The Gospel of Resurrection #2

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

Hello again, I'm Bill Wright. It is our joy to continue our commitment to teaching God's people God's Word. Today Don is continuing with the second part of a message we started last time.

So let's get right to it. Open your Bible as we join Don now in The Truth Pulpit. Let me ask you a second question as we consider the resurrection and your salvation. Has God made you alive in Christ at some point in the past?

Let me ask you this question, second question. Here in the present, in this stage of your life, is God causing you to grow in understanding of the things of truth? Is God causing you to grow in love for Christ? Is God causing you to grow in holiness and sanctification? Is there an ongoing kind of transformation happening in your life, however imperfect it may be, and it certainly is imperfect. Is there something happening in your life on an ongoing pattern, on an ongoing basis that shows that there is a divine power at work in you that is changing you from one image of glory to another, as it says in 2 Corinthians 3.18? Are you being sanctified? Well, beloved, this is just amazing. It's beautiful.

It's wonderful to recognize. The sanctifying process comes to you how? Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I want to read to you Ephesians chapter 1, beginning in verse 16. Ephesians chapter 1, verse 16 through 20.

Listen as I read to you. Paul is writing to the church at Ephesus and other churches in what was probably a circular letter. Paul is writing a great doxology to God. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He praises God for the realities of salvation, and then he turns to prayer on behalf of his readers and listen to what he says. He says, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers.

Paul was such a pastor. And what does he pray? He says, I pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ the Father of glory may give you a spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him. Now, I want to take this carefully so that you don't lose track of what Paul is saying. He says, I'm praying for you. And I'm praying specifically that God would give you a spirit of understanding about important things related to your spiritual condition.

I want you to know these things. I want God to illuminate you, to expand your mind, to expand your heart that you would grasp things that you might otherwise miss. He goes on in verse 18. He says, having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you. What are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints? And what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe?

Let's pause there for just a moment. Paul says a lot in a short amount of time. He piles clauses upon clauses, and it takes some patience to follow it all and untangle it all. Paul says, I'm praying that you would understand that God would enlighten you so that you would know how great the power is that is at work in you as a Christian. It is true of every Christian. And he says, I want you to understand this, that there is a power that is at work in you. Not just a power, but there is a great power that is at work in you. Not just a great power, there is an immeasurably great power that is at work in you as a Christian, whether you perceive it in the moment or not. He says, I want you to understand that power is at work in you, and it is according to another power that exists.

What is that power that is at work in you? At work in us, Paul says, it's according to the working of his great might, verse 20, that he worked in Christ Jesus when? He raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places. Beloved, what Paul is saying there is that for you as a Christian, whatever your imperfect sanctification may be, at work in your life, at work in your heart, a great power that is sanctifying you and preparing you to go to heaven one day. And the power that is working in you and is bringing you evermore from your sinful ways to the holy ways of God and the outworking of experience in your life, that power is the same power that raised Christ from the dead. In the life of every true believer that has ever lived. And so not only did God cause you to be born again through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God is sanctifying you and causing you to grow and ever spurring you toward your heavenly home by that same power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I mean, I stumble in many ways as we all do. And so God doesn't exercise that power by immediately making us perfect. He does it by continually fueling the perseverance of the saints by adding more wood to the fire day by day so that that fire never goes out. And the sustaining of that fire within is nothing less than the power of the resurrection. So your regeneration is by the resurrection of Christ. Your sanctification is, and the power that causes you to grow, is not something that you develop on your own.

It's not self-generated. It's not from within your own resources. It is provided to you from outside, so to speak, from outside working in your heart, a supply of the resurrection of Christ that is at work in you. And that's why you grow in Christ. That's why you grow in wisdom. That's why you understand scripture better now than you did five years ago. It's because the powerful life of Christ is at work in you. We know these things through revelation.

We know them by faith even though we can't see them or feel them or touch them. Is something, did God make you alive in Christ? Can you look back and say, there was a point where I went from death to life.

Yeah, I can point to that specifically. Is God now causing you to grow in understanding and holiness? Well, it's all through the resurrection of Christ. Let me ask you a third question here as we consider the Gospel or the resurrection and your salvation.

Let me ask you this. For those of you that are weighed down greatly by present sorrows, present challenges, present uncertainty, if we could step back from all of that and just ask what lies at the bottom of your heart. In the future, do you hope to live beyond death? Do you hope to go to heaven? Is that something that is an anchor to your soul?

Well, let me say this. If you're a Christian, you will go to heaven. There will be a Christ will receive you into his heavenly home and into that home that he has prepared for you.

And do you know what? The resurrection that though you die and perhaps, you know, just tying it to the introduction, though some of us may die soon, that we don't fear the grave because we are confident that we will live again. Our spirits will live on and one day there will be a bodily resurrection where Christ will raise us from the dead and a resurrected body will be joined with that immortal spirit that continues to live and thus we will forever be with the Lord. Do you know what that hope means? And you know the certainty of that hope for you? It comes to you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Paul says in Romans 6, verse 5, those of you taking notes, I'll pause for just a moment so you get that written down, Romans 6, 5. We shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. Future tense, we shall be united with him in a resurrection like him. We shall certainly be united in a resurrection like his. And so when Christ died for his people and carried their sins far away, when he was raised again, he guaranteed that his people would have a like resurrection of their own. We will be alive bodily in the presence of Christ throughout all of eternity and all of that by the resurrection. So, beloved, watch this.

Watch the tenses here, the verb tenses here. We shall be united by the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. In the future, most certainly to be raised again, bodily raised again, to live with Christ forever and all of that guaranteed to us, provided to us through the atoning work of Jesus Christ, through his resurrection, he gladly, freely shares the benefits of his victory over death with all of his people in a comprehensive way so that one day, once you become a Christian, there is not a moment of your life separated from the resurrection power of Jesus Christ and never will be. Do you see how to live beyond the certain realities of death and the uncertain realities of life? Do you see how secure we must be if Christ has been raised from the dead never to die again?

That how much that means for us? That if we've been born to spiritual life, we'll never die again. You could never lose your salvation anymore, your true salvation. A truly sacred salvation. A truly saved man could never lose the gift of new life any more than Christ could be brought back to the grave. The resurrection guarantees this to all of his people, and not by our works, not by good things that we have done, but by the perfection of our glorious Savior.

I hope that you find this thrilling to your hearts to contemplate. By the grace of God, we receive all of the benefits of the work of Christ, and he gladly shares it with us. Christ is not a selfish Savior.

He's not like us, where some of us are kind of selfish with the things we have. Somebody threatens us. We're threatened with loss. We get protective. We get defensive.

He isn't like that. The fullness of everything that he has and done, he gladly, freely shares with all of his brethren, all of those that are adopted into the family of God. His death satisfies our debt. His life imparts life to us, originally and continuing on throughout all of eternity, so that in the end, we will share also in his glorious resurrection. Now, we're not given to outward displays here at Truth Community Church, and I think that's a good thing.

All things should be done decently and in order. But if we don't do it physically, and we won't, but there's certainly a place for us in our souls to fall down at the feet of Christ, to fall down in worship, to bow our heads low at the feet of Christ. To bow our heads low at the ground of his feet and to give him honor and to give him thanks for the fullness of the grace that he has showered upon us. And for those of you that are not in Christ, to recognize that he freely offers it to you, that he calls you to come and to close business with him by repentance and faith, that all of this would be yours as well. He's not a reluctant Savior. He's not stingy in the gospel offer.

He makes it known to all men everywhere. That any sinner can come to him and receive the fullness of this new life, continuing life, eternal life. And we have the certainty that he is able to deliver on his promise because we have the established reality of the resurrection. That he will do, he's able to deliver.

Now listen. There is no true saving faith that is separated from the resurrection of Christ. Scripture makes this clear.

Apostle Paul says later in the book of Romans beginning in chapter 10, and listen to the whole string of verses here. Paul says, Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. You see, there is no saving faith that is separated from the resurrection. Those who deny the bodily resurrection of Christ are simply proclaiming that they are men who are in darkness. That they are blind men leading others into the pit because saving faith believes that God raised Christ from the dead. Not simply in a spiritual resurrection, but in a bodily resurrection. Beloved, that grave in Israel is empty. There are no bones of Christ to be found because his body has been raised up into heaven because he is truly resurrected. You believe in Christ, and you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, and the promise of Scripture is that on the basis of that simple faith, you will be saved.

It's amazing. Now listen as he goes on, he says, with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved. For the Scripture says, this is verse 11, believes in him will not be put to shame, which is another way of saying that they will be received in glory.

It's a negative way of saying that God will receive you. Verse 12, for there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. Everyone who calls on Christ in sincerity as a sinner to save him or herself, everyone who calls on the name of the Lord, it says, will be saved. And so there is no barrier.

I say this so many times, and I need to keep on saying it as long as the Lord gives me breath. There is no barrier in God to you coming to saving faith. There is no barrier in God that keeps you from entering into his kingdom. There is no barrier in receiving this new life because the offer is made, it is free, it is full, and every Jew, every Gentile is called to believe. Scripture says everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, and Christ will bestow the riches of everything I have said in this message from the Word of God.

He'll bestow it all on anyone who calls on him. So if you feel yourself a sinner, if you know that you are a sinner, if you know that you're guilty, don't wait until you feel worse. Don't wait until you try to get better. If you're aware and believe in what Scripture says about you being a sinner, call on Christ right now to save you, and he will. You say, man, in one sense that's really simple.

Yeah, it is. It's religion that tells you, you know, you gotta do this, this, this, and this. If you live obediently, if you get baptized, if you go through the seven sacraments, then maybe you'll be saved, maybe not. Well, you know, I'll put this free, glorious gospel of Christ against those false systems of works any day because in the gospel there is free and immediate hope offered immediately to every sinner that they can immediately avail themselves of and know that they are freely forgiven rather than going in chains and submitting and putting your hands into handcuffs to a false religion that, you know, owns you and keeps you in its prison and ultimately becomes the means by which you're delivered into the prison of Satan himself. By the resurrection of Christ.

I love it. And so, little transition point here, the salvation that we proclaim hinges entirely upon the resurrection of Christ. We stake everything on the fact that the historical fact of the resurrection is true. Everything depends on that being true in accordance with fact.

The question is, is it? Is the resurrection true? Is it, can we really stake everything on Christ on the basis of his resurrection?

Well, point number two here today, finally. The certification of the resurrection. The certification of the resurrection. And if we go back, if you go back to 1 Corinthians 15 with me, Paul spins the rest of 1 Corinthians 15, defending the historical reality of the resurrection and showing its centrality to the Christian faith. But before he does that, in verses five to eight, he establishes the historical reliability of the resurrection. And what he does, and we're just going to look at this ever so briefly, he walks through the fact that there were hundreds of contemporary witnesses to the resurrection of Christ. Not just the disciples, hundreds and hundreds of men and even women, although he doesn't allude to the women so much in this particular text, hundreds of men saw Christ alive after his crucifixion. They saw him in body. They saw the wounds in his hands. They saw him eat fish and do things.

They saw things that only people with physical bodies can do. And Paul, to establish the importance and the reality of the resurrection, walks through these witnesses beginning in verse five. Verse four, he had said, Christ was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures.

Look at verse five. He appeared to others 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.

What's he saying here? Christ manifested himself and displayed the reality of his physical resurrection to an ever-increasing circle of witnesses. Then he appeared to Peter. Then he appeared to the chosen apostles, the 12, who were the official representatives of Christ and authorized to preach on his behalf. And after that, he appeared to over 500 men at one time, an event that's not attested to so much in the gospels, perhaps, but not with those numbers. But what Paul is saying in this passage that he says to the Corinthians, and the Corinthians, remember, were starting to question the resurrection. And what Paul says in that small geographic area, he says, look, he says, there are hundreds of witnesses to attest to the reality of what I'm saying in addition to my own testimony.

Most of them are still alive. You can go, speaking to those at Corinth in the first century, he said, you could go, you could find some of these men and talk to them, and they will tell you and certify you the truth of the resurrection. It was undeniable he was appealing to contemporary witnesses to certify what he was saying. If the resurrection wasn't true, he could never do that because it would be so easily falsified. So Christ appears to James, the other apostolic men, and then he appeared to Paul. And, beloved, while we're treating this all too briefly here, this second point, I just want you to see what he's doing here.

By listing many eyewitnesses and going through the time and space history of these matters, Paul is establishing a crucial fact. This is not an allegory. This was not some kind of weird spiritual resurrection in an ethereal realm that no one could see or touch. The spirit of Christ, this was a bodily resurrection. This is the equivalent, those of you that, you know, have loved ones buried someplace, this would be the equivalent of going to their grave, going and standing at their headstone, and the earth begins to tremble. This is your loved one, really, truly in a physical resurrection. Well, we don't see that now.

We don't have that experience now. But the equivalent, the point that I'm trying to make, is the impossibility of a human resurrection in our day. That is exactly what Christ did. He came out of his own grave. He came forth in power. He came forth in glory. And many, many witnesses saw it.

Including the apostle Paul, who saw him on the road to Damascus in Acts chapter nine. Paul's saying, this is true. And what it means, when we talk about the reality of your salvation, you know, being born again, your sanctification, your future glorification, it's based on something that is true and real and actually happened.

This isn't some vague philosophy. This is the good news declaration of what God did in time and space. And I probably ought to say here that someone who denies the resurrection is not a Christian at all. Look at verse 14 of 1 Corinthians 15. If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain.

Verse 17. If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins. But Christ has been raised from the dead. The firstfruits of the resurrection. And so Paul establishes the historical certainty, the historical reliability of the resurrection, so that when you are called to faith in Christ, when you are called to believe in him, you are called to believe and rest upon historical facts that actually happened in time and space.

God acted in real time, real history, on a real earth, in the person of a real man. And that brings a vibrating living power to everything that we say, everything that Scripture attests to. Now, a third and final point here is just the resurrection in the early church. You know, and you can turn to the book of Acts, and we'll just go through a half dozen passages very, very quickly.

But it's also essential for us to know the basics, to stick to the basics, and recognize when the basics are not being proclaimed in other places. The resurrection was indispensable to the preaching of the early church. Look at Acts chapter 1, verse 3. The book of Acts is the record of what the early church did after Christ ascended into heaven. And we read in Acts chapter 1, verse 3 that Christ presented to us in the early church. He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during 40 days and speaking about the kingdom of God.

He appeared to the early church. They did not make this up. They proclaimed with courage. They proclaimed at the cost of their lives. They held to the resurrection of Christ more dearly than they did to life themselves as the authorities came and tried to silence them and murdered some of them. They held to the resurrection than to the early church. They held to the resurrection to save their own life.

People don't do that for things that they know are false. Acts chapter 1, verse 24, loosing the pangs of death because it was not possible for him to be held by it. In that first great sermon after Pentecost, Peter preached to them the resurrection of Christ. Chapter 3, verse 15, as he preaches again, verse 14, he says, you denied the holy and righteous one and asked for a murderer to be granted to you and you killed the author of life.

Whom? God raised from the dead. The resurrection.

To this we are witnesses. Acts chapter 4, verse 10. Acts chapter 4, verse 10, let it be known to all of you and to all the people of Israel that by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, here it is again, whom God raised from the dead, it's by him this man is standing before you well. Same chapter. Verse 33, and with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus and great grace was upon them all.

One more. Chapter 5, verse 30. The God of our fathers raised Jesus whom you killed by hanging him on a tree. The resurrection is certified to us by the many witnesses. The resurrection is central and was central to the early preaching of the early church. It is woven through the fabric of every aspect of our Christian experience. It is woven through the testimony of the early witnesses.

It is woven through the preaching. You cannot escape the resurrection and you shouldn't even want to or try. But simply to believe the testimony that God has left us with and to understand the implications of what it means for your eternal soul. My Christian friend, the resurrection secures for you your well-being forever and ever without end. The indestructible life of Christ which he shares with you in salvation means that your salvation and your soul is indestructible. And that you will certainly know the fullness of the blessing of God throughout the endless ages of eternity and you have a foretaste, you have the spiritual appetizer of it now in your salvation here on earth.

And just bringing it back full circle to what I was saying at the start that at some point our church is going to start, we're going to walk into the woods and start to say goodbye to each other temporarily on this earth. And that if your soul is safe and secured by Christ and secured by his resurrection, you can accept death when it comes. You need not flinch in the face of it.

You not need fear it. The sting of death is removed. We have been delivered from the realm and the fear of death through the resurrection of Christ. And if and when those days certainly begin to fall upon us, we'll stand like men.

We'll have tears running down our cheeks perhaps at the earthly loss for a period of time, but we won't be shaken in our faith wondering what God is doing. We'll look to the resurrection of Christ and find our ability to stand with courage, with serenity, and with confidence. And to you, my unsaved friend, let me just encourage you not to resist resurrection power, not to resist the resurrection of Christ with phony human arguments that are simply a cloak to allow you to perpetuate and to go on living in your sin.

Don't resist it, but receive it. Come to Christ and be saved based on the promise of Scripture that Jesus Christ receives every humble sinner that calls on Jesus' name, Jew or Gentile alike. And so I call on you to look to the crucified Christ, to turn to him and to be saved, and let not only your loved ones in this church rejoice with you, but set off the joyful, resounding songs of angels in heaven who rejoice over one sinner who's saved. Heaven awaits to receive you, and by the Spirit of God, may God grant you the faith and repentance that is necessary for you to come to him and enter into the glory of this life that you've heard of here today. Let's pray together. Great Father of glory, pure Father of light, thank you for the gospel of Jesus Christ and for his glorious resurrection. Thank you for the freeness with which you have done all of these things, for the greatness of love upon unworthy sinners to adopt them into your family, to justify them and sanctify us and one day to glorify us.

Father, we pray that you'd prepare us for those inevitable times when we start to say goodbye to loved ones within our family, and of course many of us, all of us at one point or another, have experienced that, but Father, as it most certainly will come, because it's appointed for every man to die once and then comes judgment, Father, when you unfold those days before us, may we come back to the solid foundation of the resurrection and realize that there is a great hope that lies beyond the grave and that we would respond with a serenity and a confidence and a courage that manifests forth, that our salvation is real, that we are not intimidated even by death itself, because we know that we are safe in the arms of Jesus. 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.

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.