I wish I could say that I know exactly what Paul was trying to accomplish when he cried out, “Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee: of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question.”
It could be that he was using the old “divide and conquer” technique.
But if I can get these two groups to fight among themselves, they might forget about me.”
But as I said last week, he started this “apologia” by saying that he had been following his conscience even before his conversion.
He might have been merely continuing that theme.
He always knew that there would be a Kingdom of Christ, but he had now learned that it begins in the soul, not in the government.
He had always believed in resurrection, and now he knew that Jesus had actually arisen from the dead.
but he had actually experienced the reality of some of them.
150 years ago, one of the brightest minds in France was a man named Joseph Ernest Renan.
This man grew up in Catholic schools and was destined become a high-ranking priest.
But Renan grew arrogant in his intellect and eventually became an agnostic.
But his best known work was called “The Life of Jesus.”
He painted our Lord Jesus as a mere human, and Christianity as a joke.
On the cover of one edition of his “Life of Jesus” he depicted a dismal crucifixion.
And there was a paraphrase of Jesus’ own words, “It is finished.”
Jesus Christ was nothing but a drop of blood dispersed throughout the vast ocean of humanity.
The DIVINE historian looked at the same events in a very different way:
“And without controversy great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, received up into glory.”
When the Saviour said, “It is finished,” He was not talking about Christianity.
He was talking about all God’s requirements for the redemption of sinners like us.
“Up from the grave he arose, TRIUMPHANT over all his foes.”
Seated before Paul there in the hallowed halls of the Council were both Pharisees and Sadducees.
There were men like Paul and other men who weren’t much different from Joseph Ernest Renan.
Who possessed the correct theology?
I’m sure that the Sadducees were convinced that their anti-resurrection, angel-denying faith was right.
They held the office; they had the prestige; they had the power.
Much like the intellectuals and educators of the 21st century.
Don’t let the apostates, atheists and humanists deceive you into thinking that only uneducated fools believe that Jesus arose from the grave.
Some of the greatest minds that America and the world have ever seen have been believers in the truth of God – all of the truths of God.
Scientists like nuclear physicists, geneticists, and research biologists have looked at the evidence and accepted the facts of Jesus’ resurrection.
And actually, what Daniel Webster, Simon Greenleaf, or Joseph Renan say is really unimportant.
What is most important is what the Bible says about the subject of Jesus’ resurrection.
No child of God has any difficulty believing that Christ was crucified to death, and that his life was miraculously restored.
Thus saith the scriptures.
Like Paul, I approach the resurrection of Christ without the slightest doubt.
Our questions this afternoon are not: “Is it true,” or “Is it so?”
Rather our questions are: “What does the resurrection of Christ mean?”
Not only do we see that it meant something special to the Apostle Paul, but more particularly, “What does it mean to you and to me?”
“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God, (Which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy scriptures,) Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh; And declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead: By whom we have received grace and apostleship, for obedience to the faith among all nations, for his name.”
You know, if you stop and think about it, it might be more difficult to prove Jesus’ humanity than His deity.
If you left off everything about Jesus which was not miraculous or divine, what would be left?
Are there any newspaper clippings making announcements of his birth or graduation?
Do we have letters that He ever wrote?
And then there are things like Jesus’ impeccability which make us doubt his humanity.
He changed the physical properties of things – like water into wine and concrete.
He pronounced a death sentence on a tree, and the next day it was dead.
And then there was His restoring of life to bodies that were without question dead and decaying.
There have been hundreds of self-proclaimed messiahs throughout history.
But after their funerals, after the tears and sighs, after the succeeding generation, those false teachers and deceivers became as dusty as their empty promises.
Every year now since 1926 people have been expecting the return of Harry Houdini, but they’ve been disappointed.
I can’t understand how people still attend the meetings of the Christian Science cult.
But after a few days of visiting with His disciples following His resurrection Jesus ascended into Glory.
If Christ had not come out of that tomb, then Christianity would have abruptly ended.
Paul would not have been converted, and the greatest evangelist of all time would have ended his life still hating the rumors about Jesus of Nazareth.
But Paul actually saw and heard the risen Christ.
The Lord Jesus himself laid everything on the line:
“Destroy this temple and in three days I will rebuild it.”
“Destroy this body and in three days I will rebuild and occupy it again.”
After His transfiguration He told his disciples not repeat what they had seen until He was raised from the dead.
After seeing the resurrected Jesus, the famous doubting disciple properly declared, “My Lord & my God.”
The resurrection was Paul’s proof of Jesus’ deity.
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you.”
If a person denies the resurrection of the Lord Jesus he unlocks the door to Hell and greases the threshold.
“But what saith it? The word is nigh thee, even in thy mouth, and in thy heart: that is, the word of faith, which we preach;
For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the scripture saith, Whosoever believeth on him shall not be ashamed.”
“Now it was not written for his sake alone, that it was imputed to him; but for us also, to whom it shall be imputed, if we believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead; Who was delivered for our offences, and was raised again for our justification.”
Or as Paul put it in Acts 13:
Do you remember when King Saul wanted the advice and help from the Prophet Samuel?
He was facing the most crucial day of his life and there was no one to advise him.
Oops, but Samuel was dead.
“If Christ be not raised, then your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.”
“Men and brethren, I am a Pharisee, the son of a Pharisee: of the hope and resurrection of the dead I am called in question.”
When God participated in the resurrection of the Son, he was saying,
“I am propitiated. I am satisfied with the sacrifice that my Son has made.”
I once read of a Chinese lady who was trying to explain to her relatives why she had forsaken the ancient family religion:
I knocked on the gold plated door of Buddha, but no one was home.
I knocked on the tent door of Mohammed, but only his friends were there.
But when I called upon the Christ of the Christians, He answered me in love and grace.”
Hurricane Katrina down in Louisiana and Alabama has reminded us how fragile life really is.
We are so dependent upon so many things to maintain our lives.
There are as many in danger of death today as there were at the height of the fury of the storm.
If a certain virus invades our bodies, or one of our many body parts malfunctions, we die.
If a man drives his car into us or a terrorist’s bullet or bomb fragment enters our bodies, we die.
In addition to many other things, our living is dependent upon the living of Son of God.
He is the Creator of all things and by Him all things consist.
But even more than that, beyond the physical life, any eternal life is really His life.
Romans 8:11 – “If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus form the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.”
II Corinthians 4:14 – “Knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you.”
One summer the caterpillars were all feasting on the big green bush in the front yard.
They were getting bigger and fatter with every passing day.
Then the oldest and biggest crawled into a coffin of his own making and appeared die.
The other caterpillars all sobbed and mourned and had a heart-rending funeral for their friend.
Little did they know that soon he would emerge a thousand times more glorious than he had been before.
The caterpillar became a magnificent Tiger Swallowtail butterfly.
It was possible because the Creator/Saviour decreed that it be so.
“So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption:
It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body.”
The explosion of a bomb is merely the changing of one substance into another along with the expulsion of a great deal of energy.
The compost pile in the back yard is the changing of left-overs into fertilizer.
The decomposition of a dead animal in forest, is nutrition for the bush beside it.
And the death of the saint is his transformation before God.
Away back in the oldest book in Bible, Job said –
And though after my skin worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God.”
For example, he had preached to the intellectuals of Athens.
And as that message came to a conclusion, he declared without embarrassment:
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.”
We must remember that declared in Jesus’ resurrection there is a guarantee that no sinner can get away with his sin.
Two thousand years ago a group of sinners, whom the Lord made feel miserable in their wretchedness, took and executed the Saviour.
Pilate washed his hands of the blood of Christ and then later died insane.
But the Christ Whom they rejected, Paul knew to be the King of Heaven.
He is the Saviour of those who will turn from their sins to humbly face and trust him.
And He is the judge of those who die in their sins.
I think that this is what Paul was hoping to tell the Sanhedrin that day.
Jesus lives.
I can’t tell you how those men eventually died.
The question is: will YOU face Christ as your Saviour or as your Judge?