Let’s open our Bibles to Matthew chapter 28 as we return to Matthew’s narrative on the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. The world has heard many important messages. The world has learned many great truths. The world has experienced many dramatic and life-changing events. But not any one of them nor all of them combined can come close to the significance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Nothing in the history of the world…in fact, not everything in the history of the world can match for significance the reality that Jesus was raised from the dead.
In the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the heart of the Christian faith. Christianity is a belief, is a series of truths and doctrines and principles that rise and fall on the resurrection of Christ. When Jesus rose from the dead, He proved Himself to be exactly who He claimed to be. When He rose from the dead by the power of the Father, He was affirmed to have accomplished what He came to accomplish. And in 2 Corinthians 4:14 it says that as God raised up Jesus from the dead, so also shall He raise us up. Ours is a belief in resurrection life and that is built on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because He lives, we shall live also.
Now the message of the Scripture has always been a message of resurrection hope, that death is not the end. Death is not a cul-de-sac, it’s not a dead-end street. For the believer it’s a thoroughfare that enters into eternity. That’s always been the belief of the people of God. In Psalm 49:15, for example, the Scripture says God will ransom my soul from the power of the grave. In Psalm 73 and verse 24 we read, “Afterward…that is after this life, speaking to God…Thou wilt receive me to glory.” The prophet Hosea in chapter 6 verse 2 confidently asserts that God will raise us up that we may live before Him. The great prophet Isaiah in chapter 26 and verse 19 says, “Thy dead shall live, their bodies shall rise. O dwellers of the dust, awake and sing for joy.” And in Daniel 12 verse 2 there is the great promise that those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake unto everlasting life.
In the fourteenth chapter of Job, one of the oldest books in Scripture, verse 14 says, “If a man die, shall he live again? All the days of my appointed time, will I wait…says the answer…till my change come.” And in the nineteenth chapter of Job and verse 25 through 27 we read, “For I know that my redeemer lives and that He shall stand at the latter day on the earth and though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God whom I shall see for myself and not another, though my heart be consumed within me.” And so, the testimony of Job is that no matter what happens to his flesh, some day in a new flesh He will see God.
That has been the hope of God’s people for all history. And it is a hope predicated on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is His resurrection that guarantees ours. It is His resurrection, says Paul, that is the firstfruits of all that slept. He is the guarantor of our resurrection. Is it any wonder then that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is mentioned at least 104 times in the New Testament?
The resurrection may be denied, it may be despised, it may be mocked, men may make an effort to explain it away, to give some rational arguments to explain the phenomena, but frankly I think only a fool would want to explain away the resurrection of Christ because in so doing he explains himself right into eternal doom. For the only hope of life after death, the only hope of eternal salvation, the only hope of being with God in glory forever is the resurrection of Christ. To explain that away is to damn all of the human race. Only a fool would do that. But there have been many such fools.
I’m reminded of the account of a missionary by the name of Dr. Bull. He was a Methodist missionary to the Riucco(?) Islands of Japan. And he visited on one occasion the island of Amacusa(?). And on that island he found a grave, a mass grave. And he was told that the burial there was a burial of Christians. And as he deciphered the marker on the grave he found that there were 11,111 heads taken from the bodies of Christians and buried in that place. The date of the grave is 1637, the same year in which the Japanese government ordered all Christians exterminated. And in this case he was told that they put the heads in one place and the bodies in another place to frustrate the Christian’s hope of resurrection, feeling that if there was ever a resurrection God wouldn’t be able to figure out what head went with what body. Foolish people.
Listen, the resurrection of Jesus Christ guarantees the resurrection of every saint, no matter what happens to the body. That is the promise of Scripture. And this then is unarguably the single greatest event in the history of the world. You cannot just slide the resurrection out of Christianity. Anybody who denies the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ cannot be a Christian. He can only falsely claim the title because the resurrection is the heart of everything in the Christian faith.
Look with me for a moment to the fifteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians and let me show you the centrality of the resurrection and the argument of the Apostle Paul. If there is no resurrection there is no Christian faith, there is no hope, there is no salvation, there is no eternal life. And he makes that argument very clear in 1 Corinthians 15 beginning in verse 13. He says, “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then is Christ not risen?” So let’s start with that assumption…Christ is not risen. Let’s say that Christ did not rise. We’ll try to explain the fact that His body wasn’t there another way. We’ll try to explain the fact that the grave clothes were lying in perfect order another way. We’ll try another angle. Maybe somebody took His body, maybe He never was dead and He just kind of awakened in the coolness of the tomb and got up and walked out. Let’s say He didn’t rise.
Then verse 14 says, “If Christ is not risen then our preaching is useless because the gospel says men are sinners and sinners need a Savior and Christ is that Savior and Christ has paid the penalty for sin and conquered death if He did rise. If He did not rise then He is as dead as everybody else is and He didn’t do a thing for us. His payment was not accepted. He was not powerful enough.” So if Christ is not risen, then gospel preaching is useless. There is no good news. The news is all bad.
The next statement in his argument comes in the same verse, verse 14, “And your faith is also useless,” and he repeats that in verse 17. “If Christ is not raised your faith is useless.” If Christ is not risen then all gospel preaching is useless and anyone who believes it is exercising an absolutely useless faith because a dead Christ is not good news and believing in a dead Christ is pointless.
Furthermore, verse 15 Paul says, “Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God because we have testified of Christ that He raised up Christ whom He raised not up if so be that the dead rise not.” In other words, he says all the Apostles are liars. And men whom the world has honored for centuries and whom the world has esteemed as men of truth and morality and conviction and ethics are nothing but a bunch of liars. If Christ is not risen, gospel preaching is useless, faith in it is useless and the Apostles are liars who repeatedly preach that Christ did rise.
Furthermore, verse 17 says “If Christ be not raised your faith is vain or useless and you are yet in your sins.” And the next point in his argument is that the power of sin is unbroken. And every man therefore is under the total domination of sin to be doomed and damned forever by it. No, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is not just negotiable reality, it is the very cornerstone of the Christian faith. And if you remove it, the whole thing comes down.
Furthermore, verse 18 says, “Then they also who are fallen asleep, or who have already died in Christ, are damned.” If Christ is not risen, gospel preaching is useless, faith in it is useless, the Apostles are liars, sin’s power is unbroken and everybody who died hoping in Christ is damned.
Therefore he says in verse 19, “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” If Christ didn’t rise from the dead, then Christians are putting their hope in a different Christ and they are the most pitiful people in the world.
But bless God, He did rise. And let’s go back to Matthew 28 and see His resurrection. And this is the theme of Matthew’s last chapter. This is the climax of 28 chapters of the life of Christ. It is the monumental event of history. The simplicity of which he presents it is thrilling. The lack of effort to try to prove it but to just let it speak for itself is convincing.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
