Will, turn back with me to my
text in 1 Corinthians 15. By the grace and spirit of our
God, I want to talk to you this morning about the glory of His
resurrection. Those of you who know me know
I don't often bring any kind of traditional message, but I
believe this is fitting. and a good day for it, and I
feel led of God to bring it. Churches the world over will
swell to capacity this morning. They'll be sitting out in the
aisles, some of them, and all gathered to celebrate Easter. Hundreds of thousands of messages
will be delivered this morning Some publicly from coast to coast. I'm sure that I didn't have time
this morning to watch. I would like to have seen some
of them, but they're going to be all over the television. I've
already seen signs around with all the activities that they're
having here locally. Hundreds of thousands of messages
will be preached today on the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
but not one in a thousand. Not one in a thousand knows what
it means or could give you any kind of scriptural explanation
as to the glory of it, the reason for it, or what it means to a
heaven-born child of God. I'll never forget. This is before
I really knew too much about the gospel. I was going to go
with my brother to his church, and I think it was a Church of
God if I remember right. But we went on Easter morning.
I was up there visiting with my parents, and I decided I'd
go to church with him. And I got up and went up there,
and there by the front door of the church was a seven-foot Easter
bunny. You know, looking back on my
childhood, growing up in religion, that's all I can remember about
Easter. Hunting Easter eggs and getting candy at church and all
the festivities afterward. That's the only thing I can remember
about Easter. Not one in a thousand knows what
it means or could give you any kind of scriptural explanation
concerning the glory of it, the reason for it, or what it means.
What they will do today is celebrate a holy day. They'll make much
of the day of Easter. It'll be everybody's ears. If anybody has an ear and turns
on their television, they're going to hear about this holy
day called Easter. And all afternoon, they're going
to hunt Easter eggs and talk about the will and works of men. And the closest their congregations
will come to any kind of understanding of this great and phenomenal
event will be in the reading of their text in the Bible. That's as close as they're going
to get. There are two monumental days which the professing church
of this world celebrates, Christmas and Easter. At Christmas, they
celebrate his birth. And at Easter, they celebrate
His resurrection. But never, never on any day during
the year do they celebrate His eternality as the Son of God. You want to celebrate something,
celebrate that. He's God. Always was God. Always will be God. He who thought it not robbery
to be equal with God. This man born in that cow stable,
that tiny baby, equal with God because he was God. Never do they celebrate his eternality
as the son of God. Never do they celebrate his life
and death which outwith his birth and resurrection would be absolutely
meaningless. I never attended church anywhere
on Easter as a child where they celebrated his offices. You can
celebrate that. Celebrate his offices as the
Christ, though everything he did was done in the capacity
of an office that he was appointed to. Nobody celebrates his offices. Are you aware that Jesus Christ
is God's appointed mediator? The scripture said there's one
mediator between men and God, the man, Christ Jesus. You think about that, just one.
This man was appointed to mediate the redemptive will of God. And because he was appointed
to that end, God turned everything over to his hands. Do you know that Jesus Christ
is the federal head and representative of His elect? That every man,
woman, boy, and girl chosen by the Father was chosen in Him
and predestinated to the adoption of children by Him according
to the good pleasure of God's will? I'm telling you, I've listened
to Easter services far back as it goes. I never one time ever
heard anybody told about that. Do you know that he was appointed
as our covenant surety? You know, most people this morning
all dressed up with their new bonnets on and their new dresses
and everything, coming out for Easter, they don't even know
what a covenant is. They don't have a clue that God
had a covenant, an everlasting covenant of grace. by which all
the terms of salvation and everything, it was ordered, David said, in
all things and sure. And Christ is the surety of that
covenant. The blood that he shed on the
cross was the blood of the everlasting covenant. It tells us that in
the book of Hebrews. He's our prophet, priest, and
king. Well, where are you going with
all this preaching? I'm simply trying to point out that it's
not just the miracle of a dead man being raised from the dead.
There was nothing new about that. Christ raised men from the dead
a lot. The most famous of whom was Lazarus. Oh, Lord, don't roll that stone
back. By now, he's stinking. He's been in there. Roll the
stone back. He raised Lazarus from the dead. The widow of Nain had a son.
He raised him from the dead too. And Jairus' daughter he raised
from the dead. Why don't we celebrate their
resurrection? Huh? They were raised before
he was. Why don't we celebrate their
resurrection? They were just as dead as he was and just as alive when they raised
him from the dead. Why don't we celebrate their
resurrection? Why don't we have a holy day for that? Why don't
we all congregate on July the 10th or something and celebrate
that? Why don't we celebrate their resurrection? Why do we celebrate the resurrection
of Christ and not others? What makes his resurrection so
special? Four things. Who he is. You take that out of the picture,
resurrection is meaningless. Who he is. God and man and one person. Secondly,
why He came. Why He came. He came down from
heaven, He said in His own words, to accomplish. He said in the
volume of the book it's written of me, to accomplish the redemptive
will of God. And to raise up at the last day
all which the Father had given to Him. Thirdly, because of what he did.
What did he do? What did this man, Jesus Christ,
do? I know he came to this world.
I know he was born of a virgin. I know that the wise men came
and laid gifts down at his feet. And I know in time he was called
to be a minister, and he ministered to men and worked miracles. But
what did he do? What was the significance of
His coming? What did He do when He got here
as a man? Scripture said, by His own blood
He entered in once into the holy place, having obtained eternal
redemption for us. That's what He did. He offered
Himself without spot to God. He bore our sins in His own body
on the tree. He's the end of the law for righteousness
to everyone who believes that. He ushered in everlasting righteousness. And then, fourthly, because of
what His resurrection meant. Very briefly, Paul summed it
up with this in Romans 4.25. He said He was delivered for
our offenses. and raised again for our justification. You know that old high priest
in Israel, he'd take that blood atonement one time a year. And
he was the only one permitted to go in there. And he went past
the holy place and under that veil into the Holy of Holies.
And he took that atonement blood and poured it out on the mercy
seat above the ark. And all Israel stood outside
knowing why he went in, knowing what that sacrifice meant,
or at least some of them did. But they didn't just go home
when they seen him go in, because they didn't know if it was accepted
or not. The way you knew if it was accepted is when the high
priest come back out. When he come back out of that
tabernacle, he raised them arms and he blessed Israel. That's what the resurrection
is about. That's what it's about. He was raised for our justification. And just to stand up here and
talk about empty tombs and huge stones being rolled away and
Roman governments and liars and all this kind of stuff, it's
just bang-jangling. That's all it is. The real glory
is in who died and who was raised and what that resurrection declares. Now, what I propose to do this
morning is go through the first part of 1 Corinthians 15 and
show you in Paul's Gospel the glory of the resurrection of
Jesus Christ. There's five specific things
that he talks about here in these first 23 verses of this chapter. And the first is this, that the
resurrection of Jesus Christ is an indisputable fact of both
Scripture and history. Both. It's indisputable. Listen to this, 1 Corinthians
15, 4, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third
day according to the Scriptures. This is what God said he would
do. This is what he did. And it's verified on both ends.
It's verified beforehand, and it's verified after. And that
he was seen then, after he rose. You know, most men think the
Lord Jesus Christ, the angel come down, rolled the boulder
away, and He just come out of the tomb and then floated off
into glory. Ain't no such thing. He stayed
on this earth for more than a month after His resurrection. And appeared
to people who knew Him. Appeared to His believers and
to His elect. And he was seen of Cephas, and
then of the twelve, and then of above five hundred people
at one time. We don't have a hundred in here
this morning. Five hundred of them seen him. Knew him. Knew that that was him. And then he was seen of James
and some more. For a month. House to house. This one saw
Him, that one saw Him. And though the Jews hired the
guards at the tomb to lie about His resurrection, they paid them
big bucks. Scripture says big money. Paid
them big bucks. So that when somebody asked Him,
they'd say His disciples come and snuck Him away at night. But there's more than sufficient
evidence that he rose from the dead. And a man might not understand
all the whys and wherefores, but you can't deny the fact of
his resurrection. Now, you better not look at that
as some kind of superstitious mystery that some man started
back 2,000 years ago. It's a fact. And it's a fact
not only of the scriptures, but it's a fact of history. Now,
history don't make any difference to faith. Faith receives the
testimony of God. And God said he was raised from
the dead. His birth was a public birth.
His life was a public life. His death was a public death.
And his resurrection was a public resurrection. Paul said to Felix
the king, he said, much study has made thee mine. He said,
let me tell you something, Felix. This thing wasn't done in a corner.
This thing was done right out in the wide open for everybody
to see. And Felix looked at him and he
said, almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian. That wasn't Felix, that was King
Agrippa. All right, here's the second thing I want you to see.
His resurrection was absolutely necessary to the saving of our
souls. In verses 14 through 18, Paul
gives us four things that show the necessity of Christ's resurrection.
First of all, he tells us in verse 14 that if Christ be not
risen, what I'm doing this morning is just wasting my time. If Christ
be not raised from the dead, your preaching is in vain. You're
just spinning your wheels. You're not doing anything. You're
not accomplishing anything. Nothing's going to be accomplished. Just a lost cause. Everything we preach to men concerning
the salvation of their souls is contingent upon the resurrection
of Christ. Now, I'm talking about real preaching,
not the yammering of a bunch of false prophets. Gospel preaching declares that
this man, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph and Mary, is
the Christ. I don't know how many times he
uses that title in the New Testament and the Old Testament. It looks
like somebody would go back to see why he uses that name. Who is this man? He's the Christ. He's God's promised seed from
way back yonder in Genesis 3. He's the woman's seed. The Christ is the promised Redeemer,
the Savior, the Prophet, Priest, and King of Israel. And every
son of Adam, the Father chosen in eternal election, was chosen
in Christ. Isn't that what it says? It didn't
say He was chosen in Jesus. It said He was chosen in Christ.
Jesus was appointed the office of Christ, and He held that office. And He was chosen in Christ before
the foundation of the world. By way of eternal covenant union,
we were chosen in Christ, made one with Him, and predestinated
in Him. So when He came into this world,
He came in union with our body and soul, and of all His elect. And they said, His name shall
be called Immanuel. What's that mean? God with us. Huh? When He come into this world,
He come in a union, an eternal covenant union, but also a physical
union. He was made man. He didn't come as the seed of
angels. He didn't come as the seed of Abraham, the promised
seed. When the fullness of the time
was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under
the law, to redeem them that were under the law. And we were
in Him as He obeyed that law. We were in Him as He was tempted
in all points, like as we are yet without sin. We were in Him. Did you know that all that He
did was charged to our account? That's why to me, when people
start talking about, well, I just feel so bad because I didn't
do this and didn't do that. Well, sure you didn't. You're
a sinner. You never will. You're not going to find any
comfort in that. Here's where you're going to find comfort.
Christ is your righteousness. My soul, why would I want to
hang on to my... Paul said, I hope I'm not found
in mine. And he already stated his was
more than yours. And he said, I hope God don't
find me in mine. Why would I want to be found
in my righteousness when He's clothed me with the righteousness
of Christ? Men are ignorant of this. They're
ignorant of this. Well, that's what that resurrection
declares, isn't it? That His righteousness has been
accepted. He's the end of the law for righteousness. Everything the law demanded,
He's the end. We were in Him as He obeyed the
law and ever jot and tittle. We're in Him as He died for our
sins, satisfying the holy justice of God. And that being so, this is so
also, Ephesians 2 verse 6, "...and hath raised us up together with
Him, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ
Jesus." Secondly, God requires full satisfaction
for every transgression and that according to the infinite and
holy justice of God. A mean old man was suddenly struck
down with a fatal illness. And after years of suffering,
he finally died. And one man was talking to a
close relative at his funeral and hoping to comfort her a little
bit. He said, I think everything is
going to be alright now. He certainly suffered enough
for his sins. You think that's possible? Not possible. Not possible. All men suffering for all eternity
could not satisfy God's justice for one single infraction to
His law. Is that hard to swallow? It's
so. It's so. Turn with me to Hebrews chapter
10. I believe this is one of the
most misunderstood of all the gospel doctrines. Hebrews chapter 10 verse 1. Listen to this. For the law,
having a shadow of things to come, and not the very image
of the things, can never, with those sacrifices which they offered
year by year continually, make the comers thereunto perfect.
Couldn't do it. For then, listen to this, for
then would they not have ceased to have been offered? If that
high priest took in that blood, that atonement blood, and put
it on the altar, and he said, It's accepted. All your sins
are gone. Then why did he come back next
year with the same offering? Huh? Because those sacrifices
which they offered year by year continued could not take away
sins. They weren't never designed for
that. They were given as a figure,
as a picture of the substitutionary sacrifice of Christ who one time
in the end of the world offered himself without spot to God. If the sacrifice was sufficient,
there should have been no need for another. But Israel offered
this atonement continually. And they did so for thousands
of years. Why? Verse 4, it is not possible that
the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins. Now watch
this, verse 5. Wherefore, when he cometh into
the world, here might be a better way to understand what he's saying
here. By his coming into the world, he saith, sacrifice an
offering thou wouldest not, but a body hast thou prepared me. A sacrificial body, a substitutionary
body, a representative body. Why? Verse 7, to accomplish the will
of God. Now let me tell you something
about the will of God. I'm always inserting this word,
redemptive will of God, because that's all of His will that He's
pleased to reveal to His people. His redemptive will. And that's
what's important to the saving of His soul. And everything else
that happens is subject to that redemptive will. He worketh all
things after his own will. Now, I ain't what that says.
He worketh all things after the counsel of his own will, and
his counsel is a redemptive counsel. This is his purpose. This is
his purpose. To accomplish the redemptive
will of God, verse 10, by the which will, that is the accomplishing
of this will, we are sanctified through the offering of the body
of Jesus Christ once for all. So what does that have to do
with His resurrection? When God raised Him from the
dead, God declared His sacrifice and His righteousness is accepted.
And then he tells us there in Ephesians 1 where he talks about
choosing us in Christ, predestinating us in Christ. I think it's the
very next verse. He said, we're accepted in the
beloved. Oh, what a sweet thing it is
to the believer to know that. Christ was delivered for our
offenses, raised again for our justification. I don't have time
to go through all the doctrines of the gospel, but suffice it
to say this, everything we preach is contingent on the resurrection.
That's what I'm trying to illustrate to you. If Christ be not risen,
then preaching is vain. Everything that we're saying
is vain. It's a lost cause. There's no reason to say it because
it's contingent on his resurrection. And then look at this. 1 Corinthians
15 verse 14. If Christ be not risen, our preaching
is in vain and your faith is in vain. I believe. Well, you rest at
home. Religion pictures him on the
cross. He ain't on the cross. He's sitting on the throne. I've
never seen a picture of him sitting on the throne. He's alive. God raised Him from
the dead. He ascended into glory and He
sat down at the right hand of God. You want to picture something,
picture that. Preaching and faith is the gift
of the resurrected Christ. But if He be not risen, how can
you believe? Here's what he told his disciples
when he sent them out to preach. He said, all power is given unto
me in heaven and earth. Now, you go preach. You go preach. But if he be not risen, then
he didn't have all power in his hands, and there's no reason
for me to go preach, because I don't have the power. Faith rests on Christ. If he
be not risen, we have no assurance of atonement, no assurance acceptance
and no assurance of righteousness. And not only this, but if Christ
be not risen, we're false prophets. We're false prophets. You tell
somebody that Christ is risen, that Christ is their hope, Christ
is the sinner, you're a false prophet if he didn't raise from
the dead. You know, the philosophers on
Mars Hill tolerated everything Paul said. They were fascinated
with his whole story until he come to the resurrection. When
he preached the resurrection to that bunch of philosophers,
it says, when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some
mocked. Others said, well, we'll hear
you again some other time. Howbeit some believe. Some believe. And then here's
the fifth thing contingent upon His resurrection. Verse 17. If Christ be not raised, you're
yet in your sins. Did you know that? Did you ever
think about that? I know we think about His death
and His blood and that atonement, but isn't all that contingent
on His resurrection? It sure is. It sure is. Jesus Christ did not come into
this world to give us an example on how to live and love and hoping
to persuade as many as He could to follow after Him. Just try
to save somebody, anybody, if they'll listen. That's not why
He came. He came into this world to save
His people from their sins, and that's why they called Him Jesus,
which means Joshua. What did Joshua do? He took His
people into the promised rest. That's what Christ did. He saved
us from... He shall. He didn't say might.
He shall save us from our sins. He came to give eternal life.
He lifted His eyes to glory. And He said, Now glorify Me,
Father, with that glory which I had with Thee before the world
was, that I might give eternal life to as many as Thou hast
given Me. And I guarantee you, all that
the Father gave to Him will receive eternal life. They'll all hear
the Gospel and God's providence. They'll all be born of the Spirit
of God. They'll all be enabled to believe.
And they'll all persevere unto death. Every last one of them.
How do I know that? Because he raised from the dead.
That's how I know it. The question then is, did he
do what the father sent him to do? My brother-in-law asked me one
time about the doctrine of election. I said, well, let's just lay
that on the table for a minute. Let me ask you something. When
Christ came into this world, did He do what the Father sent
Him to do? Well, that's kind of a catch-22
for an Arminian. He didn't know what to say. And
I said, well, you know what the Father sent Him to do. And he
didn't have no answer for that either. Well, what did the Father send
Him to do? All that the Father hath given me It's going to come
to me. Him that cometh to me, I will
in no wise cast out. Now listen to this. For I came
down from heaven not to do my will, but the will of my Father
which is in heaven. And this is my Father's will
which is sent me, that of all which He hath given me I should
lose nothing, but raise it up again at the last day. Huh? That's the Father's will. That's
His redemptive will and that's what's going to be done. And
Christ accomplished that, and I know He accomplished it because
God raised Him from the dead. If Christ be not risen, verse
18, then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. I preached on this chapter, or
I didn't really preach on it. I made some comments on it at
Peggy's funeral. I don't know how men handle that
kind of loss, that kind of catastrophe in their lives if they don't
have this hope. I guess they're just blinded
to it. Blinded to it. They got no pain in their death. There's
no... But there ought to be. I mean,
my soul This one that you love for a lifetime is gone. What
hope do you have? A lot of hope if you believe.
A lot of hope. You can rest on that and the
guarantee of it is that He's already risen. He's the first begotten from
the dead. His final resurrection of the
saints is contingent on the first. Did you know that? There's going to come a day.
Our Lord said there's going to come a day when all that are
in the graves is going to hear the voice of the Son of God.
And they're all going to come out of the grave. All of them. Everybody from all eternity is
going to come out of those graves at His voice. And that resurrection
is absolutely contingent on the first one. Well, can you give
me a Scripture for that? I sure can. Revelation 20, verse
6. Blessed and holy is he that hath
part in the first resurrection. On such the second death hath
no power. No power. So that our peace for
all eternity Our peace for that day of judgment, our peace in
that day of the final resurrection is all contingent on that first
resurrection of Christ. The resurrection is not about
Easter baskets and bunnies and eggs and not about new clothes
and hats and suits and celebration, it's about the assurance declared
by God of the sufferings of Christ and the sufficiency of Christ
and all that He did when He raised Him from the dead. That's what
Easter is all about. Paul said, our hope is an anchor
of the soul, both sure and steadfast. Why? Because it entereth in past
the veil, whether the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus,
who now sits as our great high priest in heaven and is a priest
forever after the order of Melchizedek. But Christ is risen from the
dead, verse 20. Now is He risen, back in 1 Corinthians
15, verse 20. Now is Christ risen from the
dead and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since
by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the
dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be
made alive. All that were given to Him of
the Father in that last day, He's going to present spotless
before the presence of His glory. And for all eternity, they'll
show forth their gratefulness and love and worship Him. And we have the first fruits
of that right now. That's why the disciples, everywhere
they went, they preached the resurrection. They preached His
resurrection. He's not in the tomb. He's alive. Old women went out there, them
angels looked at Him and said, He ain't here. Why seek you the
living among the dead? He's not here. He's risen. He
told you He was going to rise, and now He's risen. They went
back and told the disciples, and they said, silly women. And then He appeared to them. And then He took them all the
way back to the book of Genesis, and He preached all the way through
the Old Testament to them. All those things. that he was
to come and do, and he did those things. And now he said, you're
witnesses of these things. You're witnesses. And so they
saw, so they witnessed, and so they wrote, and so they preached
the resurrection of Jesus Christ. I hope this will have some impact
on you on this day that where so much idolatry has been practiced
this morning. I hope this will help you get
a better understanding of what his resurrection is all about. It's the glory of His resurrection,
not just a dead man coming back to life.