The Power of the Resurrection

So I read an article this week and the author was complaining

about coming to worship on Easter.

His complaint was he said the problem is that all the

preachers do is talk about Jesus being raised from the dead.

I thought, well, there's somebody that missed some Sunday

school classes along the way. We too are going to speak of

Jesus raising from the dead. And so does our text here at the

Apostle Peter as he preaches to a congregation and he says these

words, blessed be the Godfather of our Lord Jesus Christ,

according to his great mercy, He has caused us to be born again

into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ

from the dead. Once again, blessed be the

Godfather of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to his great

mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope

through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

And this is the word of the Lord.

Thanks be to God. Dear gracious Father, we do pray

that you would use that very same power, the power of the

resurrection here amongst us this day, that we would know the

reality of what you have spoken to us and our lives be changed

and transformed by it. Lord, make it so.

We pray in your son's name we ask, Amen.

Please proceeded first Peter one verse 3.

Now, to be fair to that author of the article, what he was

saying was that preachers only end up talking about the

historical realities of the resurrection.

They give great defenses of the realities of what took place

2000 years ago, and they focus upon that.

And of course, it's cosmic influence and the impact of that

across the board. And what the author was saying

is what we need is to hear more of what the actual scriptures

say about the resurrection and how the resurrection isn't just

a historical reality, though it is.

And it's not just a cosmic changing, life altering event,

though it is, but how it impacts us as individuals, how it

influences us as individuals, every one of us.

And so the author was making a broader point here of saying,

look, when we talk about the resurrection, we should talk

about it within the context that the Scripture itself does.

And that was wonderfully captured here by the apostle

Peter. As the Peter does the exact same

thing. His focus is different than in

the book of Acts. If you read the book of Acts, as

Peter preaches, Peter very frequently talks about the

cosmic realities and the historical effect of Christ's

resurrection. It's an important, essential

thing to what Peter is, that getting out in his message.

But here in this text, the focus is less upon the historical

realities and more upon the influence of that reality.

And so today what we're going to do is going to look exactly,

we're going to follow Peter's model here for us to talk not

simply about the reality of the resurrection, but its influence

and impact upon our lives. You can see this here in the

text in which I just read here. According to His great mercy, He

has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the

resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Notice the back end of that passage, that verse, everything

about that verse is predicated, is built around the means or the

instrumentality or the tool, the effectiveness of the

resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

In other words, here that Peter is assuming the reality, he of

course experienced the reality of Jesus's resurrection.

And here he is not saying let's look at the realities of that

resurrection. He's saying let's look at the

impact of that reality. What's the impact of the

resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

And here we see that is set up as a tool or a means to an end,

an effective tool to the end. When I was much younger in high

school, I got my first scientific calculator.

It was a Texas Instrument 35, if I remember correctly.

And this, the calculator was just marvelous.

It was able to do logarithms, differential equations,

integrals, and and the derivatives like it mapped out

matrices. It was a marvelous calculator.

The reality is it was a wonderful tool that I had

absolutely no use for. I was in high school, I didn't

take any of those classes. I had no use.

And so, but I knew it was a marvelous tool.

And so I spent lots of time focusing on the calculator.

I played with all the buttons. I pushed all the buttons and I

saw it do different things, not knowing what it was doing but

being utterly amazed at what it was.

But it was utterly useless in my life until numerous years later

when I suddenly were taking higher math courses that

actually enabled the use of that calculator and enabled benefited

from it. So often, so many of us focus

upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the exact same way.

We recognize that it's a powerful, life changing, cosmic

altering event. And indeed it is.

It is the central event in all of history.

It is the most central event that has ever taken place.

And it shapes and guides the whole entire history, but it

also shapes and guides your entire life.

And what Peter's emphasis here is, he says, take a look at this

resurrection from the dead. And it is through the

resurrection of the dead that certain things happen.

What takes place It is through the resurrection of the dead

that he has caused us to be born again into a living hope.

We have hope because of the resurrection of the dead.

That's that's his emphasis, he says.

Because of the resurrection of the dead, we have hope.

Now we have to talk about the nature of hope a little bit

because again, it's so frequently mischaracterized in

our society as wishful thinking or daydreaming or just imagining

a good outcome or something along those lines.

And that is never the way scriptures portrayed the

doctrine of hope. Hope is a confident assurance in

what God is doing in the future, a confident assurance of what

God is doing in the future. I read number books a long time

ago in my formative years. I read some books about PO WS in

Vietnam in particular, and I read about the torture and the

suffering that they went through and the pain that took place and

the survival character of the PO WS and the unifying theme, The

mark, The characteristic that defined if the PO WS were going

to survive the torture and how they were going to survive the

torture was not their strength of body.

It wasn't even their strength of mind.

It was the ability for the PO WS to hold on to and maintain hope.

This is a wonderfully portrayed characteristic in PO WS

throughout the world and throughout world history that

one of the things that torturers try to do so often is remove the

concept of hope. But for particularly the

American PO WS in Vietnam, those who were able to maintain the

thought that there is, that the US has not forgotten about them,

that there is still an opportunity, a possibility for

this war to end, for them to be returned home.

That hope motivated them and kept so many of them alive.

Life. That's the nature of hope that

we are talking about here, A confident assurance that what

God is doing in the future. But notice that it's not just a

hope. In the text we're told not just

that he has caused us to be born into a hope through the

resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, but because of

the resurrection of Jesus Christ into the dead, we are born into

a living hope. Now, what do we mean by living

hope? We don't mean that hope is

somehow animated with arms and legs and moves around or

something like that. No, hope that is living is a

living, is a characteristic of something that has power, that

has possibility, that has potential, that has an

opportunity to do something. Think of a battery.

Battery has life in it when it still can do something.

Not when it has arms and legs and moves around.

Not when it's animated, but rather when it has the ability

to do something. It still has some life in it.

A dead battery is one that has no potential at all.

It can't do anything. It just sits there.

And so often the nature of hope that is expressed in Christian

life sometimes is a dead hope. It's a it's a hope that doesn't

do anything. It's a hope where we say, yeah,

OK, we're we know it's out there.

We know it's a possibility. But that's not what the

Scriptures call us to here. Because of the resurrection from

the dead, we don't just have a formalized hope where we say,

well, we know that Jesus is coming at the end of time.

We know that death has been defeated.

We realize all those kind of things.

No, we have a living hope. This hope is something that

motivates, that moves, that changes, that transforms us.

Every Christian in this room, every Christian across the globe

should be motivated by living a life of living hope, a hope that

is manifested, that shows itself, that demonstrates it,

that, that, that, that reveals itself to the world around us

and to our own hearts. And if you're not living that

way, if you're not living with a living hope, you've got to ask

yourself what Peter would say about that.

For we have a living hope through the means of the

resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Christ has raised from the dead, He has called us to be his

followers, and he has granted to us a living hope.

Now what does that living hope look like?

There are over 100 passages in the New Testament that speak of

the resurrection, and a whole lot of them talk about the

historical reality of it. A lot of those texts talk about

the cosmic influence and impact of the resurrection.

But there are many texts that do exactly what Peter does here,

spell out for us what it means that through the resurrection of

the dead, we are to have a living hope.

We're going to look at four of them here today.

We're going to start with First Corinthians 15, which by the way

is the chapter if you, if you want to understand the

resurrection, if, if the resurrection remains in your

mind, this historical event that is going to shape your life

somewhere in the future. But it's not really having that

living hope. If you sit here and you hear

Peter's words that we have a living hope through the

resurrection. And if you sit there and you

think, I don't know that my life models, that, I'm not sure that

my life is wrapped around a living.

It manifests, shows itself to everyone.

I'm not sure in the bad times, when things go crazy at work,

when my family is falling apart, I'm not sure that people would

look in and say there's somebody that has a living hope.

If you're concerned about that, spend time in First Corinthians

1 Corinthians 15 · chapter mention

chapter 15. It is the chapter in the Bible

where you will get a wonderful picture of the realities of the

resurrection, but also this wonderful insight into its daily

life impact in your lives. And we begin with First

1 Corinthians 15:54

Corinthians 15 verses 54 and 55. Paul writes this when the

perishable puts on the imperishable, when the mortal

puts on immortality in the resurrection, in the

resurrection, then shall come to pass the saying death is

swallowed up in victory. Oh death, where is your victory?

Oh death, where is your sting? It is passe to say that we live

in a culture of death. We absolutely do.

Our entertainment focuses so much around death.

Our news focuses so much around death.

Our lives focus so much around death.

Our jokes focus around death. Everything that we recognize in

our lives is modeled as shaped by the fact that in each of our

lives is coming an event, which is death.

And here we see the realities of the teaching that Paul puts

forward here, that death is swallowed up in victory because

of the resurrection, Because of the resurrection of Jesus

Christ, death is swallowed up in victory.

Now notice carefully what's being said here.

Death is swallowed up. It is not that death doesn't

happen. This is the Mary Poppins reality

of life. Death is swallowed up in

victory. A spoonful of sugar makes the

medicine go down, you know. And So what we have here is

you've got the death and it's persistence and it's reality,

death's reality. And yet because of the

resurrection, it has been swallowed up, it has been

overcome, it has been masked, it has been emptied of its power

because of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ for every

single person in this room. If the Lord does not come again

between now and your death, every one of us will experience

death. And yet the reality is that we

still maintain the truth of this statement that death has been

swallowed up in the victory of Jesus Christ.

It has been swallowed up in the victory of the resurrection.

Now that is intended to provide living hope for us.

If not that, then certainly the following words.

Oh, death, where is your victory normally?

Where is the victory of death apart from the resurrection of

Jesus Christ? Where's the victory of death?

It's not in its inevitability. Death is inevitable for all of

us because of the brokenness of this world.

Death is inevitable for all of us, those who unless those who

are alive when Christ comes again, death is inevitable.

That's not its victory. Its victory is its permanence.

Once it gets you, once it gets its hands on you, it never let's

go. Death ultimately wins everything

except by the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

For those of us who live in living hope, we know that that's

not true. The death, while it will come,

while it will manifest itself in these terrible ways, while,

while it demonstrates itself on each of our lives, it will not

win the long game. Death loses its victory, its

victory. Death has no victory, not

because it's not going to come to us, but because it will not

ultimately survive the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Death has lost its power over us, not because it's not coming,

but because it has no permanence in our lives.

So that's picked up again in this last line there.

Oh, death, where is your stain now?

My guess is that most of you, along with me, have walked with

people who are in the position, who are in positions of dying.

There are a number of people here that haven't had to go

through that at this point, and I recognize that.

But probably for most of the people in the room, we have

walked through people in stages of grief as they are going

through the process of dying. When Paul says here, oh, death,

where is your sting, I sit there and think, Every time I watch

somebody go through this, every time I walk through a family

that is suffering, every time I go through the process of

holding someone's hand as they pass from this life, I can tell

you where the sting is. It stings.

What does this mean? Oh, death, where is your sting

that stings? When that happens, the sting

that Paul is talking about is a scorpion sting.

It's not the bite of an insect. It's not even the sting of a

scorpion that zaps you, it's the poison that then works its way

through your body that then ultimately kills you.

Oh death, where is your sting? Oh death, you have no power.

Not because it's not going to hurt when we die.

Not because death is not something that is opposed to the

gods created design for our lives.

It absolutely is. Death is the enemy and it stings

when it happens, but it doesn't sting like a scorpion that

ultimately will take your life because your life is well hidden

in Jesus Christ and is bound to him through the resurrection of

our Lord Jesus Christ. That is why we can say that

that's a living hope that we have.

We have a living hope, a hope that motivates and drives us

because yes, death is at the end of the road, road for all of us,

but that's not the end of the road for all of us because death

has lost its victory and instead it has no sting, no long term

permanence in our lives. The first point here that comes

from this idea of having a living hope because of the

resurrection of Jesus Christ is that death has been defeated for

each of you. And if you can't imagine that

changing the way you live your life right now, you're not

thinking well at all. That should absolutely transform

the way that we live. That hope that you have in the

debt, in the, in the destruction of death and the defeat of death

in Jesus Christ, that should be a living hope transforming the

way in which you live your lives.

Paul in that same chapter also says this in verse 17.

If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are

still in your sins. If Christ has not been raised,

then your faith is futile if the resurrection didn't happen.

If there is no resurrection, then your faith is futile and

you're still in your sins. Let let's turn that around.

Paul says it in the negative. Let's say it in positive.

Because Christ is raised from the dead, your faith is not

futile and you are no longer in your sins.

That is a driving force for our lives.

That is a driving force for a living hope in our lives.

For our faith is not futile. Futile, by the way, especially

in the way in which it's used here, means an emptiness of

vacuum. But something that is, is not

just not just space, but something that looks like it

means something looks like it's powerful and yet ultimately has

emptiness. It's a vacuum, it's vapor.

So I think in terms of a really nice gift, let's say somebody

presents you with a wonderfully gift wrapped box and it's

beautifully and it's your birthday or Christmas or or

Valentine's Day or something like that.

And it's this beautiful gift and it's just so marvelous.

And your heart is swelling and you're all excited about it and

you and you're committed to this gift and you're committed to the

person that has given you the gift.

And you just can't wait to tear it open.

And you tear open this beautiful package and you open the box and

nothing. Nothing.

That's what Paul says. Your faith is if the

resurrection does not dominate your life, if if Christ has been

not not been raised, that's the historical reality.

But if Christ hasn't been raised for you, a living hope.

If you're not experiencing that living hope, then your faith is

futile. Oh, I like coming to church

because I like singing. I like hearing the preacher

speak. I like the people that I

interact with. I like starting my day off, my

week off on a good. It's all beautiful wrappings and

it means nothing. It's empty.

If your life is not dominated by a living hope that comes about

through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, your faith is

futile. Why?

Because you're still in your sin, the cross.

But wait a minute, Our sins were taken care of.

If you know the gospel message, you know the message is this,

that long before you were born, if you're a follower of Jesus

Christ, he. Covenanted, he determined the

Father, the Son, the Spirit determined that the Son would go

to the cross and while on the cross he would take his

righteousness, his godliness, his goodness and all that he is

and he would give it to you in replace.

Then in in in return you would give to him all of your sin, all

of your wickedness, all of your ugliness.

Everything that separates you from Jesus Christ would be given

to Him and dying on the cross. On the cross is where we

proclaim our sins are forgiven. Yet Paul here says that if

Christ hasn't been raised from the dead, if Easter didn't take

place, if Good Friday happens but no Easter, you are still in

your sins. Why?

The resurrection from the dead is the affirmation.

It's the promise, it's the guarantee.

This goes back to first Peter one again, where Jesus Christ is

raised from the dead through the glory and the power of God the

Father. God the Father has raised Christ

from the dead so that we might know the reality that Christ has

been accepted. The sacrifice of Christ has been

accepted for you. How do you know that you're not

still in your sins? Because the Father has done

exactly what he needed to do. God has looked upon Christ's

sacrifice for you and said I will accept Christ on behalf of

Joe Sally, Henry Kelly. That's what God does upon the

cross and through the resurrection.

We have to guarantee the assurance that we are no longer

in our sins. That provides a living hope.

Who here is not burdened at some point in their life, perhaps

continuously, with feelings of inadequacy, with feelings of

guilt, with feelings of shame, with feelings of of burden of

our sin? You have a living hope because

of the resurrection of Christ. None of that should happen for

you. You cannot live that way if you

have a living hope. The living hope is a very thing

that conquers those feelings, that shows those feelings to be

untrue, that proves the fact that death has been defeated,

that you are no longer in your sins.

So we have the second idea here, the first idea being that death

has been defeated. The second idea that you are no

longer in your sins because of the resurrection of Jesus

Christ, and because of that, then each of us has a living

hope. Thirdly, Paul writes in Romans

verse verse 4 of chapter 6. We were baptized therefore with

Him by death and by baptism into death, in order that just as

Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we

too might walk in newness of life.

OK, because of the resurrection of Christ from the dead, by the

glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of

life. Because of the resurrection, we

might walk in the newness of life.

Now I need to clarify what we mean by might.

Might here is not an option. It doesn't say that because of

the resurrection there was no way for you to walk in newness

of life before the resurrection. But now, because of the

resurrection, you can either walk in newness of life or you

cannot walk in newness of life. That's not what might means

here. Might means power, might means

means ability. Because of the resurrection from

Christ, from the dead, we can walk.

We have the power. We have the might to walk in

newness of life. In newness of life, we walk now.

It doesn't mean that we can do actions that are good.

That's not what Paul is saying here.

Wouldn't it be nice if Paul said, look, because of the

resurrection from the dead, every once in a while you can do

a good thing. Great, thank you.

Or more often than once in a while you can do a good thing.

Every week or every other day or every day you can do a good

thing. That's not what Paul's saying

here. He said no, that you walk in

newness of life. This is this is a habit.

This is a lifetime. My family likes to go hiking.

And when we're hiking, especially in an area where we

don't know very well, we stay on the path.

You stay on the path because that's where we are intended to

walk. And by the Lord Jesus Christ, he

has laid forward a path for us, and we are intended to walk

along that path because of the living hope that we have in the

resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because of the resurrection of

Jesus Christ, death has been defeated.

Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven

of your sin. Because of the resurrection of

Jesus Christ, you now walk in newness of life, newness of

life. There's the old way of living, a

way that is shaped and modeled by death.

That is, oh, that has death at the end.

And there is a new way of living that is made possible through

the coming of Jesus Christ, and that is a life of righteousness,

of holiness, of goodness. Christians with living hope walk

in the newness of life. And then finally John says to

Mary in I'm Sorry, John records Jesus speaking to Mary in John

John 11 · chapter mention

Chapter 11 where he says these words, I am the resurrection in

the life. Whoever believes in me, though

he die, yet he lives. And everyone who lives in me and

lives and believes in me shall never die.

Do you believe this? Everyone who believes in Jesus

Christ will never die, and those who die will live again.

Predicated upon everything we've been talking about is the Jesus

Christ resurrection, while unique, while earth shaking,

while cosmic shaping, is not the only resurrection that will ever

occur because all of us who are bonded in Jesus Christ with Him

will also be raised at the end of the age.

This resurrection is ours as well.

What happened to Christ will happen to us.

And this was intended to provide that living hope.

Why are we supposed to live so hopefully?

Why do we live with No Fear of death?

Why do we live as though we have been forgiven?

Why do we live in newness of life?

Because we have a living hope that is bound up in the

resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because we too will be raised.

We too will be raised if we believe.

Notice the end of that verse where Jesus says to Mary, Do you

believe this now He's not saying do you believe the historic

realities of the resurrection? He's not saying, Do you believe

that I exist as a person or that I am God?

He's not asking any of those questions.

He's saying not Are you intellectually embracing the

fact of the resurrection? My guess is that by virtue of

the fact that you're here today, you're embracing the

intellectual realities of the resurrection.

Either that or else you were dragged here by a family member.

OK, but if you are here today, you probably understand the

realities of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

Jesus is not asking that. He's saying, are you living this

way? Are you believing in this as

your faith placed here? Do you trust in this?

Do you rely upon it? Is it an act of reliance that

drives your life? Is it a living hope?

And you can tell because your life should be modeled after a

living hope. That living hope should drive

and direct every aspect of your life.

If it does, rejoice greatly in the resurrection of Jesus

Christ. Death has been defeated, and for

you your sin has been forgiven. And now walk in the newness of

life because of your faith in Jesus Christ.

If you can honestly look at your life and say, I'm not sure my

life is modeled by a living hope, I'm not sure that when the

going gets tough that I nevertheless express a hope in

the future that drives and effects everything that I do,

that it's a living hope. If you no longer can say with

confidence that you have a living hope in every aspect of

your life, Jesus would look at you and say what he says to

Mary. Do you believe this?

Our gracious Father, we thank you that by the power of your

glory you raised Jesus Christ from the dead, that because of

his resurrection we have been given a living hope.

And because of that living hope, we have No Fear of death, though

it stings the when it comes, though it's going to be tough to

swallow for all of us, ultimately it will have no

victory over us. Lord, we are forgiven of our sin

and no longer suffer under the anguish of the guilt of our

judgment. Lord, we have the power of The

Walking and new life because of what you have done upon the

cross. And Lord, we know that this is

ours because of the faith that you have given to us, enabling

us to believe the realities of the resurrection.

Yet, Father, like the father of the epileptic child who looked

at you and said, Lord, I believe, help me in my unbelief.

Lord, we believe, but help us we pray.

In our unbelief we ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord

and our Saviour, whose name we pray.

Amen.