Resurrection Confidence Series

Phil Callaway talks about a sleepy Sunday afternoon when his son was five years old. They drove past a cemetery together and the boy noticed a large pile of dirt beside a newly excavated grave. He pointed and said: “Look, Dad, one got out!” Phil laughed, but now, he says, “Every time I pass a graveyard, I'm reminded of the One who got out” (Phil Callaway, Men of Integrity, April 16, 2006; www.PreachingToday.com).

Praise God for the One who got out! Jesus is indeed risen. And because He is alive, we can face life with confidence no matter what is going on around us. How so? You ask. Well, if you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to 1 Corinthians 15, 1 Corinthians 15, where the Bible shows us how Christ’s resurrection gives us confidence in difficult times.

1 Corinthians 15:12-14 Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 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 (ESV).

If Christ is not raised from the dead, then everything you say and believe as a Christian is useless. It’s empty. It has no value or benefit to anyone. For the entire Christian faith stands or falls on the resurrection of Christ. So if Christ is not raised from the dead, then your faith is worthless.

But since Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, you can live your life with confidence. You can go about your daily life with assurance. You can live your life not with a tentative fear, but with certainty and conviction. So, since Christ is raised from the dead…

BE CONFIDENT THAT YOUR FAITH IS USEFUL.

Be sure that everything you believe as a Christian is valuable and worthwhile.

A few years ago (2018), in the Wall Street Journal, George Weigel described the effect of Christ’s resurrection on His followers and on the world. He writes:

There is no accounting for the rise of Christianity without weighing the revolutionary effect of the resurrection on a ragtag band of nobodies. They encountered One whom they embraced as the Risen Lord, whom they first knew as the itinerant Jewish rabbi, Jesus of Nazareth, and who died an agonizing and shameful death on a Roman cross outside Jerusalem.

That first generation answered the question of why they were Christians with a straightforward answer: because Jesus was raised from the dead… And as they worked that out, their thinking about a lot of things changed profoundly.

Then, two and a half centuries later, their thinking had permeated the entire Roman Empire, changing their world for the better. For example:

• There was a new dignity given to woman in contrast to the classical culture.

• There was a self-denying healthcare provided to plague sufferers.

• There was a focus on family health and growth.

• There was a remarkable change in worship from the Sabbath to Sunday

• There was a willingness to embrace death as martyrs—because they knew that death did not have the final word in the human story. &

• They lived as if they knew the outcome of history itself.

Weigel suggests that it's only through “the Easter Effect” that these changes make sense. The social changes that followed Good Friday occur only if they actually believed in the resurrection of Jesus (George Weigel, “The Easter Effect and How it Changed the World,” The Wall Street Journal, 3-30-18; www.PreachingToday.com).

Your Christian faith is powerful, not only to change your life, but eventually your culture, as well. Your Christian faith, fueled by the conviction that Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, makes a real difference in the world.

So, be confident! Since Christ is raised from the dead, be confident that your faith is useful. 2nd…

BE CONFIDENT THAT YOUR WITNESS IS TRUE.

Be sure that your testimony about Christ is genuine and real.

1 Corinthians 15:15 We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised (ESV).

Some false teachers in Bible days were teaching that the dead are not raised. They had a platonic view of the afterlife, which said that people’s spirits are freed from the prison of their bodies at death never to return again. In other words, they were teaching that there is no resurrection of the body after it dies. But if that’s the case, then Christ was not raised from the dead. And if Christ was not raised, then our witness about Christ is false.