JESUS’ LIFE-CHANGING RESURRECTION

Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on April 17, 2022 under 2022 |

Bethany Bible Church Resurrection Sunday message; April 17, 2022 from 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

Theme: Jesus’ resurrection is a reality that changes the life of everyone who turns to Him.

(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).

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Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. And that’s something that is far more than a doctrinal statement, or a part of a creed. It’s the basis of the whole Christian life. The Christian faith truly rises or falls on the basis of the resurrection. And praise God—He is risen!

And I wonder if you’ve ever noticed something. When we talk about the resurrection of Jesus—maybe without our being aware that we do so—we often speak of it in that particular way. We don’t just say, “Jesus was risen”—as if it were an event that occurred long ago in history. Instead, we say, “Jesus IS risen”—because it’s something that is an ongoing reality. It’s a past event; but one that has ongoingly-present significance. He rose from the dead, and ascended to the Father, and is alive right now. He is powerful, and personal, and is able to completely transform the life of anyone who trusts Him.

To help us appreciate that glorious fact—and to help us celebrate it—and most of all, to help every person in this room today to whole-heartedly believe it, and trust Him, and allow Him to change their lives—I ask you to turn with me to 1 Corinthians 15.

In 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, the apostle Paul wrote;

Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time. For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me. Therefore, whether it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed (1 Corinthians 15:1-11).

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Now; the apostle Paul—who wrote those words—was a man who was completely convinced of the life-changing power of the resurrected Lord Jesus. An encounter with the resurrected Jesus utterly and dramatically transformed his life.

I wonder if you’re familiar with his story. He used to go by the name Saul. He lived at the time when Jesus walked and taught upon the earth. But Saul, at first, was not a follower of Jesus. Far from it. He was a hostile opponent to the preaching of the Christian faith. After Jesus had been crucified, had risen, and had ascended to the Father—and after the Holy Spirit came upon the earth and empowered the apostles to preach the good news—and after many people believed, and the church began to grow and spread—this man Saul began to viciously fight against the message of Jesus.

Saul was a Pharisee. He was devoted to the Judaistic religion. From the standpoint of the religion of his people, he lived a pious life. But he did all that he could to oppose the followers of Jesus—thinking that, in doing so, he was serving God. He secured authority from the Jewish leaders to seek out and arrest anyone who professed to be a follower of Jesus. He even went outside the regions of Jerusalem and Judea, and sought followers of Jesus who were living in other cities. He had them bound, brought them back to Jerusalem, made them stand trial, and sought their executions. He even stirred up murder and hatred against this ‘new religion’ in the hearts of others.

Here’s how he put it:

“Indeed, I myself thought I must do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth. This I also did in Jerusalem, and many of the saints I shut up in prison, having received authority from the chief priests; and when they were put to death, I cast my vote against them. And I punished them often in every synagogue and compelled them to blaspheme; and being exceedingly enraged against them, I persecuted them even to foreign cities” (Acts 26:9-11).

You could say that there was hardly ever another person in history that hated the Christian faith as furiously and passionately as this man Saul. And it wasn’t all just talk with him. Lots of people say that they hate Christianity. But Saul was able to do something about it. He was a fearsome and murderous antagonist against the whole idea that Jesus rose from the dead.

But then, something happened that completely changed him. He met the resurrected Jesus.

While he was on his way to the city of Damascus, with authoritative letters in hand to arrest the Christians who were living there—and with a small band of assistants riding along with him—a bright light suddenly appeared and shown around him. It knocked him flat off his horse. He said,

“I heard a voice speaking to me and saying in the Hebrew language, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me? It is hard for you to kick against the goads.’ So I said, ‘Who are You, Lord?’ And He said, ‘I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting’” (vv. 14-15).

And right then and there, the resurrected Lord Jesus called Saul into the ministry of preaching of the very same gospel message that he had fought so viciously against.

“Therefore, having obtained help from God, to this day I stand, witnessing both to small and great, saying no other things than those which the prophets and Moses said would come—that the Christ would suffer, that He would be the first to rise from the dead, and would proclaim light to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles” (vv. 22-23).

There’s no way to explain Paul’s amazing transformation of life except by the resurrection. A real-life encounter with the living Lord Jesus Christ utterly transformed Saul of Tarsus—who we now know and love as Paul the apostle—from being the Christian faith’s most vicious opponent to its greatest preacher and missionary.

An encounter with the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ has transformed my life too, by the way. My story isn’t anywhere near as dramatic as Paul’s. But I was an unbeliever, and an atheist, and a vile young man. I knew that I was a sinner destined for hell; but I didn’t know that there could be any hope for me. I simply resigned myself to a life of sin and a destiny of eternal judgment. But in August of 1973—almost fifty years ago—I heard the gospel message of God’s love through Jesus His Son. I prayed by faith and yielded myself to Jesus—asking Him, if He truly was there, that He would forgive my sins and change my life. And He was! And He did!

And I say to every person here today that you can believe it! Jesus Christ is raised from the dead and He is alive! His power to change lives isn’t something far in the past. It’s a living reality right now; because He is a living Savior! He transformed me! And this day that we celebrate—Resurrection Sunday—means that He is 100% able to utterly transform the life of anyone who trusts Him!

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So; let’s look at these words from Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:1-11.

Paul had been dealing with many problems in the Corinthian church. And one of the problems that he was dealing with—a very serious one indeed—is that some people in the church denied the reality of the whole idea of ‘resurrection’. They didn’t believe that anyone could ever rise from the dead.

What they didn’t understand was that, in denying the reality of the idea of resurrection, they were denying the gospel itself. Paul explained to them that, if no one is raised, then Jesus wasn’t raised. And if Jesus was not raised from the dead, then the whole idea of the Christian faith itself was a fraud. The truth or the falsehood of the whole thing hung on whether or not Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. The same is true today. The resurrection of Jesus Christ isn’t something that it makes no difference whether or not we believe. It isn’t something that doesn’t matter whether or not it’s actually and factually true. If Jesus did not actually, physically rise from the dead, then the whole thing is over. Our faith is in vain. We are without hope. We are still lost in our sins.

So; it was very important for Paul to stress to them that Jesus Christ really did rise from the dead. Our hope is a real and living hope, because we have placed it in a real and living Savior who is really able to transform the life of anyone who turns to Him and trusts in Him.

Paul shows us this, first, by proving that it’s a reality that is …

1. BASED ON THE PROMISE OF SCRIPTURE (vv. 1-4).

The message of the gospel isn’t something that Paul made up. It was given to him by God. But it wasn’t given to him as something new. Rather, it was based on what God had already declared in the Old Testament prophecies of Scriptures long before.

In verses 1-2, he wrote;

Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain (vv. 1-2).

Do you know, by the way, what the word ‘gospel’ means? It means the declaration or the preaching of good news—good tidings. And so; Paul here wrote to the Corinthians and told them that he is about to explain to them what the gospel is that God had given him—the good tidings of Jesus Christ—which he had been transformed into a preacher to proclaim to the world.

He goes on to say, in verses 3-4;

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures (vv. 3-4).

And so, it’s as if he was saying, “There you have it! That’s it in a nutshell. The gospel that God gave me to preach to the world—the gospel that, if you believe, will save you—is basically summed up in three things: Jesus is the promised Messiah—the Christ—who (1) died for our sins according to the promises of the Old Testament; and (2) was buried—just to show that He genuinely died; and (3) was raised again from the dead three days later according to the Scriptures to prove that God was satisfied with His sacrifice for us.”

How was it declared in the Old Testament? Psalm 16:10 has the words of Christ speaking from long ago; and He prays to the Father and says,

“For You will not leave my soul in Sheol,
Nor will You allow Your Holy One to see corruption” (Psalm 16:10).

In Isaiah 53:10, it also speaks of the Christ and His death; and it says that “He shall see His seed”, and that “He shall prolong His days.” And we’re even given a picture of Jesus’ resurrection in the story of Jonah; because Jesus once said in Matthew 12:40,

“For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth” (Matthew 12:40).

Dear folks; we can place our faith in Jesus Christ and know that His ‘resurrection’ isn’t some story that people tacked on to His life later on. He was raised from the dead in fulfillment of the promise of Old Testament prophetic Scripture. He is alive; and is 100% able to transform the life of anyone who trusts Him.

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But there’s more. If something happened that was promised in the Old Testament, it then makes sense to expect that people coming later would be able to attest to it. And so, as we read on, we find the reality of the resurrection to change the lives of people is …

2. AFFIRMED BY EYEWITNESSES (vv. 5-8).

Look at the list of eyewitnesses that Paul goes on to speak of in verses 5-8. He says, “and that He was seen by Cephas …” Do you know who Cephas was? That’s another name for Peter. Peter was one of Jesus’ disciples who—sadly—got afraid when Jesus was betrayed and arrested, and who ended up denying that he even knew the Lord. When it comes to devotion to the Lord Jesus, Peter was a terrible failure. But the Bible tells us that when Jesus rose from the dead, and He appeared to all of the other apostles, special mention was made of Peter. They all said, “The Lord is risen indeed, and has appeared to Simon” (Luke 24:34)—which, by the way, is another name for Peter. Peter was an eyewitness to the fact that Jesus is alive. Jesus changed His life.

Paul goes on to say that Jesus was seen “then by the twelve”. That’s another name for the apostles; and is probably meant to define them as a group—all gathered together at once. After Jesus was crucified, they all hid out of fear of the authorities. But after His resurrection, Jesus suddenly appeared among them in the place where they were hiding. He said to them, “Peace to you” (Luke 24:36)—probably in part because they were freaking out because of His sudden appearance. And it wasn’t some ghost that they saw. He showed them His hands and His feet—so they could see the nail prints from the cross. He showed them His side—so they could see where the spear had pierced Him. He allowed them to touch and handle Him. He even ate some fish in front of them to show that He really is the life-transforming Savior who is alive.

Paul tells us something that we don’t read about anywhere else in the New Testament—but that we have no reason to doubt. He said, “After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep.” On some occasion—sometime between the time that He was raised from the dead and that He ascended to the Father—He made a very public appearance. A whole large crowd became ‘a collective eyewitness’ to the fact that He was alive. Paul said that, at the time of his writing, some of them had ‘fallen asleep’—which means that some of them had died. But many of them were still alive as he wrote; and if any reader in the Corinthian church had wanted to, they could have gone to them personally and asked about it. That’s a pretty bold piece of evidence that Jesus is alive … and that He is able to transform the lives of those who trust in Him.

Paul went on further to say, “After that He was seen by James …” And do you know who this man James was? It was one of the half-brothers of our Lord. He was born of the same mother as our Lord; but through a different father—that is, through Joseph. The Bible tells us that before the resurrection—while Jesus was preaching—His own brothers didn’t believe Him. But we’re told in Acts 1:14 that, after the resurrection, they were all worshiping with the rest of the believers. James—one of those brothers—became the first pastor of the first Christian church in history. And he even wrote a book in the New Testament that bears his name. Do you know how that book begins? James introduces himself as, “James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ” (James 1:1). Now, I ask you; if you have a half-brother, would you call yourself his “bondservant” and declare him to be your “Lord”—putting him on equal standing with God? Not very likely! And yet James did. Why? It’s because he had an encounter with the resurrected Lord Jesus—and that encounter changed his life!

Paul said that Jesus was seen “then by all the apostles”. This probably means that Jesus appeared to each one individually. Did you know that according to the written history of the early church, every one of them died as willing martyrs for the cause of Jesus? They laid down their lives preaching His gospel. The only exception was the apostle John who—according to tradition—did not die a martyr’s death. He survived being horribly tortured for his faith in Jesus, and he eventually died in exile as a prisoner for preaching about Him. But he gave his whole life—and all the apostles gave their lives—for the testimony that Jesus lived. They had an encounter with the risen Lord Jesus—and that encounter transformed them from then on.

Finally, Paul tells us about one more eye-witness. He wrote, “Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time.” He was an apostle—called later in time—called after the Lord Jesus had been raised. But it was that encounter that made Paul into the greatest missionary of them all.

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And that leads us to a third way that the resurrection of Jesus is proven to be a life-changing reality; and that is that it’s …

3. PROVEN BY REAL-LIFE EXPERIENCE (vv. 9-10).

Paul tells us in verses 9-10;

“For I am the least of the apostles, who am not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain; but I labored more abundantly than they all, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me” (vv. 9-10).

You know; you can have written testimony and eyewitness evidence that Jesus was alive—but you wouldn’t be able to be sure of it if you didn’t actually see lives being transformed by Him. And you can see lives that may claim to be transformed by Him because He’s alive—but never be sure of it without the written testimony of Scripture and the eyewitness testimonies. But when you have both the testimonial evidence that Jesus is raised from the dead and the genuine life transformation of those who trust Him, then you have something sure and certain. And the transformed life of this man Paul is powerful evidence indeed!

In 1 Timothy 1:12-17, he put it this way:

And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord who has enabled me, because He counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry, although I was formerly a blasphemer, a persecutor, and an insolent man; but I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief. And the grace of our Lord was exceedingly abundant, with faith and love which are in Christ Jesus. This is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. However, for this reason I obtained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might show all longsuffering, as a pattern to those who are going to believe on Him for everlasting life. Now to the King eternal, immortal, invisible, to God who alone is wise, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen (1 Timothy 1:12-17).

I think Paul would say that Jesus Christ is alive and is able to transform the life of anyone who trusts in Him … wouldn’t you? He ought to know! He met the resurrected Lord!

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And that leads us to one last thing; that the reality of Jesus’ resurrection as the greatest life-transforming power in this world is something …

4. TO BE PROCLAIMED AND BELIEVED (v. 11).

This was the message of the gospel that Paul gave his entire life to preach. He suffered many things—and even eventually laid down his life as a martyr—in order to proclaim it. And so; what does he say in the end about this gospel that he and the other apostles proclaimed? He wrote;

Therefore, whether it was I or they, so we preach and so you believed (v. 11).

It has been proclaimed. It has been my privilege to pass that proclamation on to you today. But notice what you must do with it. You can’t be indifferent to it. You must consciously, intelligently, willingly, personally place your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ—crucified, buried, and raised from the dead—and believe in His resurrection so much that you invite Him to transform your life. As he said at the beginning of this passage, it’s the gospel that you have received, and on which you stand, and by which you are saved if you hold on to it “—unless you believed in vain” (v. 1).

It is meant to be proclaimed and believed. Don’t let it be proclaimed to you in vain. Turn to the Lord Jesus Christ right now—the resurrected Lord Jesus—in faith. Trust that He is alive and able to transform you. Give yourself to Him and let Him make you into a brand new person.

Do that, and you’ll be celebrating this day in the greatest way possible. For He IS risen; and He IS wonderfully able to transform the life of anyone who sincerely trusts Him.

AE