Reclaiming the Resurrection - Bill Shiley

Lesson Transcript

And that if we follow Him, we follow our King, our big brother, our role model, and live His way, we can begin now to live a way that brings life into the world and that destroys that grip of sin on our lives so that death will not have dominion on us in the end as well. The strife is o'er, the battle done, the victory of life is won. The song of triumph has begun. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. He is risen. He is risen indeed.

All right, that's such a powerful and such an exciting statement to be able to make. So this morning, the title of my message is "Reclaiming the Resurrection." Now, that title implies that it's been hijacked, and I'll let you decide that. Like most of the time when I share, it's something either that is part of my personal journey or something that I'm very concerned about. The subject of the Resurrection has been an interest of mine simply from an apologetic standpoint.

One of the fundamentals has been brought out this morning of the Christian religion, if you want to call it that, that if the Resurrection did not happen, the whole thing would be very empty. The question that begs then is, why? What is it about the Resurrection that makes it so important? And hopefully we discover some things about that today.

So this morning I'm going to be speaking out of my own journey, and I don't know what your journey has been and what you were taught and brought up with about the Resurrection. But I'm going to be speaking from my own, and hopefully if you have already been brought up or taught or understood a historic concept about the Resurrection and its meaning for us, then thanks be to God. I hope it can be an encouragement to you. And if not, I hope maybe it can be a little part of your journey.

Kind of one place where my awakening about the Resurrection began was teaching the book of Acts in Bible class in school. One thing that's exciting to me is just when I begin to realize it's like these epiphanies and it's like, "Oh wow, all of a sudden I understand what Peter's message was about." He wasn't just saying lots of good things and telling people, "Hey, they should get right with God," but he actually had a point to his message and Stephen's message. It was a very well thought through point.

I want to focus on Peter's message on Pentecost this morning. Of course, the Holy Spirit descended and there were manifestations of the tongues of fire and them speaking in tongues. The crowd gathered and said, "What in the world's going on?

These guys got to be drunk because this is weird." And Peter stood up and gave a defense for the sanity of the group and the supernatural phenomenon that they were witnessing as a fulfillment of the prophecy from Joel that God was going to pour out His Spirit and people were going to be changed and all flesh would see the salvation of God. And then he moves on to getting to the point of all this, of the Spirit being given.

And he says in Acts 2, "You men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved among you by miracles and wonders and signs which God did by him in the midst of you, as you yourselves also know, him being delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain, whom God hath raised up, having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that he should be holden of it." That phrase stuck out to me.

I was like, "Hmm, so why was it not possible that he should be holden by death?" Because I guess what I had come away with and the impression I had of the Resurrection that it was like, so Jesus suffered to pay the penalty for our sins and we're not going to get into that so much this morning. And then God did this magic resuscitation. He got Jesus back alive so the thing could keep going again, like a supernatural intervention and overriding of natural effects. But here he says there was no way around this.

It had to happen. Now, I'm not minimizing the fact that it was a miracle and it was God's power, but Peter speaks of this as if there had been causes set up that there couldn't be no other way that it would have turned out than that Jesus would have risen from the dead because it was not possible that death could get a hold of him. And then he goes on and he tells us why that happened.

"For David," speaketh concerning him, "I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for he is at my right hand that I should not be moved. Therefore did my heart rejoice and my tongue was glad. Moreover, also my flesh shall rest in hope because thou wilt not leave my soul in hell." That's the grave, Hades. "Neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption. Thou hast made known to me the ways of life. Thou shalt make me full of joy with thy countenance." So here he quotes a prophecy of David.

He goes on to give an apology or a defense that David was not speaking about himself because David's bones are down the road. Everybody knew where they were and you could go visit them. So obviously his flesh saw corruption. So David's got to be speaking of someone else. And he's speaking about his Lord, his descendant who was actually going to be his Lord, the Christ, the Messiah.

And he says here that, "I foresaw the Lord always before my face, for he is at my right hand that I should not be moved." The quotation here is not as clear in the King James translation. And as a teacher, one of my goals in Bible class was to give my students some basic tools for Bible study. So I want them to learn how to use a concordance and at least how to look up Greek words in the lexicon and some things like that. So Peter's quoting here. So I got them to look up and find out where Peter's quoting from.

And if you read this in Psalm 16, verses 8 through 11, it gives the thing a lot more clear twist because to say, "I foresaw the Lord always before my face," to us it sounds a little passive. It's like, "Oh yeah, he's up there." But when we read that in Psalms, we get a very intentional, very purposeful twist to it. And I actually asked one of my friends, Leonard Hagee, who studied Hebrew to be a Bible translator, to comment on this.

And he said, "Yeah, it's actually a very purposeful, a very aggressive, a very active connotation there." It says, "I have set the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore, my heart is glad and my glory rejoiceth. My flesh also shall rest in hope, for thou wilt not leave my soul in hell." Again, that's the grave. "Neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life. In thy presence is fullness of joy.

At thy right hand, there are pleasures forevermore." So this gives us a little different picture here. This is not some sort of a passive thing that, "Oh, well, I know God is always around me, and so everything's going to be okay." But this is an intentional choice that he chooses to set God before him, to make God his guide, his biggest priority. He's the one he's listening to and he's following and he's shaping his life after. He's getting his instruction from him. He's resting in his security.

And because of that, all these other things are going to happen. He's going to be filled with joy. He's not going to be worried because he knows that God will not allow him to rot in the grave. And there again, as Peter understood, he's speaking prophetically of Christ. So what he's saying here is that Jesus rising from the dead was based on a choice, a way of that Jesus lived, of setting the Lord always before him.

And that is what resulted in a life of security, of stability, and to where even he would not rot in the grave. I love this statement, especially the last part there of the result of this, that it's this way of life. You have showed me the path to life. And when I'm in your presence, I'm going to read it from the BSP here. "I always keep the Lord as the one and only person of importance. So because of that, I will never get shook up.

This fills my heart with joy and glory because you will not leave my soul in the grave or let a person set apart for you rot. You show me a way to live that leads to life. And being with you, I find everything I ever long for." So I want to look a little bit at what Jesus said about how he lived and how he got to where he was, how he had the power to perform miracles and to live like God, especially because he says things like, "I am the way." So he's saying, "I live like me.

This is the way to do it." We're very familiar with ways. If you want to lose weight, there are all kinds of ways out there, methods. Some say, "Well, don't eat this." And some people say, "You've got to take this many steps in a day." And there's lots of different methods. Jesus says, "I am the way. I am the method. Do like me. This is the way to eternal life, to real life, life that never ends." And he also has this term.

He calls himself the Son of Man, which harks to these prophecies that began in the Garden of Eden with God's promise to Adam and Eve that there would be a descendant of the woman who would crush the power of the serpent, would break the power of evil. And so all through the Old Testament, there's these prophecies of this human that is going to come and is going to reset the bondage and this problem of brokenness and choosing a way of destruction.

And so Jesus arrives on the scene and he describes himself as the Son of Man. Later, we're going to look at the Apostle Paul uses the term the second Adam or the last Adam. So I think it's important to listen to what Jesus himself says on this subject of how he was able to live in a way that resulted in the Resurrection. John 5, Jesus has just healed the impotent man at the pool of Bethesda and the Pharisees were upset because he had healed on the Sabbath. So he is in his defense.

He's explaining how he why he is doing this and about the unity that he has with his Father that results in him working with his Father and having his Father's power. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word and believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting life and shall not come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto life. Verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God and they that hear shall live.

For as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son to have life in himself and hath given him authority to execute judgment also because he is the Son of Man." So he starts out here by talking about this idea that he has life. He has this unity in this relationship with his Father that he has life and he has the ability to give life to others. And he uses the present continual tense.

He says, "Hath eternal life." So this is a quality of life that we begin to have now that results and it never stops. And it's because he is this human one who lives in perfect harmony with his Father. "Marvel not at this, for the hour is coming in the which all that are in the grave shall hear his voice and shall come forth, they that have done good unto the resurrection of life and they that have done evil unto the resurrection of damnation. I can of mine own self do nothing as I hear, I judge.

And my judgment is just because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which has sent me." I should have underlined that. Then later on in the chapter, Jesus saith unto them, "When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall you know that I am he and that I do nothing of myself, but as my Father hath taught me, I speak these things. And he that hath sent me is with me. The Father hath not left me alone." And there's that important word for, which means this is the reason why.

It's because I always do those things that please him. So in the mystery of the incarnation or God coming as a human, and there's so much we don't understand about that, about him being God but being human. But we do clearly understand from Jesus' teachings that he came to live as a human and to show us as a human how to live as a child, as a Son of God, and how to live the way God created us.

So while there's so much about that that we don't understand, we do understand that Jesus had the power he did as a human because of choices that he made to always honor his Father and always to please him. John 6, here he says, "All that the Father has given me shall come unto me. And him that cometh to me, I will know why he's cast out. For I came down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of him that sent me.

And this is the Father's will which has sent me that of all which he has given unto me, I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. And this is the will of him that sent me that everyone which seeth the Son and believeth on him may have everlasting life. And I will raise him up at the last day." So Jesus tells us that he is coming and living in this way of honoring his Father. That's his focus. He's always looking at what his Father's doing and he's doing it.

He's always living in submission to his Father. And because of that, it's directly connected to this concept of him having life and giving us life. So I want to move on to the apostles here a little bit. And especially we're going to look at a lot of what the Apostle Paul says.

And ironically, we're going to look at the book of Romans here, which has been used a lot of times to undermine the importance of a new life, especially in a literal, physical, behavioral way that we actually are living with different attitudes and behaviors. This is one of my favorite verses in scripture.

Romans 8:11 says, "But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you." So if the same Spirit that controlled Jesus that lived in him dwells in us, that is going to result in our resurrection as well. And that's not just something that happens down the road.

This is in Romans 8 where Paul is talking about the life of being controlled by the Spirit of God and bringing forth the fruit of the Spirit of God rather than the life of following the flesh and living a life of death. So this is not something just that happens when we die, but this is something that happens now. We begin to live a life now. And this is so exciting to me because this means that we can change.

We don't have to just sit here and be sinners that God's going to wave a wand over us at the last day because we said a prayer and poof, we'll all come to life and live happily ever after. But this means that I can change now. I don't have to live in the behavior patterns that I developed as a child or through my life as I followed my own carnality. I don't have to repeat the mistakes of the family and the settings that I grew up in. I don't have to live drugging myself with lust.

I don't have to live being angry or being frustrated and bitter and feel like I have to protect myself in life. I don't have to live in fear. That I can change. I can begin to live now in a way that breathes life into the world and that never has to end. Romans 5:12, "Wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for all have sinned. For until the law, sin was in the world, but sin is not imputed where there is no law.

Nevertheless, death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over them that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression, who is the figure of him that was to come. But not as the offense, so also as the free gift." So listen here. We can get lost in Paul's rhetoric and his logic here. But listen to what it says about the first Adam and Christ as the second Adam and the difference between the two. "But not as the offense, so also as the free gift.

For if through the offense of one many be dead, much more the grace of God and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many. And not as it was by one that sinned, so is the gift. For the judgment was by one to condemnation, but the free gift is of many offenses unto justification. For if by one man's offense, death reigned by one, much more they which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one." So we have Jesus set up as a new Adam.

And the early church was very clear about this. Tertullian spent some time dicing through this, that Jesus being a second Adam, that you don't have a second unless it's the same type of thing as the first, right? And so Jesus comes as a reset for humanity to start a new way of being human. And in the same way that Adam messed things up and started something that brings death, Jesus came to start something that brings life.

The term grace here is used, which means a gift, a breathing of God's character and goodwill into humanity. And we could take this to mean that it's some magic potion God dumps on all of us and has nothing to do with what we do. But if we move on into chapter 6 and continue the conversation, which Paul did not interrupt in his original writings, it goes on and says this, "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound? God forbid, how shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?

Know ye not that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death? Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death, that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life." Those are such powerful, precious words there. And often when this at a baptism, I've heard this, I don't know how many times at baptisms and no criticism, but often it's kind of rattled off as the liturgy is read.

And every time I hear that, I think, "Wow, we should just stop and say, 'Selah,' and just think about that." Because that's such a precious promise that as we associate our lives with Christ's story and we die to ourselves and we choose to live God authority in our life and to obey and honor and love and trust him, that we can live a new kind of life.

"For if we have been planted together in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection." So Paul's setting this up that we have a choice. And if we follow Christ's example of dying to himself and always choosing to do his Father's will, we are also going to partake in the resurrection. "Knowing this that our old man is crucified with him, that the body of sin might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve sin. For he that is dead is freed from sin.

Now, if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with him." Again, this is a connection of our story with Christ's story that if we choose to live his way, we also are going to partake of the resurrection that happened, that was an inevitable result of his life choices. "Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more, death hath no more dominion over him. For in that he died, he died unto sin once. But in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.

Likewise, so in the same way, reckon ye yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lust thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin, but yield yourselves unto God as those that are alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.

For sin shall not have dominion over you, for ye are not under the law, but under grace." What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace? God forbid. "Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants you are to whom you obey, whether of sin unto death or of obedience unto righteousness? But God be thanked that ye were the servants of sin, but you have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you.

Being then made free from sin, ye became servants of righteousness. I speak after the manner of men because of the infirmity of your flesh. As ye have yielded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity unto iniquity, even so now yield your members servants to righteousness unto holiness. For when ye were the servants of sin, you were free from righteousness. What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.

But now, being made free from sin and become servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness and the end everlasting life. For the wages of sin, which you get paid for serving the master sin, is death. But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord." So that passage is very plain about this concept that the one that you serve is the one who you give authority and who you give a grip on your life. And if we serve sin, we reap death in this life and we reap death in the next life.

But if we turn and when we die to ourselves and we begin to serve righteousness, we begin to serve God as Jesus did, we have eternal life. We begin to live a way now that's different, that is alive. It's producing goodness and beauty in the world like God created rather than destruction. And that continues on. The gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. And I believe that that means that it's through following his way of life as well as the freedom that he bought us on Calvary.

1 Corinthians 15 is known as a resurrection chapter. Talks a lot about the resurrection. And again, he talks about this concept of Jesus being the second Adam or the last Adam who comes to make a reset. And he says, "But now is Christ risen from the dead and become the firstfruits of them that slept. For since by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.

For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." And that's not just talking about some sort of a click this and follow him on Facebook type of a thing. But as in Adam, when we live Adam's way of choosing his own thing and dying, creating death in the world, we will reap death. But if we follow the new Adam and we always live to honor our heavenly Father, that we will reap life like he did. We will be able to be made alive. Something that starts now and also carries on into eternity.

Something that never has to end. Eternal life, real life. So I want to just do a few comparisons between the first Adam and the second Adam here. The first Adam began with a pure nature, right? He was created without an inclination to sin or however we want to think about that. And Jesus, the second Adam, was also without a sinful tendency. But the first Adam chose, when he was tempted and tested, he chose to rule his own way.

He chose to follow Satan's advice and to separate from God and try to create his dominion after following his own way. There's so much we could try to understand about that. But I like to just keep it simple. He just decided he's going to do his own way instead of doing God's way. Jesus, when he was tested and tempted, always chose to honor his Father. Always chose to mirror God's likeness and God's character in what he did, the way he treated people, the way he lived out every detail of his life.

Well, through that choice that the first Adam made to sin, to do his own thing, he sold himself into bondage to sin. And each of us since has done the same kind of thing and has reaped the bondage of being stuck, sold to sin. Romans 6 clearly brought out there that whoever we yield ourselves service to obey, we give him a right over our life. Jesus, on the other hand, because of his choice to always honor his Father, he lived victorious over sin in his life.

He actually had power to step in then and bring God's life and healing to other people to deliver them from sin, to deliver them from the effects of sin like sickness and death and things like that in a physical way. So the first Adam, because of his choices, he died. Genesis 5, I'm not sure what all the purpose of that genealogy there is. I think there's probably a lot of different things. There's different theories out there.

But one thing you get from that chapter is these guys that lived tremendously around 959 years, but he died. And he begat sons and daughters and who knows what else he did, but he died. Well, Christ didn't die. His body was killed and he just took a little rest and was raised up on the third day. And now he has a body that his death has no there is no way he can be killed now.

His body, even we were talking about that this morning, the mystery of this new body that it's still physical, but it's not bound by the same constraints that we are used to with our flesh and blood. And so this is the exciting part, is those who follow Adam's way of doing his own thing, sell themselves to sin and die physically, they will also be lived in bondage to sin and die physically.

But those who repent and live Jesus' way of always honoring their Father, they overcome sin in life and therefore sin has no dominion over them. And so death has no dominion over them. And because they have allowed God's spirit to rule their life, that same spirit that raised Christ from the dead has been making them alive and is also going to raise us up in the last day. So the resurrection of Jesus was not a miracle of God reaching and overriding natural cause and effects.

It was a miracle of God, but it was not overriding natural causes and effects. But it was the inevitable result of the life of a human, Jesus, who chose to always honor his heavenly Father. And so Satan and death had no more business with him than oil does with water or than your fingers do with a greased pig. It didn't apply. He couldn't do anything with him. I think that's the mistake, one of the mistakes Satan made is he thought that because Jesus was a human, that he could do whatever he wanted.

And so in the same way, our resurrection or the lack of it will be the same. It will be a direct result of the choices that we make now over who is the Lord of our life by who we are obeying. It starts with the choices that we make now. So again, I want to close with those exciting verses from Romans 8:11.

"If the spirit that raised up Jesus from the dead dwells in me and you, that same spirit that raised Christ from the dead, that he had given power and authority all through his life by his obedience, that can make us alive. Now we can change. We can become a different person. We can arise from the dead and live in newness of life. And that also then will result in the resurrection after our bodies sleep.

We will rise again with a new body that's absolutely free from any presence or effects of sin to reign with Christ in the new heaven and the new earth." So I hope that that was inspirational to you. This is definitely something that really excites me as I face life and I face the world around us, that we have a king who is alive. He's not some passive person that just gives us all a bottle of his potion and we just go on living the way we are. But in the end, it'll all get fixed.

But that Jesus is somebody who sacrificed and came to live and show us a new way to live. And that if we follow him, we follow our king, our big brother, our role model and live his way, we can begin now to live a way that brings life into the world and that destroys that grip of sin on our lives so that death will not have dominion on us in the end as well. Let's bow our heads and pray. Thank you, Father, so much for the resurrection.

And while many people are excited about the resurrection or this morning, we're thankful to understand that the resurrection is something that applies to us now, that Jesus came to show us a new way of living and to set us free so we can choose a way of living that brings life now to our lives and to the world around us and that will never have to end. Thank you so much for Jesus and for your love through him to us in bearing our sin, our griefs, our sorrows to set us free.

And for the hard work that he did as he was here to always surrender to you and to show us that it can be done. And help us, Lord, to follow him in entering into his death, to dying to ourselves and to choosing to live his life. I pray, Lord, that you could help us, each of us, to grow in being controlled by your spirit, obeying your spirit so that your life can be manifest, it can be shown and displayed to the world around us. And we praise and thank and honor you for all this in the name of Jesus. Amen.

Any response or corrections to the message? I really appreciate your point that death is not something normal for humans. I mean, we think of it that way because we, as you read there in Romans 5:12, that death spread to all men because we have all sinned. But that wasn't the original design of when he designed our bodies. He didn't design Adam and Eve to die. And so, yeah, Jesus, since he never sinned, there was no law by which he could rightfully be put to death.

So, yeah, Satan trying to do something that was not allowed under any kind of law in the universe ended up wrecking his own kingdom in the process. Yeah. We talk about that. We say, "Well, you know what? I'm human." And not to pick apart words, but that's, yeah, we think when we say that, we mean fallen humans, that we make mistakes and we all have problems and we all die. But yeah, humans were not made to be that way. And Jesus came to reset that. I really like the comparison between the two Adams.

And then especially the point in that, that they both chose. They both made a choice. And the one brought death and the other brought life. And I like that picture again, that reminder. That really excites me as I watch Jesus live then. And I know that he's making those hard choices to show me so that he's showing me that it can be done.

And in so many ways, I think the cross there when Jesus says it's finished, I'm not saying this is absolute theology, but I would like to think of it almost as like it's a high five to his Father. He's like, "I did it. I honored you through my whole life. So I'm a pure sacrifice and now it's all broken." The resurrection was an inevitable result and the path to life was open to all of us because he made it. He finished the race and was faithful to his Father the whole way through.

Justin kind of said what I wanted to say, but I also really appreciate the ESV and to see it when it comes out. And I've never thought about the wages. For some reason, I heard the wages of sin and death so many times that I never thought about it being the price for it. I know it's the same thing, but that's something you hear that just kind of goes in and out. You know it, but whenever you switch it, sometimes it makes it a little different. And yeah, it's very good.

Also, Jesus was always doing his Father's will. And I know you didn't mention it, but then he prays that we can be one like he is one with the Father. We can be one with each other like that. And I just think it's a good picture. Yeah. For those of you who don't know, the BSP stands for Bill Shiley Paraphrase. It's a way of me quoting myself without drawing undue attention. But it's basically saying this is how I like to think about this point in my life.

One thing that's scary of getting to a point in your life when you're in your upper 30s and realizing that a lot of the things that you believed about being a Christian are not quite the way it really is, is it gets scary to teach because I realized that I probably still have some twists in my thinking. So I was really challenged by Matthew Milioni's talk on conspiracy theories where he talks about living a life of humility and wanting to be corrected, wanting to be shown where our errors are.

So what I'm sharing this morning, I want to invite correction. If something I've David's out now, but if there's something I've said that's definitely not the historic view on scripture, I welcome correction and being better informed about that so that I can grow and also pass on the truth to others. Thank you for your attention. Thank you for being the church and being God's family. And let's keep striving together to live Jesus' way. The Lord is risen. He is risen indeed. He is risen indeed. He is risen indeed.

He is risen indeed. He is risen indeed. Christ is risen indeed. He is risen indeed. He is risen indeed. He is risen indeed. He is risen indeed. Christos Anastasios. Ala soz bon chrest.