God's Faithfulness Revealed Through Christ's Resurrection

"We live in a time that does not take promises seriously, and that is evidenced by the rampant divorce rates we see and the ease, I think, on a more personal level, even if you have never experienced divorce, with which we break our word. 'I'll be home at 5:45,' we say, and then we show up at 6:15 habitually. And it may seem like a small thing, but if we do it often enough, then we become those kind of people who are unreliable with our word." [00:00:06]

"But on a more serious level, the resurrection of Christ reminds us that the fulfillment of the promises of God comes to their fruition in the resurrection of our Lord from the dead. So what we want to do in our time together now is to look at the resurrection of Christ in the Gospels. We have looked at it in the Old Testament. We are now going to look at it in the Gospels and then go from there to look at it in Acts and the rest of the New Testament." [00:00:37]

"And what we see in each instance is that the resurrection fulfills the promises God made to us in the Old Testament. Well, let's start off then in Matthew chapter 28 in verses 1 through 10. I'll just read the first verse there, and we'll focus on details among the four Gospel accounts, each one bringing out a different facet of what the resurrection means for us." [00:01:04]

"And so, when we come to the resurrection account which capstones each Gospel, it's the high point of each Gospel which is what lead one scholar to say, 'The Gospels are essentially passion narratives with resurrection accounts.' And when you come to the end there and you come to this verse, it would have been shocking for the original readers to hear the first witnesses to the most exciting miracle that God ever did were women, were two women that came to see the tomb." [00:02:17]

"Now again, look at the details of this text that are different from the Matthean account. And these two words here that are only found in Mark's account are so instructive for us, my friends. Now, scholars will say, and I think this is right, that Mark is likely writing the eyewitness testimony of Peter. So, underwriting Mark's Gospel is Peter's account of what happened, and there are details throughout the text that kind of bring this out." [00:04:32]

"Surely, he is human like we are. Peter thought to himself, 'There's no hope for someone like me.' And then he hears this account from these two women who said, 'And oh, by the way, specifically the angels told us to tell you, "Go tell His disciples and Peter that He's going to meet you."' And that could be the gospel in two words, my friends, 'and Peter.'" [00:06:14]

"And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. So, same setting, resurrection. It has happened. This detail Luke puts in front of us is so instructive. So notice so many details here. Let's just focus on a few of them. 'They were kept from seeing Him.' And we are going to see this in John's Gospel too when Mary doesn't recognize Him, and once again that reminds us it's got to be the Lord who opens our eyes for us to see the truth of the resurrection." [00:09:24]

"And then he says, 'Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets,' which is a shorthand way of saying, 'The Old Testament.' He says, 'Here's what they teach about Me.' And again, we need to recover this understanding today as we have so much confusion about what the Old Testament is and what it does and how we are to read it. It is a Christ-centered book and a collection of books rather. It is a Christ-centered document. It is focusing, riveting our attention in every detail from the Psalms to Ecclesiastes, Jesus at the center." [00:11:44]

"Now, why were they startled and frightened? Well, because they thought they saw a spirit, but go down to verse 39. Here is what Jesus says, 'See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch and see. For a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.' Now why is this important? One of the early heresies in the church was that Jesus was not really a man, that He just appeared to be a man." [00:13:09]

"Now John loves to do this. He loves to take the historical reality and remind us of the pregnant theology that underwrites it. Did you notice that little detail, 'supposing Him to be the gardener'? Now, where were Adam and Eve placed? In the garden. Where did the fall, where did all of the ruin that the resurrection has to undo come from? A garden. And this address, 'Woman,' by the way, that does not come through in our English translations, and Jesus uses it a few times in this Gospel." [00:17:15]

"Thomas answered Him, 'My Lord and my God!' Jesus said to him, 'Have you believed because you have seen Me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.' And notice what He says. We don't even have any indication that Thomas actually touched Him, but we have one of the strongest evidences for the deity of Christ, and this is the capstone of John's Gospel that began in John 1:1, 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.'" [00:19:36]

"So, all of these accounts show us the reality of the resurrection, but they also show us the reality of God's love for sinners like us. He is the God who is the God of 'and Peter.' He is the God who will say, 'The first people I appeared to will be the ones most forgotten in this society.' He is the God who will walk us through and show us all of where He comes from in the Old Testament, and He is the God who has got charcoal on His hands, and there is no other one like Him, and there is no one else we should trust or believe, given the reality of the resurrection and the reality of the God of resurrection." [00:22:42]