Christ's Resurrection: Some Observations on a Truly Wonderful Truth Acts...
Andrew Molloy · Mar 31, 2024
Holidays, No. 01
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/410261640285382

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

I'm going to begin with the gospel this morning, a kind of strange place to start for Easter Sunday, but the resurrection of Christ is in here, of course. So I begin at 1 Corinthians 15, verse 1.

Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which is preached to you, which you have also received, in which you also stand, by which you are also saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also receive that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he's buried and that he was raised and there's our subject for today on the third day according to the scriptures and he appeared to Cephas or Peter and to the twelve and that's verses one through five the gospel and it's I hadn't noticed this before or I did the preamble verses 1 through Verses 1 and 2 it lays it out so clearly. This is the gospel by which you are saved and I always sort of blow through that the preamble to get to verse 3 the gospel and I was like, wow, he makes it very clear so So if you haven't, if you're listening to this recording in 10 years, five years, 10 years, or a month from now, and you haven't believed that Christ died for your sins according to the scriptures and is buried and raised again, do that and you'll be saved, just as Paul lays it out right there. So we're gonna look at how he was raised here And I just went through this quickly, the grammar of it, just to make sure I knew what I was doing with this. But I stuck on it because it is so instructive and brilliant, the Greek of the gospel. Christ died, he was buried, and he was raised.

You'll notice that the tense voice and mood, it's all aorist tense. And it's all indicative mood. Virtually all of it. We'll look at the one exception. So the aorist tense in the Greek is a point in time fact. It has an aura of finality, which Merriman brings out. We says it's a once and for all quality that he died and he was buried.

So very important and very clear. The indicative mood, if you go over to the right, all in the indicative mood, it's a mood of assertion and a mood of presentation of certainty. So absolute certainty, it's asserted as fact. So the gospel is fact, it's asserted, and there's no wiggle room to it. which is very comforting for us when we believe the gospel.

We would have a problem if those moods over there were subjunctive when in it. That would mean that, well, maybe Christ died, maybe he didn't. Maybe he's buried, maybe he wasn't, it depends. But they're indicative moods, so there's certainty. Let's look at the voice really quick in the middle of the gospel. And it makes so much sense. Notice where the active voice is placed. The death of Christ. Christ died, he was active.

And that kind of brought out to me a very Eureka moment. I was like, he had to, He had to actively, he instituted the Lord's Supper to his disciples. He brought in the new covenant. And then he had to actively let Judas leave the dinner table. He had to actively go down the hill, I think into the Valley of Kidron, and then up to the Mount of Olives where the Garden of Gethsemane is. He had to actively do that. He actively prayed in the garden.

The soldiers came. He had to actively let them arrest him. He had to actively not give any defense at his trial, and all that. And then he had to actively carry his cross. actively let himself be placed on the cross and up, all active voice. You see that? It's very interesting. Now notice where it gets passive. And it makes sense, doesn't it? He was buried. Somebody has to bury him. If I die up here, Someone's going to all be passive. You'll have to wheel me out the front door. So that's a passive voice. And he was raised passively.

God raised him from the dead, which is terrific. So to sum up all this, all the gospel is aorist. It's a fact of finality. of his death and burial, and it's in the indicative mood, so it's a unqualified assertion of certainty. Except for, and we'll look at this now, he was raised, and can anyone guess what tense that's in?

Audience participation? So, I'll give you the answer, it's in the perfect tense. Still passive, of course, and indicative. But the perfect tense is a past action with abiding results. An action that has culminated in the past, but is still resulting here in the present.

He was raised and His resurrection's power, effect, its purpose and its present abides with us this very day in the durative moment of now, right? I was thinking it's like an open circuit and never closes. His resurrection power and presence is always online. The doors never shut. You can think of a lot of examples in real life to that. Christ is risen today, right? And that's the song we just sang. And it's not that they wrote the song or 2,000 years ago he was raised. In the past, there's no past tense in the Greek, he is risen today. So in durative action, perfect tense.

The second sort of I guess observation I had on the resurrection of Christ is this, the 500 witnesses, and this occurs right after the gospel that we just read. And I didn't read it, it's in verse six. But we're gonna deal with that this morning. So Christ appeared after he was risen from the dead to Mary Magdalene. and Mary and the other women, and I'm just gonna go through these quickly, to Peter, to the two disciples on the way to Immanuel, Emmaus, yes. I practiced that last night and I couldn't do it, so I failed. But you know, you can read it for yourself.

The 10 apostles, he made a bunch of, he made so many of these little appearances to the 11 apostles, the 10 apostles, 7 apostles, the apostles on the beach of the Sea of Galilee. all the apostles at the Great Commission, and there we have it, the 500 disciples, 1 Corinthians 15.6, as I said.

He appeared to James, and then all the apostles after the Ascension. And this is from Billy Barrington, and this is his slide. And I thought it was a good one, and I just wanna show you the breadth of who he all appeared to. A lot of appearances. And then Paul after the ascension. And that's why Jim read for us that narrative this morning. We're gonna look at that too.

So here it is, 1 Corinthians 15.6. 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 and to all the apostles. And last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me also.

So I thought about, and this is another thing, I always read the gospel, which we did, and then I sort of, don't go on, right? And I noticed this, oh, this 500, disciples at one time. I knew it, but you sort of, it sort of goes in your memory. And so for preparing this, I just said, why is this there? The 500 witnesses, why is it significant? And I think it's this. In both the old, especially the Old Testament, You have this rule in the Old Testament law.

Deuteronomy 19.15 says, a single witness shall not rise up against a man on account of any iniquity or any sin which he has committed. On the evidence of two or three witnesses, a matter shall be confirmed. And then it carries over into the church age. Paul, in 1 Timothy 5, 19, says, do not receive an accusation against an elder except on the basis of two or three witnesses.

And it appears this law, or now it's a principle, it carries over from the Old Testament to the New. Two to three witnesses. So what does that have to do with the 500? Well, if in Jewish law it takes two or three witnesses to establish a legal proof that an event has to be verified, what is 500? It's 500 brethren at one time. It's It's huge, it's a multiply of 250, so if you take two people and then multiply that out, give it a multiply of 250, or three, so it could be between 500 and 750 people saw Christ at one time raised from the dead.

So I was thinking, we have that in today's world, and we have this, When you record your deed at the county clerk, that's a public record for all to see. If I want to buy Courtney's house, which the White House I guess you're calling it, right? And I don't want to involve any attorneys or the title company. and just want to pay him privately on site, but I want his house, I could go to the county clerk and look, make sure he owns the house. And hopefully he hasn't sold it away, and then I give him the money, and then I'm out all that money. So that's the county clerk system.

Or if you think, we had a friend up the road who, at the end of January, his name was Dr. Peter, and he died in an avalanche. And just recently, his brothers, I saw in the paper, matter of public record, it said whoever creditors that Dr. Peter owes money to, this is a matter of public record, we'll submit it to his attorneys. So it's a way, what it does is it's a way It gives you a legal duty of care in the law. There's a legal term called you know or should have known. I know or should have known that Courtney sold away his house. Or I know or should have known that Dr. Peter had passed away and I'm a creditor.

So then when that closes, I have no excuse. So if you think about that, 250 multiplier those two or three witnesses that makes it everyone knew this and I'm sure that Jerusalem was kind of small at the same one time and when you read about the two guys on the road to Yes They said to Christ They said they said You haven't heard, yeah, what you said, Roger. They haven't heard that. They were just shocked that Jesus was kind of pretending that he hadn't heard. He wanted to be told.

So that is, Just a really kind of cool thing about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The next observation I had on his resurrection was the appearance of Christ to Saul, and that Dr. Berentine, that list, has Paul, but it probably should have been Saul. He wasn't Paul yet. From Acts chapter nine, So he's traveling along the Damascus Road, and he was murdering Christians. And it says he's breathing threats against the people of the way. And then Christ himself meets him on the way.

And I was thinking a lot about this, and I don't think it was a glorious, appearing. I don't think it was a positive one. The evidence for that is Paul was knocked down. He was blinded. He had to recuperate for three days. He did not eat or drink. And then there's some discussion, maybe so, maybe not, was he physically marred by this encounter? Is that what made him blind? They peeled away something like scales from his eyes. So did it mar his face? We don't know, but I don't think it was a pleasant experience for Paul.

If we go back to the Old Testament, Exodus 33, Moses says, I pray you to God, show me your glory. And God responds, you cannot see my face. for no man can see me and live. So the presence of God, His glory, you could say, if it's full on, can kill you. So Moses got to see God, right? But he said, well, I'm going to turn my back, and then I'll pass by you, and then I'll cover your eyes with my hand.

And you can see that, but not much more. So it just gives you the power and glory of his presence there. So, may I submit this this morning, and J. Vernon McGee always says, if you listen to him, he always says, may I submit to you, every lesson he has, so this is a J. Vernon McGee, may I submit to you, that the appearance of Christ to Saul, was greatly increased in power and intensity, more so than the other appearances. Take the appearance of pre-resurrected Christ, but to James and John and Peter, right, at the Mount of Transfiguration. Very pleasant, but he was in glory and he was with Elijah and Moses. so pleasant that they wanted to set up a tabernacle and stay there forever and maybe concession stands and just be there in his glory from then on.

But this appearance to Paul, I think, was so unpleasant that he had to recuperate for three days. And notice that he was, it's three days. So basically, and Paul should have died there. The Lord should have really taken Paul out there on the road to Damascus for his sin of persecuting the church. But he didn't, he had other plans for him. So just a wonderful thing there.

Miles J. Sanford says that Saul already stood in clear light regarding the ascended Lord Jesus than did the other apostles, for they had known him primarily in his humiliation. and they were messengers of Israel, of whom Christ, as concerning the flesh, yet henceforth know we him no more," from 2 Corinthians 5.16. And then Miles goes on to say, but Paul's first vision of Christ was as the glorified one, the eternal Son of God, in blinding ascension glory. So he got that. The other people before that didn't really see that. post-resurrection, blinding ascension glory. And Paul says that too, there's blinding light all around me. Paul, we may say, never saw aught after his conversion but the glory of that light that burst into his life from the glorified Lord. And that's from Acts 22 verse 11 in Philippians 3, 7 through 10. I read that in Pauline dispensationalism that we're studying on Wednesday nights. And I thought, oh, that's a good thing for Easter Sunday or Resurrection Sunday.

My brother's father, his father-in-law, interesting he's a doctor and one of his first jobs as a doctor way back when in the maybe 60s early 60s was to go to Japan into Hiroshima and interview all of the atomic bomb survivors, because the military was trying to figure out what radiation was doing to them, and they wanted to study that. And he told me this story, and he goes, every, every person, I talked to hundreds of people who witnessed the bomb dropping on Hiroshima, and he said, everyone to the man and woman said, mentioned the light, the blinding light, and they just, they could not get that out of their mind. So I think that is analogous, too, to what Paul had encountered there on the road to Damascus. So what does this have to do with us?

Well, we, too, will see him in this blinding ascension glory someday. Some of us will be caught up in the air to meet Him. The ones coming down south from heaven will get their resurrected, their bodies will be resurrected and they'll meet their resurrected bodies in the air. And if we're alive, we're gonna go north and we're gonna go through a live transformation into our transformed bodies at the rapture, right? which will be a glorious thing as well.

And why is this all the case? Well, because Christ, he's the first fruits of the resurrection. If he's the first fruits, there's other crop that come after that. And it's you, and it's me, and it's everyone else who believes on the Lord Jesus Christ. I guess you'd call them the second fruits of the resurrection, but we get exactly What he has now and how he appeared to Paul and all those other people, the list I went through, we get that too.

Philippians 3 20 and 21 says that for our citizenship is in heaven for which we eagerly await for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of His glory by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself. Some more that says the exact same thing. 1 John 3, 2, Beloved, now we are the sons of God, and it does not yet appear what we shall be. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.

Philippians 3.21, who will change our vile body that it might be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able to subdue, even to subdue all things to himself. So like him we'll have immortal bodies.

For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. Oh death, where is your sting? Oh, death, where is your victory? I think I flipped those around, but there you go.

1 Corinthians 15, 53 through 33. That doesn't make sense, but maybe I'll correct that on the slide. It's in there, so just... look it up there. I always do that, you know, you always get the scripture references, you're like, Anna, where did I get that from? So there's one of those goobers there.

Or this, just as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. That's 1 Corinthians 15, 49. Isn't that a, that chapter, I mean, we have the gospel, and then we have all this, all in one chapter. It's just chock full of, just an incredible thing. That chap, it explains it all. So, From, again, 1 Corinthians 15, we are earthly right now, perishable, weak, mortal, and natural in these bodies. And you might feel that this morning, like I do.

But that will change because Jesus in his post-resurrection appearances, he had his new body, he was heavenly, imperishable. powerful, immortal, and supernatural. So we're going to go from one to the other at the rapture. Or if you're already passed away like many of our old saints here in Holly Hills, Jack and Winnie, the Lowthers, Art and Doris Lowther, all the glory saints that have been part of this, my dad, part of this fellowship. They're gonna get their heavenly, imperishable, powerful, immortal, and supernatural bodies. So again, J. Vernon McGee, let me submit to you but I got to do it in that drawl. Let me submit to you, brethren, that Texas drawl.

With this new Christ-like resurrection body, one of the purposes of it is we'll be able to see Him in all His glory, face to face, for all eternity. We need to be changed to see that. Because remember Exodus 33, you cannot see my face for no man can see me and live. Because you'd be destroyed or you'd shrink away. But we need to be able to hang out with him in heaven.

And I think we're gonna see his full glory. we're going to be outfitted to enjoy and thrive in His presence. That's one of the reasons that we'll get these resurrected bodies, is it's going to be outfitted like a maybe suit of armor to be able to be in His presence for all eternity.

Because you think of it He, there's no sun up there. He is the light that shines and makes everything visible in heaven. So if you're in your heavenly mansion, and you wanna go out your door and get your mail at the mailbox, you're gonna need to see where that mailbox is, and that's gonna be the light of Christ always on, and it's gonna be just truly wonderful.

So, that's our Easter sermon, and our Resurrection Sunday sermon. So I hope that we'll all be blessed by just thinking about that this morning, and I'll close in prayer here. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for your Son, and that today he is risen, and he's, He's risen, ascended, and seated with you in the heavenlies.

And that someday very soon, very soon indeed, He's gonna come back and receive us again to Himself. And we'll be given that same resurrection body that He has to enjoy His presence forever. We know you've done this He's fulfilled the covenant of the eternal covenant in Hebrews 13 20. He was accepted and he died on the cross for our sins.

He's buried and he rose again and Father, you accepted this sacrifice from him by raising him up again, and we thank you for that this morning. And truly, every day, this is a reality in our lives, and make it a reality in our lives, the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And these things we pray in Jesus' name, amen.