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The Resurrection: The Line in the Sand

Foundation of Our Faith

There are a few things that are indispensable to the authentic Christian faith—to the authentic Christian walk and authentic Christian depths. We live in a world where every click of the mouse is a false teacher waiting there to try to coerse you into thinking that it might be about you.

Sure you do need to understand that you're a sinner and that you are in need of salvation and you have to have the knowledge that you can't save yourself. You need to understand that Jesus is the spotless lamb of God who died in your place as your substitute and you realize what a big deal that is. So you surrender this life for the one to come because of what Jesus did for all mankind. Yes, that's all true. But have you ever thought of some of the other indispensable things?

The Podium Finish of Faith

To break it down for you in order of importance, I'd like to just try a little something here. And now keep in mind this is just me taking all of religion, all of the Bible, any other book that's considered holy, and I want to break it down into a podium finish. Do you know what a podium finish is? The Olympics has it, Formula 1 racing has it. It's where second and third stand on either side and first place is above. Guys, see what I'm talking about? So I want to give you the Christian faith podium finish. This is just my little game. This is not doctrine, but I think there's some truth to it:

• In third place on the podium you have Adam and his original sin. Adam was created by God. And when him and Eve decided that they wanted their will and not God's will, original sin came into the world. And we've been living with the consequences ever since.
• In second place you have the virgin birth. The virgin birth allowed Jesus to come into the world as the spotless lamb of God required to take away the sins of the world.
• In first place, the winner of it all, above it all, the top of the heap is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Without it, our faith is misplaced at best and an outright fraud at worst if you stop and think about it. And that's what I want to tell you about this morning.

The Personal Reality of Resurrection Faith

Let me start by taking you behind the curtain of my own life for a minute. For starters, I struggle to understand the doubters of this. I do. Why? Because deeply believing in the resurrection has come very easily for me personally. And this is in part due to how the risen Lord and Savior has touched me, has talked to me through His Word every day. You want to hear from God? Open your Bible. He talks to you every day right through His Word.

I have never been more confident of anything in my entire life. I love the promises of God and the promises for victory over death so much and it is so real that I am more than willing to base my entire life on it and my entire future on it. It's what I base my life on.

So add in that the more I have desired to walk with Jesus, the more peace and contentment that I have had while many times watching my circumstances decrease and my situation get hurt. I'm talking about losing worldly things, material things, losing the "crowd cheering your name" type of things. And yet my love and my contentment grows for the Lord, with the Lord of the universe, because He becomes more real to me every day. Every day.

So when your sanctification takes you to this upper plane of contentment, life then becomes an even equals zero sum game. What do I mean by that? It's like this: With Jesus, sometimes I gain more, and it's very cool, and it is well with me. Sometimes with Jesus I lose more, and it's still very cool, and it's still well with me. There's a place you can get to that when you win you praise Him, and when you lose you praise Him.

Now that's not an easy place to stay because of our sin nature makes us wobble sometimes. But when the mature Christian resets—and many times daily resetting—when they reset, it always comes down to serving a God of resurrection and a God of eternal life.

The Line in the Sand

But alas, the doubt or confidence in the resurrection is really something that becomes a line in the sand. It's the line in the sand that makes you or breaks you. There is one thing that separates the saved and the unsaved. You can make a case for a handful of things, I suppose, but the biggest, in my opinion, is what we celebrate today: the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Now at the end of the text that I chose for this Resurrection Sunday found in Matthew 28, we hear the setup for the lie they're going to try and put out to shut down the possibility of this great display of God's power. That is, they said that his disciples came by night and stole his body away—that he didn't really rise from the dead.

I heard a university professor some time ago describe a meeting he had with his students, and it went like this. He was a Christian man. He's describing to his students the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And one dude stood up and said, "Sir, I don't believe that." And the professor said, "Why don't you believe that?" And the student replied, "Because dead men don't rise up out of their graves."

That statement can echo down through time and down through the number of days each and one of us have been given as we process the resurrection because this is the line in the sand. That statement—"dead men do not rise from their graves"—is something we as rational, modern people must deal with. Did Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah, did He rise up and walk out of the tomb? Can I believe it? And if so, why can I believe it? Can you believe it? And if you do, why can you believe it?

The Heart of Christian Faith

So today, we're going to turn this key marker of our faith, the line in the sand that separates fact from fiction, this issue of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and just know upfront that we are turning to far more than just a discussion of the resurrection of a man. Please know that what we're looking into this morning, we're describing as the absolute pinnacle of the Christian faith. This is the heart, the circumference, the center, the all-in-all of the Christian message: the resurrection of Jesus Christ, because it entails everything—His person, His deity, His character.

Let's start with the person. Think about how marvelous a thing it is that Jesus should be fathered by the Holy Spirit and born of a virgin. What a miraculous thing! But does that necessarily establish Him as deity, as divine, does that establish Him as God?

Adam was the generation of the spirit and not of a human father as well. Yet he was simply the first man. He was not a god of any sort. In Luke 3:38 you will have the closing of the genealogy. You know in so and so the son of so and so the son of Seth who was the son of Adam who was the son of God. But that didn't make him God, did it?

The virgin birth simply by itself does not establish, I dare say, the divinity of Jesus Christ. He did marvelous miracles, and we're astounded at them. But there are other men who were mortal who did miracles: Moses, Elijah, Elisha, just recorded in the Bible. They were men of mighty power, men of great faith. And the favor of God was upon them. But they were just dudes. They were just like us. They were just men. They were favored of God, but they were men. We're not God.

How about the teachings of our Lord? Oh, it's majestic, isn't it? Just the teachings of our Lord is so incredible. But that doesn't establish His divinity, His deity. It does not establish Him as God. How would we know that our Lord specifically in the things that He said, that our Lord was nothing more than another genius along the lines of a Shakespeare or a Plato or Homer or somebody who could really get after the words right—what if He was just that to the nth degree?

No. If He is the Christ of God, if He is God of very God, then He must come with divine appointment, not simply like those who shared a gifting, other mortals who shared various gifting. Is this making sense? See, there must be a chain of evidence from the time that He appeared into this world until the time when He came back to the world again. And every one of those chains, every one of those links must be supernatural and superhuman. And guess what is at the center of it all, those chains, those links, what's holding it all together? Of course, it's the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Now rather than just tell you in my words, let's look at what the Apostle Paul wrote in your Bible in 1 Corinthians. 1 Corinthians chapter 15, I'm going to read you 13-19. Check this out:

"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. 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. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied." (1 Corinthians 15:13-19)

Do you see the things said there? There are three specific things said there I want to point out to you. If there was no resurrection in verses 13-19, he is saying three things:

First, that if Christ did not raise from the dead, then our faith is futile. Or as the southerner would say, our faith is futile. We are yet in our sins. The whole plan of salvation collapses if Jesus is not alive. If He is not alive, then this is all a waste of time. It would be the same thing as though you were drowning in the sea and someone tosses you a rope and it's not anchored to anything on the ship. There has to be an anchor to it. It has to hold. If our faith is built on something that never did happen, if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then what exactly is this? The whole Christian gospel is shattered in a lie, in a fantasy, in fiction, in a vapor. Could a dead Christ save anybody? Could a dead Christ conquer sin in the grave?

Think about those two men in Luke 24:13-25. It won't be on the screen; I'm just going to tell you a little bit about it, but you can jot it down and look it up later—24 of Luke. One was named Cleopas. That's not much we know. We never found out who the other guy was. They're the ones who are walking around, walking from Jerusalem. They start talking, and then Jesus actually joins them in their conversation, and they're walking seven miles to a village called Emmaus. And they had seen Jesus crucified, and they were sad. And they spoke to one another and they said these words, and I'm paraphrasing: "We had thought, we had thought that it had been that he, this Jesus, would be the great savior of Israel, but he is dead."

And a dead Jesus can't save Israel, not us. Can't save anybody. It never occurred to them that Jesus, dead and buried, would ever save anyone. Nor should it to you and me. You and I—we should not think that Jesus can save us if He is dead and buried. If He is dead, then He is not the Savior, then He is not Lord, and He hasn't won any of those great victories that He claimed. Nor is He anything He said He was. Your faith is misplaced, and we are yet in our sins.

Second, Paul says another thing in that passage I read to you. Not only that, but we are found to be misrepresenting God, and our preaching is in vain. We testify that Christ raised or that God raised Christ up. But if He didn't do it—if He's still in the grave and was buried by Joseph and Nicodemus—our preaching is in vain. We were found to be false witnesses before God. It's kind of harsh, don't you think?

Look at Simon Peter at Pentecost. He's a living flame. He's a fire, and his message has in it burning conviction. But that glorious message preached by Simon Peter on the day of Pentecost was a sermon on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And it's nothing but a lie if He didn't rise from the dead. It's just powerful delusion, deception.

If Jesus Christ didn't rise from the dead, then that same deception and illusion has been perpetrated all generations through all of time. Our preaching is in vain, and we are found to be false witnesses. Think of the people after Peter: Paul, Timothy, Titus. Let's go down through history: Augustine, John Hus, Luther, Calvin, Spurgeon. Or how about the giants in our modern world: Graham, MacArthur, R.C. Sproul. They all preached lies because they said Christ was living and that He rose from the dead. Same with Joe Pennington before me in this platform and me myself at Fresh Encounter Church. It's all a lie and it's all a waste of time if Jesus is still dead. Think of it. Listen to it: "Then our preaching is in vain and we are found false witnesses of God."

Lastly, His last word in that paragraph I don't want you to miss this morning. It's the most pathetic a human being could say: "Then they which are also fallen asleep in Christ are perished." If all there is to life is right now, we—that is, practicing authentic Christians—we are of all people the most miserable, most to be pitied.

Think about it now. Socrates, he died of that fatal hemlock concoction. Caesar fell by the assassin's dagger on the Senate floor, and the Romans crucified Jesus on a cross. They all died, right? Maybe they were just martyrs in their own way. Maybe they died, and that was just the end of their careers.

But our Lord told us, He said, "When I leave you, I'll go away and prepare a place for you, that where I may be, you can be with me also." But if He didn't go, if the grave held Him bound, if He didn't get there, He'll not come back for us. And there's not any place prepared for us. So we should be pitied.

See, listen now. Everything rests on this one event. Everything. So the theme of today is and always will be that the heart of the Christian faith and the Christian assurance and hope, the keystone, is the resurrection of Jesus Christ, that He rose from the dead. Can you and I believe it? Can we? What assurance, what assurance can you and I have? See, I have a mind as well as a heart. And if I can't believe it with my head somehow, if I can't take it and trust it, then it means nothing to me. I've got a head as well as a heart.

Six Evidences for the Resurrection

Six Evidences That Jesus Rose From the Dead

So I want to give you six things that point to the historical and experimental evidence that proves to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus rose from the dead and is alive to this day. Six things. They'll go quick:

1. The Empty Tomb

Number one, the empty tomb. All four gospels report that Jesus's tomb was found empty on the third day. The tomb was known and it was guarded, and if the body had been there, critics would have easily disproven the resurrection. But it wasn't there. Where did it go?

It would have also been common knowledge that the band of misfit toys, also known as the 12 disciples, could not have overpowered a Roman military squad, rolled away the stone, moved the body, and then left no evidence behind. That is not possible to any degree. Think about it.

Next, the first witnesses to the empty tomb were women, whose testimony wasn't highly regarded in the first century Jewish culture. This one fact is often seen as an indicator that the story wasn't fabricated. It was true. It was true.

2. Eyewitness Encounters

Number two, eyewitness encounters. Jesus is reported to have appeared to many people after His death: Mary Magdalene and other women in Matthew 28 and John 20, the two follower disciples on the road to Emmaus that I told you about in Luke 24, the 12 disciples including Thomas in John 20, over 500 people at once according to 1 Corinthians 15:6.

Paul writes that many of these witnesses were still alive at the time he was writing, inviting readers to verify it for themselves. Personal stories add power. Christianity isn't based on myth but on the people who saw and then couldn't stay silent.

3. The Transformation of the Disciples

Number three, the transformation of the disciples. Before the resurrection, the disciples were scared and in hiding. Afterwards, they boldly preached that Jesus had risen, even when facing persecution and death.

Have you ever heard of the end result for each one of the disciples? It's a variety of martyrdom. It's not good. It's not good. They went from cowards to courageous. Many argued that they would not have been able to endure that kind of suffering or death if they knew something was a lie.

This one thing—the change in each one of these guys and then carrying it to the death without recanting—none of them recanted. That is so powerful to me. They knew what they knew cuz they saw it. They touched it. They lived it. So they couldn't, under circumstances of even the most severe distress, anything that was thrown their way, they couldn't deny it.

4. Conversion of Skeptics

Number four, conversion of skeptics. James, Jesus's brother, was not initially a believer but later became a leader in the early church. His transformation is attributed to seeing the risen Christ.

Paul, also known as Saul of Tarsus, was a fierce persecutor of Christians. He was killing Christians for their faith until he had what he claimed was a personal encounter, which is recorded in Acts chapter nine. And then he became one of the most influential apostles.

Ask yourself one simple question:

• What does it take to convince these hardened doubters and skeptics?
• What had to happen to take them from fearful to fearless?
• What would make a skeptic go from arrogant to humble, to publicly correct themselves and admit they were wrong?

The answer is a real encounter. A real encounter.

5. The Beginning and Growth of the Church

Point number five, the beginning of the church and then the growth of the early church. All historical and archaeological evidence puts the crucifixion and reports of Jesus being alive after witnessed by many puts it all in the same time period archaeologically and historically from both Christian and secular writings that were found from that time. It was not a legend that appeared over time. It was the actual founding belief that started this entire thing.

Many scholars, even skeptical ones, agree this is an extremely early and foundational Christian belief, not a legend that developed over time.

And then you think about this: Christianity spread rapidly through the Roman Empire despite intense opposition and aided by zero political efforts and zero military power. Think about that. Just process that for a minute. The resurrection was central to early preaching, and those who saw Christ risen from the dead could never deny it. And many of them suffered all the way to their death because of it.

6. The Evidence of Transformational Experience

Number six, the evidence of transformational experience. Many Christians all over the world cite the personal reality of Jesus's presence, power, and transformation in their lives. The power of the New Testament to change lives. The actual rebirth many of us and those who have come before us testify to. Don't kid yourself. This is an ongoing evidence of the resurrection's reality.

We know it because we've tasted it. Many of us have gone from death to new life, and we know we can't go back. And we know what we know cuz we know it.

When we were out in western Alaska on the Bearing Sea for three years, I would watch Eskimo men come to know Jesus. There's a handful of them. And I'm not making this up. You could see a literal change in their countenance and their demeanor wearing the same clothes, going to the same store together, going to the same different places we would see each other and talk to each other. Their countenance was completely different. They had a new life in Jesus Christ.

The Line Remains

Crossing the Line of Faith

For many of us, this line in the sand is there. The line in the sand is there. And for some of us, we've stepped over that line. That line remains for some but not for others. For others like me, we've stepped over that line. We found new birth. We found spiritual resurrection that serves us in this life and marks our hope for the life to come.

The Victory of Resurrection

Let me close with some verses again from 1 Corinthians. Let this be the spike of the football today, okay? We're in the end zone. I'm spiking the ball with 1 Corinthians 15:3-8. You ready?

"For I delivered to you as of first importance that I also received: That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are alive, although some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, and then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he also appeared to me." (1 Corinthians 15:3-8)

May you add verse eight for yourself today—that by faith, He appears also to you and to me. And one day, you and I will see Him, and He will welcome us into heaven as one of His own if we have His blood over the doorpost of our soul. And that is what we celebrate today in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.