01But God raised Him up again!

Well, good morning. So it's a privilege to be able to do the message this year, as with every year. I labeled this message, but God raised him up again. And the reason I chose that, that's a common phrase you'll see in scripture. You know, talk about he was crucified, but then shortly thereafter, many, many passages you'll see, you'll talk about, but God raised him up again. Not to say that if you're a good Bible student, I mentioned this last week and I got several comments just from mentioning that. They said, well, Roger, don't you realize that Christ was involved and so was the Holy Spirit? And I said, I guess you're right. But he's pointing out a specific fact that, you know, God, the totality of God was involved in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So, what I'd like to do this morning is I'd like to try to present some of the typical passages we'll see about the Resurrection. And then also I'd like to kind of weave that in. You know, the Gospel is so connected with the Resurrection. And I hope I can prove that to you. I think you already know that.

And that's important because the Gospel is the good news about who Jesus Christ is and what He's accomplished by His death and Resurrection on the cross. And that's what gives us eternal life. So that's kind of where we're headed today. So here's kind of an outline. So we're going to see that the resurrection of Jesus Christ was God's plan from all eternity, from eternity past.

We're going to see that it's a climatic event in the Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. We're going to see that it's critical to Peter's preaching in the Book of Acts, and also in Paul's preaching, and also in all his letters. It's a critical event that he speaks about Often and it's a culmination if you think about it's a culmination of the gospel message and we'll show that and I want to show the importance of the gospel, which I think you already know We've been studying that in the first three chapters of Romans. We're going to go through that kind of again We've revisit that a little bit Then I want to bring out the we have these two robbers or thieves or criminals depending upon which version you read and they're kind of interesting They kind of mirror if you will where you are in terms of Jesus Christ Hopefully I can show you that today where where man stands before a holy God and our Savior Okay, so let's get into it.

We've So from eternity past so the the this is a fantastic verse and toward the end of Hebrews It says now the God of peace who brought up brought from the dead the great shepherd of the sheep To the blood of the eternal covenant even Jesus Christ our Lord So there are several points that we can see in this. This is a divine agreement between the Godhead if you will and it's called the eternal covenant and So if you look carefully and read carefully, God the Father, the God of Peace, and God the Son, the Great Shepherd of the Sheep, in eternity past, they made this agreement.

And the agreement was this. And it was all about the Lord Jesus' blood. He was going to shed His blood. So the Son agreed that He would shed His blood. And the Father agreed that He would bring Him up from the dead. And what I like here is that the tense of the verb is that it Even though this is an agreement in the eternity past, it was as if it already happened. And in God's mind, when He speaks, when something is decreed, it happens. It's going to happen. It cannot happen. It cannot fail to happen, I should say. So this is this wonderful agreement in eternity past that the Son would lay down His life and the Father would raise Him up again.

Okay, so now I'd like to kind of go through, I'm just going to go through Matthew, Mark, and Luke. If you look, you know, the account in John is really kind of a special account. Actually, Mike's going to cover that, a little advertisement for his Bible study. He's going to cover that probably in a couple of weeks here, maybe sooner, the account of Mary. Her encounter with the Lord Jesus is really a special situation.

It kind of doesn't exactly fit the same pattern as the other three Gospels, so we're going to talk about those briefly. So we start out in Matthew 20. I'm just going to do kind of the core part here. So we're going to see a couple of different people groups. We're going to see angels, at least two, and at least three women are going to be the players in these three Gospels. And they're going to interact with one another.

So the angel said to the women, do not be afraid, for I know that you're looking for Jesus who has been crucified. He is not here. He is risen. Just as he said, come and see the place where he was lying. Go quickly and tell his disciples He has risen from the dead and behold he's going ahead of you into Galilee and you will see him there Behold I have told you so you're going to notice we're going to see it in each of the three Gospels here There's kind of this pattern.

We see that the angels proclaim the fact that Jesus is risen Then they tell them they tell the women they tell them we want you to go tell the disciples that You know go tell it he is risen and then thirdly, you know what you're going to see the risen Christ You're going to see him so they proclaim it go tell the disciples and you're going to see him physically which I thought was cool So we'll see that same pattern in the next one here.

Okay in mark a Little bit different, you know, and I've heard people do a really great job. I'm not really Proficient in this, you know, if you look if you're in them into courtrooms not courtrooms, but interviewing people. If they tell the same story exactly, then usually they've contrived it. Well, these stories are not exact. There's a little bit of a shade of that with each of the accounts. This is an account by Mark. It says, Look up. They saw the stone having been rolled away, although it was extremely large. Entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting at the right wearing a white robe, and they were amazed.

He said to them do not be amazed you are looking for Jesus the Nazarene who has been crucified He has risen. He is not here Behold, this is a place where they laid him But go tell his disciples and Peter He's going ahead of you to Galilee and you will see him there just as he told you. So again, we see they proclaim he's risen and They actually say look here. Here's wait. Here's where he was He's not here anymore and they say go into Galilee and you'll see him in person pretty cool Luke is a slight bit different and they found the stone rolled away from the tomb But when they entered they did not find the body of the Lord the Lord Jesus While they were perplexed about this behold two men suddenly stood near them in dazzling clothing and And the women were terrified, and bowed their faces to the ground. And the men said to them, Why do you seek the living one among the dead? But he is not here, he is risen. Remember how he spoke to you while he was still in Galilee, saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, and be crucified, and the third day rise again.

Okay, so that's the accounts in the Gospel. So now let's look at The next part I want to go into is the account of the resurrection as preached in the book of Acts especially. If you look through the book of Acts, it's a wonderful book. If you haven't read the book of Acts, it's actually more like a, I don't want to say, it's a travel log. It's where the disciples traveled, what they did. You can kind of read it that way.

So you're going to find that in the In the book of Acts, Peter and Paul are two main players and a good part of that. So Peter has several accounts where he will use the resurrection of Christ in his preaching message. And I want to show you at least one of those. But it actually occurs in Acts 2, Acts 3, Acts 4, and Acts 5.

And in those accounts, he's preaching to the nation of Israel, to the Jewish people. What he says is he says you know what guys you nailed? You nailed your Messiah and said essence to the cross and you put him to death this is what you did your Messiah, but you know what God raised him up again and God has and he that's his part of his message in Talking about they need to come to trust Christ as their Savior, so let's look at the one here in Acts 10 we including Peter are witnesses to of all the things that Jesus did both in the land of the Jews and in Jerusalem. They also put him to death by hanging him on a cross.

God raised him up on the third day and granted that he might become visible. Not to all people, but to witnesses who were chosen beforehand by God. You know, I had missed this when reading through. I didn't realize that the people that saw Christ after his resurrection, this verse says they were chosen, picked out beforehand.

I thought that was really pretty cool. That is, to us, speaking about the disciples, who ate and drank with him after he arose from the dead. Kind of verification of the fact that he did rise. If you eat and drink with somebody, a physical person, that's pretty real. And he ordered to us to preach to the people and solemnly to testify that this one, Jesus, who has been appointed by God as judge of the living and the dead.

So his message centers around the fact that Jesus Christ is raised from the dead. So let's go on to Paul. Now Paul also, if you look through Acts, he had not as many as Peter, but he had several. So this is one of the ones that Paul had. And of course, if you look at Paul's ministry, it's a ministry to the Gentiles. So he kind of takes a different approach here, slightly.

And though they found no grounds for putting him to death, they asked Pilate that he be executed. When they had carried out all that was written concerning him, concerning him Jesus, they took him down from the cross and laid him in a tomb. And here's our phrase, but God raised him up again from the dead. And for many days he appeared to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, the very ones who are now his witnesses to the people.

And we preach to you the good news of the promise made to our fathers that God has fulfilled this promise to our children in that he raised up Jesus. Okay. So we've seen a couple of examples of their preaching. By Peter and Paul so now we're going to kind of move to the next part That I wanted to cover And let's talk about the gospel message so the resurrection is a culmination of the gospel message So here's the gospel message what I did I put in the verse 1 which I don't always quote But I think it gives a good background for the whole passage so verse 1 says This is Paul talking to the Corinthians. Now I make known to you, brethren, he's speaking to believers, the gospel, which I preached to you, which you also received, in which you also stand. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures. He was buried and was raised on the third day according to the scriptures.

So just kind of some highlight points here. I like the amplified. I like to look at different versions see how they translate the and this comes across really well I think so Paul saying to the Corinthians he said Let me remind you of the gospel because they were believers Which I proclaim to you so he proclaimed it to him you welcomed it and you accepted it so that he proclaimed it they welcomed it and they believed it upon was your faith rest and so the three the three aspects Christ died for our sins or behalf of our sins as our substitute he was buried you only bury dead men hopefully and God raised him he raised him up again and then from acts that says since it was impossible for him to be held by its power so that's that's a gospel message and we're going to see this message is so so special that that this message did not come, and Paul makes a big deal of this.

He just says this so many ways, and we're going to look at that. This message is so special. It's a very simple message, but he says this is so special. If there's any variation in this message, That person should be a curse. There can't be a deviation from that.

This is God's message to man for his salvation is kind of the bottom line. And it was given to Paul by a special revelation when he was caught up into heaven apparently. So here's some points on the gospel. The resurrection is validated in the gospel. It's the last part of that. So Paul has like, we've studied this in the first three chapters of Romans.

Paul says, I'm eager to preach the gospel in Romans. The gospel is the power of God unto salvation. The gospel is to everyone who believes. The gospel, the origin of the gospel is not from men, but from Christ. In the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed.

So I'm going to go through a few of these in here. They're all just critical to understanding the gospel. So let's look at the first one. The gospel, and this is just the The one that just really kind of is amazing. And actually it's amazing because God's Word is amazing. And there's power in God's Word. And the Gospel points that out.

Let's start off with the fact that the unto here, the power of God unto salvation is the idea in the direction of salvation. The direction of God's power is in the salvation of men past, present and future. And what I mean by that is He saved us from the penalty of sin. He is saving us from the presence of sin, from the power of sin, and He will save us from the presence of sin. The gospel is God's word given to Paul through a revelation of Jesus Christ. And we're going to see more of that in a few minutes here. Power is contained in God's word, the gospel.

And I really like this, actually Macaulay pointed this out when I was listening to one of his tapes. And this is a situation where Peter is preaching again, and this just kind of gives you the goosebumps. He said, and I kind of thought about, what if I said, Mike, I want you to come over to my house, I want you to tell my neighbor, give him these words from God. And so that's what's being said here. Simon Peter is asked to come. Have Simon, who is called Peter, brought here and he will speak words to you by which you will be saved, you and your household.

And it reminded me of this wonderful passage in Isaiah, which I just really love. It talks about my words going forth from my mouth will not return to me empty or void, but will accomplish what I desire and will succeed in the matter for which I sent it.

So the gospel is exactly that. It's God's Word intended for man's salvation and man is to proclaim it. They ask Peter to come and do it and Mike comes. Any person that knows the Lord Jesus can proclaim that message to anybody they're interfaced with. And it's God's Word and it's promised to have an effect, to have power in their lives, which I think is just incredible.

And then Merriman just says, and this sounds kind of strange, anyone who believes the gospel salvation that's how sure it is so pretty amazing stuff so let's look at the origin of the gospel it says in Galatians 1 11 for I would have you know brethren that the gospel which which was preached by me is not according to man so he's going to expand on that so it's not according to man so what does he mean by that and verse 12 says for I neither received it from a man nor was I taught it But I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ. And here's the point I was making earlier. Paul is just so, if you will, hard over. But even if we, or an angel from heaven, should preach to you another gospel contrary to what we have preached to you, he is to be accursed.

So that message is God's word to man to accomplish salvation, and it shouldn't be altered. It's the good news of salvation energized by the Holy Spirit. And then a last point here about this. We studied some of this, or all of this, in the first three chapters of Romans. In the gospel, the righteousness of God is revealed.

This is sort of the story of man. Man's view and God's view of righteousness is totally different. Man thinks that his righteousness is a lesser form, and this is from Merriman, a lesser form of God's righteousness. And what we typically think is, you know, I'm pretty good, but it's that neighbor or it's that person next to me. I do a pretty good job, you know, but it's the other person. But the problem is that we're talking about God's righteousness, which is absolute.

He's absolutely holy. So we can't be comparing ourselves and try and compare ourselves to God. Comparing ourselves does no good. We have to compare ourselves to a holy God. So here's some points God's righteousness Under God's righteousness. We learned in in Romans 3 10 all are guilty. None are righteous. That's what that's our starting point No degrees of righteousness. We aren't working up the ladder. I'll get a little bit better and then oh you be Got there. You made it. No, you're at the bottom to start with you're not going to advance from the bottom.

I When it comes to salvation, it's all of God and nothing of man. Just look at the gospel which I read to you. Was there anything of man in there, outside of his sin? Man's sin was there. God paid for it. But Christ died for his sins. He was buried and rose in the third day. Is there anything of man in that? No. You can't mix human works with God's salvation.

And then, as we learned last couple weeks, we are all under sin. So now, It's a little bit of a diversion, but I'm going to hopefully tie this in. So now we're going to look at the two thieves, robbers, criminals. They have several names, depending on which gospel you look at. We're going to look at the two thieves on the cross from two different accounts, from Matthew and from Luke. And my intent here is to show you how these two thieves interacted with our Savior. If you think about the two thieves, if I have this right, If I'm wrong the Lord was on the cross for six hours.

Is that right? Totally six hours before he died So those thieves I don't know how long they live. This is a question. How long were they there with him? They probably died at some point along there too. So they were there a long time What we're going to see is these two thieves are criminals and they both were criminals that they deserve to be there They both heard what was going on, what the accusations were being hurled at Jesus, but they reacted differently. Not initially, so that's what I want to show you. So initially, they acted the same. So let's start off with that. At this time, two robbers were crucified with Him, Christ, one on the right and one on the left.

And those passing by were hurling abuses at Him, wagging their heads and saying, if you are the Son of God, come down from the cross. In the same way, the chief priests, notice the plurals here, chief priests, plural, also along with the scribes, plural, and the elders, plural, were mocking him and saying, we've got quite a crowd here mocking the Savior, right?

You've got those passing by. We've got the chief priests. All the executives in the Jewish church were there. Isn't that kind of incredible? They all were there with the goal of mocking the Lord Jesus. And the thieves are not going to be, we're going to say, not much different. And so here's some of the things. He saved others. He cannot save himself. Let him come down from the cross and we'll believe him. He trusted in God. Let God rescue him now. If he delights in him, for he said, I am the son of God.

And then the highlighted verse at the bottom, 44 says, the robbers, plural, both of them, who have been crucified with him were also insulting him with the same words. So they were joining in. So from Matthew's account, you would think that they all were in harmony, they were all together, both robbers. But that doesn't seem to be the case. When Luke comes along, he gives his account, we're going to see that he singles out. He looks at the two thieves or robbers and he says, you know what? One reacted differently than the other.

So here we go. When they came to the place of the skull, they crucified him and the criminals. So now they're called criminals. One of the criminals who were hanged there was hurling abuses at him and saying, are you not the Christ, the Messiah? Save yourself and us.

But the other, the other answered, rebuked him saying, do you not fear God since you are under the same sentence of condemnation? still talking of the other other criminal and we indeed are suffering justly for we we are receiving what we deserve for our deeds but this man has done nothing wrong and he was saying Jesus remember me when you come into your kingdom and he our Savior said truly I say to you today you will be with me in paradise now I realize you're going to say you good Bible student you say well Roger you know that's not the Not the church age.

I say, OK, OK, but I think we can learn from it. So let's see. With that in mind, this is not the church age, but believing in our Savior is still the same process here. OK, so let's look at this chart here. So you know what? I'll tell you how I... I read those two verses and I said, I want to contrast those two.

So I got on my tilt thing. It tilts me upside down. So I'm hanging from my legs. It's upstairs in our house. And all of a sudden, I got inspiration. Well, I know what I'll say. So I'm upside down. Anyway, that sounds kind of crazy, I know. But anyway, thoughts come to you in crazy ways.

Okay, so here I said, well, wait a minute. Look at the information. Look at the information that was going on between all these people, all the scribes, the Pharisees, the passing by. All this information about the Savior is being put out. Well, you know, I think there's a pattern here. So here's what I saw. The other criminal, the one that was responding to who Christ was, he did fear God because he said, don't you fear God? So he responded. He did fear God. He said, you should be fearing God.

He said, I'm under the sentence of condemnation. I'm suffering justly. I deserve to suffer. I'm receiving what I deserve. So he realized where he was at. Wonderful, wonderful. Like our brother Hal used to say, a person had a problem, he says, well that's wonderful. That's great that you have that problem. Because maybe the Lord is going to show you something. So the Lord wanted to show this criminal something, okay?

But they both heard, they both heard a lot of information. They heard that you are, that Christ was the Son of God. He saved others, he certainly did. He raised Lazarus from the dead. He saved many people. He trusted in God, and most importantly, he claimed to be their Messiah. And he was their Messiah. And he was recognized as that. And so what did this one criminal do with that information?

He said, Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom. So I started thinking about this, and I looked at some of the people, what they said about it. And several thought that this idea of remembering me is kind of a, if you will, it's a cry for Jesus saved me, if you will, remember me. You might say to somebody, don't forget me, I'm here. He wants the Lord to do something and he did something in the next verse. Also, this man knew something about the kingdom, right? He knew that Christ had a kingdom. He wanted to just be part of the kingdom.

And also, if you think about it, this is the last person, this criminal here was the last person that Jesus touched in a sense. He provided salvation to this man That was the last person he interfaced with on this earth before he was raised, this criminal. And then one last point. He received salvation, but think about it. I know Mike likes to point this out a lot.

When the Lord says, today you'll be with me in paradise, this criminal didn't have to wait for his kingdom. He could be with the Savior right now, immediately. And that's our hope too. If we die today, we'll be with Him immediately. And that was the promise that this criminal had.

Okay, so now I'm going to get into us a little bit. Okay, final thoughts. What are we to realize about ourselves? And what are we to believe about Jesus Christ? So actually we've been doing a great job here in terms of ourselves. We've been reading Romans 3. It has a lot to say about ourselves. It's not pretty. So I'm going to repeat some of the things from the last couple of weeks from Romans 3.

All mankind is under sin. This is just so important. We all come from from Adam. We have a nature from Adam and that sin nature reigns, has power and is penalty of that nature in our lives. This has resulted in mankind being sinful in the following ways. We went through this last couple weeks.

In his character there are none righteous, no not one. None who seek him. In his speech his throat is an open grave. His tongue is deceiving. We read all those. There's 14 different points that Paul makes in that section. His conduct. His feet are swift to shed blood.

Resulting in there is no fear of God before man's eyes. And this is one of the things that just kind of went off like little neon lights. I said, wow, Paul says there's no fear of God before man's eyes. What did the other criminals say? You don't have any fear of God. Wow, that's that's there's a connection there. I thought it's just it's amazing.

Okay, so number two, but the gospel the good news given to Paul by Christ and So what I did I said, well, let's put the gospel in the shoe leather a little bit more So I this is my paraphrase you can argue with me about this If you want see me in the parking lot if you don't like someone like okay the God man Jesus Christ died on our behalf and On behalf of our sins and was buried like all dead men but according to the eternal covenant We saw that was planned the eternity past was raised up on the third day and was seen by over 500 people and Some even touched him and some even ate with him. So that's a gospel in my mind in shoe leather It's a power of God unto salvation of men This power is contained in God's Word. Just like we read God's Word is going to go forth and accomplish what he he wants it to accomplish and Anyone who believes in the gospel will be saved So my final point so as the other criminal did on the cross next to Christ to be saved It only takes a simple trust in Christ death burial and resurrection That's described in the gospel. That's what what God desires that men and women do to become saved and that's God's plan for men to receive the gift of eternal life and And then I added this verse.

It's one that's coming up. We're going to be studying. And I took it from the Amplified. Actually, it's a little more complicated than I wanted it to be. But basically, it's talking about that as a result of our faith and trust in Christ, God will do all these marvelous things for us. He will justify us, make us right in the right standing before Him, freely based upon His grace. We can't add anything to it.

Through the redemption, which is provided in Christ Jesus. So hopefully that was helpful today. Hopefully that was encouraging the ones who know him already, which probably most of you. So let's pray. We thank you, Father, for the blessings we have in our Savior. Thank you so much for your marvelous gospel, which is men are to believe to be saved. We thank you for that. We ask it in Christ's name. Amen.