Held and Holding Firmly
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Held and Holding Firmly

 (ID: 1777)

Paul’s highest priority was to share the Gospel with others, warning them against self-effort that doesn’t save. Our ability to hold firmly to the truth of God’s Word is not a means of being—or staying—saved. Instead, Alistair Begg teaches that faithfulness is evidence that we are firmly held in God’s embrace. As believers, we must fully understand the Gospel so we can communicate it simply and rest confidently in God’s promises.

Series Containing This Sermon

A Study in 1 Corinthians, Volume 7

Life after Death 1 Corinthians 15:1–58 Series ID: 14607


Sermon Transcript: Print

I invite you to turn with me to 1 Corinthians 15.

Father, above all things you have exalted your name and your word.[1] Grant now that as we open your living Word, the Bible, that you might speak to us through it, instruct us, equip us, prepare us, change us, by your Spirit, for the glory of your Son. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

We began last time, in the opening verses of 1 Corinthians 15, by paying careful attention to the message which Paul was proclaiming, and we noted his very strong emphasis on the gospel, the good news of the Lord Jesus Christ. And we find that Paul in this case, as in each case, is overtly concerned that his class, if you like—those who are under his tutelage—will be in absolutely no doubt as to the course of study upon which they have embarked. He is quite unashamed of his constant reminders, and indeed, the way in which he begins this section, he then wraps it, before moving on in the eleventh verse, by declaring to his readers, “Whether, then, it was I or they”—“whether it was someone else or myself”—“this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.”

As we’re going to discover again this morning, the gospel, the good news, is at the very heart of Paul’s proclamation. Paul himself, in opening up his letter to the Corinthians, says to them in 1:17—and we noted this last time—“Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel.” And if we had had occasion to meet Paul, if we had been encountered by him in one of his preaching sessions in some of the cities that he visited, we would have been very, very clear that this apostle Paul was consumed with the issue of the gospel.

Now, in light of that, it seems to follow, to me, that whenever you preach the Bible at all, you are essentially preaching the gospel. Because the whole of the Bible focuses on Jesus, and the whole story of Jesus is about Jesus and the death on the cross and his resurrection. And therefore, the whole thrust of continual study of Scripture will not be to the detriment of making sense of the rest of the Bible, but it will be to give us the indication that there is a crossroads encounter with Christ which the unbeliever should be able to detect as God works in his life, and also that the believer would be strengthened by the awareness of this to make clear to the world to which we return that what we are about is the message of good news.

Now, I was greatly encouraged a couple of years ago when, in reading a book called A Quest for Godliness on the Puritans, written by J. I. Packer, I came across a statement which actually reverberated with my own heart. I’d never, ever seen this written down, and when I found it, I immediately had my secretary type it up and put it in a little Perspex thing so that I could have it on my desk. And if you come in my study, you will find this quote there. It looks at me every day, I look at it every day, and I have learned it off by heart.

It goes like this: “If one preaches the Bible biblically, one cannot help preaching the gospel all the time, and every sermon will be, as Bolton said, at least by implication evangelistic.”[2] Okay? I’m gonna tell you it again—very important. You wanna know what makes me tick? You can come in my study, look around; you can come in my bedroom, look around—all the books and stuff that’s lying around there. You can find Margaret Thatcher in my bedroom—that is, her biography. You can find Winston Churchill in there. You can find Louis L’Amour in there. You can find a lot of stuff about me if you just scurry around. You come in my office, my study, you’ll find right against me, “If one preaches the Bible biblically, one cannot help preaching the gospel all the time, and every sermon will be, as Bolton,” one of the Puritans, “said, at least by implication evangelistic.”

If God’s people are going to proclaim the good news, then they must understand it fully so that they can communicate it simply.

Now, if you get ahold of that, it will help you to understand the pastoral team that God has given you here. This past week, we went on a retreat together in order that we might advance, and we spent time in rest and in prayer, in fellowship, study, planning. And in the course of that time, we focused on a book which we’re using in our pastoral team meetings entitled Pastors and Teachers. We’re studying it together in the hope that we might understand better what it means to be a pastor and a teacher. And on Wednesday, we focused on a section entitled “Goals and Priorities,” in the course of which we spent some time on this somewhat extensive quote. And the reason I give it to you is, again, so that you might understand what it is that drives and equips and stirs the hearts of those who have been given the privilege of pastoring and shepherding here at Parkside Church.

The author says,

The body of Christ is not only to care for its spiritual maturity, but it is also to grow. Our responsibility is not solely for the flock already gathered in, but for those other sheep who are to be called. The body of Christ is healthy as, through the works of service her members are equipped to fulfil, she reaches out into the world and obeys her Master’s final commission to preach the good news to every creature. A true pastor’s concern is for the other sheep who have not yet heard the Great Shepherd’s call ….

Our goal is to equip God’s people to be fishers of men and women. This was a priority purpose of our Lord Jesus Christ for His disciples.[3]

In other words, that the driving impetus in the hearts of the pastors is that those sheep that are already gathered in under the auspices of Parkside Church might be equipped to become fishers of men. But when push comes to shove, as long as the ninety and nine are safely in the fold, the pastor is going for the one. That was the whole story. There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine who have no need of repentance[4]—that the existence of the church is not simply that it might sit around and congratulate itself on how well it is doing, but that it might be consumed, focused on the fact that it is being equipped, it is discovering the truth of the Bible, it is enabled in its spiritual gifting, in order to become fishers of men—in order to become, like Paul, those who declare the gospel.

And if God’s people are going to proclaim the good news, then they must understand it fully so that they can communicate it simply. Very, very important that we’re brought to an understanding. And that’s why I try my best and labor as I do, as do my colleagues in variety of context, so that you might understand—not simply that you might be able to memorize what you’re told but so that you might understand. Because if all that we do is memorize to mimic parrot fashion, then as soon as somebody hits us with a question for which we have not been given the pat answer and the key verse, then we’re completely at sea—a bit like me when I was doing mathematics at school. All I could do were the ones from the example in the book. As long as the exam was as per the example in the book, I was okay. As soon as they threw in a zinger, I was in deep difficulty. And, of course, they threw in the zingers with great frequency, and so I spent a lot of unhappy days in relationship to that. The problem was not that I didn’t show up at the class. The problem was not that I was unprepared to memorize the material. The problem was that I didn’t understand.

So, loved ones, you have to understand the theology fully so that you may be able to articulate simply. Anybody can make stuff complicated. That’s easy! The hard part is to make it simple.

So, to this end we labor, striving with all of the strength that God supplies,[5] so that after we have departed you will be able to bring these things to mind.

Now, we’re still in verse 2, if you recall from last time. Because there is a little section there which we never completed—a little problem statement that some of us may have tripped over and wondered about, so I want to address it with you. I’m referring to the final statement in verse 2: “Otherwise, you have believed in vain.” What does he mean, “You have believed in vain”?

Well, I want you to understand this: that what Paul is addressing here is not a warning against the true believer losing their salvation. Rather, he is providing a warning against the kind of faith that doesn’t save. If you need to cross-reference this—it’s not our purpose this morning—but, for example, if you read the opening chapter of James 1, you get James’s question: “Can such faith save …?”[6] Actually, into 2 and on to 3. “Is this a saving faith?” he says. No, this is not faith which saves. And so Paul says, “It is imperative that you understand that the gospel brings you into an experience which not only redeems you from your sin but saves you and keeps you. And if you are not holding firmly to the word, then the faith that you have adopted is not a faith that saves.”

And there all kinds of people who will declare that they have faith, but they have no assurance of salvation; they have no experience of the transforming power of God within their lives. Their faith is something that they have essentially latched onto rather than the faith which Paul describes here—namely, that one’s ability to hold firmly is not a means to being or staying saved, but one’s ability to hold firmly is an evidence of having been firmly held. Only those who are firmly held hold firmly. It is our continuance which gives evidence of the fact that we have been taken up and held. Our continuance is not the ground of our salvation; that is at the cross, whereby we have been picked up and held fast. But our holding firmly is the evidence of that transaction having taken place.

“Well,” says somebody, “what about those who forsake Jesus, those who turn away from the church and by their life and by their lifestyle and by their public profession reject fully all that they once professed to believe?” Well, the only answer that we can realistically bring to that from Scripture is that such an individual never, ever had genuine faith in the first place.

If you want to clarify that in your mind, turn to 1 John and chapter 2. If you turn from the book of Revelation back the way into your Bible—it goes Revelation and then Jude and then 3 John, 2 John, 1 John—1 John 2:19. John wrote his letter in order to bring assurance to those who have professed faith; he wrote his Gospel in order that men and women might come to faith. And here he addresses the question of those who have disengaged themselves from the body of Christ. And this is how he describes it, 2:19: “They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us.”

It is our continuance which gives evidence of the fact that we have been taken up and held.

Belonging is a very important thing, is it not?—a sense of belonging. It’s very important to a child to know that he or she belongs to a family. If you’re in a sports club, you like to get the membership roster and to look at it and to find out if your name is printed there, because it gives to you a sense of belonging. When we think in terms of our engagement with Christ, it is a wonderful thing to be described in biblical terms as those who belong to Jesus. One of the hymns we love to sing, sometimes sing it in the evening at a baptismal service:

Now I belong to Jesus,
Jesus belongs to me,
Not for the years of time alone,
But for eternity.[7]

And this morning, as I stand before you, years and years into my own spiritual pilgrimage, I marvel at the fact that on the twenty-ninth of January 1995, I’m still here—that I’m still holding firmly. And I know for sure that it must be because I’m being firmly held. Because when I think about the perversity of my own heart, when I think about how prone I am to wander away, when I think about how easy it is for me to sin, when I think how significantly possible it is, like in Pilgrim’s Progress, to get in Bypath Meadow or to get in Doubter’s Castle or to get in any of these side streets, there’s no sense of pride in my heart to look back over the vantage point of a year, and another year, and another year. I find myself saying with the hymn writer,

When I fear my faith will fail,
[He] will hold me fast;
When the tempter would prevail,
He can hold me fast!

I could never keep my hold,
He must hold me fast;
For my love is often cold,
He must hold me fast.

He will hold me fast,

the chorus goes,

He will hold me fast;
For my Savior loves me so,
He will hold me fast.[8]

Surely one of the great thrills for a dad is when that little toddler girl or boy, whatever it is, gets to be able to take those early steps, and when for the first time you no longer have to carry them or push them, but you can walk beside them. Tell me how close you walk beside that little one. Do you let their hands dangle? No! You just love that feeling of reaching down and getting that tiny, tiny little paw about the size of your thumb and just clasping it up in your great big hand, at least in comparison to that tiny little hand. And when the first time you came to walk across the traffic, and they looked at this melee, and they looked up at you, and their heart beat, you reached down, and you took their tiny hand in your hand, and they held firmly onto you, because you had determined to hold firmly onto them.

Listen: if you’ve got a Christian faith this morning whereby you’re hanging on by your fingernails to God, just making it, then I don’t know that you have understood saving faith. If you are hanging onto God as a result of how well you’ve done this past week, or how many times you’ve read your Bible, or how many times you’ve witnessed, or how many times you didn’t think the bad thought, or whatever else it is, and when something comes across your mind says, “I wonder if I’m a Christian?” you find yourself saying, “Oh, yes, I am, because of this and this and this and this and this; I’m holding on”—then you don’t understand! The only reason any of us are holding on is because he picked us up in his almighty embrace and gathered us to himself. Jesus says, “My sheep hear my voice … and they follow me: And I give … them eternal life”—gift—“and they [will] never perish, neither [will] any man pluck them out of my hand.”[9]

This morning, the ground of our assured conviction concerning the nature of the good news in our own lives is on the fact that we have found our tiny hand nestled under the warm and large and powerful, eternal embrace of God our Father. And when sin comes into our lives, as it inevitably does, it spoils our fellowship, but it does not negate our relationship.

“By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.”

Love to have the chance to talk with anybody who feels they may have believed in vain. We would be glad of the chance to turn to the Scriptures and look at these things.

Now, let us get on from here into the section that begins at verse 3 and ends at verse 11. I want through these subsequent verses to notice three elements: first of all, the priority of the message; and then the reliability of the evidence; and then, thirdly, the testimony of the apostle. We will go no further, probably, than the first of these today.

The Priority of the Message

The priority of the message. “What I received,” he says in verse 3, “I passed on to you as of first importance.” This was not some marginal issue. It was right at top of the list.

Now, I want you to notice carefully that this message did not originate with the apostle Paul. He received it, and he passed it on. There all kinds of messages out on the streets at the moment that originate with mere men and women. If you tune in your television, you can be invited to listen to some of the most bizarre stuff you have ever heard in your life. That lady Clare Prophet, for example: it’s totally bedeviling to me. I cannot understand a word she is saying. I cannot… I’ve listened. I can’t make sense of hardly three consecutive sentences. And yet she has thousands and thousands of people subscribing to her stuff and sending her money and listening to her programs, and her message all originates with her. She’s making it up! Hannah Whitall Smith was making a lot of stuff up! Mary Baker Eddy was making stuff up! Christian Science and the Bible—people scuttling into these little things to read books that originated with the people themselves.

Paul says, “Listen, you’re not involved with a cult.” Every so often people will say to you, “Hey, I hear you left the established church and went over to Parkside. Joined a cult now, did you? They’re making their own message up, are they?” Well, you can say, “No, actually not! We’d sure love to talk with you about that, because the message is actually coming right out of the Book. It doesn’t originate with an individual. It actually originates with God. It didn’t even originate with the apostle Paul. He was passing on what he had received.”

The language that he uses here is the same language you get in 1 Corinthians 11 when he introduces the Lord’s Supper. He says the same thing: “For what I received from the Lord, I passed on to you”[10]paradidomi, paralambano, two key technical words which simply mean “the transmission of eyewitness accounts.” Paul says, “I want you to know that what I’m writing down here I did not make up. I received it. And I received it, and now I’m writing it down” in AD 51, 52—whatever it might be, but in the 50s. Therefore, within twenty years of the actual events of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we have the record being written into text.

You say, “Well, why is that significant?” Well, it’s very, very significant. These are the facts. They were written at such a time as to make clear that the very heart of the gospel message concerning the resurrection of Jesus Christ goes back right to the event.

Well, you say, “Well, still, you’ve lost me.” Well, let me tell you this: if you go to become a theological student in a university that does not teach the Bible and you join their faculty of divinity, the prevalent view is this: that there was an historical Jesus, about which we can know virtually nothing. The only Jesus that we now know is the Jesus who has been created by the New Testament church. And over the years, the New Testament church painted Jesus in the way they wanted him. And so, they introduced all kinds of mythology attaching to this historical Jesus of Nazareth, and that the task of a New Testament theologian is to try and scrape away all of the mythology and get back to the historical Jesus.

Well, fine! We get back to within twenty years of the Jesus event, and the testimony is clear, as we’re about to see.

This week we have recorded and rehearsed the events at Auschwitz—the horrible events of the Holocaust—fifty years later. Nobody is in any question about it, apart from a lunatic fringe that wants to deny it. Nobody can deny the reality of the pain and the hell and the disgrace of it all. Fifty years on, everybody knows. Why? Because it was passed down carefully from generation to generation, and it was written down. And everyone accepts it. With a fifty-year time lag, nobody’s questioning Auschwitz. With a twenty-year time lag from the resurrection, nobody was questioning the facts of the resurrection.

You see, the scholars have to be true to the material that they’re given. If we’re going to be scientific, we have to examine the evidence that is there, not the evidence we would like to be there.

Now, for those of you who’ve understood that, good. For those of you who didn’t, don’t worry about it, and ask somebody along the row, and they’ll tell you, “Ask somebody else along the row.” Okay? He received it. He did not originate it. It’s very important. One day that may dawn on you.

Now, what is the primary tenet of Christian faith? Here it is in one phrase: “Christ died for our sins.” The death of Jesus was an atoning death. The death of Jesus was not some magnanimous act on the part of divinity. It was not simply that God thought he would show some way in which he loved people. The death of Jesus was in order to pay the penalty for sin. It was thereby an atoning death. It was the atonement. The atonement.

Now, if I said to you, “What is the atonement?” could you write fifty or sixty words on the atonement? Well, hopefully many could. Let me tell you how I tried to learn it when I was a boy. I thought of the atonement as three words: at-one-ment. Now, I don’t know what ment meant, but I just had to get it out of the road there. But I understood it like this: that here we had a holy God and sinful man. The wrath of God was revealed from heaven against all the wickedness and godlessness of men. So, we were enemies; we were not friends. Therefore, there would have to be a reconciliation. In order for there to be a reconciliation, there would have to be a reconciler, and that reconciler would take those who were at odds and make them at one with one another. He would effect an at-one-ment. He would bring in reconciliation those who were distanced and separated. Peter understood it in the same way. He said, “Christ died for [our] sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring you to God.”[11]

You see, in the Bible we have both fact plus interpretation. One of things that people say to us is this: “Oh, but that’s just your interpretation.” And sometimes, of course, we are saying bizarre things about the Bible, and we ought to be smacked rather firmly across our knuckles, and it really is preposterous. But when we’re talking in these terms, we have to say to them, “No, I’m sorry, it’s not my interpretation. This is the apostles’ interpretation.” The fact is, “Christ died.” What is the interpretation? Comes in the next phrase: “for our sins.” Someone says, “Well, I know Christ died. I know there was a Jesus, and I know he died. I just don’t know why he died. I don’t know why it is important.” No, the answer is, he died “for our sins.”

You notice that word “our.” Do you feel included in that word “our”? You should. Because that identifies the fact that I, as a sinner, am included in this problem, and that if I am to have a solution, it must be by means of this same individual. The just penalty for sin is death, and the death of Jesus on our behalf satisfied sin’s penalty and overcame our alienation.

Let me give you it in ABC terms. This is the ABC of the predicament of man. A: man is alienated from God. That’s why God seems so far away—don’t know if there is a God, because he lives in alienation from God. B: man is in bondage to his own sinful desires. C: man is in conflict with others.

Now, everybody identifies the problem of conflict in our culture—conflict between the races, conflict between rich and poor, conflict between parents and children, conflict between husbands and wife, and so on. And they want always to try and explain the big C. What’s the nature of the conflict? Well, the Bible says. The reason we have conflict is because man is in bondage to his own sinful desires, and the reason that he’s in bondage to his own sinful desires is because he is alienated from God—hence the statement of Augustine, “O God, our hearts are restless, and they remain restless unless they can find their rest in thee;”[12] then, when for alienation we have reconciliation, then for bondage we have freedom, and for conflict we have compassion. And the means whereby this is effected is through the cross.

The just penalty for sin is death, and the death of Jesus on our behalf satisfied sin’s penalty and overcame our alienation.

And I want you to notice as well that it says here that this message of the cross, Jesus dying for our sins, is not an afterthought—not an afterthought to correct a defect in the system. It was according to the Scriptures.

Turn with me to Luke 24 and the story of the Emmaus Road. You remember the disciples going down the road, and they’re all unhappy because the events concerning Jesus just haven’t worked out in the way in which they’ve said, despite the notion of this empty tomb. Jesus comes along beside them. It’s really a fabulous story—about verse 19. And they’re talking to one another, and he just sidles up, and he’s walking beside them, and he just… I mean, you’re not going to go in and interrupt, so you just pick up and walk along.

And in verse 17 he said to them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?” And “they stood still, their faces downcast.”[13] It’s interesting that they stood still, is it not? Luke, as a doctor, got a fabulous eye for detail. If it says they stood still, they stood still. They’re walking along the road, and they’re talking. And Jesus says, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?” So they’re walking along, and he says, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?” and they stopped.

Why did they stop? Well, you’re told right here: they say, “Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem?”[14] This is great, isn’t it? “Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem”—right?—“and do not know the things that have happened there in these days?” I mean, the irony in this is brilliant. This is Jesus of Nazareth, the guy who’s just been hanging on the cross. Everyone in Jerusalem is taking about him. He sidles up to these guys, and they say, “Are you just visiting Jerusalem? Did you miss what’s been going on?”

And he doesn’t go, “Oh, you stupid nits! Let me tell you what’s been…” No! Listen, look at this: he says, “What things?”[15] “What things?” “Tell me more.” And they said, “About Jesus of Nazareth. He was a prophet. His miracles, unbelievable! His words, his sermons, fantastic! We thought he was going to liberate Israel. We thought he was going to redeem Israel,”[16] and they come to the conclusion.

And then he says to them, he says, “[Oh!]”—verse 25—“how foolish you are, … how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!” He said, “You haven’t been reading your Bibles!” He says, “Did not the Christ,” the Messiah, “have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?”

“And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”[17] He doubtless went back to Isaiah chapter 53, and he must have said to them, “Who do you think the prophet was speaking of when he wrote these words:

“He was pierced for our transgressions,
 he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
 and by his wounds we are healed.”[18]

And suddenly, their eyes must have become big as saucers, and they realized it! It is to this end that we labor, preaching the gospel to every man, that suddenly the lights may go on and someone says, “I see it! I got it! I’m unrighteous. I’m in deep trouble. He is righteous. He died for me, once for all. Therefore, I need no other sacrifice. He needs to be sacrificed never again. There is one sacrifice upon a hill called Calvary, once and for all, for those who place their faith and trust in him.” And the lights go on.

It’s what happened to Martin Luther as he climbed the Scala Sancta in Rome, as he bloodied his knees trying to earn his way to some kind of acceptance with Almighty God, and he heard the verse reverberate in his head: “The righteous will live by … faith.”[19] And then he said, “Well then, why, if it is by faith, am I trying to do it by works?” And that, of course, brought about a great revolution.

Now, let me just try and wrap this up by pointing you back again, in 1 Corinthians 15, to the fact that he was buried: “According to the Scriptures … he was buried.” Why make much of this? Well, because it was factual: “He was buried.” And his burial was the evidence of his death. You don’t bury people unless they’re dead—at least you’re not supposed to. That’s the one thing I don’t like about death is the thought of being buried, because I can’t imagine being dead so that I wouldn’t know that I was being buried. I can only imagine being buried while I’m still alive, and it really freaks me out! ’Cause I’m claustrophobic on an elevator, and it’s a bad thought. But the fact is, you don’t get buried unless you’re dead. I got a special thing at the bottom of my will; it simply says, “Make sure,” you know. Because I don’t want to be going, “Excuse… Excuse… Excuse…” you know? “I was just going to say…” So, you only get buried if you’re dead.

So what do we know? We know Jesus was dead. ’Cause you don’t bury anybody unless they’re dead. When the Joseph of Arimathea came, said, “Can I take the body?” he knew he was taking a dead body.[20] They did not break his legs—as was customary in the crucifixion scene so as in some small act of mercy to increase the speed of the final demise of the individual—they did not break his legs, because when they came to him, he had already given up his spirit, and he had gone.[21] And they were in no doubt, and they took him down, and they laid him in the tomb. Therefore, there was no thought in the minds of the eyewitnesses that somehow or another Jesus had just swooned in the tomb, or that he was only half dead in the tomb. The only reason he was in the tomb was because he was dead, and that is why Joseph of Arimathea made sure that he was embalmed as was necessary. And frankly, if you were not dead before you got embalmed under about fifty or sixty pounds of that stuff and wrapped with all that stuff around your mouth, anybody knows you’ll be dead by the time of that is finished, right? In fact… Ah, forget it. It’s all right.

If he was in the tomb, it was because he was dead. And if he was dead, then the resurrection was the reanimation of a corpse. And that is exactly what he’s saying. The resurrection is neither here nor there unless you have a dead Christ. It’s no big deal for somebody to be half dead and revive themself in the coldness of the tomb. What is a big deal is when somebody is dead, dead, dead, and they’re laid in the tomb, and you go back in to check, and the graveclothes are lying all nicely and neatly folded, and it is apparent that somehow or another, either this guy is the neatest person you ever saw in making his bed, or else he came through this stuff in a way that is inexplicable to the human mind. He vaporized! And that’s exactly what he says here: “He was buried,” and “he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.”

Paul comes before Felix Agrippa in Acts chapter 26, and he says to the crowd gathered around him, as he offers his defense of Christianity, he says, “Why should any of you consider it incredible that God raises the dead?”[22] “Why should you consider it incredible that God raises the dead? If he made the heavens and the earth, and if he made you, and if he designed an eye, and if he made the function of the mind, and if he made the double circulatory system happen, and if he managed to conceive of all of this oxygenated and deoxygenated stuff, do you think it’s a problem for him to raise the dead? Don’t be crazy, Agrippa! Why would anybody think it’s a big deal for God to raise the dead?” Now, it’d be a big deal for a man to raise the dead, but it’s not a big deal for God to raise the dead.

And when we come back to this next time, we’ll go to verses 5, 6, and 7, and we’ll look at these resurrection appearances, which underscore the words of Jesus, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me, even though he die, yet shall he live; and whosoever lives and believes in me will never die.”[23] That’s in John’s Gospel. John, on the island of Patmos, seeing a vision of the risen Christ, encounters Christ and trembles as he hears him speak. And in Revelation 1:17, John says, “When I saw him,” Jesus, “I fell at his feet as though dead. And then he placed his right hand on me and said: ‘Do not be afraid. I am the First and the Last. I am he that liveth, that liveth and was dead, and behold, I am alive forevermore.”[24]

There’s no way around it, loved ones. If Jesus is not alive, this is futility. If Jesus is alive, then there are not enough seats created to receive those, the sheep of his fold, to whom we want to go. I want to see Jesus lifted high, like a banner, right across Bainbridge, right across Cleveland, right across America, right across the world.


[1] See Psalm 138:2.

[2] J. I. Packer, A Quest for Godliness: The Puritan Vision of the Christian Life (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 1990), 169.

[3] Derek Prime, Pastors and Teachers: The Calling and Work of Christ’s Ministers (Crowborough, UK: Highland, 1989), 45–46.

[4] See Luke 15:7.

[5] See Colossians 1:29.

[6] James 2:14 (NIV 1984).

[7] Norman J. Clayton, “Now I Belong to Jesus” (1943).

[8] Ada R. Habershon, “He Will Hold Me Fast” (1908).

[9] John 10:27–28 (KJV).

[10] 1 Corinthians 11:23 (paraphrased).

[11] 1 Peter 3:18 (NIV 1984).

[12] Augustine, Confessions 1.1.1. Paraphrased.

[13] Luke 24:17 (NIV 1984).

[14] Luke 24:18 (NIV 1984).

[15] Luke 24:19 (NIV 1984).

[16] Luke 24:19–21 (paraphrased).

[17] Luke 24:26–27 (NIV 1984).

[18] Isaiah 53:5 (NIV 1984).

[19] Habakkuk 2:4 (NIV 1984). See also Romans 1:17; Galatians 3:11; Hebrews 10:38.

[20] See Matthew 27:57–60; Mark 15:43–46; Luke 23:50–53; John 19:38–42.

[21] See John 19:31–33.

[22] Acts 26:8 (NIV 1984).

[23] John 11:25–26 (paraphrased).

[24] Revelation 1:17–18 (paraphrased).

Copyright © 2025, Alistair Begg. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations for sermons preached on or after November 6, 2011 are taken from The ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

For sermons preached before November 6, 2011, unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from The Holy Bible, New International Version® (NIV®), copyright © 1973 1978 1984 by Biblica, Inc.TM Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

Alistair Begg
Alistair Begg is Senior Pastor at Parkside Church in Cleveland, Ohio, and the Bible teacher on Truth For Life, which is heard on the radio and online around the world.