.

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Could I make this one plea to you? Please live happily. Please smile.

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Please be happy. Please sing. Please be happy in your home. Be happy with your children. Be happy with each other as husband and wife.

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Be happy. Be happy going to work. Be happy dealing with those stressful meetings. Be happy at church.

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Be happy in that members meeting you're gonna have this afternoon. Be happy. Jesus is alive. The world is on the right track.

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God is building his kingdom. He will win. He has won. You have won.

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One day you will judge the world, and so there should be nothing that in this life can threaten your happiness.

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You don't need to be one of those people who just eats and drinks and eats and drinks because tomorrow we die, and if anyone takes your food and your drink away, you get upset.

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You don't have to live like that. You can be truly, deeply happy in whatever situation you're in because whatever situation you're in, if you belong to Christ and if you will put your faith in him, he, a risen savior, knows the way out of that situation because he knows the way out of a grave.

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Let's pray together. Father in heaven, we glorify you as the father of our

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Lord Jesus Christ, the risen savior ascended now to your right hand. Oh Lord, we pray that the truth of the resurrection, not only the truth of the words we have spoken about the resurrection, but the truth of the resurrection itself would so influence and affect our lives that we might be a living display of your resurrection grace and glory in this world, and may we and many put our faith in you and so find resurrection life ourselves.