Peace, Panic, Proof (Part 1 of 2)

Sometimes we create images in our minds about what heaven will look like, only to eventually realize that our ideas don't line up with what the Bible teaches. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg explains what the Bible has to say about what our new bodies will be like when we enter into eternity in a message that's all about how we can find true peace.

I invite you to turn again to Luke chapter 24. Now let's pray together. Father, we thank you again for the Bible, that we can have it open before us and make sure that what is being said is actually there. You have given us minds that we might think and wills that we might obey, and we pray that you will come to us and illumine our minds by the Holy Spirit through the Word of God, that we may become true disciples of Jesus, the Son of God. For it's in his name we pray. Amen. The disciples, the followers of Jesus, are, quite frankly, on an emotional rollercoaster.

One minute they seem to be up on the crest, and the next minute they're hurtling towards the ground, at least emotionally. The report of the empty tomb was met instinctively by the reaction of unbelief—the things that the ladies came to tell them seemed to them, Luke tells us in verse 11, like nonsense. And throughout the day there were conflicting reports.

He's alive, the tomb is empty, he's been seen, he has not been seen. And finally, they apparently got it clarified and resolved when, as a group, in verse 34, they said, It is true the LORD has risen and has appeared to Simon. We might have thought, then, that at verse 34, with this great affirmation on the part of the total group assembled, they could put the thing to bed now and move on with their lives. But as you would have detected from the verses that have just been read, in this particular incident it is clear that the people who made this great affirmation did not apprehend fully the meaning of the affirmation that they were making. So they were saying something that they believed, but they didn't fully grasp.

And emotionally, they're just thoroughly confused. It seems fairly obvious that there's only one thing that is going to settle the matter for them as a group, and that is if Jesus himself appears and reveals himself to the whole group at the one time. And that, of course, is what Luke tells us takes place right here. Now, I have three words this morning that we're going to use as pointers to help us navigate through verses 36–43. They are peace, panic, and proof.

And the first of these comes in verse 36 in the statement of Jesus. While they were still talking, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, Peace be with you. The context is clear. They were in full swing talking and presumably debating with one another. What were they talking about? They were talking about this.

What is this? Well, if you were reading any book, in order to find out what this was, you would just go further up the page, and you would back up a couple of paragraphs and find out the context. Well, that's exactly what you do when you're reading the Bible.

There's no mystery to it. While they were still talking about this, go up the page and find out what they had been talking about before. While they'd been talking about the appearances of Jesus and the events of the day. And the most recent information had come from the two individuals on the Emmaus Road, and they had been telling what had happened on the way, how they had recognized Jesus, and it may well be that they had referenced verse 27 and the great explanation that Jesus had given to these two individuals of the story of himself all the way through the Scriptures as they had them. That is the context in which Luke tells us two things. It tells us, first of all, that Jesus stood among them.

And the way in which he stood among them was so dramatic that they recoiled from it, as we will see. One moment he was absent, the next moment he was present. John tells us in chapter 20 of his Gospel and verse 20 that this took place despite the fact that the doors were locked.

There's no indication that anyone came knocking on the door. It was just that they were in an animated conversation with one another, and all of a sudden Jesus was there. He appeared by supernatural power, no longer bound by the limitations of his ordinary, earthly body. He is now already clothed in his glorified and celestial body. Now, just so that we don't get confused by words or phrases like glorified celestial body, I want to purposefully take a moment or two to address this with you, because it matters not only in relationship to what we discover here about Jesus, but it matters because what we discover about Jesus, Paul tells us, is the forerunner or the firstfruits of what will happen to those who follow Jesus in terms of having resurrection bodies.

So let's say it as simply as we can. Jesus has risen from the dead in a transformed body which will never die again, which cannot die again. He now has a body over which death is impotent.

And in this sense, and in this respect, he is therefore distinguishable from anything that we've seen of resurrection to this point. Those of us who know our Bibles know that we can go to the tomb of Lazarus when he was raised from the dead. We can go to the story of Jairus's daughter, who was raised up.

We can go to the funeral procession for the son of the widow of Nain. But in each of these instances, all of those individuals have our sympathy, because, as C. S. Lewis once put it, they had all their dying to do again. They were raised but were not given glorified and celestial bodies. They were raised to die again. Jesus is resurrected, never to die again. And the point is that our resurrection bodies are going to be like Jesus' resurrection body. In the words of Committal, the minister says, We commit the soul of our dear brother or sister here departed to the ground, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ—and then quoting from Philippians 3—"who will raise our earthly bodies, that they may be like unto his glorious body, according to the mighty working, whereby he is able to subdue all things, even death to himself."

Jesus then appears with a new body, invested with new powers, and in Christ we too will have new bodies, invested with new powers. Now, for your homework, I want you to go and read 1 Corinthians 15. I'm going to get you started on it if you're prepared to turn there with me for just a moment, and I will, like any kind teacher, give you a start, and then I say, as every teacher does, now, I'm not going to do this for you. I want you to go on and do the rest by yourself.

But let me just get you started. 1 Corinthians 15, and into the second half of it, verse 35, Paul says, Now someone may ask, How are the dead raised? And people do ask that. We ask that. If we're going to be raised, how are we going to be raised? Our children and our grandchildren ask that. What will we look like? Will we recognize one another? What will it be?

With what kind of body will they come? That's a bit stupid, he says. How foolish.

Think about it. What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. Every gardener understands this.

Every farmer understands this. When you sow, you do not plant the body that will be, but just a seed, perhaps of wheat or of something else. But God gives it a body, as he has determined, and to each kind of seed he gives it its own body. So in other words, between seed and flower, there is continuity.

But there is also discontinuity in terms of shape and size and color and fragrance. He then continues with that analogy and makes application of it, beginning in verse 42. So the conjunction which ties the picture he's been providing with the application he makes. So this is how it'll be with the resurrection of the dead.

In other words, if you understand that picture, then it will help you to understand this. He then provides four contrasts—and this is all I'm going to give you, point them out to you—so it will be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable. It is raised imperishable.

Meaning what? Our present bodies are subject to decay and to disease and to death. Our resurrected bodies will be imperishable. Disease, decay, death will be impotent in relationship to our resurrection bodies. It is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory. That is not to say that our bodies are per se dishonorable, but it is to say that the bodies that we have now are subject to the impact and ravages of sin. Our new bodies will be free from every selfish, passionate desire.

It is sown in weakness, and it is raised in power. Well, we know that our bodies are weak. Just the last couple of days, getting out of cars, I said to myself, Why is it so difficult to get out of a car? I mean, I'm talking to myself as well, which is another indication of the ravages of time bearing in on me, but I'm literally getting out of the car, saying, How can it be so…? I am so out of it, I said to myself, that this isn't a major jump or a leap.

What's wrong with me? Well, you're weak. And you're about to get weaker still. But the new body that we will have will no longer be subject to the limitations of our present bodies. It won't have the same metabolism.

No possibility of fatty deposits in places that you don't want them, and so on. Our body is sown in weakness, and it is raised in power. And the fourth contrast is that it is sown as a natural body, and it is raised as a spiritual body. Well, does that argue, then, for some kind of immateriality, for a soulful existence? No, that's not what he's saying. He's saying that our bodies are perfectly suited at the moment to the natural realm, and our bodies raised spiritual will be adapted to our new spiritual life and to our redeemed personalities.

Now, this is very, very important. In the Old Testament, the argument is always from creation to the power of God. For example, Jeremiah 32, sovereign Lord, you have made the heavens and the earth by your great power and outstretched arm.

Therefore, nothing is too hard for you. From creation to the powerful impact of God in his world. In the New Testament, they largely go from resurrection to the same conclusion. Looking back, Lord Jesus, you are raised from the dead. Father, you raise the Son from the dead, you are the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. Or in Romans 1, for Jesus was declared with power to be the Son of God by the resurrection from the dead. Now, I've belabored this point, and purposefully, and I'm not finished.

I have one other thing to do. What I want to reinforce for us this morning is the Christian belief that is not in the immortality of the soul but is in the resurrection of the body. We live at a time in history where people are fascinated with death and dying and whether they can communicate with people beyond the dead.

It's on TV all the time, stories of incarnation and reincarnation and ideas of where we're going to go and what we're going to be. And sometimes I think as Christians, when it comes to the moment for our opportunity to speak with clarity concerning this, we're just actually drooling rather than communicating. And anything that we have to say sounds so bizarre. Because it is bizarre. Because what we have made the mistake of doing is importing language which is being provided—it's called apocalyptic language—we have imported apocalyptic language, which is language used in a poetic fashion to describe the indescribable—undescribable, whichever—and we've made that the story of heaven. And the more that we look at that as the story of heaven, the less we like it. At least I can tell you, I don't like it. I mean, I am not ready to make a run, to swing on a tree, playing a harp, looking down on streets of gold.

Are you? I mean, does that get you up in the morning like, Oh, yes, and you know what? When we finish here, guess where we get to go? You get to go to this place, and it's like nothing you've ever seen, and there's gold and harps and angels, and tell me when it starts to really interest you.

And then you feel bad, you go, Oh, this is terrible! I don't even like heaven, and I'm supposed to be going to heaven! How could I possibly be a real believer? I got this heaven I'm supposed to go to, and I don't like the idea! That's because the idea that most of us have of heaven came from Victorian England or Hollywood. And we have this immaterial notion of what it's going to be.

We fail to see that God has done it once fantastically in our world that we enjoy, spoiled by sin, and he's about to do it again just to the nth degree. Now, the person who's helped me most in this most recently is an Australian by the name of John Dixon. If I were God, I'd end all the pain. Very helpful book in speaking to your friends. And in the course of reading this book, I discovered—and I love it when this happens, I'm sure you do too—I discovered that there was someone else in the universe that actually felt the same way about me as I did in relationship to heaven. Up until this point, I wanted to keep it very quiet, because I didn't want anyone to think I was a heretic. But as soon as I knew that I had a heretical friend that I kind of admired, I said, That's fine, I'll stand up and admit it too. He puts it so perfectly, and I want to read it to you.

It's page 57. In the years after I came to believe in Christ, it always troubled me that I was now meant to enjoy the thought of escaping the physical world and entering a spiritual one called heaven. I loved the taste, smell, sight, sound, and touch of this world, and here I was being told to look forward to losing those five senses and having them replaced by a spiritual sixth sense. I was not terribly excited about it. Then someone challenged me to point to biblical texts that described the afterlife as a disembodied nirvana-like bliss. I couldn't.

Every passage I turned to challenged the Hollywood version of heaven. It turns out that the biblical kingdom come is not an ethereal place of clouds and ghosts, but a tangible place of real existence. It is a new creation. Whether or not we will gain a sixth sense I have no idea, but I think we can count on keeping the other five senses.

This is a future I can get excited about. It is life in the fullest sense of the world—word—a reality in which the moral and physical tensions of our current world will be resolved through an extraordinary act of divine recreation. And when I find myself doubting that such a fantastic hope could ever become a reality, I need only go down to the beach near where I live or look up at the glorious night sky and remind myself that God has already done it once. The proof is right there before my eyes.

Why should I question his ability to do it a second time? So that moment in the early evening, when the first shadows start to fall across your favorite fairway, and it's so fantastic that you would like just to sit on the grass with your friends and love it all and take it all to yourself, it is the reality of the wonder of how God has created this, which ought to make us excited about what it will be when he does it again in a way that will be completely unfettered by the ravages of man's rebellion. And, says Dixon, there is another piece of evidence left in the world by the Almighty to indicate his intention of resurrecting the physical world itself. It is the resurrection of Christ himself. The resurrection of Jesus is God's tangible pledge within history that he intends to do the same for the whole creation at the end of history. This current world convinces me of God's ability to recreate the universe.

The resurrection of Jesus convinces me of his intention to do just that. While they were in animated conversation with one another, Jesus, in his glorified and celestial body—a real physicality, an identifiable materiality—came and stood among them. And standing among them, he spoke to them. It was, as we can see from what follows, a necessary greeting. Their hearts were fearful and confused. But it was also, as we ought to know from reading the gospel, more than a greeting. And again, I'm only going to get you started on this.

You'll need to research it for yourselves. But if you read throughout the Gospel of Luke, from the very beginning of it, you discover that peace and salvation are almost synonyms for one another in many places. For example, the words of Simeon in the temple, Luke 2, Lord, let your servant depart in peace, for my eyes have seen your salvation. Peace, salvation. Jesus to the woman, your faith has saved you.

Go in peace. Salvation and peace. Therefore, when Jesus speaks peace to them, he is using normal terminology, necessary terminology, but the context in which he is saying it makes clear exactly what's in view. He is speaking peace to them in light of the invitation that is about to follow for them to see his hands and his feet. What are his hands and his feet but evidences of his crucifixion? What is his crucifixion?

It is his substitutionary death on our behalf. What is Jesus doing in dying on the cross? Paul explains in Colossians 1, he is making peace through his blood shed on the cross. We will return to this topic of peace tomorrow in part two of a message titled, Peace, Panic, Proof.

You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. At the beginning of today's program, Alistair explained that the disciples were on an emotional roller coaster as they struggled to make sense of the empty tomb. And honestly, it's not much different today. People still continue to wrestle with the truth of the resurrection. So is there proof that can help dispel our doubts? Well, that's the subject of a book titled, Alive, How the Resurrection of Christ Changes Everything. In this book, the author investigates the historical and biblical evidence of Jesus' resurrection. He examines and refutes most of the popular theories of today's greatest skeptics and cynics. He explains how the reality of Christ's victory over death establishes a solid basis for us for our eternal hope. This explanation echoes what the Apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians.

If Christ is not raised from the dead, then our faith is worthless. One of the biggest benefits of the book, Alive, is that it logically and straightforwardly presents all of this information so the evidence for Jesus' resurrection is easy to understand and easy for you to explain to others. Request your copy of the book, Alive, today when you donate to support the Bible teaching you hear on this program. You'll find the book on our mobile app and online at truthforlife.org slash donate or you can call us at 888-588-7884. If you'd rather mail your donation along with your request for the book, write to Truth for Life P.O.

Box 398000 Cleveland, Ohio 44139. It's our hope that listening to Truth for Life fits conveniently into your daily schedule. To give you some additional options for listening, you can now hear Truth for Life on your Apple Watch. If you have an Apple Watch, series 3 or later, just open the podcast app on the phone, search for Truth for Life programs and then subscribe.

Find out more when you go to truthforlife.org slash Apple Watch. I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for listening. Tomorrow, Alistair explains that Scripture gives us an honest portrayal of the disciples, showing us that their feelings fluctuated widely between hope and despair. Join us as we continue our study in Luke's Gospel. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.