The Gospel of Resurrection #1

Welcome to The Truth Pulpit with Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Hello, I'm Bill Wright. Thanks for joining us as we continue teaching God's people God's Word. Don begins a new message today, so without further delay, let's join him right now in The Truth Pulpit. Before our text this morning, I invite you to turn to 1 Corinthians 15 as we return to the text that we started to look at last week.

We want to read the text and then have a matter of close and intimate introduction to our body here at Truth Community Church in what will follow, 1 Corinthians 15, beginning in verse 1, as we return to this series on the true gospel of Jesus Christ. The apostle Paul wrote this, he said, 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 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. There's an urgency to this series that in part is just due to the fact that it is appointed to every man to die once and after this comes judgment, that God has an appointed time for each one of us to stand before him. It is urgent that that time go well for us, and we think about it individually, but I want to bring something else to your attention today that I've been thinking about quite a lot, and I think that it's kind of inevitable that there's going to be a pivot in our life together as a church in coming months, coming years, certainly for sure. It's been 13 years since we started our church, over 13 years, and there's something interesting. These are the kinds of things that I think about as a pastor, not that I expect them to be foremost and prominent in your thinking, but in over a decade since we first began receiving people into membership, there has been a reality that is statistically greatly unlikely, highly improbable, and cannot continue in the indefinite future.

And what I'm referring to is this. The total number of people that have come and gone in the membership of Truth Community Church and those that are with us now, 271 people have been received into membership at our church. Now, you know, almost half of those have moved on, have relocated, some have been excused from membership publicly for reasons of discipline, but there's just a fascinating aspect of that. In the course of the life of our church, people in active membership that have died while being members and actively participating in our church, only three.

Brooke Higgins, Paul Morel, and Jim Schultz, not in that sequence. Beloved, that's almost impossible to contemplate, that for such a long period of time in a church the size of ours, that you would only lose three over the course of those years. And to the best of my knowledge, only one ex-member has gone to heaven, and that is Charlie Mills, who died in Florida not all that long ago.

This is highly, highly unusual. Now, I realize that within our families we have said goodbye to loved ones, to extended family, but not to people that were part of our church. We've lost spouses and extended family, for some even, you know, losing a child or a grandchild. But active members, no, no, it's been very, very small. And so in a church of our size and of our demographics, as a matter of statistics, that is just extraordinarily unlikely.

When I was back in California serving a group not all that much larger than ours, it would be common to have two or three funerals a month. And here we go, we go years at a time without that. And so what we need to do is to recognize that we have a window of time here in this series that God has given to us, a window of time while we are all still alive and most of us having something of our senses about us, to understand that we have an opportunity to prepare for the inevitability of what is to come. And it will come, beloved, there will come times, who knows, I mean, you know, you cannot predict these things, but it is inevitable that the time will come where we will start to have someone with us one week and then they're not with us and their pew is empty the following week. It is certain, and what we need to do is we need to prepare for that and to thrive in the midst of that. And when it comes, when it comes as Christians, when it comes as those who know the gospel of Jesus Christ, when it comes to a congregation that believes what the Bible says, that the Father has appointed our days before there was one of them, there are certain things that should flow out of our lives and responses when that inevitable season comes.

And when it comes, it could come with, you know, multiplied, you know, multiplied instances. We should not be surprised when that time inevitably comes as if some strange thing were happening. We understand, we understand that there is death woven into this fallen world.

We understand that Christians are not exempt from that. We understand that these things will certainly come. And so when it comes, when it inevitably comes, we will not be surprised as if we had no reason to expect it. At the same time, when it comes, we will not despair as if we did not know about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We will not despair as those who were living only for this world and had never given a thought of a life beyond, had never given a thought to death. No, we're prepared and equipped by the Word of God for the inevitable realities that will come to us. And one other thing that I would say, there'd be multiple ways to expand on this, but when it comes, beloved, we will not be shaken as if we did not know about the love of God and the providence of God. We will not be shaken as if we did not rest in those truths that we proclaim. You see, there is an intimate connection between the truth that we jointly believe, there is an intimate connection to what we proclaim, and how we respond to the inevitable realities of life. And these inevitabilities have to be right at our doorstep, just statistically speaking. I'm not predicting anything that's going to happen in the next three months or anything like that, but it is just a reality that we must take into account. And when a church and a congregation goes long periods of time without experiencing death, it's easy to fall into a worldly mindset, easy to fall into a comfortable level of existence that has factored out the realities of death and eternity. And I want to awaken you to those things so that when they come we will be prepared and that we will respond in a way that is fit for the glory of God and is fit for the gospel that we proclaim. Will we grieve when we start to say goodbye?

Yes, absolutely. I can't imagine saying goodbye to any one of you. The thought of being separated from any one of you is a serious matter to me. But we will grieve, yes, but not as those who have no hope. We will not grieve as the world does that has never contemplated these things, that is lost in the midst of the realities of which we speak. We will grieve as those that are continuing in our trust and confidence in the revealed Word of God, our trust and confidence in the righteousness and shed blood of Jesus Christ and the promises that He has given to keep us.

We must respond differently. And the kind of courage and the serenity of which I speak are things that belong to us. They are ours as a gift from God as we rest in the gospel of the resurrection. And that's what we are going to consider here today is the gospel of the resurrection based on the text that I just read to you from 1 Corinthians 15. Now, with that in mind, and sometimes people don't like to hear these things discussed so directly and frankly, and to me, that's just an indication all the more that you need to discuss them directly and frankly, because this is reality.

This is the nature of life. And it is a foolish pulpit that does not address these things clearly for the benefit of the people of God and even for the benefit of those that do not know Christ, that are lost in their sins. We need to bring these realities to front and center and contemplate them rightly. And so that's what we want to do in this series this month on the gospel of Christ. Now, last time we saw in the first four verses that I read in 1 Corinthians 15, Paul is showing the centrality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ to the gospel. He taught the resurrection as he preached the gospel at Corinth. He makes that clear in those first four verses. The existence of the church at Corinth showed that he had preached the resurrection.

Their existence showed that they had to believe corporately the gospel of Christ and the resurrection of Christ because it was central to the preaching of Paul, which gave birth to the church in the first place. And what we saw last week, for the benefit of those of you that were not with us, is that the gospel is a gospel of atonement. When we preach the gospel, when the Bible speaks of the gospel of Jesus Christ, it is not preaching a method of human self-esteem. It is not setting forth what you can do in order to earn the acceptance of God. It is certainly not teaching you a system of elaborate rituals and outward displays of pointy hats and gold garments as means by which you can be reconciled to God.

Nothing of the sort. What the gospel is, it is a declaration of good news about what God has done in order to reconcile sinners to himself. It is a gospel of atonement.

It declares that all men, all women, all boys and girls are born sinners, conceived and born in sin, and therefore separated from God from the moment of their birth. And yet it comes with the good news that Christ has done something in order to reconcile us. Christ has died for our sins. He stood in our place, more accurately stated perhaps, he hung, exposed, and suffering in our place at the cross, bearing the wrath of God that should have been poured out on us. Christ, as it were, says, I will represent them. He says to God the Father, I will represent them.

I will be their substitute, and the punishment that rightly should have been poured out on my people, I will bear it on their behalf, and thus I will provide a means of reconciliation to them that they could never achieve on their own. And as Christ hung there, and as thick, forbidding darkness fell upon the earth, as it were to hide the divine transaction that was taking place, Christ absorbed the wrath of God against our sins, without the separation, the equivalent of eternal judgment for every one of his people, as he cried out in dereliction, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Some, in some great, mysterious way, the Father turns away from his own Son, and the Son alone in the universe, suspended between earth and heaven, bears the full brunt of the wrath of God on behalf of his people, a full satisfaction, a full payment made, so that there is nothing that we do that contributes to our salvation, there's nothing we do that pays for a penny of the infinite debt that we owed against God.

Jesus, as we sing, Jesus paid it all. Jesus did it all, and therefore he could say at the end of it all, it is finished. And so when you, as a sinner, come to Christ, there's a sense in which you say it is finished on your own behalf. I'm finished with my love for sin. I'm finished with trying to earn my way to God. I'm finished with my pride. I'm finished with this world. I'm finished with every aspect that would claim any glory for myself. I'm finished. I repent.

I come to Christ by faith and receive him as my hope and my reconciliation with the Holy God. I ask you, my friends, are you finished in that way? Are you finished with yourself? Are you finished with your sin? Are you finished with your love of self, your love of the world, the boastful pride of life? Have you laid down all of your weapons of warfare against God? Have you surrendered everything about self-love and come humbly, alone to Christ, cried out, save me, a sinner, have mercy on me, I'm done? I ask you to begin a new life in me. I ask you to come and reign over me and save me. Have you come to that point and has your life reflected an ongoing, lasting change of that kind of sort?

Have you transacted? Have you closed business with God in such a way that you have yielded yourself fully and completely to him in response to this wonderful gospel that the Bible proclaims? You know, Scripture says in 1 Peter 3.18, and this is really a verse that every one of you should know well, that Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous that he might bring us to God.

That really kind of summarizes all of it. Christ suffered greatly on our behalf. He suffered as a substitute. He suffered paying a penalty, and he in his pure, impeccable, infallible, wonderful righteousness and perfection and sinless life offered that up to God on your behalf in your place, laying down his life so that you might receive life and be brought into a righteous relationship with God. It's just stunning how wonderful that message is, how wonderful that truth is. And as we speak of the wonder of the truth of it, beloved, what should be happening in your mind and your understanding and your heart affections is just a rising up of the Lord Jesus Christ in your affections.

How wonderful he is. How great is his love if he would do that for, you know, in this the love of God is manifested that he sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. God loved us. Christ loved us while we were enemies. Who is like that?

Who does that? Only one. And as we think of the resurrection of Christ, what we need to understand is that the resurrection that Christ was buried and he was raised on the third day, the resurrection is the certificate of authenticity that God has given to us, that this is the one and only true sacrifice that satisfies God. So that your responsibility as a sinner is not to work your way into heaven, but by faith receive the sacrifice that has been provided to men and women just like you. And to receive that sacrifice, to receive the person of the sacrifice, and to entrust everything about your future, everything about your so-called goodness, everything about your sins, everything about your forgiveness, everything necessary to everything pertaining to every interest of your soul, to gather that up in your guilty hands and go to Christ and lay it at his feet and say, you take this and just save me. I come to you as a brokenhearted, contrite sinner.

The Bible tells me that you will not despise a broken and contrite heart and receive me. And the gospel comes to us with a word of promise that when God calls you forth like that, that he will certainly save you and that this is a salvation that can be immediately received. You can receive this salvation and know full and free forgiveness this moment, this instant.

It can be an immediate reality for you, not something that you have to work up and prepare yourself and start to try to be righteous and then Christ will receive you. No, don't try to become as someone who's improved your righteousness because Christ didn't come to call the righteous. He came to call sinners, to save sinners. And so you go directly and immediately to Christ and say, I'm a sinner, save me.

We'll talk about this more in the next two or three weeks. But the resurrection tells us that based on that sacrifice, God will forgive all of the sins of everyone who comes to him. There is no lack in the sacrifice of Christ.

It is a perfect sacrifice. He is a perfect Savior willing to save the most vile sinner who comes to him. The worst of the worst, those deep in the dungeons of the supermax prisons, can come to Christ and be fully and freely forgiven in a way that the self-righteous, prosperous man of the state of Ohio would never know. That's how wonderful the gospel is and it's a gospel for sinners. It's a gospel for the guilty.

It's a gospel for the undeserving. And when you receive Christ, all the threat of judgment is gone. All of the separation from God is ended forever.

There can be no more judgment place. There could be no such thing as purgatory, where there's another place of suffering that awaits those who have truly trusted Christ. That's a denial of Christ altogether.

It's a denial of the cross altogether. Because when Christ died, as I said earlier, he said it is finished, paid in full, so that you as the most guilty sinner can come to Christ and know that he will gladly receive you because it is why he came. It is the fulfillment of the purpose of Christ for guilty sinners to come to him and receive justification, sanctification, wisdom, and glorification in the end.

That's why he came. All is a free gift lovingly offered from a sincere and gracious God. Now, as I said, the resurrection is the certificate of authenticity. It's the proof that God accepted the sacrifice.

Death no longer had a claim. Death is the wages of sin. Christ having paid the wages in full, death no longer had any claim on him, and so he is alive forevermore, never to die again, never to be sacrificed again, never since Calvary has there ever been another true sacrifice of Christ, despite what cathedrals throughout the world try to say to the contrary.

What I want you to see today, beloved, this is an invigorating, enlivening, thrilling message that I have for you here this morning from this text. What we have here is to explore all too briefly the wonders and the glories of the gospel of resurrection, and so we have three points for this morning. We're going to start with this preliminary point, the resurrection and your salvation. The resurrection and your salvation, and I'm going to venture to say that many of you have not thought about these things in quite the way that I'm going to present it to you from the Word of God today, but when we talk about the resurrection, that God raised Christ from the dead, He was dead, but now He is alive. Do you realize, my Christian friends, that whatever your circumstances and difficulties and trials may be that you're immediately facing in life, that despite those things, that you are already, speaking to Christians, my brothers and sisters in Christ here, you have already begun to taste and participate in the resurrection life of Christ. Absolutely, Scripture is so very clear about this, and I want to help you see the resurrection in its application to your salvation. And it's hard for me to restrain myself as I talk about these things because the glories are so greatly magnificent, but the resurrection of Jesus Christ is essential to every aspect of your salvation. Every aspect of your salvation, from the moment that you first were saved, when God first saved you, the resurrection power of Jesus Christ was in full operation, and it has been in continuous operation since then, and it will culminate in glory. Let's approach it this way as I ask you just a couple of simple questions.

A couple of simple questions here this morning. Speaking to my brothers and sisters in Christ, was there a point in the past where God made you alive together in Christ? Was there a point in the past where you passed from death into life?

Now, I'm not saying, you know, can you quote the exact day to me. I'm not even asking about the day that you prayed maybe to receive Christ, and for some of you I know, you know, from the Nazarene, Arminian backgrounds, you know, you prayed to receive Christ a hundred times, some of you before you were the age of 10. I'm asking about has there been in your life a transfer from death to life, from old to new, an old creation to a new creation?

In the past, has God made you alive in Christ where going forward life was never the same again? Well, beloved, that's true of every Christian. If that is a foreign language to you, you might want to reconsider whether you're in Christ at all or not. But what I want to say to you is this, is that that new birth, that new life in Christ that transformed you and made you a new creation in Him, God did that by the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Scripture's explicit on it. Listen as I read to 1 Peter 1, verse 3. 1 Peter 1, verse 3, where we read this, blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope, here it is, through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ secured to you your own death and resurrection in Him.

God communicates new life to us, He imparts new life to us through the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ so that when you were born again, to use the theological term, when you experienced regeneration, you were experiencing the power of coming from death to life. And the means of that, the source of that is the resurrection of Christ. So that if you are a Christian, you are already a partaker in the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ as you sit here today.

All of a sudden you've got an entirely different perspective on your existence and why you live and why you're a Christian. I am a participant in the resurrection of Christ. This goes to the doctrine of the union that believers have with Christ, our union with Christ, that what happened to Christ, what He did on our behalf, we share in. We share in the benefits of His death that paid the price of sin. We share in the benefits of His resurrection, and there is not a moment in the true Christian experience where we are Christians apart from the resurrection of Christ. If He had not been raised again, there would be no Christian in the world. There would be nobody born again because it's all through the resurrection of Christ. So I ask you once again, in the past, whatever the past is, did God make you alive in Christ?

Or maybe we can ask the question this way because sometimes that gets confusing to people as their experience is hard to interpret. As you sit here today, are you alive in Christ? If you are, you are a partaker in Christ and therefore a partaker in His resurrection.

This isn't something that we get an outward mark of. This is, you know, ashes put on our forehead to mark us out as one that's been born again. It's a spiritual reality in your heart that shows forth in the manner of new life that is associated with the holiness of God. So has God made you alive in Christ?

That's a fair question. And if He has, you're a sharer in the resurrection of Christ already. Well, my friends, before we go at the end of today's podcast, I wanted to let you know that I'm very excited to announce the upcoming release of my latest book. It's an evangelistic book titled An Easy Guide to Missing Heaven. And I think you're going to want to get a copy for yourself and also to have copies to give to others. It's a short book. It's about the size of my hand and with very short, brief chapters that make it easy for people to read. You know, I'm not a great evangelist on a one-to-one basis.

And I understand that sometimes it's hard to get a conversation started with someone you know, a friend, or even more with a person that you love within your family or the circle of your household. Well, this is a perfect book if you are like me. You can give this book easily to anyone.

They can read it in an hour, and that will set the stage for further conversations down the road. Again, the book is titled An Easy Guide to Missing Heaven. And you can find it at our website, thetruthpulpit.com. Just look for the link books on our website, thetruthpulpit.com. That's Don Green, founding pastor of Truth Community Church in Cincinnati, Ohio. Thank you so much for listening to The Truth Pulpit. Join us next time for more as we continue teaching God's people God's word.