The Resurrection of Jesus Christ

Thanks for being with us this Easter Sunday morning, and we're going to do things a little different.

Normally we would dismiss the children for Children's Church right now, but we want the children to stay to hear the good news.

So just stay where you are and if they start acting up or throwing stuff around the outtown, you know you can.

If it's a problem, you can move into the foyer.

That's okay, I think it's there.

You can move into the foyer, that's okay.

I think it's.

There are TVs out there as well.

If you have not been here, I've been in a sermon series in the book of the Acts of the Apostles and this Sunday we're going to look at chapter 13 in the book of Acts of the Apostles and there is a sermon outline.

If you like to follow along or do a crossword or something on it, our ushers have one.

If you'd like one and just raise your hand they'll help you out.

And if you have your bible, you want to make your way to Acts, the book of Acts, chapter 13.

Acts 13 · chapter mention

As some of you many of you know, the book of Acts is about earliest Christianity and the passage we're going to look at today is the very first recorded sermon that the Apostle Paul ever preached.

We're looking at it today because the Apostle Paul's first sermon is dominated by the subject of Jesus' resurrection.

Sermon is dominated by the subject of Jesus' resurrection, so let's look at it and listen to it.

In Acts, chapter 13,.

Acts 13 · chapter mention

I'll begin reading in verse 13.

Now Paul and his companions put out to sea from Paphos and came to Perga in Pamphylia.

But John left them and returned to Jerusalem.

But going on from Perga, they arrived at Pisidian Antioch and on the Sabbath day they went into the synagogue and sat down.

After the reading of the law and the prophets, the synagogue officials sent to them saying brethren, if you have any word of exhortation for the people, say it.

And Paul stood up and, motioning with his hands, said men of Israel and you who fear God, listen.

The God of this people, israel, chose our fathers and made the people great during their stay in the land of Egypt and, with an uplifted arm, he led them out from it.

For a period of about 40 years he put up with them in the wilderness and when he had destroyed seven nations in the land of Canaan, he distributed to their land as an inheritance, all of which took place about 450 years After.

These things.

He gave them judges, until Samuel, the prophet.

Then they asked for a king, and God gave them Saul, the son of Kish, a man of the tribe of Benjamin.

For forty years After he had removed him, he raised up David to be their king, concerning whom he also testified and said I have found David, the son of Jesse, a man after my heart who will do all my will, and from the descendants of this man, according to promise of God, god has brought to Israel a savior, jesus.

After John had proclaimed, before his coming, a baptism of repentance to all the people of Israel, and while John was completing his course, he kept saying what do you suppose that I am?

I'm not he, but behold, one is coming after me, the sandals of whose feet I am not worthy to untie.

Paul and his companions traveled in their first missionary journey to the.

There it is.

There should be a map, thank you.

They're here in Antioch, in the Syrian Antioch.

They travel to share the gospel with people in this island, cyprus, and then they go up into this region, and this is modern day Turkey.

This is Pisidian Antioch, two Antiochs.

Don't get them confused.

He starts here.

They send him and Barnabas up here.

It is here where some very significant things start happening.

This is the first time Paul gets to speak to a group of people publicly and he preaches a sermon to Jews who are all in a synagogue.

They ask him if anybody wants to say anything.

In Paul's first recorded sermon he talks about the resurrection of Jesus over and over again, four times.

It's very significant.

It's important for us to look at this because this is the earliest Christian we're seeing how the resurrection was believed and preached in the very earliest church.

They believed it, preached it as the essence of Christianity itself.

And so from Paul's sermon today we're going to see that the resurrection of Jesus was believed and preached three ways.

It was believed and preached as a fact of history.

It was believed and preached as a fulfillment of God's promises through the prophets.

It was believed and preached as God's provision for our freedom.

So first let's look at this.

The resurrection of Jesus was preached as a fact.

Let me continue reading verse 26.

Brethren, sons of Abraham's family and those among you who fear God, to us the message of this salvation has been sent for those who live in Jerusalem and their rulers recognizing neither him nor the utterance of the prophets which are read every Sabbath, fulfilled by those condemning him.

And though they found no ground for putting him to death, they asked Pilate that he be executed, and when they had carried out all that was written concerning him, they took him down from the cross and laid him in a tomb.

But God raised him from the dead and for many days he appeared to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, the very ones who are now his witnesses, to the people, and we preach to you the good news of the promise made to our fathers.

Let's stop there.

Paul preached that Jesus died, was buried and raised from the dead.

He raised him from the dead.

He was seen alive after many witnesses saw him crucified and put in the tomb.

Paul did not.

He did not ever refer to Jesus' resurrection, to Easter as a symbol of new life as spring has come.

No, no, no, no.

He preached it as a historical fact.

It was a hard, bare, terribly inconvenient, paradigm shifting, impossible to dismiss fact.

It was a hard, bare, terribly inconvenient, paradigm-shifting, impossible-to-dismiss fact.

Facts, you see, can be incredibly irritating, especially if we don't like them or don't want to believe it, which was Paul's case.

There it is, though, a fact.

I have to believe it.

By preaching the resurrection as the fact and those of you who are aware of his story we've preached through it some time ago Paul was actually recounting his own journey, his own entire life.

There was no better example of this point that the resurrection effect than Paul himself.

His name was Saul when he started in the book of Acts.

His name changed to Paul because of what happened to him.

He started out as Saul.

He hated Christianity.

He didn't think it was true.

He didn't want it to be true.

He was a good, solid, righteous Jew, faithful.

He thought it was absolutely outrageous to believe that Jesus was God and that Christians had no need for a temple anymore or sacrifices for sin.

Outrageous Paul passionately, if you know the story, tried to stamp out Christianity when it started.

He was one of the main leaders of resistance to it, targeting their leaders, those who were preaching to it, targeting their leaders, those who were preaching.

He helped condemn the martyr Stephen to death by stoning.

If you remember this story, why?

Paul was deeply offended by Christianity.

He did not believe it, but then he saw the resurrected Jesus on the road to Damascus who appeared to him.

At that point, you see, it didn't matter whether he liked Christianity or not.

It didn't matter what his Jewish traditions and convictions were telling him.

It didn't matter because it was true, a historical fact.

I see him alive from the dead.

It was very inconvenient, but he had to believe it because it was a fact.

By the way, historians tell us that it is astounding that Christianity could even get off the ground.

Jews would never go for this.

Jews would never go for this.

Faithful Jewish traditional people in the first century would never go with this.

For two reasons.

First, jews were the last people in the whole world to believe that a human being could be God.

Absolutely ludicrous.

Greeks and Romans.

However, they believed gods could take on human forms, not the Jews.

Where Christianity began, there was one God Yahweh.

We serve him.

They thought claiming Jesus to be God was ludicrous, ridiculous, blasphemous.

The second reason this should have never gotten off the ground because the Jews were the last people on earth also who would believe that God would somehow raise one person from the dead and all the rest of us are still here.

No, they believed in a resurrection at the end of time Daniel 12.2, when everybody gets resurrected.

It's unheard of for Jews to hear that God raised one person from the dead.

Well, that begs the question, doesn't it, why Historians tell us that belief in Jesus' resurrection would have been rejected out of hand by every first century Jew.

So here's the question you could consider today what kind of evidence would a first century Jew have to have in order to be convinced that Jesus actually rose from the dead?

It would have to be pretty heavy duty and convincing.

The evidence they received must have been very strong, because they were just as skeptical as people today.

Paul, as I mentioned, was extremely skeptical of Christianity's claims, but then he saw Jesus alive, resurrected from the dead, and he had to accept it and admit he was wrong.

And you know what?

The apostle Paul then, from that moment on, was willing to suffer and be executed for his belief that Jesus' resurrection was a fact of history.

As many others did, I want you to listen to something Paul said a little later on to a church in Corinth, explaining to everybody willing to listen he's going to present the hard evidence.

He's going to present the hard evidence.

What are you going to do with this?

1 Corinthians 15, verse 3, For I delivered to you.

1 Corinthians 15:3

He said, as first importance, what I received that Christ died for our sins.

According to the Scriptures.

He was buried and then he raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas.

It's Peter.

Then he appeared to Cephas.

That's Peter.

Then he appeared to the twelve.

After that he appeared to more than 500 people at one time, most of whom remain until now.

Go talk to them.

That's what he's saying to them.

Go check it out.

After that he appeared to James, then to all the apostles and last of all, as to one untimely born.

He appeared to me also.

I am the least of the apostles.

I'm not fit to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God, but by the grace of God I am what I am and his grace toward me did not prove vain.

I labored more than all of them, yet not I, but the grace of God within me.

Jesus died, was buried, rose from the dead and he appeared to Peter, then to 12, then to more than 500 people, then to James, then to all the apostles, then to Paul.

Over 40 days.

Jesus appeared to individuals.

He appeared to groups, eyewitness testimony recorded for us in the Scripture.

Christianity is true because these eyewitnesses are testifying.

This is a historical fact.

I saw him.

Paul didn't decide Christianity was true because he liked it, or even because it made sense and was rational.

Because it didn't, he believed it because of the hard evidence that Jesus rose from the dead.

Now, unless you and I do the same and look at the eyewitness evidence that Jesus did rise from the dead, you will neither understand how the early church started and exploded, how the early church started and exploded, nor will you grasp how powerfully life-changing the fact of the resurrection is.

Paul believed and preached that Christianity is true because of the historical fact of the resurrection.

Second, paul believed and preached Christianity is true because of the historical fact of the resurrection.

Second, paul believed and preached Christianity is true because Jesus' resurrection in his sermon he tells us it fulfilled all that God had promised about it hundreds of years prior.

Look at the scripture.

That's what he's telling the Jews in the synagogue.

Listen to what he says as we continue Acts 13, 32.

He said, and we preach to you the good news of the promise made to the fathers, jewish fathers that God has fulfilled this promise to our children in that he raised up Jesus.

As it is written also in the second Psalm you are my son today.

I begotten you and as for the fact that he raised him from the dead, no longer to decay, he has spoken in this way.

This is Psalm 16.

I will give you the holy and surely blessings of David.

Therefore, it also says you will not allow your Holy One to undergo decay.

For David, after he served the purpose of God in his own generation, fell asleep and he was laid among the fathers and underwent decay, but he meaning Jesus, whom God raised, did not undergo decay.

Paul believed the resurrection of Jesus true, because it fulfilled all the promises of God leading up to it Death, burial, resurrection.

The promises that we see in the Holy Hebrew scriptures focus on the coming of Messiah, who is the Son of God, who will die for our sins, be raised from the dead and reign over all the earth.

That's why Paul quotes Psalm 2.

It pictures God's anointed Messiah reigning over the entire earth.

That's one promise.

That's why Paul quotes Psalm 16.

He speaks of Messiah's death and being raised from the dead in that psalm.

Messiah's death and being raised from the dead in that psalm.

And the reason Christianity became so popular is because the resurrection fulfills our deepest longings, deep down for the future.

It's better than anything else that anybody's ever proposed about our future.

The fact of Jesus' resurrection proves several things actually about our future.

First, it proves we have a future.

Jesus died, but he didn't stay that way.

This is not all there is.

This is not all there is Life.

Our future is life after death.

When we die, we don't just cease to exist and I've talked to many people who believe this I just disappear, that's it.

Well, jesus' resurrection proves that's wrong.

He lived after he died.

Jesus' death and resurrection is actually, according to the Scripture, a foretaste of our own resurrection.

Just as Jesus died and was raised, after we die we too, the Scriptures say, will be raised from the dead.

Paul helps us understand that as well in his letter to the Corinthians.

Continuing in 1 Corinthians 15, 20-23, he says but now Christ has been raised from the dead, there's the first fruits of those who are asleep, meaning dead.

For since by a man came death, meaning Adam, by a man, Jesus also came the resurrection of the dead.

For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive, but each in his own order.

Christ first, first fruits, after that those who are Christ's.

That is coming, and in the very end every single human being will be raised to stand before the throne of God's judgment to determine their eternal destiny.

Everybody will be raised.

Second, so it proves we have a future.

So it proves we have a future.

Second, jesus' resurrection proves that our future is unimaginably wonderful for those who believe in Jesus.

Do you remember what Jesus said on the cross to the thief who said Remember me, jesus, when you come into your kingdom?

Jesus said to him Son, today you will be with me in paradise.

What's paradise?

Wonderful, wonderful.

Jesus told his disciples before he died that he's going to prepare a place for them.

John 14, verses 1 and 2,.

John 14:1

Do not let your heart be troubled.

He said to them Believe in God, believe also in me, because in my Father's house are many dwelling places.

If it were not so, I would have told you, for I go to prepare a place for you.

If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself.

That where I am, you may be.

Also, and listen to what the Apostle Paul continued on saying to the Corinthian church 1 Corinthians 2.9.

That's heaven.

Has heard what no human mind has conceived, the things God has prepared for those who love him.

That's heaven In the resurrection.

You see, you and I will be face to face with Jesus in all his glory In the resurrection.

Do you realize this?

The scriptures tell us that you will get your body back.

Please, not that one, a better one.

Praise God, philippians 3.

Paul says to the Philippians, he says, for our citizenship is in heaven, from which we also eagerly wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our body, the body of our humble estate, into conformity with the body of his glory, glorified body by the exertion of power that he even suggests all things to himself.

In the resurrection you'll be face-to-face with Jesus, you'll get a new body and in the resurrection you will have your loved ones back.

You will see them.

This is what Paul encouraged the Thessalonian church with 1 Thessalonians 4.

For the Lord himself, he said, will descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of an archangel, with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord.

Therefore, comfort one another with these words.

Third, the resurrection of Jesus proves that our wonderful future is certain, absolutely certain.

What good does it matter to say there is a wonderful future out there if you're not sure you're going to be part of it?

Paul is not trying, as he preaches this sermon, he's not trying to make the religious leaders look bad.

He's trying to help them see that Jesus did not die for his own sins.

The resurrection proves that God vindicated Jesus.

1 Timothy 3.16.

Paul says by common confession great is the mystery of godliness.

He who was revealed in the flesh, meaning Jesus, was vindicated by the Spirit, meaning the resurrection.

Then why did he die?

Who did he die for?

It wasn't for his own sins.

Paul's final point is Jesus died for their sins, for our sins, for you and me, and the resurrection is proof of that.

I know that's hard to grasp, but let me use an analogy.

Suppose you go to a department store and you buy something.

You put it in a bag and they hand you a receipt.

Take your bag and you start to leave the store and you're stopped by a plainclothes security guard, thinking maybe you're running off with something you shouldn't.

And you can say to them oh, plainclothes security officer, trouble me not, I have a receipt.

I have a receipt.

Trouble me not, trouble me not.

You see, it was already paid for.

I never have to pay for it again.

I'm free.

That's Paul's last point.

Listen, chapter 13, 38.

But he whom God raised, did not undergo decay.

Let it be known to you, therefore, brothers, that through this man, jesus, forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you and by him.

Now listen, this is a very important part of his sermon.

By him, everyone who believes is freed.

By him, everyone who believes is freed From which you could not be freed by the law of Moses or thinking you're just a good person, because we're not.

We're all sinners.

Beware, therefore, paul says, lest what is said in the prophets should come about.

Look, you scoffers, be astounded and perish, for I am doing a work in your days, a work you wouldn't believe, even if someone tells it to you.

And as they went out, the people begged that these things might be told to them the next Sabbath, and after the meeting of the synagogue broke up, that these things might be told to them the next Sabbath.

And after the meeting of the synagogue broke up, many Jews, devout converts to Judaism, followed Paul and Barnabas who, as they spoke with them, urged them to continue in the grace of God.

All of us are sinners.

All of us have done regretful, sinful things.

We can't forget them.

Because of them we don't feel good about ourselves.

Martin Luther once said if you are suffering, facing hard times, depression, death, if you are not absolutely sure that God accepts you, that God is for you, that God loves you, that all of your sins have been judged and paid for, then the knowledge of a bright future is not going to be any consolation to you.

Because you don't know.

We have a receipt.

Jesus died on the cross for every sin you ever committed and will commit.

It's infinite for those who believe in him.

When you believe in him, he gives you a receipt.

I paid for that.

That's why they call it good news.

The resurrection is the greatest receipt in the history of the world.

It's stamped across history in a way that everybody can read it.

If you believe in Jesus, your sins have been paid for all of them and Jesus' resurrection validates.

The reason for his death was for your sins, for my sins, for our sins.

The penalty, the scriptures say, the penalty for our sin, was death.

And when Jesus walked out of death, god was vindicated him, raising him from the dead and it means that the penalty for our sin was paid in full.

Listen to Romans 6.23.

Here's Paul again, for the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Now we can be certain that our future in heaven is wonderful and secure, that God is for us and that nothing will be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

The Apostle Paul once hated Christians, persecuted them, arrested them, advocated for their deaths.

He didn't believe it.

He thought belief in Jesus as the Son of God and was raised from the dead was blasphemous and fraudulent.

He was a fully convinced unbeliever, but then he saw him Raised from the dead.

He saw him, he heard him, he talked with him and he became a believer and an eyewitness to his resurrection.

His testimony is evidence that the resurrection really happened as a historical fact.

Now, based on the testimonies of Paul and those early believers which we have right here, we are called, continue to be called, to believe in Jesus as the Messiah promised by God, who died for our sins and was raised from the dead to give us, all who believe in him, eternal life free gift.

Eternal life, free gift.

And this now is our opportunity, your opportunity to move, if you are, from skeptic or agnostic to believer, by asking Jesus to save you and to give you his promise of eternal life.

Here's what Jesus promised everyone In John 6, 40,.

He said this is the will of my Father, that everyone who beholds the Son really grasp who he is, what he did.

Whoever beholds the Son and believes in him will have eternal life.

And you know what?

I myself will raise him up on the last day.

Could I encourage you as I close in prayer, why don't you pray silently in your heart and reach out and say Dear Jesus, I believe you died for my sins and rose from the dead.

I invite you to come into my heart and life and be my Savior.

Pray that even as I close us now in prayer.

Father, thank you for the fact that Jesus' resurrection testified by many eyewitnesses at the time and to unbeliever Saul how he would go on to be the foremost defender of Christianity, because he was convinced Jesus did rise from the dead.

Thank you for that fact.

Thank you that the resurrection of Jesus means we have a future in heaven.

That's wonderful.

It's beautiful, it's certain.

Thank you for that hope.

Help us to remember that when we face temporary trials in this life.

Thank you for our Jesus resurrection.

It means you forgave our sins.

It freed us from the things that once held us in bondage, alienated us from you.

And now, lord, would you please help us to live life in the freedom of that grace.

In Jesus' name, I pray.

Amen.