"King and Country: the King Inaugurated" by Ken Miller

Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

I guess we'll get this started off. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Strength to Strength. It's good to have you all in here this morning, and one of our purposes of Strength to Strength is to tackle thought-provoking topics, and another is to stimulate candid discussions. And so I'm looking forward to some of that, both of those this morning. And we have Brother Ken Miller on here to share on The Kingdom Inaugurated. And yeah, looking forward to that. And maybe let's have prayer here before we get started.

Our Father in heaven, thank you for this new morning you've blessed us with. Thank you for your goodness and your mercy again this morning, and thank you for this privilege to meet together this way. God, I just pray for Brother Kennedy as he shares his heart on Jesus and his kingdom and the inauguration of Jesus' kingdom. And God, I just pray that you would inspire us to enter fully into that with you, into being part of your kingdom. And thank you for that privilege that it is, as children, as people, to be your children, to be part of your kingdom that's advancing, and we know it will prevail. God, I just pray, yeah, as we go through our lives that we can be evidence and witnesses of that.

Thank you for this time. We pray your blessing on it. In Jesus' name we pray.

So yes, we're glad to have Ken Miller on, Brother Ken, on this morning, and I'll let Ken introduce himself. And God bless you, brother. Good morning, brothers. It's a privilege to be with you all. Am I coming through okay, Brother Wendell? Yes. Yes. Okay. Well, I'm Ken Miller, and I live in Stewart's Draft, Virginia, Shenandoah Valley. Married 32 years to Linda, formerly Stutzman. We have six children, and I am a member at Pilgrim Christian Fellowship here at Stewart's Draft, a Beachy Amish congregation. I'm one of the ministers, and it's a privilege to be with you brothers this morning talking about our King and his inauguration and just the fact that we can be together sharing his life.

It's a wonderful thing. And so I want to go through—I have four sections in the talk this morning: the resurrection as a fact of history, and then I want to talk about the resurrection as a coronation and a validation, and then the centrality of the resurrection in the gospel message of the early church, and then have some thoughts on salvation/redemption as life with the resurrected Christ, and what does the resurrection mean to me in daily life. And I hope to have—I hope to pause between these sections for comments or questions or a little bit of discussion if we don't get too far off track there.

And also, I'd like to read some scripture, an early creed, 1 Corinthians 15:3-7. So if somebody could be prepared to read that, please. 1 Corinthians 15:3-7, and then also that early hymn out of Philippians 2:6-11. If somebody could please be prepared to read that passage.

So I wanted to begin the talk this morning by reading from one of the early confessions of the Reformation's radical wing, what somebody has called it, from the confession of faith according to the holy word of God from the Martyrs' Mirror on page 390, just a paragraph on the resurrection. "Thus the only begotten Son of God suffered, was crucified, and put to death according to the flesh, but thereby was again glorified and made alive according to the Spirit, and again fully received his precious divine glory and his equality with the Father. He will now die no more, neither will death have any more dominion over him, but he shall live and rule as a reigning King of kings and Lord of lords over Mount Zion and the house of Jacob forever and ever."

So I thought that was a great statement on Jesus' resurrection, his ascension, and exaltation at the right hand of the Father. So let's talk about the resurrection as a fact of history, and I am intended to guarantee Habermas's work on the resurrection. He's written 15 or 20 books on the resurrection, and a number of his lectures are available online. So of course, he is an evangelical Protestant. He's head of theology and philosophy at Liberty, has been or was for some time, so that's my disclaimer.

But he was born and raised German Baptist, and hopefully he'll return to his roots and understand the way of Christ maybe more perfectly one day. But his work on the historical Jesus and his death and resurrection, I'm sure that some of you, maybe many of you, are familiar with it, and it's considered authoritative. And as far as I know, in that particular field, he agrees with the Anabaptists.

And of course, we have Lee Strobel's Case for Christ. If you've read it, you probably recognize some of the material here in my talk. So on the subject of the resurrection, I could recommend both of those resources for reading and research.

So I was reading in the book of Acts, Acts 1:3 about a year ago, and I was pondering Acts 1:3, which I will read now. And I began to realize that I should probably adjust my thinking on the resurrection, Acts 1:3, "To whom also he showed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them 40 days and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God."

So all my life, as I'm sure probably all of us have done, I accepted the resurrection accounts in the gospels by faith, and I still do more firmly than ever.

But then I started to think about the resurrection as being documented by infallible proofs. That's a phrase, of course, that we've heard all our lives, but somehow I hadn't seriously considered the meaning of that until more recently. And as I reflected on what that meant, then I began to realize that the resurrection is rooted in concrete human history.

There is historical data for what happened there on Easter morning, according to what Luke says. And I began to realize that the resurrection can be looked at differently than, say, the existence of God. We don't have eyewitnesses' accounts of people seeing God. Nobody has seen God. But of course, we can make a very strong, would you say, circumstantial case for God's existence through various kinds of deductions, nature, and many other ways of going about it, proving or showing the existence of God. But the resurrection is different than that because we have, so to speak, courtroom data. Court cases have often been won on the basis of one good witness, but we have hundreds of witnesses, people who saw Jesus after he was known to have died.

We can accept the resurrection of Jesus then with the same historical certainty as we can accept the existence of Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, or George Washington. We can have the same historical basis for Jesus' resurrection because we have infallible proof. So I want to go down through some of these infallible proofs of the resurrection and then maybe open it up for some comments.

So one is that Jesus died by crucifixion. So we have record of that in the gospels, but it's a historical fact that can be validated by multiple sources outside the gospel accounts also that Jesus died by crucifixion. Two, his disciples believed that they saw him reappear after he had died. And even the skeptics, like Bart Ehrman, acknowledge that it's obvious that his disciples believed this, that he appeared after he had died. And there's a whole list of eyewitnesses listed there in that creed in 1 Corinthians 15, which I want to come to a bit later.

And so the disciples, number three, were so convinced that Jesus had risen from the dead that they turned the world upside down with their message about a resurrected Christ. And of course, Christian tradition has it that all of them gave their lives for the cause except one. And we know that people will give their lives for what they believe to be true, but they won't die for what they know is false.

Fourthly, we have the early creeds, and I want to spend a bit of time on this one. There's a lot of very early data preserved in creedal form that even critics and skeptics like Bart Ehrman acknowledge were written as early as, say, 33 to 34, 35 AD, right after Jesus died and rose. We have material that goes all the way back there in the New Testament. So that when Paul met Jesus on the Damascus road and said yes to him, there were already creeds being circulated that taught that Jesus died, was buried, and he rose again.

And the fact that these creeds were being circulated so early means that if Jesus' resurrection had been a lie, the disciples preaching about it would have been thoroughly debunked by people who were right there and saw it all just recently, and the creeds would have never gotten off the ground. But the fact that the creeds exist and that they testify to Jesus' death and resurrection mean that they can be accepted as historical data. They were verified by the recent testimony of people who actually saw Jesus after he died.

So let's go to the creed of 1 Corinthians chapter 15. If you have your Bible, the creed is found, as we know, there in chapter 15 about verses 3 to 7. And from what I could find, first of all, on 1 Corinthians, there is scholarly consensus that the book of 1 Corinthians was written on Paul's third missionary journey. Pretty much not that it makes us any difference, but there is pretty much agreement even among the critics like Bart Ehrman that 1 Corinthians is solid. Paul wrote it. There's not much doubt there. Not that it makes any difference to us because we accept it by faith. But that means then that if 1 Corinthians was written on Paul's third missionary journey, which is roughly 55 AD, I'll get into that a bit later, this means then that the material in 1 Corinthians 15 is definitely earlier than any of the gospel accounts of Jesus' death and resurrection.

So secondly, there's consensus that the book truly was written by Paul. And secondly, Paul's founding of the church in Corinth. It's really interesting that his visit to Corinth and the establishing of the church there in Corinth in Acts chapter 18 can probably be dated almost more precisely than any other New Testament event because there was a fellow by the name of Gallio who was proconsul of Achaia at the time of Paul's stay in Corinth. And findings date his from archaeology, those findings date his rule to precisely AD 53. And the proconsuls in the Greek city-states at that time, Roman, held their power for only a year. And the record in Acts 18 names Gallio and that Paul appeared in front of this man.

So Paul had to be in Corinth in AD 53. And so we have Paul writing 1 Corinthians 15 about two years after he started the church there. So now I'll read 1 Corinthians 15:3, and it says, "For I delivered unto you, first of all, that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures." So it says that Paul says that he had received something which he then gave to the Corinthians. And this means that someone else had given it to Paul sometime before he delivered it to the Corinthians in AD 53, which he is now writing about two years later.

So now this is I'll call this the Habermas theory taken from Galatians chapter 1. Galatians 1 is another book that's not disputed even by skeptics that Paul is the author. And again, that doesn't make any difference to us. But in Galatians 1:1, verse 15 and 16, Paul talks about his conversion. And it's generally accepted that Paul's conversion happened like two or three years after Jesus or in 35 to 36 AD, depending how you do those early dates, Paul's conversion about 35 or 36. And according to the account in Galatians 1, it says that Paul went to Arabia, and then he went to Jerusalem. After he was in Arabia, three years later after Arabia, he's in Jerusalem.

And that would have been 38 or 39 AD. He stayed there 15 days. And it says of the apostles, he only saw Peter and James. Apparently, he met them for the first time after he was met by Jesus on the Damascus road three years after he's converted. So the question is, what did Peter and Paul talk about during those 15 days? They were together. And James also. Of course, Habermas's theory is that Paul received from Peter the creed, which he later delivered to the Corinthians 14 or 15 years later in AD 53. So if that's the case, the creed would have been in existence before AD 38 or 39 or plus five to six years after Jesus was on the earth.

Then, of course, if you figure that it took a couple of years for the creed to be developed and circulated, then you can bring the authorship of it back to maybe 36 AD or just three or four years after Jesus' death and resurrection.

And of course, even if Habermas's theory is wrong, and let's say Paul got this creed some other way just shortly before he brought it to the Corinthians in AD 53, it would still only be 20 years after Jesus, no time at all for the historians of ancient history. So this is a very, very old piece of literature and something that the early church has been saying, something that the early church was reciting together just a very short time after Jesus died and rose. And it almost gives me it thrills me to be able to read this together. So I understand, though, that even some of the skeptics like Ehrman date the creed with other theories.

They even date it back to much earlier than Habermas's theory. So I think Bart Ehrman dates it to within one to two years of Jesus' death using other ways of getting there. So this creed in 1 Corinthians 15:3 to 7 is data from the early church that speaks of Jesus' death and resurrection. And scholars know it's a creed for a number of reasons. Number one, Paul introduces it with the words delivered and received. So he received it and he delivered it. And in the original, those are technical rabbinical terms for passing along holy tradition.

So with those words, he's giving credit to established Christian tradition. And secondly, maybe more fundamental even, they know it's a creed because of its style and its rhythm. In the original, it has sort of a cadence, a kind of meter and rhythm that you could use for poetry or a creed like this. It was maybe la, la, la, la, la, la, la, la, or something like that. And it was a device that was used to help illiterate people remember what was being said or what had been said.

So you've got the technical rabbinical terms that are embedded in the creed. And also in the original, it had a sort of cadence and rhythm. So this means that very early, we have record that as early as 33 to 34 AD, even the critics say that people were convinced that Christ died, he was buried, he rose again, he appeared to Peter, he appeared to the 12, and then he appeared to 500 people at once, to James and to all the apostles. This is courtroom data, an abundance of it. This is the proof, really, as Luke calls it in Acts chapter 1, verse 3, that Jesus did rise from the dead. We have history on our side.

Yes, we accept it by faith, but we also accept it as historical data, just as we accept the data that George Washington was president of the United States of America, the first one. So we can stand on this and it can give us more faith and more confidence. All right. So the early Christians were convinced enough about these facts that they put them into creedal form and they circulated them. And again, we say that if these events hadn't actually happened, the creed would have never become a creed because it was circulated early enough that plenty of eyewitnesses would still have been living. And they would have debunked it and would have said, "Hey, this never happened.

Why are you guys saying this?" And it would have never survived as a creed. That's the argument. So would I have a brother be able to read 1 Corinthians 15:3 to 7? "For I delivered unto you, first of all, that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. And then he was seen of Cephas, then of the 12. After that, he was seen of about 500 brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James, and then of all the apostles."

Thank you. And then Paul goes on and adds to it, "Last of all, he was seen of me also as one born out of due time." I just think it's so thrilling to be able to read together and reflect together on material that was put together by those early believers just very few years after Jesus rose from the dead.

So I'll pause now for if anybody has a question or you'd like to discuss a point on this first point as the resurrection as a fact of history.

So just a question. We know how immediately after the resurrection, the Romans tried to cover the fact that there was a resurrection. So evidently, by what you're saying, that was not accepted. Their conspiracy to cover the reality of the resurrection did not succeed. Or did it succeed in the non-Christian world and the Christian world accepted the resurrection?

Yeah. Apparently, it did succeed to an extent because that story is still being circulated among the Jewish people, sadly. But of course, there were many Jews who were converted who believed in the evidence and so came to faith. So I guess maybe it was a mixed bag in a sense.

But I think that the truth won out to a greater degree, obviously, and stands today. So thank you for that. All right. Okay. So then I'll move on to the resurrection as a coronation and validation. So one thing that I find exciting is that in the New Testament, the resurrection and ascension are often put together kind of as one exaltation. So you have Ephesians chapter 1, verse 19 to 22, which I will read now.

It says, "And what is the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe according to the working of his mighty power, which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead." And here he goes right into the ascension and set him at his own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. And hath put all things under his feet and gave him to be the head over all things to the church. So right there we have it, the resurrection and the ascension and the exaltation all connected together.

And Jesus is who he claimed to be at the right hand of the Father, divine Son of God, Savior of the world. And then the interesting thing is we remember if we go to Ephesians chapter 2 in verses 6 and 7, we have kind of the human parallel to what happened there to Jesus in verses 5 and 6, I should say. "Even when we were dead in sins, he's quickened us together with Christ. By grace, you are saved and hath raised us up together." Right there, it seems like you have one grand swoop. We were dead with Christ. Now we've been raised up together with him and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

So now let's go to the hymn in Philippians chapter 2. Could I have a brother read Philippians chapter 2:6 through 11? And again, we have you can remember that this is material that very likely the early Christians were either reciting this together as a kind of creed or even putting some tune to it and singing it together.

So Philippians 2:6 through 11. Somebody read that. Philippians 2:6 to 11. "Who, being in the form of God, did not consider a robbery to be equal with God, but made himself with no reputation, taking the form of a bond servant and coming in the likeness of men and being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore, God also has highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name, that in the name of Jesus, every knee should bow of those in heaven and those on earth and those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father."

Thank you, brother. So we see in this passage that again, he goes directly from the grave to the throne. The resurrection is not even mentioned specifically in this passage. It just goes, "He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, wherefore God also hath highly exalted him." Right from the grave to the throne. So I don't know if it matters. I don't think it matters that it doesn't mention the resurrection, but I think it would certainly be implied there. And we see Jesus in his exalted state, and there's many things we could say about that. Just wanted to mention that and have it read in this talk.

So the resurrection as a coronation and validation, we read those scriptures that exalt Christ at the right hand of the Father, but the validation. So what happened at the resurrection is that it verified and validated what Jesus lived and taught all those years. It meant that Jesus' teaching, number one, was true, and it was indestructible. You couldn't destroy Jesus' teaching because he taught it before he died, and he rose again, and it continued.

Secondly, the resurrection meant that the kingdom he had been talking about to his disciples would go on after all. And Jesus himself, thirdly, was not dead after all. The kingdom would go on, and Jesus was not dead. And it meant that Jesus truly is the emperor of all emperors. So Alexander the Great, yeah, by age 33, he had conquered the world, but he was just a petty tyrant compared to this. Nebuchadnezzar, we got all the Caesars and all the rulers of all time and the presidents, they were all just toy kings in comparison because Jesus could do what none of them ever did. And we know that one of the most commonly quoted verses in the early church was that passage from Hebrews chapter 2, which talks about Jesus destroying death and conquering it.

And he conquered it by going through it. He faced death, entered into it, and rose alive out from the other side of death. And I wonder what Putin and KGB would say about that. Go ahead and top that if you can. So he conquered sin by not yielding to temptation at all. And then he took the sin of the world on himself.

And he defeated the flesh by living a new kind of life that was filled with the Spirit, a bodily life. And he showed us in that way how we should also live in union with the Spirit. And he introduced a new kind of government that transcends all government. That's why he's truly King of Kings and Lord of Lords. And his government is superior, transcends everything.

And so we're thankful that we're so thankful that the coronation, the resurrection, was a sort of coronation for Jesus, and it validates everything that he taught when he lived on this earth. So let's go on then to the centrality of the resurrection in the gospel message of the early church.

So I find this extremely interesting and fascinating and corrective, actually, because I'm wondering how our preaching might change if we would have as part of our teaching the emphasis on the resurrection like those early believers did. So I'm just going to go down through the book of Acts and mention some passages and some of the content. So we're looking at the resurrection as the dominant theme in the earliest sermons that we have recorded. Of course, we have Peter's sermon there in Acts chapter 2, first of all, verses 14 through 36.

Of the 23 verses there, nine of those verses, or almost half of the text, have to do with the resurrection. And the crucifixion only gets two short references in verse 23 and verse 36. Not to say, of course, that the resurrection wasn't important. I mean, the crucifixion, of course, it was important. It was why Jesus rose from the dead. But the emphasis in Peter's message there and in the rest of the book of Acts and in the epistles, by and large, the emphasis is more on the resurrection. So in verse number 24, Peter says in Acts chapter 2, "It was impossible for death to hold Christ." And then in verses 25 to 28, it's a reiteration of Psalm 16 as a prophecy of the resurrection.

And then the rest of the resurrection passage there in Acts 2:29 to 33, it has the exalted and resurrected Jesus as the second David. And then in chapter 3, verse 15, I'm just going down through the book of Acts. I kind of read through it looking for themes of the resurrection in all the sermons and the public addresses. So in Acts 3:15, Peter's in the temple speaking to the people there, and he features the resurrection prominently. And then in chapter 4, verse 10, he responds to the rulers and the elders and the scribes, and he talks about the resurrection. In 5:30 to 31, he's talking to the Jewish council, and he goes right from the grave to the exalted Son of the Father's right hand.

And then, of course, we have Peter's sermon in chapter 6, and there he sees the living, resurrected Son of God at the end of the sermon, and they stone him. And now in chapter 8, verse 35, we have Philip. And in that passage, we have Philip speaking to the Ethiopian eunuch. And he doesn't specifically mention the resurrection, but he spoke of Christ, and we assume he definitely talked about the resurrection to that man.

And in chapter 10, 40 to 43, I'm going to read that. We're just working down through some of the public addresses by the apostles in the book of Acts, and we're seeing how they included the resurrection in their gospel message as a central part of that message. So now in Peter's message to Cornelius's household in verse 43 of Acts chapter 10, "To him, give all the prophets witness that through his name, whoever believeth in him should receive remission of sins."

I'm sorry. At verse 40, "Him, God raised up the third day and showed him openly, not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead." There Peter makes the point that Jesus appeared to a select group of witnesses.

Then over in chapter 13, in his first recorded sermon, Paul gives a very extended discourse on the resurrection. And there's much more material in that sermon than there is on the crucifixion. In chapter 17, verse 3, "Paul went to the synagogue at Thessalonica and reasoned with the Jews there for three Sabbath days, and he reasoned that Jesus must need to suffer and die and rise again."

Then, of course, in chapter 17, verse 31, "Paul closed his discourse on Mars Hill with an appeal to the resurrection, which caused the men there to mock him." In chapter 22:6 through 10, in his testimony, "Paul spoke of the living Christ appearing to him. And again, before Agrippa, he testifies of seeing the living, resurrected Christ."

And then finally, in chapter 26, verse 23, "Paul spoke of the resurrection to Agrippa as part of the work of Christ's salvation." I think in pretty much every sermon that we hear in the book of Acts, we have the resurrection featured prominently as part of the gospel message.

Now let's talk about the late emergence of the cross as a religious symbol. So you have pretty much it's understood and clearly seen that if you go to, let's say, art or church buildings or archaeological discoveries of the early Christians, the cross didn't emerge as a symbol until about 350 to 400 AD.

Why is this? Well, it may be that the cross had been such an instrument of shame and reproach that people just didn't want to be associated with it. But it could be that the cross didn't appear until later on because the early church emphasized Christ's life. That was their emphasis.

It wasn't Christ's death that was so exhilarating to those early apostles. It was his life. That's what got them going. And that was the foundation of the early church. Of course, it was the cross too. And they continually preached about the cross. And Paul said he didn't want to know anything among the Corinthians except Jesus and him crucified.

But it was Jesus' transcendent life and his kingdom and teachings that drew the disciples around him before he died. That was it. His life and his teachings. And when he rose again, he proved that the life and the teachings that had been in their midst were indestructible. And everything that Jesus taught and was was verified to be true. But what happened, it seems, is that over time, people's understanding of salvation narrowed down to merely forgiveness of sins and life in heaven after death. And Christ's death mainly came to be understood as a means to provide that forgiveness.

The cross, it seemed like the cross came to be seen as basically the whole of the redemptive work of Christ. The cross, Jesus' life and teachings then were neglected as part of the redemptive work because of the kind of the sole emphasis on Jesus' death. Now, we're the first to say that dying on the cross for the sins of the world was central to Jesus' mission. After all, the Lamb of God came into the world to die for the sins of the world, the whole world. But we don't want to neglect the centrality of the resurrection and his life as an example to follow. And we don't want to neglect the teachings which came out of that life either.

So we'll pause for just a minute on this third section, the centrality of the resurrection in the gospel message of the early church. Anything you'd like to say about that or what I've just said about how the gospel message got narrowed down to a focus mainly on Jesus' death and to the kind of expense of his resurrection? I have a question about the resurrection as foretold in the Old Testament. I'm not sure if now is an appropriate time to ask that question. Sure. Go ahead. So you have read in Acts 17, verse 3, about Paul. Starting verse 2, "Then Paul, as his custom was, went into them and for three Sabbaths reasoned with them from the scriptures," verse 3, "explaining and demonstrating that the Christ had to suffer and rise again from the dead and saying, 'This Jesus whom I preach to you is the Christ.'" So my question is, where do we read in the scriptures, of course, referring there to the Old Testament, how can we explain and demonstrate from the Old Testament that Jesus was to rise from the dead?

Another part of the same question is in Luke 24, on the road to Emmaus, we have these words that, yeah, these are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms concerning me. And he opened up their understanding that they might comprehend the scriptures. Then he said to them, "Thus it was written, and thus it was necessary for the Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day." So where do we read in the Old Testament scriptures that Christ would rise again on the third day?

Okay. I'm very interested in hearing some more of your responses because I don't have many good answers for that. Of course, in Peter's sermon, he made a case for the resurrection out of Psalm chapter 16. But if I go to Psalm chapter 16 and look at that kind of standalone apart from Peter's sermon, like many of those fulfilled prophecies and the prophecies that were then quoted in the New Testament as support for what had just happened, it seems it's a stretch to make it. So yeah, so you have Psalm 16 quoted in Peter's sermon and in other places too in the New Testament, especially verses 8 through 11. So I'd be open to hearing your comments, Brother Glenn, or any of the rest of the callers on where we find support for the where we find the prophecies for the resurrection in the Old Testament.

Because as we know, the Old Testament is not completely silent about life after death, but there is a scarcity of information in the Old Testament about life after death. So I'll just stick my neck out here. So the one thing I think about in relation to this is that Jesus told his audience that the only sign that's going to be given to them is the sign of the prophet Jonah. And as Jonah was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth, so would the Son of Man also be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth? And I've studied Jonah quite a bit on this particular subject, trying to understand if Jonah actually died in the well and was resurrected because that's, I believe, necessary for this to be actually a type of Jesus' death and resurrection.

So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that. Yeah. That connection was in my mind also. But how do you make the can you make a literal connection with that, or is it a sort of type that is imperfect in the details?

What was your conclusion from your studies, Brother Glenn? Well, I think Jonah would definitely be one place that Jesus quite likely went to when he was speaking to the folks on the road to Emmaus when he was saying that there was three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. Yeah, I think that he was probably referring to Jonah in speaking to those folks on the road to Emmaus. Okay.

Okay. Thank you for that. Any other comments or any question you'd like to raise on any of the material we've covered?

Okay. Brother Glenn, I really, really like your thoughts about the resurrection being central in every sermon that we see recorded in the book of Acts. And I don't have any questions, just a comment that I think that's a good corrective maybe for us in our preaching.

So thank you for that. I think that's great.

Okay. Let's go on then to my fourth section here in the talk. And I wonder if this isn't, for us, the most significant and, yeah, impactful thing we can do this morning is to talk about what does the resurrection mean to me in my daily life anyway? We can get excited talking about the resurrection, and we can enter into kind of the exuberance that those early disciples had about it by reading the history and thinking about how that changed everything for them. We can enter into their excitement and their joy somewhat. And that's good because the church is united with saints across the ages.

So we share in their joy. Yes, we do. So it's 2021, and Jesus died and rose again almost 2,000 years ago now. And we've heard this story all our lives. How can we rediscover the joy and the exuberance that those early followers had, this thing that changed everything for them?

So I'll hold that question for just a bit. I want to end with that. But again, what does the resurrection mean to me in daily life? As we think about that question, what it meant to those early disciples was, again, I think I've said this about three times now.

The resurrection showed those early disciples that the life that had been present among them could not be quenched by killing the body. It was indestructible. The ultimate Messiah was here, the King of Kings. This was the King that they loved to follow because we all love to follow leaders who are authentic and who command respect and who call love and affection from us. I guess we like to follow leaders like that. I'm not sure we have any political leaders that do all that. But this is, I think, an aspiration that we have as humans. We love to follow a person with the right kind of loving authority. And who else is there in history with this kind of authority that conquers everything, but with this kind of infinite love that reaches out to all of us?

I mean, this is like the ideal King. Well, he is the ideal King. And they knew this.

This was the King they loved to follow. But I think, secondly, not only did the resurrection show that Jesus was and his life was unquenchable, we should understand that salvation is not just about having our sins forgiven on the cross, but salvation is a life with Christ through union with him. And I love Paul's testimony there in Galatians 2:20, and it's very familiar to us. "I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live. Yet not I, but Christ liveth in me. And the life which I now live, I live by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me." So there, the crucifixion is mentioned at the beginning, and then he talks five times about the life that he has with Christ.

So maybe this is where we should go. There's an emphasis on life with Christ in the present moment. So let me just open up this question now. In a practical way, brothers, what's your testimony about getting the joy back, the joy that these early Christians had as they discovered that their indestructible King had risen from the dead? How can we live with more of that joy? Let's have a little discussion here. Is joy a goal, or is joy the result of living and doing what we're told to do, even if it's not fun?

Joy is a deep-seated result of that. It's not a we can't pursue it. You don't pursue the joy, but yet it's there in the midst of the work and the things that we do. Okay.

That's probably true. Brother, I think I agree with you that the pursuit of joy as a goal is maybe a little misguided, but Jesus promised us joy. So what can we do if we want joy? Is it right for me to want more joy and to think about how it can be fostered or nurtured? Is that okay?

I'm talking about the same kind of exuberance that the early believers had that made them so effective. How do we get that? Maybe you call it joy. Maybe you call it confidence. Maybe you call it faith in the risen Christ.

Is it right for us to want what they had? I think the one thing that gives me joy personally is what Jesus said, "Because I live, you can live also."

Living out the gospel of Jesus Christ by serving other people brings an inner joy that is shown in everything that you do.

Jesus said that he came to give us life and that we might have it more abundantly. I believe it's that abundant life that gives us joy.

Yeah. So you have like 1 John there where John says, "That which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you that you also may have fellowship with us. And truly, our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you that your joy may be full."

So it seems to me that in this fellowship and in this recounting of the stories of Jesus in our conversations with each other and in the testimonies that we share with each other, there's fellowship that emerges out of that, like a connection with the spirit of another brother or sister that has also tasted of this life of Christ. And as we tell each other what Jesus is doing for us, there is a fellowship, and I think that fellowship results in joy. And I think this is why it says, "These things write we unto you that your joy may be full."

So my hope and prayer is for all of us, as we come together in our Lord's Day gatherings tomorrow, that we could bring testimony of what Jesus has done in the world and in our lives. And in that fellowship around the person of the living Christ, we may have joy. And we may be encouraged to leave our comfortable places and go out and witness for this King of Kings and Lord of Lords who is exalted above all. So that's my wish for you, brother. And Brother Wendell, I think that's unless you have something more to share, I'm kind of at the end of what I want to say, and it's getting close to 7 o'clock.

Sure. Well, thank you so much for sharing there, brother, on this section of King and Country, the Kingdom and Old Great. That's really inspiring. And I'm sort of still stuck on your thought about talking about the resurrection. We've been challenged by Brother John D. Martin about praying the Lord's Prayer and using that often. And I've found that doing that has meant a lot and brings a lot of meaning into Jesus' way of praying. And I'm thinking of that, comparing that to talking about the resurrection.

I think that if we can make that more of a theme in our encouraging each other. And you know how sometimes we might meet each other and say, "Isn't it a beautiful day?" And it just kind of lifts everyone's spirits thinking about how nice it is. That's very basic in human nature. We all talk about the weather. But if we could say to each other as Christians, "Jesus has risen," the joy that that brings, just reminding ourselves of that and keeping that as focus. That is, after all, the reason we celebrate. It's the reason we gather for worship on Sunday, the Lord's Day, because of Jesus' resurrection.

So yeah. I think what you're saying, our conversations with each other, words about fellowship and stories about who Jesus is, what he has done, and what he is doing in our midst, what he could possibly do in our midst if we'd love him. We have conversations about so many other topics that are of interest to us, we love to visit.

And I'm wondering if we could do a lot for our own personal enjoyment and joy in the Lord if we were able to fellowship in this way around the living Christ. I wonder if that would be one way to foster the joy that those early Christians had. I mean, what else was on their minds, really?

This is about the only thing they were thinking about. And I don't know how to recapture the immediacy of what had just happened. I wish we could. But maybe this is one way this topic this morning hopefully will push us back a little bit more into thinking about the historical reality of Jesus' resurrection, that it did actually happen and the wonder of it, that we might be encouraged to follow him and talk about him with our friends and family.

Yeah. Amen. Any other questions or comments here yet?

Well, if not, I'm going to—I want to just give a boost for next week's talk is another session on this King and Country. Brother Leo Eby is going to be talking about King and Country, the new humanity. So there will be a link coming out on the channels for that probably shortly.

And looking forward to that, talking about the new humanity.

I'm just reading a quote from the little introduction that he has there at the end of it. "The new humanity rejoices in tribulation, uses crucified flesh to do the will of their King, speaks truth and love, overcomes evil with good, loves their enemies, and is obsessed with obeying and worshiping their King." So I think that will be a great continuation of today's talk.