Today we will look at one of the most pivotal events in all of human history – the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
But we’re going to cover it from a unique perspective. You’re going to see not only what the resurrection of Jesus means to you for eternity but also how it helps you every day.
We’re going to see why the resurrection of Jesus has meaning has and how that meaning impacts your every-day life.
We’re going to begin today with why the resurrection of Jesus has meaning because of faith. And, let’s correct a big misconception about faith before we get started with this one.
Faith is not a blind stab in the dark. Faith is not just believing something because it sounds good. Yes, it is believing in some things we cannot see – but we believe in things we cannot see because of things we have seen. Christians don’t follow Christ just because they hope they might get lucky in so doing. It’s not about beating the odds, or choosing Christ just in case He’s right.
"Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservation." (Elton Trueblood)
If you’re looking for a evidentially based faith, then faith in Christ is based on solid historical and empirical evidence: historical, because the truths of Christ’s life, death and resurrection can be authenticated by the documented record; and empirical, because in the laboratory of the lives of billions of people, faith in Christ has proven true as well. But, beyond that we experience Christ in our own lives, we’ve experienced change, answer to prayer, we know His presence, and through our own human tendency for doubt, uncertainty, and confusion, we know that he exists within us and is working for our salvation.
We’re talking about faith that has a rock-solid foundation. That foundation is Jesus and His life, death and resurrection. But the message today is not going to be about proving the resurrection of Christ.
Today we’re going to see why and how the resurrection of Jesus has an impact on your faith and why and how your faith impacts your life.
Our Scripture today is from Paul’s first letter to the Christ followers at Corinth in ancient Greece.
1 Corinthians 15:12-22
12. Now if Christ is preached, that He has been raised from the dead, how do some among you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
13. But if there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised;
14. and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain.
15. Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised.
16. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised;
17. and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.
18. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.
19. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.
The Order of Resurrection
20. But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep.
21. For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead.
22. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.
Let’s break this passage of Scripture down further and talk about the specific reasons the resurrection of Christ, the true meaning of the resurrection of Jesus, impacts your life in positive ways.
1. Faith in the resurrection of Jesus means you may live confidently.
Let me show you how these verses give us confidence.
Paul said in verses 14, "If Christ was not raised from the dead, then what we preach to you is worth nothing. Your faith in Christ is worth nothing."
That’s how important this issue of the resurrection of Jesus is. Your very faith hinges on whether or not Jesus rose from the dead.
And in verse 17, "If Christ was not raised from the dead, your faith is worth nothing and you are still living in your sins."
"You are still living in your sins," means you are still walking around with the sentence of death – which is the penalty for sin.
If Jesus didn’t raise from the dead then faith in Him is useless. If Jesus didn’t raise from the dead then your hope is false and any and all of the ways you’ve patterned your life around His teaching is worthless.
But the Bible confirms in verse 20 that "it is true! Christ has been raised from the dead!" Circle that phrase in verse 20.
Now here’s the point. Since the resurrection of Jesus is true, then those who follow Christ have confidence that His ways are the right ways to live here and now. Christ followers have great confidence that the way they are living by following the teachings of Christ is the right way to live!
Christ followers need not be doubtful or gloomy! If you are a follower of Christ you don’t need to live in the shadows of insecurity and paranoia. You don’t need to withdraw from situations or settings when you feel inadequate and inferior. We all feel those ways sometimes. If you follow Christ you can live confidently! If you are a follower of Christ you have a right to be confident and glad!
As the Bill Gaither song says, "Because He lives all fear is gone!"
Doubts come when we feed on the fears of our human nature and its weaknesses. Confidence comes from following Christ and focusing on the resurrection.
Because Jesus is alive – because He conquered death, hell and the grave you can face life’s difficulties.
We know we can have confidence in the teachings of the Bible because we have a living Savior! If Jesus isn’t alive today you can throw this Bible into a trash can. But, He is alive and His Word sure, it is better than gold.
From a practical point of view, because Christ conquered death as the fulfillment of so many prophecies and with verifiable documented testimony, we have unshakable confidence in the message of Christ! We can walk down the path that follows the instructions of Christ with the absolute assurance that we are on the right path!
People pay big bucks to have others tell them what life is all about, and what direction to go. They spend lifetimes trying to find meaning and purpose and all along Jesus provides these things. We don’t need to go on a pilgrimage to a holy site to find enlightenment. We don’t need to seek a wise man sitting on top of some snow-covered mountain. We can have certainty that how you are living our daily life is right as we depend on His word and are committed to His teaching.
Paul said we would be glad, in verse 19. We should be more glad than anyone else because Jesus has conquered death, hell and the grave!
Living confidently is one of the birthrights of the believer! If you are following Jesus you are on the right road!
Have you ever been traveling somewhere far away from home in unfamiliar surroundings and for miles and miles you just don’t see the landmarks you think you’re supposed to see and you begin to doubt if you’re on the right road? You wonder if you’re going in the right direction. That’s a crummy feeling. The feeling that you’re lost. On a trip one time I put in the wrong destination, the right city but the wrong state. I saw a sign for a town that I didn’t recognize, Nixa. I had no idea where that was, I was completely lost, it was getting dark and we didn’t have any place to stay. Nixa was not our destination, but it was where we ended up.
If you are following Jesus you don’t have to be lost. You don’t have to doubt about your destination. You don’t have to worry about plugging in your destination into your GPS right, and even though landmarks are few and far between and sometimes life stinks, when your trust is in Jesus, and you know that He is the way (John 14.6) you don’t have to worry or be afraid that your destination is secure.
Somebody at Corinth was trying to get the believers off of the right road and Paul was writing to tell them to stay on course. They were losing their confidence about the very thing about which they should have been confident!
Paul said that because of the resurrection of Jesus faith means you may live confidently!
And, faith in the resurrection of Jesus means you should live gratefully. (1 Corinthians. 15:21)
Look again at verse 21 & 22 with me.
21. For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead.
22. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.
Trace your roots back to Eden. Your forefather Adam decided to disobey God. He decided to sin – even after having been forewarned of the consequence of sin, which is death. And you and I inherited his sinful nature. We inherited the inclination or the predisposition to sin.
Have you ever wondered why sinning comes naturally? We think and say and do wrong and hurtful things without even having to try. It is thinking and saying and doing the right things that often takes effort, at least until we have matured and begin to respond correctly out of the habits you have formed in our life. And even then it takes the Supernatural power of the Holy Spirit to assist us in living right.
This problem stems from our membership in the human race. We are a son or daughter of Adam. And the Bible emphatically states that death came because of a man, Adam.
But the Scriptures immediately follow that bad news with good news! Being raised from the dead also came because of a Man, Christ.
We owe our ability to conquer death and to conquer the lifestyle that leads to death, to Christ. Once we make a faith commitment to Him we are given the power to overcome the penalty of sin, which is death. We are given the power to live a resurrected lifestyle!
But before that power becomes ours – you must admit that it was our sins that put Jesus on the cross.
"Before we can begin to see the cross as something done for us, we have to see it as something done by us." (John Stott)
My sins nailed Jesus to the cross. Your sins nailed Jesus to the cross. The whole world is guilty, every one of us. Therefore, each of us deserves the penalty for sin – death. But Jesus loved us so much He took sin’s penalty for us. The greatest love ever known is the love of God displayed on the cross on Golgotha, the place of the skull.
That kind of love should be returned with gratefulness.
One stormy night in Lake Michigan, a side-wheeler steamboat was rammed by another boat. The steamboat sank just a mile offshore from the village of Winnetka, Illinois. Out of 393 passengers on board, 279 drowned.
A man named Edward Spencer after seeing the situation unfold plunged into the lake and swam to the drowning people. He towed one person to shore and went for another. In all, he brought seventeen people to safety. However, the strain on this young man caused him to collapse. The nerves in his legs were so completely destroyed that he could never walk again. He was an invalid wheel chair victim for his entire life.
On his eightieth birthday, someone asked him to relate his most vivid memory of that dreadful day. He replied, "Not one of the seventeen returned to thank me."
Don’t live without thanking Jesus for the sacrifice He made for you!
The resurrection of Jesus Christ means you may live confidently.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ means you should live gratefully.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ means you may live hopefully.
(1 Corinthians 15:22) For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive.
When you read in First Corinthians which was written in the first century you realize that doubts about life after death aren’t new. For centuries man has wrestled with the concept of immortality. Is this life all there is? Or is there something after? The Bible clearly teaches that this life is only temporary, but it will be followed by eternal residence either with God or apart from God.
Your preparation needs to be focused on preparing for that existence with God. And you also need to do everything that you can to get others to spend their eternal existence with God.
Why should you believe this? Why should you believe what the Bible says about life after death? Isn’t this "pie in the sky" stuff just the fanciful by-product of man’s wishful thinking? Don’t you have to be a weak person to believe in an afterlife because you’re naïve and you fear death?
Before we answer that question let me ask another? Aren’t people who don’t believe in an afterlife engaged in wishful thinking? It could be that they are hoping that there is no accountability when they die and that there is no authority over their lives before that time.
(Psalm 10:4) The wicked, in the haughtiness of his countenance, does not seek Him. All his thoughts are, “There is no God.”
Non-belief in God is a convenient way for the unbeliever to stick his head in the sand. But, God won’t go away just because people don’t believe in Him.
Death is man’s greatest enemy, and it has conquered all men but Christ. No matter how brilliant or rich or strong he may be, no man is wise enough to outwit death or wealthy enough to buy freedom from death or strong enough to vanquish death. The grave always wins the victory, and man sooner or later returns to the dust.
In fact, the triumph of death applies not only to man, but to all things. Animals die and plants die, and even whole species become extinct, and then fade away. Cities and nations, like people, are born and grow for a time, and then fade away. Homes and automobiles and clothes wear out and must eventually go back to dust, just as do their owners. Even the universe itself is running down." (Many Infallible Proofs, Henry Morris)
Death is such a universal absolute that the Bible says , For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it, in hope
that the creation itself also will be set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. (Romans 8:20-21)
Freedom from death – that is what Jesus offers!
If you are a follower of Christ you are going to live forever in eternity with God! If you’re in what is commonly referred as mid-life, don’t sweat it. The other day it occurred to me – since I’m going to live forever, and I am not in mid-live, there’s no such thing as midlife. If you’re in your senior years remember that you’ll be young again in heaven! Forever!
In his book, "God Said It, Don’t Sweat It," The Christian Psychologist Neil Clark Warren tells about a Christian man who came to his office contemplating suicide because his wife was leaving him. Warren shared with this client the promise of eternal life in Christ and how it trumps even the serious and weighty problems of life.
And he wrote something in his book that is interesting. He said that through the years of counseling thousands of clients not one of them had committed suicide. He kept pointing his clients toward the hope of heaven and where’s there’s hope there’s always a reason to go on!
The resurrection of Jesus Christ means you can live hopefully.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ means you may live confidently.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ means you should live gratefully.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ means you may live hopefully.
The most important question to ask yourself then is, "Do I have faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ?"
Have I placed my trust in what Jesus did by dying for me on the cross?
If you have never done that, I want to give you an opportunity to do that today. Let’s bow our heads for prayer together. If living confidently, gratefully and hopefully appeals to you and if you want to make a faith commitment to Jesus today – pray something like this silently and sincerely from your heart today: "Jesus I thank you for dying on the cross in my place. I realize that you took my place. I’m a sinner but I want to become your follower. Forgive all my sins and give me eternal life. Give me the confidence and the hope that I need to face not only eternity – but every day. In Jesus’ name."
