The Resurrection of Jesus Christ
This is an exegetical sermon on Romans 4:22-24 titled, The Resurrection of Jesus Christ and exposes how righteousness and life are counted to us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This sermon was originally preached by Pastor Duane Smets on April 16, 2006 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA. Audio unavailable.
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::The Resolved:: Sunday April 16, 2006
“The Resurrection of Jesus Christ”
Romans 4:22-24
Duane Matthew Smets (elder)
Romans 4:22-24 22 That is why his faith was “counted to him as righteousness.” 23 But the words “it was counted to him” were not written for his sake alone, 24 but for ours also. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord;
Elohim, the vast one, you who are God of gods and light of lights, the giver of life…give to us tonight I pray. Give us a grace that we might hear the words “raised from the dead” with the full weight and power in which those first witnesses, hearers, and writers did in the first century. Teach us what kind of God you are. Save our souls. Give us Christ. And speak into our being. Amen.
Introduction
The title of my sermon tonight is “the resurrection of Jesus Christ.” This day in the calendar year has become known as resurrection Sunday or Easter. Which is kind of weird because both of these words, resurrection and Easter have become words distinct to this religion come of age, Christianity. It is weird because we don’t use the word resurrection at all in normal every day language and the word Easter really refers to an old Anglo Saxon festival for spring which worships the goddess eostre. Every time there are these christianized holidays, like Christmas and Easter I sort of get wielded out and wonder if the Christ really intended all the hype.
What I am sure of is the claims the bible makes about Jesus of Nazareth and his Christ deeming death and resurrection. Resurrection simply means “to rise again” and to be honest the whole idea is pretty strange. I started studying, really studying this thing, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, about seven years ago and then about two weeks ago when I started studying for this sermon I began revisiting the whole subject and in particular the words here in Romans chapter four. And the hard thing for me isn’t the pop-skepticism about it.
Every year around this time you can almost guarantee a cover on time or Newsweek or an article in the newspaper or some TV special about how the resurrection of Jesus Christ didn’t really happen and the whole of the Christian belief system has been uncovered shown to be false. Last year it was the da vinchi code and this year all the talk has been about the “secret” gospel of Judas supposedly just discovered even though we have had it and known about it since the 3rd century. the pop-skepticism isn’t the hard thing for me, I don’t get all freaked out every time I hear something new and think, “oh no, maybe its all false.” I know the subject too well.
Maybe I have a hard time with it because I don’t really have a hard time with death. I don’t stress out about it a lot thinking and worrying about it. Maybe I would feel different if someone close to me had just died or if we were in a war on our own soil and there was an imminent threat of me or my family being killed. Maybe then I would be much more concerned about what happens when I die and be very interested in this thing, resurrection, and how it might help provide some hope or some answers. I think our disinterest in death does have something to do with disinterest in the resurrection.
But the point which stabs me awake about this thing is the claims the bible makes this resurrection. Listen to some of the words of 1 Corinthians 15, part of another letter like Romans written by the apostle Paul. “12Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? 13But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. 14And if Christ has not been raised then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. 17…if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins (1 Cor 15:12-14, 17).” so according to Paul, this whole meeting tonight, my sermon and every other sermon ever preached, the whole of Christianity, is completely false, in vain, futile, if Christ did not rise from the dead. That is a huge claim. Huge. No other religion is like this, no religion puts something out there, opening itself to a courtroom trial and says here, prove this wrong and you prove the whole thing false. Huge. And in the chapter of Romans we are studying tonight, Paul gets into why this is so important.
if you are like me and there is a disconnect with how this relates to meaning and to God and to your life, then Romans four can be a great aid of grace for us because it tells us how Christ rising from the dead has everything to do with the thing we long for most as human beings, namely God Himself. But before we get there and dig a little bit at Romans 4, I want to spend some time looking at some of the things people knew who this letter was originally written to in Rome. I want to look at what some of them had witnessed, what they thought of when they heard of Christ being raised from the dead. Three reasons why people may have believed this actually happened and three reasons why some perhaps didn’t.
The empty tomb
Jesus of Nazareth come on the scene when he is about 30 years old, preaching and teaching and sometimes performing these seemingly miraculous feats, but he pisses off a bunch of politicians and religious fanatics and after three years of doing that finally ends up getting himself crucified on a cross and is buried in a tomb. It was the Jewish custom to put all dead holy men, or rabbis in a tomb. The gospel accounts say it was the tomb of a very wealthy publically known man named Joseph of Arimithea, so it would have been a tomb many knew about. No other ancient document or tradition ever records anybody questioning whether Jesus was buried in a tomb, there is no other story. Three days after this public death and burial, some of Jesus followers, his disciples, start preaching that Jesus had risen up and out of the tomb. First, this would be foolish for them to do, if Jesus was really in the tomb and everyone knew that. Many probably followed the taking of the body down from the cross and carrying it to the tomb. No one would have ever believed the disciples if they knew Jesus was in the tomb, they could have pointed to it or exhumed the body. but instead, these disciples who go into hiding after Jesus is killed, thinking they might be next, all the sudden start preaching in that same city with confidence and courage that Jesus is risen and the result is that thousands believe them (Acts 1-2). Something happened with this tomb that had people looking for an answer.
The resurrection appearances
Not only was there the issue of the tomb, but then there were people who claimed to have seen Jesus alive after he had been killed and after this whole thing happened with the tomb. the first people the bible records to have seen Jesus resurrected were women, Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary the mother of James (Lk 24:1-11). Well, maybe the bible is false, just making it up and making up names. But here is the deal, the testimony of a woman in the first century was considered worthless, they were not even allowed to give witness in court. If the disciples or the writers of the bible were trying to convince people of something that wasn’t really true you sure as hell don’t record women being the first to see Jesus.
then there is this account, listen to what the Bible says in 1 Corinthians 15, “3…Christ died for our sins…4 was buried [and] was raised on the third day…5and he appeared to Peter, then to the [other] twelve. 6Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive. 7Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. 8Last of all…he appeared also to me (1 Cor 15:3-8).” Is this myth? Have any of you ever read any of the great Greek or Mesopotamian mythologies? They don’t speak like this. They don’t name names and then say they are still alive if you want to go ask them. This is courtroom language. This is the resurrection of Jesus Christ on trial. Five hundred people testifying in a courtroom would be overwhelming proof that something happened. How many of those five-hundred people would have to take the stand and testify of what they saw before any judge or jury would be convinced?
Then Jesus appears to a skeptic, one of his disciples named Thomas. a few of the disciples had been together and had seen Jesus shortly after the empty tomb and they came back and told the others and Thomas thought they were crazy and as much as they tried to persuade him, he said this, “Unless I see in his hand the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of his side, I will never believe (Jn 20:25).” Then the gospel account says 8 days later Jesus appears to Thomas and offers himself to Thomas saying here, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe (Jn 20:27).” And Thomas responds “My Lord and my God!”
The origin of the Christian faith
The resurrection of Jesus Christ was so unique and so significant that it was the basis for all the preaching of the early church which spawned the Christian faith. There is no parallel anywhere in any other religion of a physical bodily resurrection. Dying and rising gods are referred to as processes of nature but never actual people. Christianity is not an old religion, not like Judaism, or Islam, or Buddhism. It started because of the resurrection and the historical facts of the resurrection were never challenged in the first century, but instead people argued about what kind of messiah, if any, this Jesus was. If Jesus Christ did not actually rise from the dead it is extremely perplexing to figure out how this whole thing all got started unless something significant in human history actually happened.
But what about objections. Can’t there be some other explanation? Not everyone believed. Did any of them have any reason not to?
Was it a conspiracy or a hoax?
The gospel of Matthew, one of the books of the bible that records the resurrection accounts states that some religious politicians paid off the soldiers who were guarding the tomb to say they fell asleep and that the disciples stole the body. Could this be true? If they did steal the body they would have been guilty of breaking Roman law that said it was illegal under penalty of death to rob a tomb. If the disciples did this they would be guilty of death. But let’s just give the idea the benefit of the doubt and say these soldiers really sucked and did fall asleep. if so, if they were asleep how did they know what happened when they were asleep and why when the disciples stole the body did they stop to take to time to unwrap the body and fold up the burial cloths taking Jesus away naked and leaving the burial cloths there. It just doesn’t make sense. And the biggest thing is, if the disciples really did steal the body and the whole thing is just a conspiracy or a hoax then why did all of them except one die for something they knew was a lie. Everyone one of the disciples was killed for preaching Christ. Now I can understand people dying for what they believe in, like the guys who flew planes into the twin towers on September 11th in hopes that they get 100 virgins to have sex with when they died. But I can’t understand people dying for something they knew wasn’t true.
An apparent death?
That’s the first excuse some may have given for not believing. The second considers that perhaps Jesus was not completely dead when he was taken down off the cross and that he revived in the tomb and escaped to convince his disciples he had risen from the dead. Let’s look at this from a physical, religious, and biographical standpoint.
Physically, a modern medical examination of the accounts of Jesus’ crucifixion determines that Jesus suffered from hematidrosis (the sweating of blood), hypovolemic shock (the severe loss of blood), respiratory acidosis (not getting enough air into the lungs), pericardial and pleural effusion (blood and water filling the chest cavity), and finally dying of cardiac arrest (the heart stops beating). physically what the gospel accounts describe, without the medical understanding of the body we have today, is something one could not have recovered from, especially after three days of being unattended.
Religiously, a half dead Jesus appearing to His disciples would not evoke their worship to Him as Lord so that they start preaching with boldness and confidence about this great feat of their teacher. It would not make them think Jesus was God for sure.
Biographically, this idea goes against all we know of Jesus’ character as a good moral person who never lied or attempted to deceive anyone.
A spiritual/psychological resurrection?
Lastly, the most popular objection both today and in the first century, was that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was a spiritual or psychological illumination that occurred in the minds or perceptions of Jesus followers. The idea is that it was not Jesus actual body that rose up from the dead but instead was a new religious understanding or a trick of the mind where one either hallucinates or convinces themselves that something occurred that never really happened just because they wanted it so bad. In ancient times this belief was known as Gnosticism, which rejected a bodily resurrection in exchange a resurrection of superior understanding. The problem is that in the accounts the resurrected Jesus calls His body “flesh and bones” and offers it for physical inspection and then eats food with people like a normal person. And I can understand one person having some sort of delirious hallucination, but 500 people, at one time? All seeing and hearing the same thing? at what point do you give up just trying to find excuse not to believe and say fine, so Jesus rose from the dead, what has that got to do with me, what does it mean? And this is where Romans 4 shows itself to be one of the clearest passages in the bible about what the resurrection of Jesus Christ means for you and I.
Why I need the righteousness of Christ
Hopefully we at least have some understanding now of what people have thought of when they heard words about Christ being raised from the dead. Why they may have believed and why some perhaps didn’t. But now let’s go to Romans 4 and look at what Paul says this whole thing of Jesus rising from the dead is all about. [Read text again]
The phrase “counted to him” occurs in various ways 7 different times in Romans chapter 4. we have been studying the book of Romans, chapter by chapter and verse by verse since we started this church a year and one week ago, which is kind of amazing since the verses tonight about Jesus rising from the dead happen to work out being on the day the Christian tradition recognizes the resurrection. If you have been with us at all in the last month in a half or so you have probably heard that the word “counted” or “credited” in some translations is a bookkeeping term referring to our spiritual bank account.
This account is before God where we either have righteousness, which is glorifying God by acknowledging Him and thanking Him and honoring Him. Or we have unrighteousness which disregards God and deprives Him of due thanks and honor. for three chapters Paul demonstrated how the whole human race, despite whatever good things we do, is still morally corrupt internally…that there is something deeply wrong with us. We need righteousness but we don’t have it. Our spiritual bank accounts are empty and not only empty but in massive debt. When our spiritual credit is “counted” it adds up to this huge negative number of moral bankruptcy.
For some reason whenever I say to anyone, you are not good, I can sense the reaction coming. There is something about us as humans that hate to be told we are bad or wrong or evil. Whenever someone tells me I am a screw up, my most immediate thought is, “but I…no…I am one of the good guys.” We hate as humans to hear that we are wrong and will be judged for it. The bible says this is deadness inside us that does not know how we really are. listen to the words of Ephesians 2:1-3 “and you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience – among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body, and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind.”
This deadness is a lack of affections for the glory of God and lack of a life which shows that. And the result is that we ache and groan and complain about why we are not happy. Why we don’t feel anything. Why we are confused. Why we are hurt. We we’ve been screwed over by people or life. And so we try all this stuff to try and make us feel better and nothing works. Nothing gets to that deepest longing we have. The longing for the glory of God.
We can try and make ourselves feel better with medication or drugs like my friend who told us the other day that she is addicted to cocaine and doesn’t know how to stop. Or you can try and just drink as much PBR as possible every night until you reach the euphoria of drunkenness that last for about 10 minutes just before you puke. Or you can try and fool yourself into thinking that just the right guy or girl would be all you ever need. Or you can go to three different churches and do ministries and read your bible five times a day. But none of it works. That deep longing is still there. Everything else is deadness and just leads ultimate death.
That is the wrath of God is…death, it is hell, fire and brimstone, our souls forever tortured in an unending experience of death as the just return for our infinite wickedness that continually rejects the goodness of the God of the universe. Death. We need righteousness and all we have is nothing but the unique ability to make a mess of life. Death.
The life and power of God
But death does not have to be our end. [Read verse 23-24a] “Not for his sake alone, but ours also.” Chapter four has been looking at the life of Abraham. He was the first Jew and Paul has been arguing that he is a father of faith for all rather than just the father of the Jewish race. Look at two phrases with me. In verse 17 of chapter four we read, “It is written, ‘I have made you a father of many peoples’ – in the presence of God in whom he believed, who gives life to the dead and calls into existence the things that do not exist.” The God who “gives life to the dead.” Who is this God? He is the God of the universe who made everything, all creation and all life. When you are the one who causes life to exist when there is none, then you have an authority over life and death. God gives life to the dead.
Look at verse 19, “He did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was as good as dead, or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb.” For Abraham, he was old, almost dead with no offspring, ready to die with no heirs since his wife’s womb was dead. and Abraham met God and something happened to his wife’s womb, it was opened and she began to have children at 90 years old and life for Abraham began just when he thought it was about over.
You see there is a theme here in chapter four of Romans that God is a God who can and does give life to the dead. Our bodies start dying the day we are born and the older we get we feel ourselves breaking down. And the older we get the more likely we are to experiences the hardships and deathly, empty, feelings of our humanity. That nihilistic deadness and uncertainty that makes us want to scream. But this book is a book of hope, one that stares death in the face and says there is an answer and the answer is in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
In Christ’s death He takes our place, because he was a human but one without sin. And in Christ’s death He satisfies the just demands on humans for an infinite eternal unending hell, because He was eternal God. And His resurrection announces that what He did worked. It announces that what Jesus Christ did on the cross is sufficient once and for all for all humans throughout time and history. And now that work may be counted to us also through belief. “It will be counted to us who believe in Him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord.” His work of infinite worth is deposited into our spiritual bank account through belief and we are declared righteous before the judge of heaven.
Jesus our Lord
This is where all that stuff earlier, all the details and evidences of the historical situation regarding the resurrection, becomes meaningful for us. This is where the resurrection of Jesus Christ shines beautiful light and meets us in our greatest need. It meets us because it gets us to God. We now have a Lord, who has done something in human history to make a way for us to find God. A God who has shown Himself and proved Himself once again as He did when He first created. Deadness no longer has to be because it has been overcome in the resurrection and life is now available for now and beyond the point when our physical bodies will die. We can now find peace and satisfaction in life because we have a Lord.
Purpose is revealed and made possible in enjoying a Lord. We now have a mighty king who has demonstrated His power to conquer the greatest enemy of all, death. That is why Paul calls him “our Lord” here in verse 24. “Lord” was what they would call the Caesar, the emperor of the Roman Empire. And now Jesus here is called “lord.” He is the ruler of all nations, the most powerful one in the universe, God revealed, who sits on the throne in heaven and rules with mighty and just hand. so often today I get frustrated when I hear people talk about Jesus, because the picture I usually get is of this poor, pathetic, peasant carpenter, who just loved everyone, taught good things, and was nice to people. This Jesus I usually hear about is very feminine and passive and that is not the picture of Jesus I see in the bible in the cross and in the resurrection. I see a commander of an army waging war on the cross and who conquered it and now lives and is leading us on a mission to tell the world of what has done about the greatest problem of this life.
The other night I decided to read all the passages of the bible that talk about Jesus after he rose from the dead. Some of the pictures in the book of revelation particularly struck me. His hair is now bright white and his eyes are flames of fire, his voice like the sound of rushing waters, his face shining like the sun, he sits on a throne above a sea glass wearing a robe dipped in blood with a golden sash strapped around his chest. Then at one point he gets up off his throne and gets on a white horse and charges down out of heaven with a sword coming out of his mouth and with the words “king of kings and lord of lords” tattooed on his thigh. This my friends is the Jesus after the resurrection. if you are not convinced listen to Paul’s first words at the beginning of Romans, “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand in the holy Scriptures, concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the Son of God in power according to the Spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Conclusion
This is why the early church preached the resurrection and hung the whole of Christianity upon its truth. Because there is power in the hope provided for through faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ. If you have thought Christianity was merely a religion of intellectual ambiguity and blind faith, I pray you have seen what grounds us tonight and been convinced. If you are on the other side and have felt the deadness of your soul and misery in this world I pray you have heard of the one who made you and who did something in human history to give you life. There are good reasons to believe there really is something to this whole thing with Jesus Christ and there is something mysterious about its ability to reach into our souls. Let’s pray.
God, creator of life, you are a glorious fountain of majesty. we are wretched poor souls and we cast ourselves upon your mercy and beg for Christ. we are restless without finding rest in you. so often we long for proof and you have proven yourself so clearly not only in the beautiful sunrise and sunsets but in the resurrection of your divine Son. as we partake of bread and wine tonight, communicate to our beings your grace. may we taste the everylasting life you procured for us on the cross. may we savor the sweet air of power in your resurrection. Jesus our Lord, we humbly bow before you
