Is that right? Boy, you guys need to learn some resurrection songs, brothers and sisters. I’m telling you, you know that? You need to learn some resurrection songs. I’m not kidding you. You need to be singing the resurrection songs. They’re wonderful.
Open up to 2 Timothy 2.
This morning, before I read this verse, I’d like to talk about—not last week, but the time before I spoke—I was speaking about Peter and what he saw in Jesus.
And if you remember, because I barely do, in 2 Peter 1, one of the things that really stuck with Peter was the vision he saw of the Lord Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. He saw for himself what God meant man to be.
And it just stuck with him, because in the last letter he writes, that is one of the main things in the letter: we saw His glory. It was the glory of this new Man, the Man as He is supposed to be.
Then I said I would like to think about what Paul saw, and then what John saw. So this morning, I want to use what Paul saw. Now, we think, because Paul wrote most of the New Testament, “Well, what is the big thing about Paul?” I want to say it is right here in 2 Timothy.
So, in 2 Timothy 2:8:
Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead,
Of the seed of David, according to my gospel.
That is it. That is what caught Paul: Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, there is no way—there is no way on earth—I could bring about and show the glory of what Paul saw. Only You can, and Your Spirit can quicken Your Word to us.
We pray that this will happen as we speak about what Paul saw: how Paul was captured by this risen Lord. May it spring fresh in our hearts. We were talking about wells of salvation; may our hearts become wells of salvation by the Holy Spirit.
Only You can do this, Lord. So we come to You this morning, asking for Your help, asking for Your Word to go forth into our hearts and become a well of living water. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Jesus Christ, risen from the dead. Now, I know years ago, I think I used this for a sermon once. Yeah, because you remember it—you came up to me afterward and talked to me. I remember that.
It just happened that this is Easter Sunday. I was talking to my wife, and I said, “Well, it will be an Easter sermon this Easter.” She said, “Well, are you going to sing an Easter song?” Herb picked the one I was going to use, and it was wonderful.
It is wonderful to think about the risen Lord. What I would like to do this morning is consider what it says: “Remember. Remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead.”
Remember means to bring to mind, just like we come on the Lord’s Day, every Lord’s Day, to have His table. It is to remember Him, to bring Him back to mind—to bring to mind the things that He did.
It is not just to remember as if to say, “Oh yeah, I remember I did that last Thursday.” In remembering, it is to bring something before you for consideration: to consider it, think about it, meditate on it, and draw from it strength, life, or hope.
That is what you do when you remember, when you think. It is not reminiscing. It does not say, “Reminisce about Jesus Christ”; it says, “Remember.” Remember what this means for us.
Now, we also have to understand that resurrection has partners. Just like God is a Trinity, resurrection goes with the Trinity too. There is no resurrection without the crucifixion, right? And the crucifixion has no meaning without resurrection.
Yet resurrection really does not have any meaning without the ascension. Because if Christ does not ascend after He is raised from the dead, then the resurrection has no meaning. He would just be walking around the earth. He could be like an Indian guru, the oldest man in the world walking around. But He ascends.
So these all go together. They cannot be taken apart. When we consider Him risen from the dead, we must consider that He died, and we must consider that He also ascended, because that is what brings meaning to the resurrection.
I was raised Catholic. On Friday, we would have gone to the Stations of the Cross, and we would have seen the Lord Jesus. In Catholicism, we have the crucifix, where we have the body of Jesus on the cross.
On Good Friday, as soon as it got to be three o’clock, they shrouded Jesus. He was shrouded from Friday, through all of Saturday, and on Sunday they removed the shroud—and He was still on the cross.
Some of us live a life like that: Jesus is forever on the cross.
I know I told this story once, and I think it is a good story. When I became a Christian, I wore a crucifix, even though I was not going to the Catholic Church. I liked having the reminder of the body.
One night, we were playing pickup basketball. After the night, the body was gone. The cross was there, but the body was gone. We were looking for it, and finally my younger brother Bill said, “You know, Jim, I think He resurrected.”
There is such a truth to that. We are to live in the good of the resurrection. This is what Paul is talking about.
The resurrection is so great, and I am not going to express everything. But I want to look at three things about the resurrection: what it meant for Jesus Christ, what it means for us who believe in the resurrection, and finally what the resurrection means to God.
The resurrection is not just for us. It is for the Lord Jesus too, because He was raised from the dead. There is meaning to it for Him. There is meaning to it for God. There is meaning to it for us. It is a full-orbed event.
It is this event that separates Jesus Christ from all other men. The world wants to compare Jesus Christ to Buddha, Muhammad, Lao Tzu, and all these great teachers. But the resurrection separates Him from all of them.
It says something about Him: He is greater than these others. He cannot be relegated to just a teacher, because He is more than just a teacher.
First, what does the resurrection mean to Jesus Christ Himself? It means something to Him. Why do we call Him Christ? Have you ever thought about that?
At Pentecost, Peter claimed in his first sermon, “God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.” Well, how do we know that? Because Jesus was raised from the dead. That is it. Jesus was raised again.
The reason this is so important, and why this was so important to Paul himself, is this: Jesus was crucified. Correct? He was crucified. He was nailed and He hung on a tree.
If you look in the Old Testament, in Deuteronomy 21:22-23, it says:
He that is hanged is accursed of God.
This was enough to make any religious Jew think that Jesus of Nazareth could not be the Messiah. Hanged on a tree—you are cursed of God. This was Paul’s problem. He could not receive this Man as Messiah.
That was one of the things that stuck in his craw when Stephen was preaching. He did not like what Stephen was saying concerning the traditions. But when Stephen said, “I see Jesus at the right hand of God,” Paul would say, “No way. He was hanged on a tree. He is cursed of God. There is no way He can be anything else.”
But then, how was Paul converted? It was not by argument. What happened? The risen Christ met Paul on the road to Damascus. He met the risen Christ, and that is the only thing that could have changed his mind.
He met Christ raised from the dead, and that changed him totally. He was arrested. Later, in Romans 1:4, he could say this about the Lord Jesus:
Who was declared to be the Son of God with power,
According to the spirit of holiness,
By the resurrection from the dead.
This is how God proclaimed that Jesus was the Christ: He raised Him from the dead. What does that mean for Jesus? It vindicates all that He was. It puts God’s seal on it.
If Jesus had never risen from the dead, what would we think of Jesus? Everything He said would be a lie. He would be worse than what He ever portrayed Himself to be. He lied to us.
But He was not. He was proclaimed with power. He was vindicated.
The resurrection vindicates His claim. Remember John 2, after He cleansed the temple? The Jews and the chief priests asked, “What sign do You give us? What authority are You going to show us that this is an act of God?”
Jesus said:
Destroy this temple,
And in three days I will raise it up.
John said He was speaking of the temple of His body, and He was speaking of the resurrection. The resurrection vindicates Jesus Christ in the eyes of the Jews, in the eyes of all mankind, and in the eyes of principalities and powers.
The raising of Jesus Christ shows that He is God the Son. He is the Son of God. He is the Christ. He is the King of kings.
Secondly, it was the final confirmation of His faith. We hardly think of Jesus as having faith. Why? Because He is the Son of God. What does He need faith for?
Yet we quote Galatians 2:20. What does it say? It says, “By the faith of Christ.” The faith in Christ actually is the faith of Christ in me. The faith of Christ. He had faith.
He had paid. He said, “It is finished,” right? So why did He not just come off the cross? It was finished, right? No. He had to go into death for those three days—into death, whatever that means.
We have no idea what it means: full separation for those three days. I was reading G. Campbell Morgan’s The Crisis of the Christ. Have you ever read that? Part of the crisis of the Christ was the resurrection.
You might say, “How can the resurrection be a crisis?” Because He went into death.
Peter, in his sermon on Pentecost, and Paul, in his first recorded sermon in Acts 13, mention Psalm 16:
For Thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol;
Neither wilt Thou suffer Thy holy one to see corruption.
It was His last act of faith. He had to put Himself into the Father’s hands: “Father, into Thy hands I commit My spirit.” Why? For that time, He was going into death for those three days, trusting that He would be raised from the dead.
Think of Abraham having faith to bring his son and kill his son, because Hebrews tells us that he believed his son would be raised from the dead. But what about Isaac? Do you think Isaac had faith?
“Okay, Dad, if you say this is going to happen, I trust you.” Yes, Isaac had faith. That was the faith exercised by the Lord Jesus, because the Lord Jesus was the One who went into death.
His faith was honored, and He was vindicated in being raised from the dead. So when we think of the resurrection, it is not just about us. Consider what it says to the Lord Jesus and what it says about the Lord Jesus to us and to the world. He is who He claimed to be, and more.
Now, what does the resurrection mean for us who believe? There are three things I want to touch on. Look back in Romans 4, beginning with verse 23:
Now it was not written for his sake alone,
That it was reckoned to him;
But for our sake also,
To whom it shall be reckoned,
Who believe on Him that raised Jesus our Lord from the dead,
Who was delivered up for our trespasses,
And was raised for our justification.
There is a great thing that has happened for us in Jesus Christ being raised from the dead. We know that He died for our sins, right? Well, why was He raised?
He was raised to show us that God had accepted His sacrifice. We are now standing on different ground than we have ever stood on before.
This is to be the base camp of our Christian life. This is where we start. This is where we come back often. When we fall, we come back to this place: our justification, our new standing, our new ground to stand on, is not our performance.
It is on what Jesus Christ has done and how God looks at what Jesus Christ has done. He no longer looks at us in ourselves; He looks at us in Christ, risen from the dead.
In Christ risen from the dead, sins are no longer part of us. We stand on resurrection ground, justified in the sight of God. Our sins are no longer there.
The old standing was this: we were justified by our works. When you read the Gospels, everybody is saying, “Well, I keep the law. I do this.” Even Paul said, “I am a keeper of the law. As far as the law, I am blameless. I am a Hebrew of Hebrews.”
But Paul is the very one who writes that no flesh is justified by the works of the law. Boy, what a turnaround he had.
A lot of us go into Catholicism in our practical Christianity. What I mean is this: every so many weeks, we had to go to confession. That was part of the sacrament of confession. You confessed your sins, and then you got penance.
Penance could have been prayers: say ten Our Fathers, twenty Hail Marys, and an act of contrition, and you would be absolved. Or, when we got into Vatican II, it was, “Oh, you stole from your mom? Go tell her you stole from her and give her back the money.” You did a penance.
A lot of us, when we fall, go into the tank looking for penance. We are looking for ways to make ourselves right with God. “Well, if I do these things, maybe if I read my Bible an extra hour, or maybe if…” whatever.
The Lord is saying, “No, that does not count, because all your righteousnesses are filthy rags to Me.” So what am I supposed to do? You are supposed to stand—stand on this ground.
This is what you are supposed to do: stand your ground. It is so hard to do that because we feel, “This cannot be right. I have to do something.” The Lord says, “Yes, this is what you do. You stand here.”
It is humbling. It is a humbling thing to come before the Lord and know that you can stand on this ground, because you know yourself. This is how you get to know what the work of Christ is like for you: humble yourself and come and say, “He bore it all.”
The other way has a kind of sense of pride: “I do this, and now I am right with God.” That is not it. You are only right with God because of what He has done. Nothing else can make you right.
So you must come, and you must stand in this place. It is a base camp. This is the place where we come back.
On Friday night, we were talking about the armor of God, and I started talking about war movies because I watch war movies. Every once in a while, I show movies for my kids, but I make them come after school to watch them because I do not want to waste class time. It is terrible, isn’t it?
But I give them points. They do not have to take notes; they just have to watch the film, and I will ask them a couple of questions later. We were doing World War I, and I had them watch All Quiet on the Western Front, which is about two hours. The girls really struggle with it.
In it, the men go to the front lines. They are in the trenches; they are fighting; they are getting dirty; they are killing. It is like church life. We get in the trenches, we are backbiting one another, we accidentally shoot somebody who is on our side, and we try to help out. We do all that stuff.
Then what do we do after a day in the trenches? Where do we go? They went back to the base camp to refresh, and they sent new people up there.
This is the same thing. We get into church life again, our regular life, whatever. We get into life as it is, and what happens? We get dirty. We fall.
So what do we do? We go back to base camp. What happens there? We get cleaned. We get put on our feet. We get put on the right ground again. Then we march off to the trenches again.
The second thing is this: we are not talking about a circular life where we just go back to Romans 7 and live in Romans 7. You know Romans 7, right? “The things I do, I hate.”
How many have read Pilgrim’s Progress? Raise them high. Let us see them.
At the very beginning of the book—and this is great, I am glad it is at the beginning—the Evangelist points Christian in the way he is supposed to go. Christian is on his way, and he gets stuck in the Slough of Despond.
It is a really swampy area. He is trying to get to the gate, and he falls in there. He cannot get his feet on right ground. He is stuck in this swampy thing where he cannot get a real foothold. The Evangelist comes back and puts him on the right ground.
Another thing we get out of the resurrection is found in 2 Corinthians 5:17. We know this. These are not new things. But remember, it says to bring these things to mind, to ponder them, and to think about what they mean for you.
Wherefore if any man is in Christ,
He is a new creature:
The old things are passed away;
Behold, they are become new.
What does this mean? The resurrection not only puts us on right ground, but now it brings in the new life. We have the life of Christ. The risen life of Christ is now put inside of us by the Holy Spirit.
This is revolutionary. This is the new covenant. He is in our hearts. He is the hope of glory. It is not us attaining; it is this life being lived out through us and in us.
It is a new principle of life at work in us. Everybody uses the airplane illustration. Most of us have traveled on an airplane, right? Just think how those things get off the ground with all those people in them. Why? Because it is a different law of life.
I think I used this one time in the fundamental series, and I got the most reaction from it. I was doing the PowerPoint, and I talked about a bird. I put a picture of a bird up here, and it was a bird walking.
It looked so out of character, right? It was not the way it should be, because that is really not the life of a bird. That is the life of man. A lot of us are birds trying to walk like men. It does not work.
We have a new life in us. We have a new life force in us. We have a new life principle at work in us. Why is that? It is because of the resurrection.
This was gained for us by Christ being raised from the dead. Remember, He said how He was straitened until these things were accomplished. Now that it is accomplished—the death for our sins has been accomplished, and He has been raised from the dead—He can put His life into all of us.
We are all grafted into a new tree, all able to abide in the same life, whether Jew or Gentile. We all have the same life in us, the same life principle at work in us.
Now we can walk, being led by that Spirit—the Spirit of life in us. That is only because of the resurrection. Nothing else gains that for us. It all comes because Christ has been raised from the dead.
The third thing is this. Let us go to 2 Corinthians 2:14:
But thanks be unto God,
Who always leadeth us in triumph in Christ,
And maketh manifest through us
The savor of His knowledge in every place.
What does this mean? Because we have this life in us, we are now led into all the triumphs of Christ. In what way has Christ triumphed in the resurrection? In what way have we been brought into the triumphs of Christ? He leads us in His triumph.
When we first came to the Lord, a lot of us thought, “Oh, we are saved now, and everything is going to be cool. Everything is going to be roses from here.” Then we had the first battles in our lives, and all of a sudden we were dumbstruck. “What is going on here? I am a Christian. Why are these things happening to me?”
Where is the triumph? You go through into the triumph, because there are battles. In the battles, you find the triumph. You do not find triumph by sitting around. You find it by going out and walking where Christ leads you—and Christ leads you into battle.
Then you find out that you have victory over these forces.
Remember David and Goliath. When Goliath was out in full force—and I think Jimmy Mastriani talked about this when he was here—he was out every day saying, “Send me a champion. Come on, let’s do combat here.”
All the Israelites were on the other side of the hill. They listened to him and said, “Oh my gosh, who is going to face this guy? This guy is terrible.” Nobody would go out and face him.
Then who came in? David. David came in and said, “This is the Lord’s battle line. I am going in the Lord’s might.” Then what happened?
He went out to meet Goliath. He did not go out with armor or anything. He went out with a sling, and he found five stones. The first stone connected. What did he do to Goliath? He cut off his head.
Do you understand that? The enemy—you could say Goliath was defeated, could you not? Actually, beheaded, not defeated, right? For all you English majors there.
I could not find this picture. I wanted to find it, but there is a great picture of David holding Goliath’s head.
Now think about this. When David went out there, and they saw Goliath fall, and he chopped off his head and lifted it up, what do you think Israel did?
“Great, David. You are the man. You are it.” They shouted for joy—but that is not all they did.
They advanced, and they routed the Philistines. In other words, the victory was won. Remember what Goliath said: “If he kills me, we will be your slaves. If I kill him, you will be our slaves.”
David killed him. So what do we do? Follow after the man. You follow after your champion. You go in his steps, because he has made that lethal blow—the lethal blow that killed the giant.
It is the same way with Christ and the resurrection. The lethal blow has been dealt. Now it is for us to go up after Him and run after those Philistines.
As we run after Him, it does not mean they are just going to fall over. But it does mean this: they will fall. When I get up there and battle them as I am being led, I might get some scars from fighting, but I will find out that I am going to be triumphant because it is His triumph that I am walking in.
He takes the head of the giant, and we follow after Him in His victory. This is the practical outworking of the new life we talked about before in 2 Corinthians, where we are new creations.
That life brings us to follow the lead of the One who is King in us: Jesus Christ, risen from the dead. He is in us. His life is in us. That life leads us into victory.
We think being led into victory means there is no conflict. No. He leads us into conflict, where we find the victory. We find that we have victory over the enemy in many different things.
If you look, for example, in 1 Chronicles, and follow the life of David, 1 Chronicles is a book of great grace. It does not even mention David’s sin with Bathsheba. It is not in 1 Chronicles.
The only thing in 1 Chronicles where David did wrong was that he numbered the people. But if you look at David when he becomes king, from 1 Chronicles 18 through 20, all it is is victory, victory, victory, victory.
My old Bible—not my thick-page one, which is really nice—had little titles. Those titles said, “Victory over the Philistines,” “Victory over Moab,” “Victory over Zobah,” and “Victory over Syria.”
Then there was victory over Edom, victory over the Ammonites, victory over the Syrians again, victory over the Ammonites again, and victory over the Philistine giants—the sons of Goliath.
All of this: victory, victory, victory, victory. We follow in this triumph. That does not mean we do not have conflict. But in that conflict, there is triumph for us.
That is how we know that He is victorious. We do not know He is victorious merely by singing songs about His victory. We find out that He is victorious when we start following Him into conflict.
Then we can say, like the song we sang at the end:
The horse and his rider hath He thrown into the sea.
But I have to go out to the Red Sea first, do I not? If I do not get out there, I will never find out that God is my Victor. It is not going to happen.
So we have this victory. If you look at the life of Jesus here on earth, you see His victory. In the temptations Jesus had, especially in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, we see Him tempted by the devil.
We find that the life He had, the life He lived as Man in response to God, had victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil. In this life He lived here, He had victory over those things.
But more than that, when He was raised from the dead, we find that the power of sin has been broken.
We are only going to find that with Christ living in us and our following Him. We are going to find out that the power of sin is broken. Wesley wrote—and I have used this a number of times before—in O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing:
He breaks the power of canceled sin.
The power of sin—not sins, but sin, that sin nature—is broken.
You read 1 John, and it talks about he who has His life does not sin. What is it talking about? It is talking about the risen life of Christ. If you are living by that risen life of Christ, you are not going to be found in sin.
When we take the garment off, when we take Christ off and go our own way, that is when we find ourselves going into sin. Then we go back to base camp. We put Christ on again, and we get moving.
We go further. It is not that cycle of Romans 7: doing what I hate. We find ourselves making progress. We are not in the Slough of Despond anymore. We are making progress because we are finding Him as the triumphant One in us.
As long as we are following that moving, that anointing that is in us, and moving forward, we find out that we have victory. It is when we do not follow Him moving that we find ourselves camping out like Jacob, wanting to settle down in the land and just live in Shechem.
Not only that, but it says He broke the power of death. He broke the power of death.
Yes, it says the last enemy to be defeated is death, and death is going to be thrown into the lake of fire. What is death? Death is separation, and that is why people fear it.
We look at death as separating us from loved ones who have died before us. My brother, who said Jesus must have risen because He was gone—well, he is dead. He died. He went to be with the Lord.
I am sure he went to be with the Lord. I am comforted by that. But that is the comfort: there is no separation. When he dies, he is not separated from God.
He is not going into a place saying, “I wonder what is going to happen.” No, it has been defeated. Once I am separated from the body, I am present with the Lord. Those who believe are present with the Lord.
There is no thinking, “Oh, what is going to happen?” No, I am present with the Lord. The sting of death has been removed. The sting of the grave has been removed. He broke it.
By going into death in His last act of faith, He broke its bars so that nobody—nobody who believes—has to fear death anymore.
I know we, as human mortals, fear dying. We fear physical death. But you know something? He is saying, “You do not have to.” How can martyrs give up their lives?
We can say it is for the love of Christ, and yes, it is. The love of Christ constrains them to do that. But they also have no fear of death.
What did Jesus say? You do not have to fear death. Fear the One who, after you die, can throw you into hell. So there is no fear of death for those who believe. What a relief that is.
I can live my life. What does it say in Hebrews? Someone used it a few weeks ago:
Who through fear of death
Were all their lifetime subject to bondage.
We do not have to be bound by that fear anymore. We are free to live. We are free to live for God. That is the wonderful thing about the resurrection.
We are no longer bound by, “Oh, Jesus, am I doing the right thing? Oh, am I good with God?” What made us good with God? His death and resurrection. We do not have to fear that anymore.
We should want to follow the Lord. We know we will be called into account for our lives here, but there is no fear of judgment anymore in that way. We are free from that. We are now free to serve the Lord.
That is the whole thing about being freed from sin. You are freed from sin—why? So you can serve God. That is the wonderful thing: I am free to serve God. He will take me, the one that I am, with all my baggage, and He will let me serve Him.
Why? Because of Christ. Because of Christ. We should rejoice in that.
Finally, what does the resurrection mean to God? A lot of times, we do not think of these things, but it does some wonderful things for God.
First of all, man is recovered. Man is totally recovered. Sometimes we sing, “There is a Man in the glory.” That is what He has: He has a Man in the glory now.
We might not think much of this, but this is very, very important to the Lord. In Ephesians 1:19, it says:
And what the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe,
According to that working of the strength of His might
Which He wrought in Christ,
When He raised Him from the dead,
And made Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly places,
Far above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion.
Not only did He raise Him from the dead; having raised Him from the dead, He seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule, authority, and power.
He is not held by anything. You have a Man in the glory who is not held by anything. Sin has not attached itself to Him. He bore sin, but sin never attached itself to Him.
“The prince of the world cometh,” Jesus said in John, “and he hath nothing in Me.” He has nothing in Me, no part in Me. So we have this Man in the glory.
What does this mean? Now that God has this Man, He can put His King on the throne. He has been waiting for this. He has been waiting for His King, His Man, the Son of David.
Remember, He made that promise to David: “I will set a man from your house on the throne, and he shall reign forever and ever. There will be no end to His kingdom.” Now God has this. He has His King.
This King, from His throne in the heavens, is ruling to establish God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. God has the Man, the King, the power, and the authority in Man to do this now. This is what He has been waiting for.
God also has His King who is able, because of His righteousness, to judge the earth. The earth is going to be judged, but it has to be judged by One who is righteous.
You cannot look at men and say, “Who is going to judge the earth?” This Man will judge the earth—the Man who is righteous, who cannot be bought with a bribe, who cannot be pulled into someone else’s influence because of the power they promise Him.
Nothing can move Him. He is righteous, and He will judge in righteousness.
God also has the King who will build His house. Just as Solomon was to build the house after David fought and brought the victories, now we have what Jesus said:
I will build My church;
And the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it.
God now has the Man who will build His house, His church. He has all the materials, and He is able to provide from the riches of Himself everything that is needed.
The only thing we provide God with is wood. You look at the symbolism in the building of the ark and the temple. The ark was made out of wood, right? Wood speaks of humanity.
But it was not left as wood. It was not wood polished up and everything. It was wood covered up. It was covered by gold.
It was covered by the riches of the wealth of Christ: the life of Christ, the character of Christ—gold. Then you have the silver of redemption.
You look at the building of the temple and all the things stored up by David and used by Solomon. You find gold and silver. The cost of the whole house has already been provided.
Then you even have bronze—bronze, judgment. The Lord wants to lay His finger on things in us as He builds His house. He wants to make us according to the Cornerstone.
Who is the Cornerstone? It is Christ. He has the One who will build His house.
Finally, in the very end, when all these things are accomplished, this One will take everything and give it back to God.
This is what God has been waiting for. This is what has been taken away from God, and what Christ has done by being raised from the dead is make it possible for Him to gather all things up into Himself and then give them back to the Father.
That is what He has been waiting for. That is what His desire has been since creation—indeed, since before creation. All of this is in the resurrection.
Now, the last thing: what should be our response? How should we respond to these things?
Where is the resurrection chapter in the Bible? First Corinthians 15. I thought somebody was going to give me a Gospel. First Corinthians 15, right? This is the Gospel. There is no Gospel without resurrection.
The last verse of 1 Corinthians 15 says this, 1 Corinthians 15:58:
Wherefore, my beloved brethren,
Be ye steadfast, unmovable,
Always abounding in the work of the Lord,
Forasmuch as ye know that your labor is not vain in the Lord.
How should we respond first? Do not be moved off this ground. That is it. Be immovable.
In Hebrews, there are all these warnings. There is a lot that says, “Hold fast.” Have you read those places in Paul’s writings and in Hebrews? Hold fast to what you believed in the beginning.
What did you believe in the beginning? That Jesus died for my sin and was raised for my justification, right? Hold fast to that. That is your ground. That is the ground of salvation. Hold fast, and do not be moved off that.
“Well, you might do that, but you need a second blessing.” No, no, no. Hold fast. “Oh no, but you need some sanctification.” No, no, no, no. Hold fast. The Lord will sanctify you.
His life in you is a sanctifying life. You do not have to worry about having some experience. No, the Lord is in you. If you let the Lord lead you, if you let His life in you lead you, you will be sanctified. You will be made holy.
All the things necessary for salvation are going to be accomplished in you because His life is in you. If you follow that life, all those things will be made. When we see Him, we will be like Him.
Then it says, “Abounding in the work.” In other words, be about the business of the Lord. Be caught up in what He is doing. Be aware of what He is doing so that you can be part of what He is doing.
Now that you know He is raised from the dead, stand on that. Do not be moved from it. Do not be moved from what has been gained for you by that resurrection, that ascension, and that death.
Then be about His business. As He is leading you out, do not quench the Holy Spirit. Do not grieve the Spirit. Follow Him into that place where you are following Him into His triumphs.
In His service, you will find the triumph of Christ. “How can I do this?” He says, “Look at Me. Just do it because I have told you to do it. I will be with you.”
Then you go with it, and all of a sudden you find out you have triumphed over your fear. You have triumphed over your self-consciousness. You have triumphed over your sin because you have gone out to do His service.
This is a wonderful thing. This is wonderful news. Brothers and sisters, this is the whole thing: we should be a rejoicing people.
None of us should ever be like the muckrakers in Pilgrim’s Progress, always looking down here, trying to find things. If you look inside, you are going to find things. You open a closet door, and you are going to find something in there that is dead and smelly.
I did when I was a kid. I hated milk. It had to be flavored. Remember when they had flavor straws? One day, in first grade, my mom forgot to pack my flavor straw. “Oh, what am I going to do with my milk?” I put it in my desk and forgot about it.
It was during Easter vacation, because we got a couple of days off. When I came back, the teacher said, “Let’s clean out our desks.” Guess what I found? My milk carton.
I had to go out and empty it. It was like eggshells. It stunk to high heaven. You look, and you are going to find things, right?
But the thing is, you do not have to be looking down here. You are not looking at what is going to make you more perfect. You are looking up at the crown. You are looking out for what is waiting for you.
That is the hope of the resurrection. We look for the hope of the resurrection. We should be those who are rejoicing, filled with joy—not because we are good, not because we have done something, but because of all Christ has done for us.
We should have a song in our hearts. When we wake up, the first thing we should be saying is, “Thank You, Lord. I am on resurrection ground, and it cannot be taken from me.”
It is a wonderful thing. So, brothers and sisters, I encourage us all: let us go out this week and walk in the light of the resurrection.
Let us remember Jesus Christ, risen from the dead. Let us ponder what that means for us. As we ponder, and the Lord shows us what it means for us, let us walk in those things.
Let us find how wonderful it is that we have a risen Savior, what this means for us, what this means for God, and what the world will have to confess when they bow the knee to Him who was raised from the dead.
Let us pray.
Father, we just want to thank You. We want to thank You for our Savior. We want to thank You that You sent a Man for us. You sent Christ, who came, laid aside His deity, and became a Man for us.
He served You, lived before You, offered that life up for us, and bore our sin. You raised Him from the dead because You were pleased with Him. You were pleased with His life. You were pleased with His sacrifice.
You raised Him from the dead, and You have seated Him on high. He has placed His life in us, that we might also sit with Him on that throne forever.
How can we not praise You and thank You? Lord, we pray that our hearts and our eyes would be lifted toward that, and that we would be encouraged and find the strength of the life of the Lord.
May we find that we can follow in His triumphs. Instead of looking for all the things that are against us, may we find instead His triumph.
Let us see Goliath’s head severed from him. Let us follow after this One who goes after the Philistines. Let us, Lord, rejoice. Put a song in our mouths, Lord, we pray—praise to You. In Jesus’ name, amen.