Christ Church

Resurrection Authority (Easter 2021)

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INTRODUCTION

Because Jesus rose from the dead, in fulfillment of the words of the ancient prophets (Acts 3:24), and because He did so in fulfillment of His own confident pronouncements that He would rise (Matt. 20:18-19), the gospel message of the resurrected Christ has true authority. It is not the thing that must be proven, it is the ultimate and most glorious proof. Moreover, the preached message of the resurrection is not something to be placed under a microscope and examined in order to be proven. Rather, the declared message is also itself a proof. The resurrection proves, and also the preaching of the resurrection proves.

THE TEXT

“And as they spake unto the people, the priests, and the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees, came upon them, being grieved that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection from the dead. And they laid hands on them, and put them in hold unto the next day: for it was now eventide. Howbeit many of them which heard the word believed; and the number of the men was about five thousand” (Acts 4:1–4).

SUMMARY OF THE TEXT

In the early chapters of Acts, the apostles and early disciples had received the power of the Spirit poured out upon them at Pentecost (Acts 2). Remember that this Holy Spirit who is poured out upon them is the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead (Rom. 8:11). So all this activity is all part of the same “motion,” as it were. As a result, all of Jerusalem was in a churn. Thousands were coming into the church, three thousand on the first day alone (Acts 2:41).

On one of these early occasions, they were preaching Christ (Acts 3), and in the course of that message, Peter said something really profound, something that goes down to the bedrock of all reality. He preached to the crowd that they were the culprits, and that they were the ones who “killed the Prince of life, whom God hath raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses” (Acts 3:15). One might ask how the Prince of life could ever be killed, but apparently the question should be how the Prince of life could possibly remain dead.

As this was going on, the authorities stepped in with an attempt to regain control of the situation (Acts 4:1). They were deeply pained that the apostles were teaching the people, and were preaching “through Jesus the resurrection from the dead” (v. 2). Apart from the Sadducees, the Jews were firmly convinced of the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. And these followers of Christ were preaching that this doctrine had just been accomplished through Jesus. The end of the world had broken out in the middle of history. So the authorities laid hands on them, and put them in custody until the next day, because it was getting late (v. 3). But even though the preachers were hauled off, many still believed. Believed what? They believed in the resurrection through Jesus. The number of men in the church by this point was about five thousand (v. 4). The church is exploding. And the next day, when Peter is explaining how the cripple was made whole, he does it by naming “Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the dead . . .” (v. 10). He simply declares it as a fact.

PROVING THE PROOFS

Christ was truly kind to His disciples after the resurrection. In one place it says that they disbelieved on account of their joy (Luke 24:41). He condescends to invite Thomas to put his finger in the wound in His side (John. 20:27), which should be considered a proof. And we find this in the opening verses of Acts:

“To whom also he shewed himself alive after his passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to the kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3).

All this was Christ’s condescension and kindness. Remember what He said to Thomas:

“Jesus saith unto him, Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29).

So it is not the case that Thomas had the best of it. It is not the case that he had all the security he could wish for, but then we have to walk across the lake on the thin ice. No—we are under the blessing of Christ. We have not seen, and yet we have believed. But although we have not seen, what do we have? We have heard, which is best of all.

Hearing about the resurrection when it is preached is not the tail end of two thousand years of playing the telephone game. No. The Spirit inhabits the preaching of the resurrection, and when Christ risen is preached, the work of resurrection is ongoing and continuing.

DECLARED WITH POWER

How do we know that Jesus will judge the whole world? We know because God raised Him up. The resurrection here is the proof, it is the evidence.

“Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead” (Acts 17:31).

Jesus is declared to be the Son of God, and what is it that cinches that declaration? It is the resurrection from the dead.

“And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead” (Romans 1:4)

The Lord Jesus came back to life after He had been killed, but we have to note the context. He came to life again after having been killed in a world governed by death. That resurrection was like sticking a piece of paper into the fire, and setting the corner of the sheet of paper on fire. You watch it glow, and then catch, and then spread. As it spreads, please remember that it is the same fire.

“Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into death: that like as Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Rom. 6:4).

When the resurrection is preached, and people come to life under the hearing of it, it is the same life that brought Jesus out of the grave again. Not a different life, but the same life. The Christ has been raised, and we know that He has been raised because He is here with us, in us, under us, and above us. Christ is risen. He is risen indeed.

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An Easter Conscience

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THE TEXT

1 Cor. 15:1–19

PHARISEES AND SADDUCEES

Acts 22:30-23:10
When Paul appears before the Sanhedrin, he appeals to his belief in the resurrection. This was a point of theology that divided the Pharisees and the Sadducees. The Pharisees believed in a resurrection and the Sadducees did not. Paul’s appeal effectively split the Sanhedrin’s opposition to Paul’s teaching.

THE RESURRECTED CHRIST IN THE CHRISTIAN’S IDENTITY

However, I would argue that the doctrine of the resurrection was more than just a conveniently divisive point for Paul at this moment. Paul argues that the risen Christ is the foundation for the Christian’s identity (Gal. 2:20, Col. 3:1). And fundamental to this resurrected identity is the forgiveness that we have in Christ.

AND FORGIVENESS IS CENTRAL TO THIS IDENTITY

In 1 Cor. 15, Paul argues that the fact that Christ rose from the dead means that we are forgiven. The resurrection of Jesus is the central miracle of the Bible. And that resurrection is a testimony that another incredible miracle has happened – you have been forgiven of your sins.

THE CONSCIENCE

And so, every accusation of guilt that is levelled against one of God’s saints must deal with the fact of Jesus’ resurrection. It is not surprising then that when the subject of his conscience comes up, Paul will constantly want to start talking about the resurrection of Jesus.

AN EASTER CONSCIENCE

The enemy’s primary power is that of accusation. Satan is an accuser. In the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God has given us the greatest possible defence against these accusations. He has given us an Easter conscience. As one of God’s saints, you are called to use the resurrection of Jesus Christ as a weapon in your own sanctification.

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Sin & Dust (Easter Drive-In)

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Introduction

In the Garden of Eden, when God shaped the first man from the dust of the ground (Gen. 2:7), the Almighty was simply playing the part of a sculptor. He shaped Adam from the dust of the ground, but until the second half of the verse, this Adam was simply dust rearranged. After the semblance of a man had been fashioned out of dust, God breathed into his nostrils the “breath of life,” and it was then that man became a living soul. The dust was still there, but something else was not present. The image of God was now present.

But that image was soon to be marred. Despite the warning of God that if he ate the forbidden fruit he would “surely die,” our first father disobeyed, and in the curse was dragged back down to the dust of the ground. “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Gen. 3:19).

The Text

“For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:16–17).

Summary of the Text

God brought Adam out of a state of “death” when He first created him. Adam was not, and then he was. He walked with God in the Garden, and was free to eat from all the trees but one, and so had free access to the tree of life. He and his bride were really and truly alive. When they sinned, they plunged themselves and all their posterity into the dust of death. In our text this death is equated with being in our sins. That is what spiritual death is—separation from fellowship with the holy God. And that is what sin is—separation from fellowship with the holy God.

Notice Paul’s logic. If the dead are not raised, then Christ was not raised. And if Christ was not raised, your faith is vain, and you are still in your sins. Now if you put all this together, you should see that when Christ was raised from the dead, and we were raised from the dead with and in Him, we were also at that moment raised from our sins. Our sins are our death; our death was our sinfulness.

The Death That Is Sin

This is how Paul describes our previous condition in Ephesians:

“And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others” (Eph. 2:1–3, NKJV).

Notice here that death does not mean being “stone cold out of it” because when we were in this condition of death, we were walking around in the course of this world. When we were dead, we were living in a certain way. That way, that path, was the way of death, which meant that we were walking in a condition that was separation from God. So death is not simple cessation; death is separation. Physical death is the separation of soul and body. Spiritual death is the separation of man and God. When we die to the ways of the world, we separate from her unholy ways. “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you” (2 Cor. 6:17).

So that is what death is. Death is distance, death is separation.

We used to live in a separated way from God, aliens to Him, enemies to Him. Christ came down to us in that condition, and in His passion and death, He experienced that death. “My strength is dried up like a potsherd; And my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; And thou hast brought me into the dust of death” (Ps. 22:15).

So Flip This Around, the Way Easter Did

Look again to the words of our text, and work the logic the other direction.

“For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:16–17).

If the dead are raised, then it is not remarkable that Christ was the first to be raised. And if Christ was raised, then your faith in Him is not in vain, and more than this, you are no longer in your sins.

Ushered Out

Apart from Christ, what is the condition of man? Apart from Christ, where are we? Separated from God, what good is anything? We are the ones who reached for the forbidden fruit in our vain question to “be as God,” and what did we actually accomplish?

Now we live in the dry and choking places. Dust over everything. Broken bottles. The air is sour. The smoke of selfishness has left an acrid taste on your tongue. The walls lean in. There is scarcely any light. Ghostly shadows flicker faintly on the curtains, but they don’t mean anything. Nothing moves. The only sound we can ever hear is our own muttering, the bootless sound of endless complaint.

And in the middle of all of this dusty death, Christ suddenly appears. He speaks to the wall opposite you, and it vanishes. It had seemed immoveable and untouchable, and yet it just vanished. Christ turns to you, and speaks one simple word, and that word is come.

This is the day of resurrection. So what will you do?

This is Easter Sunday. Will you follow Him?

Today is the day of all reckoning. Christ embraced death. Christ descended to the grave. Christ has risen triumphant. That is the good word. That is the gospel. What do you intend to do?

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Sin & Dust (Easter A.D. 2020)

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Introduction

In the Garden of Eden, when God shaped the first man from the dust of the ground (Gen. 2:7), the Almighty was simply playing the part of a sculptor. He shaped Adam from the dust of the ground, but until the second half of the verse, this Adam was simply dust rearranged. After the semblance of a man had been fashioned out of dust, God breathed into his nostrils the “breath of life,” and it was then that man became a living soul. The dust was still there, but something else was not present. The image of God was now present.

But that image was soon to be marred. Despite the warning of God that if he ate the forbidden fruit he would “surely die,” our first father disobeyed, and in the curse was dragged back down to the dust of the ground. “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Gen. 3:19).

The Text

“For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:16–17).

Summary of the Text

God brought Adam out of a state of “death” when He first created him. Adam was not, and then he was. He walked with God in the Garden, and was free to eat from all the trees but one, and so had free access to the tree of life. He and his bride were really and truly alive. When they sinned, they plunged themselves and all their posterity into the dust of death. In our text this death is equated with being in our sins. That is what spiritual death is—separation from fellowship with the holy God. And that is what sin is—separation from fellowship with the holy God.

Notice Paul’s logic. If the dead are not raised, then Christ was not raised. And if Christ was not raised, your faith is vain, and you are still in your sins. Now if you put all this together, you should see that when Christ was raised from the dead, and we were raised from the dead with and in Him, we were also at that moment raised from our sins. Our sins are our death; our death was our sinfulness.

The Death That Is Sin

This is how Paul describes our previous condition in Ephesians:

“And you He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the others” (Eph. 2:1–3, NKJV).

Notice here that death does not mean being “stone cold out of it” because when we were in this condition of death, we were walking around in the course of this world. When we were dead, we were living in a certain way. That way, that path, was the way of death, which meant that we were walking in a condition that was separation from God. So death is not simple cessation; death is separation. Physical death is the separation of soul and body. Spiritual death is the separation of man and God. When we die to the ways of the world, we separate from her unholy ways. “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you” (2 Cor. 6:17).

So that is what death is. Death is distance, death is separation.

We used to live in a separated way from God, aliens to Him, enemies to Him. Christ came down to us in that condition, and in His passion and death, He experienced that death. “My strength is dried up like a potsherd; And my tongue cleaveth to my jaws; And thou hast brought me into the dust of death” (Ps. 22:15).

So Flip This Around, the Way Easter Did

Look again to the words of our text, and work the logic the other direction.

“For if the dead rise not, then is not Christ raised: And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins” (1 Cor. 15:16–17).

If the dead are raised, then it is not remarkable that Christ was the first to be raised. And if Christ was raised, then your faith in Him is not in vain, and more than this, you are no longer in your sins.

Ushered Out

Apart from Christ, what is the condition of man? Apart from Christ, where are we? Separated from God, what good is anything? We are the ones who reached for the forbidden fruit in our vain question to “be as God,” and what did we actually accomplish?

Now we live in the dry and choking places. Dust over everything. Broken bottles. The air is sour. The smoke of selfishness has left an acrid taste on your tongue. The walls lean in. There is scarcely any light. Ghostly shadows flicker faintly on the curtains, but they don’t mean anything. Nothing moves. The only sound we can ever hear is our own muttering, the bootless sound of endless complaint.

And in the middle of all of this dusty death, Christ suddenly appears. He speaks to the wall opposite you, and it vanishes. It had seemed immoveable and untouchable, and yet it just vanished. Christ turns to you, and speaks one simple word, and that word is come.

This is the day of resurrection. So what will you do?

This is Easter Sunday. Will you follow Him?

Today is the day of all reckoning. Christ embraced death. Christ descended to the grave. Christ has risen triumphant. That is the good word. That is the gospel. What do you intend to do?

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Two Coal Fires (Easter 2019)

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Introduction

The presence of the Lord Jesus, alive just as He promised He would be, transforms everything. We can see this very clearly in the fall and restoration of the apostle Peter after the resurrection. The account of Christ’s care for Peter is given to us so that we might understand more of His care for us.

The Texts

“And the servants and officers stood there, who had made a fire of coals; for it was cold: and they warmed themselves: and Peter stood with them, and warmed himself” (John 18:18).

“And the other disciples came in a little ship; (for they were not far from land, but as it were two hundred cubits,) dragging the net with fishes. As soon then as they were come to land, they saw a fire of coals there, and fish laid thereon, and bread” (John 21:8-9).

Summary of the Text

These two verses are just a few pages apart, and the Greek for the charcoal fire is identical (anthrakian). The apostle John is a very careful writer, and I believe we are being invited to compare and contrast the two fires in the two settings.

The first fire was built by the enemies of Christ (18:18), and the second was built by Jesus Himself (21:9). Peter was present in both settings, and he was present because of something that had been said by the apostle John (18:16; 21:7). Jesus was present in both settings. In the first He was on trial for His life (John 18:27; cf. Luke 22:61), and in the second He had conquered death (21:1). In the first, Peter denied the Lord three times, just as Jesus had predicted (18:17, 25, 26), and fell into sin. In the second, he affirmed his love for the Lord three times, and was reinstated (21: 15, 16, 17). In the first, Peter received something from wicked men (warmth), and in the second he received something from the Lord (food, and forgiveness). In the first, Peter does not compare favorably with the disciple that Jesus loved—John was more influential “at court,” John didn’t deny the Lord, and John didn’t run away. In the second, Peter has all such comparisons put to rest (John 21:21-22). “What is that to you?”

153 Fish, and Big Ones Too

As the disciples approached the shore, they were dragging a net filled with fish, and they cooked some of them on this coal fire. This is not a mystical or a “spooky” reading of the text—this is a literary reading of the text. The issues are placement, foreshadowing, parallelism, literary conventions, and so on.

To illustrate the difference, consider another detail from this text—when Jesus called out to His disciples fishing about 100 yards offshore, He told them to put their nets down over the right side of the boat, which they did. When they had done so, the result was a huge haul. This was a way Jesus had of identifying Himself. When He had first called them to ministry, He had called them away from their nets (Matt. 4:18-22) so that they could become fishers of men. And when Jesus had done a similar miracle like this one before, the response that Peter had had was that of being overwhelmed with his own sinfulness (Luke 5:8). This scene in John therefore has a return to both elements—Jesus deals wonderfully with Peter’s sin and fall, and Jesus recommissions him to ministry as a fisher of men. He tells him three times to “feed the sheep” (21:15, 16-17). We should have no trouble seeing the fish as emblematic of the coming haul at Pentecost. The nations were to be brought into the boat, and Jesus indeed made His disciples fishers of men. In this case, Peter had jumped out of the boat, and the others had brought the fish in. But Peter is soon to rejoin them in the work.

But what is it with the specific number of fish? This is a good place to illustrate the difference between a careful literary reading and mystical reading. This number has been the occasion of a goodly amount of ingenuity to be spent on it. Some of it has been fanciful, some of it sober, and some of it pretty pedestrian.

Bear With Me

The pedestrian reading is that 153 is mentioned because that’s how many fish there were, darn it, and John was simply interested in adding an irrelevant little detail. A fanciful reading is that when you add the ten of the commandments to the seven of the seven-fold Spirit, as Augustine urged us to do, you get seventeen, and 153 is the triangular of 17. The word “triangular” means that if you add the numbers 17 to 16 to 15 to 14 and so on down to one, the sum is 153). The problem here is that you can also get 153 from Seventeen magazine, and that doesn’t mean that John is talking about the challenges of adolescence. This is the kind of thing that John Calvin called “childish trifling.”

But 666 is the triangular of 36 (and 36 is 6 times 6). The biblical writers did make some of their points with numbers, and John particularly did this. The fact that it is unusual to us doesn’t make it unusual or odd to them. We already have solid grounds for understanding the fish as representing all the Gentile nations. We have the “fishers of men” call that Jesus gives Peter and Andrew, James and John. We have the fact that throughout Scripture, the sea represents the Gentiles and the land the Jews. No one in the Old Testament is shown eating fish, but in the New Testament fishing (and the eating of fish) comes to the front and center.

On the day of Pentecost, how many nations are listed? Well, 17 actually (Acts 2:7-11). And we have to remember the practice of encoding numbers in names (called gematria) was common in the ancient world. They could do this in a way that we cannot because they used the same symbols for letters as for numbers. We have Roman letters and Arabic numbers. But in Hebrew, the first nine letters corresponded to 1-9, the next nine were 10-90, and the last five were100-400. So? Well, the prophet Ezekiel had promised that the time of the New Covenant would be a time of glorious fishing.

“And it shall come to pass, that the fishers shall stand upon it from Engedi even unto Eneglaim; they shall be a place to spread forth nets; their fish shall be according to their kinds, as the fish of the great sea, exceeding many” (Ez. 47:10).

The prefix En simply means spring, and so if we look at the numerical value of Gedi in Hebrew apart from the prefix, we find that it is 17, and the value of Eglaim (apart from the prefix)is 153. Ezekiel is talking about the salvation of the Gentiles under the figure of fish, and he uses these two numbers. John refers to this, and it has the same meaning as the explicit meaning given to it by Jesus in Luke. This means that 153 is a symbolic number for the Gentile nations who will be brought into the kingdom of God.

But Back to the Charcoal Fire

Remember that Peter is being restored. The antithesis is very clear here. The charcoal fire built by the enemies of Christ is not really a good place to warm yourself—and it ends with snarling, cursing, devouring, bitterness, and tears. The charcoal fire built by Christ is built in order to feed the disciples, and then, as Peter is being restored, he is commanded (in his turn) to feed the Christians who will follow him.

The resurrected Christ forgives and feeds. Our responsibility is to be forgiven, to be fed, and then to forgive . . . and to feed. And this helps us to be nourished and to worship both. Feeding is something newborn infants can understand, and toddlers most certainly do. Nutrition is so complex that only God understands it, although a person trained in nutrition understands more than most of us do exactly how much is going on when we eat a sandfish. And it is the same with texts like these. We can simply feed, but we can also stand back, amazed, and adore.

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