Matthew, the book of Matthew, chapter, excuse me, I'm sorry, 1 Corinthians, forgive me. 1 Corinthians, chapter 15, verses one through eight, I'm sorry, thinking about next week. 1 Corinthians, chapter 15, verses one through eight, as Brother Byrne comes to give a public reading of the word of God. 1 Corinthians, chapter 15, verses one through eight. We're about to read and hear the very words of God, amen? Amen. Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you, as of first importance, what I also received, that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures. and that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the twelve. After that he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me also. Amen. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that in your word we have divine truth. In your word, God, within the 66 books of this small library that we call the Holy Bible, we find absolute truth. We find divine truth. We find eternal truth. And Lord, you said we will know the truth and the truth will make us free. And we thank you for this, God. You said your word is truth. And Lord, we believe your word. And Lord, we seek to examine the resurrection this morning. We know, God, that Jesus was raised from the dead. And we take this Lord's Day to focus on that, even though every Lord's Day is about the resurrection. We take this particular Lord's Day once a year to recognize the resurrection of Jesus and to specifically focus on that. And so God, help us to examine it rightly and fully. Guard my tongue that I will preach this rightly and fully. And I pray that those that are gathered here today, those that are watching by means of the internet right now, and those who will watch this at some later time, I pray you give them eyes to see and ears to hear and a heart to believe in Jesus Christ's most precious name. Amen. You may be seated. to the glory of God, the Father, God, the Son, and God, the Holy Spirit, amen. Now, if we had stood on the mountain on that day and made our way toward the cross and seen the actual sight of Jesus being crucified, we may very well have vomited or screamed or pulled out our hair or thrown ourselves on the ground and pounded the dirt while we ground our teeth and sobbed ourselves into exhaustion. putting spikes through people's arms and legs, hanging them on a cross with their full body weight, tearing their flesh, watching the brutality of the soldiers, smashing their legs, driving a spear into their sides, are all unbearable to watch, let alone endure. Yet the Holy Bible declares that Jesus volunteered for this. He chose it. The cross was not forced on him by anyone. He said clearly in John 10, 17 and 18, for this reason the Father loves me because I lay down my life so that I may take it again. No one has taken it away from me, but I lay it down on my own initiative. I have authority to lay it down and I have authority to take it up again. This commandment I received from my Father. The plan of God from eternity past was that he alone would be glorified by God the Son being born of a woman, living a perfectly sinless life, and died by crucifixion to secure the salvation of the wicked rebels that God the Father chose to save. And because Jesus loved his Father perfectly, he submitted himself fully to obey God's will. in the garden the night before Jesus asked God if there was another way to accomplish his will other than having him impute all of the sins of all of the elected sinners onto him as he hung on the cross. And many have taught that Jesus feared death, and I find that utterly ridiculous. Jesus was in heaven with God before he was born as a fully human baby. He knew every detail of what it was like to dwell continually with God. Jesus was not afraid to die. What prompted his prayer was the reality that he fully understood that the moment his father placed all of the elect's sins on him, his father would withdraw himself from Jesus and depart from him. And that had never happened before in all of eternity. The love and union and fellowship and joy that is shared among the three persons of the Trinity can only be imagined by us because we've nothing in this life to compare it with. perfect love, perfect unrestricted and continual fellowship, perfect unity, perfect enjoyment. That is what the one single God had among all three persons of his triunity. So when Jesus screamed on the cross, Eli, Eli, lama, sabachthani, he was not calling for Elijah as some thought, but he wasn't quoting Psalm 22 either. Now, Psalm 22 was prophesying what Jesus would say on the cross 1,000 years before Jesus was born. Jesus knew that his father would have to withdraw his spirit and presence from him as he became sin for us. And that reality so disturbed Jesus that he asked, my father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from me. And when God the Father let God the Son know that there was no other way to fulfill his plan, Jesus quickly reverted and said, get not as I will, but as you will, which is the greatest and the most important prayer that Jesus or any of us could ever pray. So Jesus volunteered to die by crucifixion because he loved his father perfectly. And so he submitted himself to the will of God perfectly. And the proof that he loved God and submitted to him without flaw is that Jesus obeyed his father perfectly. Jesus in his full humanity died. The deity of Jesus did not die. The humanity of Jesus died. Now, if that blows your mind, good. Every time you think about Jesus and his dual nature, it should cause smoke to come out of your ears, because nobody was like Jesus, ever, huh? But Jesus was not trapped. He was not coerced. He was not forced. He was not painted into a corner. Jesus joyfully, humbly, and completely submitted himself to the will of God to die a horrendous death. So is it not blasphemy then to think that Herod or Pilate or the screaming mobs or the soldiers or Satan were in charge that day? God alone is sovereign, and those were but players in the drama that God the Father wrote. And there's a word for this. It's called love. God demonstrates his own love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. So here's my question. The greatest suffering in the service of the greatest love for the least deserving, how do you do that? How did Jesus endure that? And here's the answer found in Hebrews 12 too. Jesus who for the joy set before him endured the cross despising the shame and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God. the humiliation of being stripped and ridiculed, the lacerations of the scourging, the unbearable searing pain streaking across his brain from the spikes in his hands and feet, hour after hour hanging there in unthinkable agony, even though at any moment he could have eviscerated the people who were hurting him. And while he could have called on his father for rescue, but instead Jesus willingly chose the pain, all of it, for the joy that was set before him. So the resurrection is specifically tied in with not only Jesus's death, but also his life and everything Jesus said or did the entire time he was in his earthly advent. The resurrection is God the Father's unmistakable proof that he was pleased with and that he enjoyed and that he approved of everything Jesus said and did during his 33 and a half years on the earth. And it is the resurrection as to why we are gathered here today. And it is the resurrection that I want to speak to you about this morning. And this sermon is designed on purpose to help you believe and trust and hope in the fact that Jesus literally and physically rose from the dead. Because when the Lord graciously saved me back in the summer of 1971, the arguments about the resurrection of Jesus were more upfront and prominent than they are, and they were much more intense than they are today. Back in the early 1970s, there was widespread consensus among believers and non-believers alike, especially here in America, that the literal resurrection of Jesus was the line of demarcation. In other words, everybody saw the need to take a stand about this fantastic truth. And so people either eagerly believed in the resurrection or they categorically rejected it just as eagerly. And if a person accepted the biblical narrative about the physical resurrection of Jesus from the dead, they also generally believed the rest of the fantastic truths that are found in the Bible. And those people wore the label of Christian very proudly. And those people who rejected the resurrection as either scientifically impossible or simply a circus trick of an ancient magician, then generally speaking, those people also relegated the rest of the Bible to be just myth and utter nonsense, and they were intentionally and proudly not a Christian. But a strange thing has happened over the last 52 years. Today, that single question, the one single debate, the one issue of did Jesus literally and physically rise from the dead is not nearly as prominent and not nearly as intense as it once was. Because at one level, people feel that the resurrection of a man from the dead 2,000 years ago, way across the ocean, really doesn't have an impact on their own personal lives. I mean, we have our technologically sophisticated cell phones, and we went to school, and we have a brain, and we are relatively safe and secure in this country. And so the debate about a resurrection of a man 2,000 years ago seems to be a discussion that has little or no relevance to the average person in our day. Because after all, they say, different people believe in different things. And maybe it happened, and maybe it didn't. And if it did, and it helped some people to believe it in order to get along in this life, then fine. But it really doesn't make much difference to me. It really doesn't affect me in my life all that much. And so many people today really think that they can call themselves a Christian, they can join a church, and they can think they can be in good standing with God, and still be either unsure about the resurrection of Jesus, or even outright rejected. And sadly, there is not much that many in the modern religious organizations would ever do to challenge those people about that, even though the Bible categorically teaches that if you do not believe in the resurrection, you cannot be saved. You are not a Christian, and you are not going to heaven. Oh, Brother Blair, there you go again. You're making a mountain out of a molehill. This is simply not that big a deal. Why do you say that a person who doesn't believe in a literal resurrection is not saved? Well, I got that notion from the Bible. And it says this in Romans 10, 9 and 10, that if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart a person believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth he confesses, resulting in salvation. So if a person is required to believe in the resurrection in order to be saved, then that person is not saved if he rejects this truth. So my authority for believing what I just said is not my own opinion or the fact that I might be religious. The inspired, inerrant, and infallible word of the living God teaches this. So the better question, I think, would be this. On what authority do you base your statement on that says the resurrection doesn't matter? Because in my travels, not believing in the resurrection is almost universally based on nothing more than personal opinion of people who have never even had the wherewithal to investigate whether the claim is true. And that is because in our modern American culture, where everything is relative, objective, propositional, and absolute divine truth is no longer important to a growing population. Our culture has elevated personal opinion and how someone may feel about an issue to be as valuable as truth. And at the same time, we have lowered and devalued divine absolute truth to be nothing more important than personal opinion. It's truly an odd swap. I was watching a news thing the other night, and these people were talking about how if you can contact the universe, the universe will give you these things. The universe will provide for you these things. It's amazing. They'll do anything in the world except call on God, right? and they're calling the universe now. And then people will say, well, I personally, you know, I'm just so humble that if you can believe in the resurrection and it helps you, then by all means, you believe it. Now, I don't need it, but if you want it, then go ahead. I mean, that's a pseudo humility that stinks to the high heavens. It's just arrogance. It's insulting. So it's common today to hear people say, well, that's just your opinion. when presented with clear biblical truth that they either don't like or don't want to hear. And it is also common today for people to honestly believe that what they believe and what they trust in and what they accept is truth, as long as they're sincere about it or agree with it, even if what they believe and trust in isn't even true or categorically contradicts the absolute truth of scripture. So a person who categorically rejects the truth claims of scripture without ever even examining them may also say that he genuinely believes that a man can become a woman and have babies. It is an interesting time to be a Christian. Many today take the attitude that, well, I may or may not call myself a Christian, and if the resurrection seems helpful to me, then I may believe in it. But if it doesn't, then I won't. But whether I do or I don't, it doesn't affect my life, and I can still be happy and prosperous, and I can still find love and comfort in God without believing in it. Far too many people today, sadly, even in the church, think that believing in the resurrection is nothing but fluff. that it may be nice, but it has no practical importance in their relationship with God, and it doesn't change where they're going to spend eternity. But is that true? Does it matter, as far as our eternity is concerned, whether or not Jesus rose from the dead? The answer to that question is what I want to explore today. Now, behind those two different kinds of unbelief, the kind from 52 years ago and the kind from today, is a completely different set of assumptions. For example, back when I was first saved, the assumption among believers then was that there was a body of fixed, closed, natural laws that make the world understandable and scientifically manageable. And those laws simply did not allow the truth claim that someone had risen from the dead to be believed by intelligent and rational and thinking people. And that was a commonly held assumption back then that the modern world with its scientific understanding of natural laws does not allow for resurrections. So unbelief back then was often rooted in a kind of smug intellectual self-righteousness disguised as scientific analysis. when in fact it was simply just blind, ignorant disbelief that came from arrogance. But today, in 2024, that is not the most common working assumption that we face. Today, the assumption is not that there are natural laws outside of me that forbid my acceptance of the resurrection of Jesus, but rather the assumption that we face today is that there is a personal law that is inside of me that says I don't have to accept anything in my life that I don't find personally helpful or personally relevant. Or you could state this modern assumption another way by saying that many people today actually believe that truth for me is not objective or propositional. It isn't divine or absolute. Truth is simply whatever I find personally attractive and helpful. And that's why they say, well, you have your truth and I have my truth. No, no, there's just truth. Right? And with that new assumption in place, and with that new subjective and suppositional inner law in place, it really doesn't matter whether Jesus rose from the dead or not, because the thinking is that whether he did or didn't is totally disconnected to the life of most people in the 21st century, and is therefore completely irrelevant. Their only issue is, do I care? Do I personally find that idea helpful? Do I feel that it helps me flourish as a human being? And if it seems like the resurrection of Jesus from the dead on the third day does not, then they will view the resurrection the same way they view UFOs and possible life in some distant galaxy or some special effects in a movie. They really don't need to bother with it. And their false pseudo humility will also say, but of course, if this silly superstition helps somebody else, then by all means, that's just peachy keen, but don't you dare try to impose that nonsense on me. And that is increasingly becoming the attitude of more and more people here in America, especially those younger than 53. In fact, some of you sitting here today may actually think that way without even knowing that that's the way you think. You have simply absorbed the carnal logic from the general culture because that way of thinking is now woven into most television shows, most advertising, most movies, and is taught in most curricula from the public school system. So what I am attempting to do this morning is to confront this issue head on and honestly examine how we as human beings sift through the new indoctrination that is coming at us every day from all of these various sources. And my hope is that when I put the resurrection of Jesus Christ before you today, not merely as a religious belief, but as a historical fact, that you will see just how important it really is. and that the resurrection is not something that might be helpful to some people, but something that is required if anyone hopes to spend eternity in heaven. And if I, by God's grace, am successful this morning, then you will not so easily buy into the bombardment of pagan and humanistic and just flat-out wrong information concerning this issue. But even from the perspective of those in the church, the belief in the resurrection is many times completely circumvented with statements like this. Well, even if there was no literal resurrection, I haven't lost anything in order to placate those in the world. But the Apostle Paul didn't agree with that crawfish statement. Because in 1 Corinthians 15, 16 through 19, Paul infallibly wrote this, for if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless. You are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hope in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied. So to Paul and the other apostles, it was all or nothing. Either Jesus literally and physically rose from the dead or there is no value at all in Christianity or the gospel or in the salvation that the gospel proclaims. But one of the most curious things about the literal and physical resurrection of Jesus is that the idea of bodily resurrection is not something that takes the New Testament by surprise. In fact, if you study the Old Testament carefully, you will see all sort of symbols that all point to the defeat of death by Jesus on the first day of the week 2,000 years ago. So I want us to consider the resurrection this morning, both the reality of the resurrection of Jesus, and then the promise of our own resurrection at some point in the future, so that we can be in agreement as to what the word means. By using the word resurrection, I do not mean something like living forever in some mystical spirit existence like vapor, but actually living again in a real body that has been glorified after the physical body has died and been brought back to life through resurrection. Now, I told you this before. Christianity is the only religion that teaches that the body and the soul are going to be united again in eternity. Every other religion talks about the soul, but they exclude the body. Gnostics teach that flesh, all flesh, any form of flesh, your body, is evil and only spirit is good. And that's why John said anyone who confesses not that Jesus has come in the flesh is not of God, because they discounted the body. Now first of all, there are a lot of passages in the Bible that talk about real cognitive existence beyond death. And in order to help people understand that this existence is not merely mental or spiritual, but that it is also very physical, there are also passages in the Bible that talk about physical and bodily resurrection. Now even though there are many more passages in the New Testament, the Old Testament is hardly silent about this issue. For example, in Genesis 22, which is not very far past the account of creation, there is the account of Abraham almost sacrificing his son. And mercifully, God himself provided a ram so that Abraham could spare his son. And that's all that's said in Genesis. Nothing more is revealed about Abraham's motives. But many hundreds of years later, God the Holy Spirit moved on an unknown rider to give us the conclusion of the matter in Hebrews 11, 17 through 19, that says, by faith, Abraham, when he was tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises was offering up his only begotten son. It was he to whom it was said, in Isaac your descendants shall be called. He considered that God, look at this, is able to raise people even from the dead, from which he also received him back as a type. Now, the only way that Abraham could have believed that this instruction came from God to kill his own son, his firstborn son, his only son, the son in whom God himself had promised that the line would run, is that Abraham really believed that God had the ability to raise his son Isaac from the dead. And by definition, that had to be a bodily existence. So Abraham was not hoping in some mystical, or ethereal, or non-corporal new life for his son. It had to literally be life raised from the dead, because Isaac would then have to pass on his genes to the next generation, and the next generation, and so on, or the promise of God would have been invalid. In other words, there was already some sort of concept of a literal, bodily, and physical resurrection and its possibility under the mighty hand of God that was grasped by Abraham 430 years before Moses was ever born, and 1,450 years before Jesus was born. Then we see a very famous passage in the book of Job. I know that there have been some problems with the translation of this, but I think it speaks for itself. So there was Job, right in the middle of all his unfathomable sufferings, who said this in Job 19, 25 through 27. As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives. And at the last, he will take his stand on the earth. Even after my skin is destroyed, yet from my flesh I shall see my God. This is amazing. Job said two things that would always be contradictory unless you insert a belief in a resurrection. At first, Job said, even after my skin is destroyed, meaning death and the corruption of the flesh by the worms and all that. I was talking to Bubba Lang recently. He's a personal friend of mine. I've known him since 1965. And he used to work for Lang Funeral Home. Now he works for Bradford O'Keeffe Funeral Home. And it is, the health department wants everybody buried in a coffin, but they want a cement vault around the coffin. And then he looked at me and he said, that's to keep the body from decaying. I said, no, it doesn't. He said, well, it'll help. And I said, about two weeks. You see grass growing up through concrete? Yeah, all the time. And with the grass, there's dirt. And with the dirt, there's bugs. And ants, and all kinds, huh? And so, within about two weeks, that body's in the ground, the worms are eating it. I'm trying to make it as gross as I can for you. Your eyeballs are gonna get eaten out of your head. And your body's gonna be raised. The people that burn up in a fire and they're eviscerated, the people that are buried at sea and the fish eat their bodies, are going to be raised in a body, a glorified body if they're saved. They're going to be raised in a body. Huh? I don't know how God's going to do all that, but God's going to do all that. Amen. But then he said, yet from my flesh I shall see God, whom I myself shall behold, and whom my eye will see and not another. So Job said after he dies, he will see God with his own eyes in his flesh. So after Job dies, he will still have a physical body. So this overrules some spirit to spirit event. Job does not say anything about that. Job talks about his flesh that he will have after death in which he will see God, which means that Job's flesh would have to come back to life. And that is called resurrection. Now there are certainly some Old Testament passages that use resurrection language, but which are not talking about a physical resurrection, but a spiritual one. The most famous one of these is Ezekiel 37, 1 through 10, and the Valley of Dry Bones. Now in context, the prophet was talking about the restoration of the people of God after they had been swept away into bondage and captivity. But spiritually speaking, he was also talking about how lost people are saved through the preaching of the gospel. So in the vision, the bones are connected, but they're not alive. The bones are connected and flesh covers them, but they're still not alive until the spirit of God comes upon them and they stand up as a mighty army in the valley of what was dried bones, but is now full of life. Now in the context of Ezekiel 37, this was an imagery of having to do with the restoration of the people to the promised land after they had been banished by God himself. But the thing to observe is that although it is talking about that restoration, the imagery is of a resurrection. In other words, those that say that the Old Testament saints didn't know anything about resurrection and that you have to wait for Jesus before you get into that, overlook the fact that even though Ezekiel 37 is not explicitly talking about resurrection per se in the immediate context, the imagery that is used to talk about that return from exile is resurrection imagery. And that shows that the category had to already be there in Ezekiel's mind and in the minds of the people for the prophet to use it. And the same is also true of Isaiah chapters 24, 25, 26, and 27, and to some extent in chapter 56 as well. Isaiah chapters 24 through 27 are sometimes called Isaiah's apocalypse by theologians, because there is a lot of apocalyptic imagery of one sort or the other there. And so in that context, in Isaiah 26, verses 18 and 19, for example, the prophet wrote, We were pregnant. We writhed in labor. We gave birth, as it seems, only to wind. We could not accomplish deliverance for the earth, nor were inhabitants of the world born. Your dead will live. Their corpse will rise. You who lie in the dust, awake and shout for joy. For your due is as the due of the dawn, and the earth will give birth to the departed spirits. Now even though the exact flow of thought in those chapters is argued about, and even if you conclude that it is talking about a return from exile, it is still written with a decisive concept of a resurrection from the dead in mind, with dead bodies rising from the grave. Now you won't know that if you don't understand the doctrine of inspiration. When we say that the Bible was given by means of inspiration, the words of the scriptures, we do not mean that God took the writer's hand and moved it the way God wanted it to. We do not mean that God was giving the writer dictation and he was taking what God spoke in his ear down. That's not what we mean. That's not how the Bible was written. We do not mean that angels contributed to the writing of the New Testament especially. We do not mean that. The doctrine of inspiration is this. that wicked, sinful men who had clay feet in their own language, using their own terminology, using their own phrases of speech, were somehow moved by the Holy Spirit to write down inspired, inerrant, and infallible truth. And God superintended what they wrote to guarantee that it is accurate. Now, I say somehow because we don't know that, because you and I have never met anybody that can say that's how they wrote down what they wrote down. We don't really understand how it happened. We don't have any example to look at. But it is not that God took his hand and moved. It is not that God dictated to him. So Ezekiel had to understand resurrection in order to use that language in Ezekiel 37. That's what I'm trying to get at. And then there are the miracles in the Old Testament, like resurrection from the dead of the Shunammite widow's son in 1 Kings 17, which is a crystal clear, absolute miracle. And when you come to the New Testament, Jesus himself raised a small number, but certain specific individuals from the dead. For example, in Luke 7, 11 through 17, Jesus raised the son of the widow of Nain from the dead as they were heading out to bury him. And then there is a remarkable event in John 11, where Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead. And in that case, the man had been in the grave for four days, so the decay on his body had already begun. There is simply no way you can confuse that resurrection from the dead with a calling of someone back to life who has simply gone into a heart fibrillation and not literally dead because decay already had taken place. And that is the context in which Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life. In other words, just before the promise in John 11, Martha confessed her Orthodox faith. I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day. That's what she believed. That's what she had been taught. And this is before any New Testament books were written, that she already believed this. Where did she get it? She got it from the Old Testament. The Jews absolutely believe in a resurrection on the last day. But then Jesus turned the tables on her. And in John 11, 25b and 26a, here's what Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even if he dies. And that's enough, right? No, it's not. And everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. That's not talking about physical death. That's talking about spiritual death, of course. In other words, Jesus was putting himself into the very center of everything. So it is not merely that there is a resurrection on the last day, but that there is no resurrection apart from Jesus on the last day. He is the one, the only one who makes resurrection possible. And that is finally demonstrated in the spectacular display of his own resurrection. I'm reminded of William Lane Craig, the great Christian apologist, and he was speaking with Ben Shapiro, who was an Orthodox Jew and very knowledgeable and very articulate and very, he was a child prodigy when he was younger. I think he's about 40 years old now. And they were talking, and Ben Shapiro put forth to William Lane Craig, he said, there are lots of resurrections. What makes you think Jesus' resurrection was special? And he said, because you say that Jesus was a liar and a deceiver. And yet God raised him from the dead, showing that God approved of what Jesus did while he was here on the earth. God would not raise a liar and a deceiver from the dead. He raised his son to show that he approved of what Jesus. And Ben Shapiro was silent. It is fascinating. He's not very silent very often. Yet the resurrection of Jesus is very unique. Because if it were not unique, then we could say that since Lazarus was resurrected before Jesus, that Lazarus is the ultimate prototype of the resurrection. Or the Shunammite widow's son in the Old Testament was resurrected way before Jesus. So he would be the prototype before Jesus. So while it is true that all resurrections in the Bible are images of what will come in the future, they are not the prototype in the sense that because Jesus's resurrection is still utterly unique in comparison to all other resurrections up to that point. Here's why. Because Jesus's body had already been transformed into a glorious body when he rose. Hallelujah. But even at that, there is still a connection between Jesus's old body, his pre-death body, and his resurrection body, in that the marks of the wounds he sustained while on the cross and before are still there. That is one of the main points of John chapter 20. Now in addition to the normal identifying marks that a person who had been crucified had, Jesus also had the highly unusual mark of a spear thrust up under his ribcage to pierce his side. And so the resurrected body of Jesus that the disciples see in experience after experience all show a direct connection with his pre-death body. And that means that the Jesus who appeared to the disciples was the very same Jesus who died and who was laid in the tomb. Yet at the same time, Jesus is now in resurrection glory. He is in resurrection life. And he does things now that he never did before. For example, Jesus suddenly appeared in a locked room, which is him materializing or dematerializing. So in some sense, Jesus existed after his resurrection in another sphere or another dimension. And even though we don't know all the details about this, we know Jesus lived after he died. Now where this is explained in the greatest detail is in 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul draws some analogies. Yet the analogies the apostle draws are meant to tell us more truth. For example, an acorn does not look like an oak tree. Yet with the death of the acorn as the shell rots away and the little life that is bound up inside begins to grow, ultimately it produces a mighty tree. And that is only an analogy, but it is a descriptive analogy that speaks absolute truth. And so all through 1 Corinthians 15, Paul speaks of the different glories of different entities of stars, moon, sun, and so on. There are different orders of being. And so also he speaks of the resurrection body of being a different order. And there are three other passages that are really important for us to understand. Consider the passage in John 20 that I briefly mentioned, where there is a huge emphasis on the visible marks of the wounds on Jesus. Those marks are what convinced Thomas, who had great doubts about the reality of the resurrection. So Thomas saw and spoke with the wounded and slaughtered Messiah, who is now fully alive and reigning as master and Lord. So because he saw the marks, Thomas fell before Jesus and cried, my Lord and my God. And then Jesus said, because you have seen Because you have seen me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see and yet believed, which refers to you and me. So there is a lot of emphasis on the demonstration of just who Jesus really is, the promised one of God, the eternal son of God, the one who is Lord of all, that is precisely rooted in the historical witness of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And so the cumulative evidence that this New Testament of ours, which speaks so powerfully and frequently of the resurrection of Christ is not the result of hallucination or some conspiracy by early Christians. The cumulative evidence is very, very strong and completely believable. But think about this. Before the resurrection, the faith of Peter and the group is very weak and fragile and wishy-washy. Yet after the resurrection, those same men were prepared to die for what they had seen. I'll never forget Chuck Colson, whose office was right next to President Nixon in the White House during the Watergate problem. And Chuck Colson was a hardened Marine. He had fought in the Korean War. And he said if Richard Nixon had ever commanded him, he would have killed his own mother. And he was being interviewed by a reporter who was certainly not a Christian. His name was Mike Wallace. And Mike Wallace asked Chuck Colson in an interview, he said, are you a Christian? He said, sure, yeah, I'm a Christian. How can you reconcile what you've done with being a Christian? And Colson said it struck him down to the very core of his being, and he didn't know what to say. And he went to a friend of his who was a CEO of a Fortune 500 company, and he went into his office that night. He said, I don't know what to do. I'm going to hell, I'm lost. And the man didn't really know what to do either. And he gave him a book, Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis. And Colson stayed in that guy's driveway all night in the car reading that book. And the next morning, he called his lawyer and said, plead guilty. He said, you don't want to plead guilty. They're going to destroy you. He said, plead guilty. I can't lie anymore. And he pleaded guilty, and that started a chain of events where the whole thing unraveled in about two weeks. So you had 12 men who were trying to keep a secret, and one of them caved in. And within two weeks, everybody knew everything. Contrast that with the 12 apostles. who said the most fantastic thing in the world. I've seen Jesus alive after his crucifixion. I talked to him. I touched him. I spent 40 days with him after he died. He's alive. I watched him go up in the air. He's alive. Now, there's a couple of reasons why people would get together and make up a story and stick to the story, even though they're attacked by the press or other people. One is you make an awful lot of money sometimes doing that. And number two is fame. You get fame or power because you stick to your story. There was no money for first century Christians to say the most fantastic thing in the world. And they didn't get fame, they got arrested and they got tortured. for saying that. So what is it that would make 12 intelligent human beings say the same thing and they never budged an inch off that story, even when being tortured and murdered? They never They never wavered. And before that, before the resurrection, they were up one day and down the next. They were in the window, out of the way. They were all over the map. But that resurrection solidified their faith. And they were like lions after that. And they never backed up an inch. You got to explain that. And it's just beyond the possibility that they made up a story. It's just ridiculous. But think about this. Before the resurrection, the faith of Peter and the group is very weak and fragile and wishy-washy. Yet after the resurrection, those same men were prepared to die for what they had seen. We cannot stop speaking about what we have seen and heard. And they considered it a great privilege to suffer for this Christ who suffered so much for them. This was not due to them merely talking themselves into believing or psyching themselves up. All the records show honestly how slow they were to initially believe that Jesus had risen from the dead. So the dramatic change has to be explained. And the Bible says their change was due to seeing and touching and listening to the resurrected Jesus. And if Jesus rose from the dead as they came to see and as even Paul came to see in his vision of the resurrected Christ on the Damascus Road, if Jesus really did rise from the dead, then that is unmistakable proof that all that he said and all that he did and even he himself was approved by God. So the resurrection vindicated Jesus. His death was not to pay for his own sin, or else he would still be dead. And if Jesus was a liar or a deceiver or Beelzebul or some ancient magician, he would still be dead. There's no way he would be vindicated by being raised by God from the dead unless he was everything that he said he was. The sacrifice of Jesus on the cross was so acceptable in God's own plan that the vindication and approval of it could be seen in the resurrection. And that established him as the reigning Lord. So now all of God's sovereignty is mediated now through Christ Jesus, who is the mediator of God's authority in every dominion, every domain in this age, until he has completely crushed his last enemy and death itself dies. Another passage that is really quite important is 2 Corinthians 5, 1-10, where Paul makes it very clear that his ultimate hope is not to simply die and be with Jesus, as wonderful as that would be. That is something to look forward to in Philippians 1. But his ultimate hope is is not to be, as he put it in 2 Corinthians 5, unclothed, that is to exist without a body. His ultimate hope goes beyond what Christians have sometimes called the intermediate state. So Paul's ultimate hope is to be clothed again with a different body, a resurrection body, a body just like Christ's glorious body that will have the capacity to live and work and eat in this terrestrial renewed earth, but also to be in the very presence of God. So the ultimate hope of the Bible-believing Christian is not to simply be with Jesus in some immaterial, ethereal existence, but to have resurrection bodies in a renewed heaven and a renewed earth. The Apostle Peter said this in 1 Peter 1, 3-9, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials. so that the proof of your faith, being much more precious than gold, which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. And though you have not seen him, you love him. And though you do not see him now but believe in him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls. In other words, we are already receiving the salvation of our souls. But this ultimately culminates in a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead into an inheritance that for us, too, could never perish, spoil, or fade, the promise of a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness with resurrection existence. So even though in scripture there is both a resurrection to life and a resurrection to death, Yet for genuine believers, the confidence, the joy, the anticipation and the hope of their own resurrection is absolutely tied in to their confidence that Jesus rose from the dead after having offered himself to pay for their sins. the cross and the resurrection tied together as the turning point of the ages on which all of history swings with the new age already dawning now and ready to be brought to consummation with the master himself returns and all of his glorified resurrection existence on that last day. Amen. Let's pray. Oh God, thank you, thank you, thank you, that we can hope in the resurrection of a body that will be glorified. Our bodies will die and go to the ground and be corrupted, but then you, by a miracle, and only you can do this, you will give us a new glorified body. And Lord, we don't know how that will work. We don't know what we will look like. We don't know how old we will be. We don't know any of that. But Lord, we know that it will be. And we know that when we are there, we will see him as he is. And Lord God, we will be changed in a moment. And oh God, I bless you and I praise you for this truth. And I ask God that you would invade every mind and every heart that's here today and cause us to dwell on the resurrection of Jesus as an emblem of our own resurrection in the future. And that the salvation of our very souls is tied in that Jesus Christ literally and physically rose from the dead. In Jesus' name, amen.