The Gospel of the Resurrection

John Wivell

Easter • Sermon • Submitted 2 years ago

1 Corinthians 15:1–28

0 ratings

· 4 views

Notes

Transcript

I. What About the Resurrection?

A. It’s part of the Gospel you depend on

B. It’s Based on evidence

Chuck Colson served as President Nixon’s “hatchet man,” (Director of the Office of Public Liaison from 1970-73) and was one of the men indicted in the Watergate Scandal. He ended up going to prison for his crimes, but in prison he became a Christian and turned his life around completely, founding the Prison Fellowship International, and his radio show Breakpoint is dedicated to preserving his writings and speeches. he went to be with the Lord in 2012. Not everything the man did was gold, however. He participated in the ecumenical document Evangelicals and Catholics together in 1994, a travesty that compromises the gospel. But there is no doubt that his personal faith was very real. He has a unique variation on the evidence for the empty tomb. Many other men have made a similar argument. He alone could use his experience in the Watergate Scandal to paint a picture:

Indeed, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, the historical fact of Christ’s resurrection is the only basis of our hope. Without the resurrection, our faith is futile. This is why critics of Christianity often try to explain away the empty tomb. They claim that the disciples lied–that they stole Jesus’s body themselves and conspired together to pretend He had risen. The apostles then managed somehow to recruit more than 500 other people to lie for them as well, to say they saw Jesus after He rose from the dead.

But just how plausible is this theory?

To answer that question, fast forward nearly 2,000 years, to an event I happen to know a lot about: Watergate. You see, before all the facts about Watergate were known to the public–in March 1973–it was becoming clear to Nixon’s closest aides that someone had tried to cover up the Watergate break-in.

There were no more than a dozen of us. Could we maintain a cover-up–to save the president? Consider that we were political zealots. We enjoyed enormous political power and prestige. With all that at stake, you’d expect us to be capable of maintaining a lie to protect the president.

But we couldn’t do it. The first to crack was John Dean. First, he told the president everything, and then just two weeks later he went to the prosecutors and offered to testify against the President. His reason, as he candidly admits in his memoirs, was to “save his own skin.” After that, everyone started scrambling to protect himself. What we know today as the great Watergate cover-up lasted only three weeks. Some of the most powerful politicians in the world–and we couldn’t keep a lie for more than three weeks.

So back to the question of historicity of Christ’s resurrection. Can anyone believe that for fifty years that Jesus’ disciples were willing to be ostracized, beaten, persecuted, and all but one of them suffer a martyr’s death–without ever renouncing their conviction that they had seen Jesus bodily resurrected? Does anyone really think the disciples could have maintained a lie all that time under that kind of pressure?

No, someone would have cracked, just as we did so easily in Watergate. Someone would have acted as John Dean did and turned state’s evidence. There would have been some kind of smoking gun, or a deathbed confession.

So why didn’t they crack? Because they had come face to face with the living God. They could not deny what they had seen. The fact is that people will give their lives for what they believe is true, but they will never give their lives for what they know is a lie. The Watergate cover-up proves that 12 powerful men in modern America couldn’t keep a lie–and that 12 powerless men 2,000 years ago couldn’t have been telling anything but the truth.

C. It’s Preached because of God’s Grace

II. What if there is no Resurrection?

A. Christianity is Meaningless

B. the Apostles are Fake

C. Sin remains unforgiven

D. Dead Christians are Gone Forever

III. What Happens since He is Risen?

A. Firstfruits

Jesus is the firstfruits of the Resurrection of the dead. This refers to the Jewish feast of Firstfruits, in which the first of the harvest is consecrated to God to represent the fact that the whole harvest belongs to him.

Jesus was not the first person to rise from the dead, but he was the first person to rise from the dead to immortality.

If a man created the problem of death, then a man must solve it. When Adam Sinned, he sealed the fate of the whole human race, since when he ate the fruit every member of the human race had chosen to eat it. This is why the penalty of death wasn’t just given to Adam and Eve, but was imparted to the human race as a whole.

All who are “in Christ”, that is, related to him by faith, have Jesus Christ act on their behalf just as Adam’s actions impacted all who are “in him.”

Therefore the reality of Jesus’ resurrection proves that our own resurrection is coming.

B. The Kingdom of God

Now Paul skips the Millennial age entirely. Christ must first come and bring in the Kingdom, before he can deliver the kingdom to the father. There must first be a kingdom to turn over, before it can be turned over.

However, we are told that Jesus will reign as long as death is a reality. Paul quotes from Psalm 8:6. He notes that this phrase should be given the full weight of it’s meaning. It applies first to humanity in general. however, as Jesus is the captain of the human race in the new age, it must therefore also apply to him.

Presently he reigns in heaven. In the Millennium, Jesus is reigning on earth. Death will not be entirely abolished, but it will be largely gone. Instead of everyone being subject to death, only the wicked will die. Everyone else will live forever.

Once death is abolished entirely then the eternal state will begin. Jesus will then turn the kingdom over to the father, and the endless ages of eternity will roll.

Related Media

Related Sermons