So I read an article this week and the author was complaining
about coming to worship on Easter.
His complaint was he said the problem is that all the
preachers do is talk about Jesus being raised from the dead.
I thought, well, there's somebody that missed some Sunday
school classes along the way. We too are going to speak of
Jesus raising from the dead. And so does our text here at the
Apostle Peter as he preaches to a congregation and he says these
words, blessed be the Godfather of our Lord Jesus Christ,
according to his great mercy, He has caused us to be born again
into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ
from the dead. Once again, blessed be the
Godfather of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to his great
mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
And this is the word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God. Dear gracious Father, we do pray
that you would use that very same power, the power of the
resurrection here amongst us this day, that we would know the
reality of what you have spoken to us and our lives be changed
and transformed by it. Lord, make it so.
We pray in your son's name we ask, Amen.
Please proceeded first Peter one verse 3.
Now, to be fair to that author of the article, what he was
saying was that preachers only end up talking about the
historical realities of the resurrection.
They give great defenses of the realities of what took place
2000 years ago, and they focus upon that.
And of course, it's cosmic influence and the impact of that
across the board. And what the author was saying
is what we need is to hear more of what the actual scriptures
say about the resurrection and how the resurrection isn't just
a historical reality, though it is.
And it's not just a cosmic changing, life altering event,
though it is, but how it impacts us as individuals, how it
influences us as individuals, every one of us.
And so the author was making a broader point here of saying,
look, when we talk about the resurrection, we should talk
about it within the context that the Scripture itself does.
And that was wonderfully captured here by the apostle
Peter. As the Peter does the exact same
thing. His focus is different than in
the book of Acts. If you read the book of Acts, as
Peter preaches, Peter very frequently talks about the
cosmic realities and the historical effect of Christ's
resurrection. It's an important, essential
thing to what Peter is, that getting out in his message.
But here in this text, the focus is less upon the historical
realities and more upon the influence of that reality.
And so today what we're going to do is going to look exactly,
we're going to follow Peter's model here for us to talk not
simply about the reality of the resurrection, but its influence
and impact upon our lives. You can see this here in the
text in which I just read here. According to His great mercy, He
has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Notice the back end of that passage, that verse, everything
about that verse is predicated, is built around the means or the
instrumentality or the tool, the effectiveness of the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
In other words, here that Peter is assuming the reality, he of
course experienced the reality of Jesus's resurrection.
And here he is not saying let's look at the realities of that
resurrection. He's saying let's look at the
impact of that reality. What's the impact of the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
And here we see that is set up as a tool or a means to an end,
an effective tool to the end. When I was much younger in high
school, I got my first scientific calculator.
It was a Texas Instrument 35, if I remember correctly.
And this, the calculator was just marvelous.
It was able to do logarithms, differential equations,
integrals, and and the derivatives like it mapped out
matrices. It was a marvelous calculator.
The reality is it was a wonderful tool that I had
absolutely no use for. I was in high school, I didn't
take any of those classes. I had no use.
And so, but I knew it was a marvelous tool.
And so I spent lots of time focusing on the calculator.
I played with all the buttons. I pushed all the buttons and I
saw it do different things, not knowing what it was doing but
being utterly amazed at what it was.
But it was utterly useless in my life until numerous years later
when I suddenly were taking higher math courses that
actually enabled the use of that calculator and enabled benefited
from it. So often, so many of us focus
upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the exact same way.
We recognize that it's a powerful, life changing, cosmic
altering event. And indeed it is.
It is the central event in all of history.
It is the most central event that has ever taken place.
And it shapes and guides the whole entire history, but it
also shapes and guides your entire life.
And what Peter's emphasis here is, he says, take a look at this
resurrection from the dead. And it is through the
resurrection of the dead that certain things happen.
What takes place It is through the resurrection of the dead
that he has caused us to be born again into a living hope.
We have hope because of the resurrection of the dead.
That's that's his emphasis, he says.
Because of the resurrection of the dead, we have hope.
Now we have to talk about the nature of hope a little bit
because again, it's so frequently mischaracterized in
our society as wishful thinking or daydreaming or just imagining
a good outcome or something along those lines.
And that is never the way scriptures portrayed the
doctrine of hope. Hope is a confident assurance in
what God is doing in the future, a confident assurance of what
God is doing in the future. I read number books a long time
ago in my formative years. I read some books about PO WS in
Vietnam in particular, and I read about the torture and the
suffering that they went through and the pain that took place and
the survival character of the PO WS and the unifying theme, The
mark, The characteristic that defined if the PO WS were going
to survive the torture and how they were going to survive the
torture was not their strength of body.
It wasn't even their strength of mind.
It was the ability for the PO WS to hold on to and maintain hope.
This is a wonderfully portrayed characteristic in PO WS
throughout the world and throughout world history that
one of the things that torturers try to do so often is remove the
concept of hope. But for particularly the
American PO WS in Vietnam, those who were able to maintain the
thought that there is, that the US has not forgotten about them,
that there is still an opportunity, a possibility for
this war to end, for them to be returned home.
That hope motivated them and kept so many of them alive.
Life. That's the nature of hope that
we are talking about here, A confident assurance that what
God is doing in the future. But notice that it's not just a
hope. In the text we're told not just
that he has caused us to be born into a hope through the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, but because of
the resurrection of Jesus Christ into the dead, we are born into
a living hope. Now, what do we mean by living
hope? We don't mean that hope is
somehow animated with arms and legs and moves around or
something like that. No, hope that is living is a
living, is a characteristic of something that has power, that
has possibility, that has potential, that has an
opportunity to do something. Think of a battery.
Battery has life in it when it still can do something.
Not when it has arms and legs and moves around.
Not when it's animated, but rather when it has the ability
to do something. It still has some life in it.
A dead battery is one that has no potential at all.
It can't do anything. It just sits there.
And so often the nature of hope that is expressed in Christian
life sometimes is a dead hope. It's a it's a hope that doesn't
do anything. It's a hope where we say, yeah,
OK, we're we know it's out there.
We know it's a possibility. But that's not what the
Scriptures call us to here. Because of the resurrection from
the dead, we don't just have a formalized hope where we say,
well, we know that Jesus is coming at the end of time.
We know that death has been defeated.
We realize all those kind of things.
No, we have a living hope. This hope is something that
motivates, that moves, that changes, that transforms us.
Every Christian in this room, every Christian across the globe
should be motivated by living a life of living hope, a hope that
is manifested, that shows itself, that demonstrates it,
that, that, that, that reveals itself to the world around us
and to our own hearts. And if you're not living that
way, if you're not living with a living hope, you've got to ask
yourself what Peter would say about that.
For we have a living hope through the means of the
resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Christ has raised from the dead, He has called us to be his
followers, and he has granted to us a living hope.
Now what does that living hope look like?
There are over 100 passages in the New Testament that speak of
the resurrection, and a whole lot of them talk about the
historical reality of it. A lot of those texts talk about
the cosmic influence and impact of the resurrection.
But there are many texts that do exactly what Peter does here,
spell out for us what it means that through the resurrection of
the dead, we are to have a living hope.
We're going to look at four of them here today.
We're going to start with First Corinthians 15, which by the way
is the chapter if you, if you want to understand the
resurrection, if, if the resurrection remains in your
mind, this historical event that is going to shape your life
somewhere in the future. But it's not really having that
living hope. If you sit here and you hear
Peter's words that we have a living hope through the
resurrection. And if you sit there and you
think, I don't know that my life models, that, I'm not sure that
my life is wrapped around a living.
It manifests, shows itself to everyone.
I'm not sure in the bad times, when things go crazy at work,
when my family is falling apart, I'm not sure that people would
look in and say there's somebody that has a living hope.
If you're concerned about that, spend time in First Corinthians
chapter 15. It is the chapter in the Bible
where you will get a wonderful picture of the realities of the
resurrection, but also this wonderful insight into its daily
life impact in your lives. And we begin with First
Corinthians 15 verses 54 and 55. Paul writes this when the
perishable puts on the imperishable, when the mortal
puts on immortality in the resurrection, in the
resurrection, then shall come to pass the saying death is
swallowed up in victory. Oh death, where is your victory?
Oh death, where is your sting? It is passe to say that we live
in a culture of death. We absolutely do.
Our entertainment focuses so much around death.
Our news focuses so much around death.
Our lives focus so much around death.
Our jokes focus around death. Everything that we recognize in
our lives is modeled as shaped by the fact that in each of our
lives is coming an event, which is death.
And here we see the realities of the teaching that Paul puts
forward here, that death is swallowed up in victory because
of the resurrection, Because of the resurrection of Jesus
Christ, death is swallowed up in victory.
Now notice carefully what's being said here.
Death is swallowed up. It is not that death doesn't
happen. This is the Mary Poppins reality
of life. Death is swallowed up in
victory. A spoonful of sugar makes the
medicine go down, you know. And So what we have here is
you've got the death and it's persistence and it's reality,
death's reality. And yet because of the
resurrection, it has been swallowed up, it has been
overcome, it has been masked, it has been emptied of its power
because of the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ for every
single person in this room. If the Lord does not come again
between now and your death, every one of us will experience
death. And yet the reality is that we
still maintain the truth of this statement that death has been
swallowed up in the victory of Jesus Christ.
It has been swallowed up in the victory of the resurrection.
Now that is intended to provide living hope for us.
If not that, then certainly the following words.
Oh, death, where is your victory normally?
Where is the victory of death apart from the resurrection of
Jesus Christ? Where's the victory of death?
It's not in its inevitability. Death is inevitable for all of
us because of the brokenness of this world.
Death is inevitable for all of us, those who unless those who
are alive when Christ comes again, death is inevitable.
That's not its victory. Its victory is its permanence.
Once it gets you, once it gets its hands on you, it never let's
go. Death ultimately wins everything
except by the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
For those of us who live in living hope, we know that that's
not true. The death, while it will come,
while it will manifest itself in these terrible ways, while,
while it demonstrates itself on each of our lives, it will not
win the long game. Death loses its victory, its
victory. Death has no victory, not
because it's not going to come to us, but because it will not
ultimately survive the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Death has lost its power over us, not because it's not coming,
but because it has no permanence in our lives.
So that's picked up again in this last line there.
Oh, death, where is your stain now?
My guess is that most of you, along with me, have walked with
people who are in the position, who are in positions of dying.
There are a number of people here that haven't had to go
through that at this point, and I recognize that.
But probably for most of the people in the room, we have
walked through people in stages of grief as they are going
through the process of dying. When Paul says here, oh, death,
where is your sting, I sit there and think, Every time I watch
somebody go through this, every time I walk through a family
that is suffering, every time I go through the process of
holding someone's hand as they pass from this life, I can tell
you where the sting is. It stings.
What does this mean? Oh, death, where is your sting
that stings? When that happens, the sting
that Paul is talking about is a scorpion sting.
It's not the bite of an insect. It's not even the sting of a
scorpion that zaps you, it's the poison that then works its way
through your body that then ultimately kills you.
Oh death, where is your sting? Oh death, you have no power.
Not because it's not going to hurt when we die.
Not because death is not something that is opposed to the
gods created design for our lives.
It absolutely is. Death is the enemy and it stings
when it happens, but it doesn't sting like a scorpion that
ultimately will take your life because your life is well hidden
in Jesus Christ and is bound to him through the resurrection of
our Lord Jesus Christ. That is why we can say that
that's a living hope that we have.
We have a living hope, a hope that motivates and drives us
because yes, death is at the end of the road, road for all of us,
but that's not the end of the road for all of us because death
has lost its victory and instead it has no sting, no long term
permanence in our lives. The first point here that comes
from this idea of having a living hope because of the
resurrection of Jesus Christ is that death has been defeated for
each of you. And if you can't imagine that
changing the way you live your life right now, you're not
thinking well at all. That should absolutely transform
the way that we live. That hope that you have in the
debt, in the, in the destruction of death and the defeat of death
in Jesus Christ, that should be a living hope transforming the
way in which you live your lives.
Paul in that same chapter also says this in verse 17.
If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are
still in your sins. If Christ has not been raised,
then your faith is futile if the resurrection didn't happen.
If there is no resurrection, then your faith is futile and
you're still in your sins. Let let's turn that around.
Paul says it in the negative. Let's say it in positive.
Because Christ is raised from the dead, your faith is not
futile and you are no longer in your sins.
That is a driving force for our lives.
That is a driving force for a living hope in our lives.
For our faith is not futile. Futile, by the way, especially
in the way in which it's used here, means an emptiness of
vacuum. But something that is, is not
just not just space, but something that looks like it
means something looks like it's powerful and yet ultimately has
emptiness. It's a vacuum, it's vapor.
So I think in terms of a really nice gift, let's say somebody
presents you with a wonderfully gift wrapped box and it's
beautifully and it's your birthday or Christmas or or
Valentine's Day or something like that.
And it's this beautiful gift and it's just so marvelous.
And your heart is swelling and you're all excited about it and
you and you're committed to this gift and you're committed to the
person that has given you the gift.
And you just can't wait to tear it open.
And you tear open this beautiful package and you open the box and
nothing. Nothing.
That's what Paul says. Your faith is if the
resurrection does not dominate your life, if if Christ has been
not not been raised, that's the historical reality.
But if Christ hasn't been raised for you, a living hope.
If you're not experiencing that living hope, then your faith is
futile. Oh, I like coming to church
because I like singing. I like hearing the preacher
speak. I like the people that I
interact with. I like starting my day off, my
week off on a good. It's all beautiful wrappings and
it means nothing. It's empty.
If your life is not dominated by a living hope that comes about
through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, your faith is
futile. Why?
Because you're still in your sin, the cross.
But wait a minute, Our sins were taken care of.
If you know the gospel message, you know the message is this,
that long before you were born, if you're a follower of Jesus
Christ, he. Covenanted, he determined the
Father, the Son, the Spirit determined that the Son would go
to the cross and while on the cross he would take his
righteousness, his godliness, his goodness and all that he is
and he would give it to you in replace.
Then in in in return you would give to him all of your sin, all
of your wickedness, all of your ugliness.
Everything that separates you from Jesus Christ would be given
to Him and dying on the cross. On the cross is where we
proclaim our sins are forgiven. Yet Paul here says that if
Christ hasn't been raised from the dead, if Easter didn't take
place, if Good Friday happens but no Easter, you are still in
your sins. Why?
The resurrection from the dead is the affirmation.
It's the promise, it's the guarantee.
This goes back to first Peter one again, where Jesus Christ is
raised from the dead through the glory and the power of God the
Father. God the Father has raised Christ
from the dead so that we might know the reality that Christ has
been accepted. The sacrifice of Christ has been
accepted for you. How do you know that you're not
still in your sins? Because the Father has done
exactly what he needed to do. God has looked upon Christ's
sacrifice for you and said I will accept Christ on behalf of
Joe Sally, Henry Kelly. That's what God does upon the
cross and through the resurrection.
We have to guarantee the assurance that we are no longer
in our sins. That provides a living hope.
Who here is not burdened at some point in their life, perhaps
continuously, with feelings of inadequacy, with feelings of
guilt, with feelings of shame, with feelings of of burden of
our sin? You have a living hope because
of the resurrection of Christ. None of that should happen for
you. You cannot live that way if you
have a living hope. The living hope is a very thing
that conquers those feelings, that shows those feelings to be
untrue, that proves the fact that death has been defeated,
that you are no longer in your sins.
So we have the second idea here, the first idea being that death
has been defeated. The second idea that you are no
longer in your sins because of the resurrection of Jesus
Christ, and because of that, then each of us has a living
hope. Thirdly, Paul writes in Romans
verse verse 4 of chapter 6. We were baptized therefore with
Him by death and by baptism into death, in order that just as
Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we
too might walk in newness of life.
OK, because of the resurrection of Christ from the dead, by the
glory of the Father, we too might walk in the newness of
life. Because of the resurrection, we
might walk in the newness of life.
Now I need to clarify what we mean by might.
Might here is not an option. It doesn't say that because of
the resurrection there was no way for you to walk in newness
of life before the resurrection. But now, because of the
resurrection, you can either walk in newness of life or you
cannot walk in newness of life. That's not what might means
here. Might means power, might means
means ability. Because of the resurrection from
Christ, from the dead, we can walk.
We have the power. We have the might to walk in
newness of life. In newness of life, we walk now.
It doesn't mean that we can do actions that are good.
That's not what Paul is saying here.
Wouldn't it be nice if Paul said, look, because of the
resurrection from the dead, every once in a while you can do
a good thing. Great, thank you.
Or more often than once in a while you can do a good thing.
Every week or every other day or every day you can do a good
thing. That's not what Paul's saying
here. He said no, that you walk in
newness of life. This is this is a habit.
This is a lifetime. My family likes to go hiking.
And when we're hiking, especially in an area where we
don't know very well, we stay on the path.
You stay on the path because that's where we are intended to
walk. And by the Lord Jesus Christ, he
has laid forward a path for us, and we are intended to walk
along that path because of the living hope that we have in the
resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because of the resurrection of
Jesus Christ, death has been defeated.
Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, you are forgiven
of your sin. Because of the resurrection of
Jesus Christ, you now walk in newness of life, newness of
life. There's the old way of living, a
way that is shaped and modeled by death.
That is, oh, that has death at the end.
And there is a new way of living that is made possible through
the coming of Jesus Christ, and that is a life of righteousness,
of holiness, of goodness. Christians with living hope walk
in the newness of life. And then finally John says to
Mary in I'm Sorry, John records Jesus speaking to Mary in John
Chapter 11 where he says these words, I am the resurrection in
the life. Whoever believes in me, though
he die, yet he lives. And everyone who lives in me and
lives and believes in me shall never die.
Do you believe this? Everyone who believes in Jesus
Christ will never die, and those who die will live again.
Predicated upon everything we've been talking about is the Jesus
Christ resurrection, while unique, while earth shaking,
while cosmic shaping, is not the only resurrection that will ever
occur because all of us who are bonded in Jesus Christ with Him
will also be raised at the end of the age.
This resurrection is ours as well.
What happened to Christ will happen to us.
And this was intended to provide that living hope.
Why are we supposed to live so hopefully?
Why do we live with No Fear of death?
Why do we live as though we have been forgiven?
Why do we live in newness of life?
Because we have a living hope that is bound up in the
resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because we too will be raised.
We too will be raised if we believe.
Notice the end of that verse where Jesus says to Mary, Do you
believe this now He's not saying do you believe the historic
realities of the resurrection? He's not saying, Do you believe
that I exist as a person or that I am God?
He's not asking any of those questions.
He's saying not Are you intellectually embracing the
fact of the resurrection? My guess is that by virtue of
the fact that you're here today, you're embracing the
intellectual realities of the resurrection.
Either that or else you were dragged here by a family member.
OK, but if you are here today, you probably understand the
realities of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
Jesus is not asking that. He's saying, are you living this
way? Are you believing in this as
your faith placed here? Do you trust in this?
Do you rely upon it? Is it an act of reliance that
drives your life? Is it a living hope?
And you can tell because your life should be modeled after a
living hope. That living hope should drive
and direct every aspect of your life.
If it does, rejoice greatly in the resurrection of Jesus
Christ. Death has been defeated, and for
you your sin has been forgiven. And now walk in the newness of
life because of your faith in Jesus Christ.
If you can honestly look at your life and say, I'm not sure my
life is modeled by a living hope, I'm not sure that when the
going gets tough that I nevertheless express a hope in
the future that drives and effects everything that I do,
that it's a living hope. If you no longer can say with
confidence that you have a living hope in every aspect of
your life, Jesus would look at you and say what he says to
Mary. Do you believe this?
Our gracious Father, we thank you that by the power of your
glory you raised Jesus Christ from the dead, that because of
his resurrection we have been given a living hope.
And because of that living hope, we have No Fear of death, though
it stings the when it comes, though it's going to be tough to
swallow for all of us, ultimately it will have no
victory over us. Lord, we are forgiven of our sin
and no longer suffer under the anguish of the guilt of our
judgment. Lord, we have the power of The
Walking and new life because of what you have done upon the
cross. And Lord, we know that this is
ours because of the faith that you have given to us, enabling
us to believe the realities of the resurrection.
Yet, Father, like the father of the epileptic child who looked
at you and said, Lord, I believe, help me in my unbelief.
Lord, we believe, but help us we pray.
In our unbelief we ask this through Jesus Christ our Lord
and our Saviour, whose name we pray.
Amen.