Sermon Tone Analysis

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Last week we looked at the first part of 1 Corinthians and the first evidence that the Apostle Paul presents as evidence of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Today, we are going to look at a second evidence that the Apostle Paul provided.

Next week we will look at a third.

Paul wrote,

READ BIBLE UNFILTERED ON THE AFTERLIFE CH. 33

Today, we are going to look at a second evidence that the Apostle Paul provided in for the Gospel account or the message about Jesus Christ that the church is founded on.

Paul wrote,

Today, we are going to look at a second evidence that the Apostle Paul provided in for the Gospel account or the message about Jesus Christ that the church is founded on.

Paul wrote,

(CSB) — For I passed on to you as most important what I also received: that Christ … was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.

Just like in last weeks message, Paul appeals to the scriptures.

The thinking is that if God foreknew and had his people record in the scriptures what would happen hundreds of years before the events occured, then that is evidence that the happening is real.

I shared this quote from A. W. Tozer on Thursday night.

He wrote,

God has lived all our tomorrows and knows no yesterday and no tomorrow but swallows up yesterday and tomorrow in one everlasting now.

~ A. W. Tozer

A. W. Tozer, And He Dwelt among Us: Teachings from the Gospel of John, ed.

James L. Snyder (Ventura, CA: Regal, 2009), 101.

God was able to put his plan in the minds of men hundreds of years ago because the timeless, eternal God see’s the entire scope of history from beginning to end in what Tozer calls, the ‘everlasting now.’

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So, it shouldn’t surprise us to see historic records in the past pointing forward to events in the future.

And it also should not surprise us when we see the fulfillment of the scriptures in the present.

If God is who He says He is, then God should be seen everywhere.

And He is seen all throughout the scriptures.

The ancients believed that Jesus fulfilled all of the prophesies about the Old Testament Messiah.

And thus, they wrote what today we call the New Testament.

And that New Testament serves as evidence to us that the prophesies were in fact fulfilled and Jesus is in fact the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one of God who takes away the sins of the world.

So, for our purposes today, we want to explore Paul’s statement that 1) Jesus Christ was buried, 2) he came back from the dead, and 3) I want to explore the implication of Christ’s ressurection, which is that He rose and became Lord over all.

And we want to do that from the Old Testament texts.

So, let’s begin with the first one.

The scriptures teach that…

The Messiah would be Buried

The Messiah would be Buried

This is an important point, today and for the early church.

The concern is that people might try to say that Jesus didn’t really die, that he was still alive when they took him off the cross and put him in the tomb.

So, then maybe the disciples snuck his body away and nursed him back to health and that’s how he appeared to have been resurrected.

These are the sorts of arguments that people fabricate.

But, there’s absolutely no historic precedent for that argument, inside or outside of the Bible.

What actually occurs in the scriptures is, Jesus has already been hanging on the cross all day, and then this:

(CSB) — Since it was the preparation day, the Jews did not want the bodies to remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a special day).

They requested that Pilate have the men’s legs broken and that their bodies be taken away.

So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first man and of the other one who had been crucified with him.

When they came to Jesus, they did not break his legs since they saw that he was already dead.

But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once blood and water came out.

He who saw this has testified so that you also may believe.

His testimony is true, and he knows he is telling the truth.

For these things happened so that the Scripture would be fulfilled: Not one of his bones will be broken.

Also, another Scripture says: They will look at the one they pierced.

There’s a significant emphasis on the actual death of Jesus.

When blood and water pour out it is because you have already been dead some time and the red blood cells have coagulated so that the blood separates.

[THE MESSIAH WOULD BE BURIED]

Jesus couldn’t have been more dead.

And you can see John sees several prophesies fulfilled, that his bones would not be broken and so forth.

But, let’s look at this significant one, that Christ really died.

The death of the Messiah shows up in the two most important Messianic passages in the Old Testament.

In , the Psalmist writes in the voice of the Messiah,

(CSB) — My strength is dried up like baked clay; my tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth.

You put me into the dust of death.

The Messiah would be Buried

I love the imagery here.

Just as Adam was created from the dust of the earth and life was breathed into his lifeless body, the Psalmist imagines the Messiah returning to the dust of the earth as a euphemism, not to distract from, but to accentuate the reality of the Messiah’s death.

He was buried in the earth.

Returning to the dust.

The second passage is from and I prefer the King James tradition for the rendering of this passage.

It says,

(KJV) — And he made his grave with the wicked, And with the rich in his death; Because he had done no violence, Neither was any deceit in his mouth.

,

The wording is a little weird, but it’s preferable because of the implications it gives.

First, it says that he made his grave with the wicked.

The fulfillment of this prophesy came when Jesus hung beside two criminals on the cross.

But, because he had done no violence and had never spoken deceitful words, he was with the rich in his death.

That is to say, he was buried with the rich.

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His body wasn’t burned or buried in a shallow grave.

Rather, his body was to be anointed and laid in a tomb—actually, for Jesus it would occur the opposite way because of the Sabbath, but he rose before the anointing could occur.

It’s interesting, because, you can see some of the very specific details in the Old Testament come to fruition in the New Testament, and for Paul this was trustworthy evidence that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah of Israel.

And it should be for us as well.

The second part of this is that…

The Messiah would Rise

…and this follows from the previous point, because if not for a very real death, then the ressurection is a rouse.

The Jews believed the Messiah would die a very real death and that he would rise from the dead.

The interesting thing is, they never really used the words rise or resurrect.

They didn’t say that the Messiah would rise.

And that’s because the scriptures—Old and New Testaments—don’t focus so much on the event of the ressurection as they do on the state of the resurrection, although the event is mentioned several times in the New Testament.

Notice what Paul said to Timothy,

(CSB) — Avoid irreverent and empty speech, since those who engage in it will produce even more godlessness, and their teaching will spread like gangrene.

Hymenaeus and Philetus are among them.

They have departed from the truth, saying that the resurrection has already taken place, and are ruining the faith of some.

There were people who were teaching that ‘the resurrection’ had already occured and by that they did not mean that Jesus’s resurrection had occured.

They meant that the world had entered into a period of time, an new era, which was called the resurrection.

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This was a false teaching, because, the resurrection is taught—Old and New Testament—as a perfected state.

And thus, we will not be in the resurrection until all things are made new, which we read about in .

But, notice the way Paul talks about the resurrection.

It’s not an event.

It’s an era in time.

The resurrection is heaven or the afterlife, if you prefer to think of it that way.

So, as we look to the Old Testament scriptures to find the resurrection, what we are really looking for is the afterlife.

So, let’s look at these passages.

King David wrote,