Resurrection Hope

We live in a glorious age. Yes, the news outlets, social media, and our constant connection to the Internet continue to funnel stories to us that make us see how much is wrong in the world, but beauty continues to shine regardless of how dark it gets. I love living in this time. I love the information age. I love that I can pull up almost anything I want to know at a moment’s notice. As a massive fan of YouTube, I am convinced there is a YouTube video for everything. A lot of it is entertaining, but a lot of it is also educational.

Did you know you can repair a car, an appliance, or a leaky faucet by watching YouTube? There used to be these books called DIY manuals. You remember what DIY stands for: Do It Yourself. If you could do something yourself without having to hire a professional, do you know how much money you would save?

But you know, it doesn’t matter how many YouTube videos I watch about repairing cars. I will not try to repair my own vehicle. I can almost guarantee that I will make it worse. Have you ever experienced that? You see something, and think, “Yeah, I could do that” only to discover you are horribly wrong?

Adjacent to DIY is self help. Did you know there are over 400,000 self help books listed on Amazon? Did you know approximately 15,000 new books are published every year? The self help genre of literature is one of the fastest growing genres and worth an estimated $10 billion. Do you know what that tells me? It tells me a couple things.

First, we all instinctively know something is broken. We experience brokenness everyday. We experience it when the government doesn’t do its job. We experience it when others mistreat us. We experience it when natural disasters strike. We experience it when we lose a loved one. We experience it when we don’t measure up to the standard we have established for ourselves. We all know that the world is broken, and so are we.

Second, it tells me that the world’s answer to its brokenness problem is found within us. Through a self help book or a DIY project you can be better. I don’t want you to think that is untrue. I have received great insight from books that would be classified as self help literature. But the Bible tells us that the solution to the world’s brokenness does not come from within it, but from outside of it.

The Bible tells us that the answer to our brokenness was not trying to fix it ourselves, but rather God fixing it himself. He sent Jesus, who died on a cross, bearing our sins, and receiving the wrath of God’s justice on our behalf, and purchased our pardon and secured for us adoption into the family of God. Easter is a celebration of the fact that Jesus has risen from the dead not to fix our old life, but to give us a brand new one.

The hope of resurrection.

This hope of resurrection has existed for millennia. If you have a Bible, turn with me to Psalm 16. David, the king of Israel, writes many of the psalms. He was a great poet. This psalm begins with David seeking safety in the Lord. He rejects the worship of other gods. In the middle of the psalm we see a closeness of relationship between God and David.

Psalm 16:5–10 NASB95

The Lord is the portion of my inheritance and my cup; You support my lot. The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places; Indeed, my heritage is beautiful to me. I will bless the Lord who has counseled me; Indeed, my mind instructs me in the night. I have set the Lord continually before me; Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoices; My flesh also will dwell securely. For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol; Nor will You allow Your Holy One to undergo decay.

Now, the Bible tells the story of David as a troublesome one. When he was chosen as the next king, Saul, the present king, tried to kill him. After becoming king, David committed a grave sin by sleeping with another man’s wife and tried covering it up by having the man killed. One of his sons ran him out of Jerusalem and tried to take over. His family life was a mess. David was far from perfect, but he was a man who loved the Lord.

Verses nine and ten provide a window into David’s hope. He says his flesh dwells secure. He is not afraid of death. He knows that God will not abandon his soul to Sheol, the name for the place of the dead. The second line says that God’s holy one will not see corruption. Now, you need to understand something about Hebrew poetry for a second. Rather than using a rhyming pattern like English poetry is known for, Hebrew poetry used something called parallelism. It looks to the relationship between lines for understanding. One of the most common forms of this is synonymous parallelism. Synonymous parallelism shows that the first line and the second line are saying the same thing, yet in a different way. In Psalm 16:10, David is talking about himself. So how does this Psalm provide resurrection hope?

Over 1000 years later, Jesus had been crucified, laid in a tomb, and rose from the dead three days later. After appearing to his disciples numerous times over a forty day period, he ascends into heaven. Ten days later is the day of Pentecost, a Jewish festival in which Jews from all over the world traveled to Jerusalem. On that day, the Holy Spirit fell on the followers of Jesus. They begin speaking in different languages, causing a bit of a commotion among the crowd. Peter begins preaching, and cites Psalm 16:10 as David’s hope of resurrection.

Acts 2:22–36 NASB95

“Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know— this Man, delivered over by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. “But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power. “For David says of Him, ‘I saw the Lord always in my presence; For He is at my right hand, so that I will not be shaken. ‘Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue exulted; Moreover my flesh also will live in hope; Because You will not abandon my soul to Hades, Nor allow Your Holy One to undergo decay. ‘You have made known to me the ways of life; You will make me full of gladness with Your presence.’ “Brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. “And so, because he was a prophet and knew that God had sworn to him with an oath to seat one of his descendants on his throne, he looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that He was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh suffer decay. “This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses. “Therefore having been exalted to the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured forth this which you both see and hear. “For it was not David who ascended into heaven, but he himself says: ‘The Lord said to my Lord, “Sit at My right hand, Until I make Your enemies a footstool for Your feet.” ’ “Therefore let all the house of Israel know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ—this Jesus whom you crucified.”

In his sermon, Peter argues that the words of Psalm 16 do not merely speak of David’s hope that death would not take him before it was time, but that he was also speaking of the resurrection of Christ, that would happen over 1000 years later. How could this be? Peter says that David, having already known that God promised him that one of his descendants would sit on his throne forever, was given a glimpse of the future, so that the words recorded in Psalm 16:10 both apply to David himself and the promised descendant to come. David wasn’t speaking of his own resurrection, but he had resurrection hope.

The reality of resurrection.

The context of Acts 2 is the day of Pentecost. Jerusalem is filled with people. The Holy Spirit comes upon the gathered disciples of Christ, and they begin speaking in tongues, in languages foreign to them but known to those visiting from all over the known world. This causes quite a commotion, and leads to Peter’s sermon recorded in Acts 2.

The resurrection of Jesus is a great hope, but it is a tough thing for someone to put their faith in. Peter is speaking to a Jewish audience. Most of them have a solid background on the teachings of the Old Testament. The New Testament shows us that the Old Testament is speaking of Christ, and we can see even from a passage like Psalm 16:10 that David meant more than what he said. It not only applied to himself, but the descendant to come who would be the fulfillment of God’s promise made in 2 Samuel 7.

On resurrection Sunday, there was for sure a commotion because a tomb that held a very controversial figure was now empty. But his disciples were not out preaching the resurrection for the last 50 days. Only when they had received the Holy Spirit did they begin preaching on the resurrection of Jesus and it became the central message of Christianity.

The cross doesn’t matter if the resurrection never happened. Jesus is irrelevant if the resurrection never happened. But what Peter is saying is that the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, prophesied by the prophet Joel is direct evidence that Jesus, the Son of God, has indeed risen from the dead. What people were experiencing on the day of Pentecost would never have happened if Jesus was still in his tomb. Jesus promised his disciples in John 14-16 that he would be leaving, but the Holy Spirit would be sent to them. Peter is testifying to the crowd that what they are experiencing is the reality of a resurrected Jesus. Because Christ rose and ascended, the Holy Spirit has come. He is fulfilling Joel’s prophecy, David’s vision of the Holy One not seeing decay, and providing evidence for those with eyes to see.

The resurrection of Christ is as sure as the sunset. Acts 2 would have never been written if Jesus was still dead.

But what does that mean for you and I? Well, there is still a promise of resurrection.

The promise of resurrection.

The resurrection of Jesus is meaningless if it doesn’t mean something for us. It would be silly to believe in the resurrection of Jesus if he was the only one who would rise from the dead. But what the Bible teaches us is that Jesus is one who has power over life and death. Not long before his own death and resurrection, Jesus raised a man named Lazarus from the dead. It was one of the greatest miracles he had ever performed. If Jesus can raise Lazarus from the dead, and God the Father can raise Jesus from the dead, and the Bible teaches us that our sinfulness is traded for Christ’s righteousness, then we too can be raised from the dead.

The resurrection of Jesus was the central teaching of the early church. It still is the central teaching of the church. Remember that the hope of resurrection in Psalm 16 was that the promised descendant of David would not be abandoned to the grave, but be raised to life. The fact that Jesus has been raised paved the way for us to receive the Holy Spirit, a down payment on the promise of our future resurrection.

Paul writes to the Thessalonian church that those who pass away before his return will be among the first to rise when he returns. But the promise of resurrection is not just for our physical bodies one day in the future. It is for right now.

Ephesians 2:4–5 NASB95

But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved),

Being made alive is a present reality. We are described as spiritually dead. Paul says we were dead in our trespasses and sins. Every person is spiritually dead until awakened by the Holy Spirit of God. If you are in Christ today, you have already experienced a resurrection of the spirit. Your body is next.

Romans 8:11 NASB95

But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.

The Holy Spirit dwells in the life of the believer, giving life to his mortal body. This is not just a future hope, but a today hope. The greatest problem any human faces is that the spiritual part of us is dead because of sin, but Christ dies and rises again so that the spiritual part of us may be resurrected to new life in Christ.

Christianity is not just another attempt at self help. It is not a system by which we fix our own lives through a code of ethics.

Easter means we can finally stop trying to fix our old lives and start living a brand new one through the power of the Spirit.

We are powerless to fix our own lives. But Jesus doesn’t want to fix your life. He wants to transform it. The gospel of Jesus Christ offers complete transformation from the inside out. He’s not interested in cleaning you up. He wants to make you into something entirely new.

2 Corinthians 5:17 NASB95

Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creature; the old things passed away; behold, new things have come.

Let me show you what I mean. I came to faith when I was 20 years old. A year before that I was arrested for the second time. I found out years later that you could look up your own arrest records, so I did. I found my mug shot from when I was 19, and I keep this image as a reminder of where I once was. Christ didn’t just step in and fix my life. He transformed it. The man you see in that old picture walked into a church one morning, heard a message that would change his life, but he would never walk out of that church. A new man did.

If God can accomplish this work in me, what do you think he can do in you if you will let him? So I’ll ask you the same question God asked me in December 2005. “Isn’t it time you come home?”

You see, for some of you, there has been this nagging feeling that there is something missing and you haven’t been able to identify it. You’ve been searching for something to fill the void and you haven’t found it yet. You’ve been searching for a physical solution to a spiritual problem. The only solution is to turn to Jesus.

There are others here today who professed faith in Jesus years ago, but you feel more like the guy you see on screen than the one standing in front of you. There is a way for you to go from who you are to who God wants you to be. Come home. Just come home. God had you show up today just so you could hear this. Come home.

There are those who are faithful, and God sees your faithfulness. What is the next thing he wants to work on in your life? Maintain the hunger for his righteousness. Pray for those who are far from God. Care for them. Share with them that where they are now is not where they need to stay.