To Know and Love Christ

Well, happy Reformation Sunday. I don't get the greeting back. All right. Happy Reformation Sunday. I know most of you are used to calling it All Saints Day. We are commemorating, remembering the day that Martin Luther nailed the 95 theses to the door at Wittenberg in 1517. Of course, technically it's tomorrow, but we're going to celebrate it today, the Lord's Day. That's why we all wore orange sweaters and blue shirts. For those of you who don't know me, that was not correct. It is always saying a mighty fortress is our God, the classic hymn of Martin Luther. To begin with, we started last year beginning a series every year. We'll be going through one of the soul laws of Martin Luther, one of the great articles of faith that define us as Protestants, as opposed to the Roman Catholics. That's who he was protesting against. Last year, we started with Sola Scriptura. We're going to start the ministry by saying the word of God alone will direct who we are and what we do and what we believe. This year, we're going to look at Solus Christus because it is in Christ alone that we have hope. Christ is the most important doctrine taught in scripture. All the scripture points to him, either looking forward to him from the Old Testament or back to him from the new. It is Christ alone that gives us hope, Christ alone that gives us salvation, and Christ alone for the reason why we gather. See, the Word of God is deep and demanding. The Word of God is rich and full of many beliefs. Some of them are full of mystery and awe. Some of them are difficult to understand. There's one that is the most important of all, and it is Jesus Christ. It hinges upon Jesus Christ, our faith, Christianity. You can have doubts about inerrancy. You can have questions about the origins of life. You can have wonders about life after death. But what it all comes down to is Jesus Christ. Answer that question. Who is He and what did He do? More important, let's focus even further. Did Jesus rise from the grave? That question answers everything. Well, we already have a yes. But if you're questioning about Christianity today, there's one question you have to answer. Did Jesus Christ rise from the grave? Is he resurrected? If he's not resurrected, he was just a teacher. Just like Buddha or Gandhi. But really, he's not even a good teacher. You have to say he's insane or a liar because he led all of us astray. If he's not risen, he's an evil person. Because we're all here worshiping no one. As Paul says, if there is a resurrection, we are to be pitied above everyone else. Because we believe in a hope that's not there. The good news today, friends, is that he is risen. He is risen and our hope is sure. He is risen and we have a sure and steadfast foundation. This morning, as we look at Christ, specifically Christ alone, we're going to look at the resurrection. It's really more of a meditation upon Jesus' declaration that I am the resurrection and the life. Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life. The key question for you this morning is how has the resurrection affected you? How has the resurrection changed you? How does it change what you do? How does the resurrection change what you believe? How does the resurrection change what you love? What does the resurrection mean for you today? Paul also says, where he says that we should be pitied above everyone else, is 1 Corinthians 15. In the same chapter, He says this, if there is no resurrection, let us eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. Now, of course, I didn't that wasn't originated by Dave Matthews, even though he has sung such a lyric that comes from a great philosopher, Epicurus. It's a valid argument that he makes. Epicurus says, let us eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die. What he's saying is that life is just going to end, live it up. Enjoy as much of this life and the sensual pleasures that you can because you die and that's it. It's a good argument. It's a valid argument if only the premises were true. It's not a sound argument. Because the key premise there is that we don't just die. We go on and we live and we'll face a judge who will hold us accountable for everything we do in this body. Friends, the resurrection is what it all comes down to. The resurrection is the most important thing you have to wrestle with. If Jesus Christ rose from the grave, he's God. He's man and he's the Savior. So the resurrection is important because the resurrection proves the most basic doctrines of our faith. Only God can conquer sin and death. Everyone in this room is going to die. Everyone in this room knows people have died. No man has come back from the grave except for one. And that's because that man wasn't just a man. He was God. The resurrection proves that Jesus Christ was God. We'll think about this more specifically from Romans 1.4. Secondly, it proves that Jesus was a man. He rose with a full humanity. He's just like us in every way, except without sin. Someone touched him, someone put their finger in his wounds, he ached, he has a full body. He just didn't appear to be a man. He is like us in every way. Which proves our third point. He's our Savior. He's the mediator, he's fully God and fully man, and therefore able to stand in our place under the judgment of God. He alone can take upon the wrath of God for us if we put our faith in him. He alone delivers us from our sins. And finally, it proves what Jesus taught was true. Essential to Jesus' teaching is that he was going to be killed and in three days he was going to rise again. That is a central aspect of His teaching. There's no good morality in Jesus' teaching apart from that alone. There's no reason to believe anything Jesus said if He did not rise from the grave. Let us look at how this should affect us today. The resurrection of Christ. First, the first main point. The resurrection gives us a new identity. The resurrection gives us a new identity. When we believe in Jesus Christ, we have a new identity. We were sinners waiting for judgment. We become saints longing for glory. We were condemned. Now we're called. We were under God's wrath. Now we receive mercy. We were rebels who fought against God. Now we are called friends of God. We were dead in our sins because of Adam. Now we are alive because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. We were children bound to the lives of Satan, destined for hell. But now in Christ, we become sons of God, adopted children into the family of God. Jesus Christ gives us a new identity in his resurrection as the sons and daughters of God. Romans 1.4 says as much. I'll read Romans 1 verses 1 through 4. Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, which he promised beforehand through his prophets and the Holy Scriptures, concerning his son who was descended from David according to the flesh and was declared to be the son of God in power according to the spirit of holiness by his resurrection from the dead. Jesus Christ Our Lord. See, in the Trinity, we see a Father, a Son, and a Holy Spirit. We need to focus particularly on the Father and the Son. The one God, there's a Father and a Son, and there's only one Son. He's a unique Son, as we confess with the Council of Chalcedon. He's the only begotten Son. He's the only proper Son of God. He's the only proper Son of God the Father. He has a unique access, a unique relationship, a unique love. that he shares with the father. What's amazing is that when we believe in Jesus Christ, we get to share some of the privileges of his sonship. You see, we were created in the image of God, we were given a special status in the world, but we were there merely creatures that God had a special status for that God loved more than other creatures, I believe. But we were still just creatures. Then we rebelled and we became sinners and enemies of God. But when Christ came, we become sons and daughters of God. We get a better status than our original. We now have access to the father, as if the son. When we come to God in prayer, we get to call him father. That's unique in the New Testament. Remember what Jesus called God father, he was going to be stoned. That's because it's a unique declaration. It's a unique claim. But now we get to call him father in the name of Jesus, the true son. It's a unique privilege to come to him with that intimate name, that intimate relationship. You see, we now get to go to the father face to face. Moses couldn't see his glory. Moses couldn't do it because Christ had not come yet. He had not been adopted into the sonship because Christ had not made the declaration on the cross and the resurrection. Friends, the glory of God is scary, and Alex taught us Wednesday night. But what's amazing is the glorious one has made a way for us to see the glorious one. God himself in the covenant of Christ, in the new covenant, there's no more fear. We are encouraged and commanded to enter into His presence boldly, not fearfully. We get to go into the very presence of God, into His Holy of Holies, to look at Him face to face and talk to Him as a Father. That's a privilege we receive because of Jesus Christ and His resurrection. Because the Son stands at the right hand of the Father and allows us access into His most intimate, precious presence. We get to go into the Holy of Holies rooms every day, all day, whenever you want. The question is, are we taking advantage of that? Do we truly enter boldly into the presence of God regularly to speak to God, to talk to Him and to hear Him talk to us? Do we look to pray to the Father in that intimate, personal, relational way? Do we look to carry other saints with us in corporate prayer into the Holy of Holies? Are we praying to see God greater while we're there? Are we giving our list of to-do's and wants? It's one of the things about prayer. I remember Brian Russell saying this. We pray too many saints out of heaven and not enough sinners into heaven. We're constantly giving him our physical needs list. Not asking him to do amazing spiritual feats for us and for sinners and for their saints. See, when we pray in the name of Jesus, we're praying with the same authority as Jesus. That's the privilege we have. Let me give you three ways to pray for one another as a church in the name of Jesus. Pray that we would all be quick to repent of sin. Pray that we would all embrace God's grace and forgiveness. And pray that we would proclaim the gospel faithfully. The second way Jesus Christ gives us a new identity in his resurrection. So he sets us free. The risen Jesus has given us a new identity by giving us freedom. Paul in Romans says we're enslaved to sin apart from Christ. I actually like the language of Ephesians better. We're dead in our sins. What could a dead person do? Nothing. No capacity, no potential, no power. Completely incapacitated to do anything to help yourself or to have any hope. We were dead in our sins. But we are now made alive in Christ Jesus who is risen from the grave. He sets us free from the power of sin. The power that enslaves us to only sin. And the power that sin has over us that will lead to our death. The exodus of Israel from Egypt is one of the most powerful stories in all of scripture. They're being enslaved, they're being abused, they're losing their children. And God raises up Moses. He finally gets to leave and he leaves with great riches and God parts the Red Sea and they march through and it's a glorious deliverance. But it's nothing in comparison to the deliverance of Jesus Christ. The New Testament likens Christ's death to Moses's exodus, but it's so much better because it's not just freeing us from a physical captive, it's freeing us from our spiritual captivity. It's freeing us from the power of sin. You see, friends, without Christ, We can do nothing but sin. But Christ sets us free to fight sin. In Romans 6, Paul says, if we are baptized in Christ, we are identified with His death and His resurrection. It's a great emancipation proclamation. You are free from sin in Christ Jesus who is risen. That's the greatest freedom anyone has ever known. In Romans 8.11, Paul argues the same power that rose Christ from the grave lives within you and the person of the Holy Spirit. We have the power of the resurrection living inside of us to persevere against sin, to resist sin, to say no to temptation. When we feel overwhelmed by temptation. We need to remember the resurrection. When we feel overwhelmed by temptation, we must remember the resurrection. If Christ has risen to give you freedom, you are free indeed. You may not feel the freedom because the temptation is overwhelming, but you have to fight against what you sense and believe in his promise. You have to cast your eyes upon what's above, and that's the risen ascended Savior. If Christ is risen, he is the risen King who protects you. with absolute authority and power. If Christ is risen, he is able to deliver you from every temptation if you trust him. If you place your faith in the risen Christ, you have the power to say no to all those temporal temptations and believe in the eternal reward that is waiting for you at the right hand of the Father. Not only does he give us a new identity and a new freedom, but he also gives us a new purpose. The risen Christ Jesus has given us a new identity by giving us a new purpose. So we believe in Jesus Christ, we no longer live for ourselves. We no longer see sin as entertaining. We no longer see sin as good. We see sin as our enemy. That's what Jesus Christ, our champion, the risen one, has come to fight for us. That fight we could not win. We were even believing a lie that sin was good for us. It had betrayed us. It had duped us. But in the power of the risen Christ, we see the pleasure of sin is nothing. It's a lie. We see the power of sin is destroyed. We no longer live for ourselves. We live to love God. We live to enjoy the fountain of delights. We live to have our hunger quenched by the love of God. Are you allowing the resurrection to change every aspect of your life? Is it changing the way you purpose your life, the intentional purpose you have? Let me go through some areas in which it should change the way we live. Does it change the way you love your husband or your wife? We should seek to let the resurrection define the way we are a spouse. As a risen Christ, he is a great bridegroom. He is the greatest husband ever known to man. He is a great lover of us, the church, who has laid down his life. If you're a husband, you must reflect this love for your wife. And as a wife, you must respect your husband being in submission to him as he has commanded the church. See, what's beautiful is that the end picture of redemption is not marriage as in my wife and I are your spouse and you, but it's actually the church and the bridegroom. He is a great head of the church. He is a great bridegroom, the only perfect lover of our souls. What we have to realize is that our calling to be good husbands and faithful wives is tied to his resurrection, which means that we repent of our sin and obey our calling as he has reflected what we're supposed to be doing. How is the resurrection affected how you parent? What is the goal for your children? What is your ultimate goal for your children is that they would have a good experience with sports like you did in high school? Is it that they would succeed with grades? Is it that they would succeed in life? Would it be that they would live the American dream and make more money than you? None of those are Christian goals. None of those are resurrection goals. The resurrection goal is that your child would have wisdom. The resurrection goal is that your child would have a godly spouse. The resurrection goal is that your child would have a love for God above all else and love others sacrificially. What are you leading your children into with the goals that you have for them? What are you training them to think is the chief end of man? To be successful? To look good? To have great experiences? Are you training them to be prayer warriors, students of the word, lovers of God and lovers of their neighbor? Friends, we have to let the end Define how we live now. If Christ is risen, he has told us that we will be held accountable for every deed and every action. He must change the way we live our lives, what we seek, what we hope for and what we love. Now, if you're not a Christian this morning, a few weeks ago, I I preached that the reason you're not a Christian, the reason you deny Jesus Christ is because you love your sin too much. And I believe that's chiefly right. I know there's intellectual questions that are important. I mentioned some earlier, but the main thing comes down to is Jesus Christ, the Savior, and are you willing to repent of your sins and trust Him with your soul? I believe the main problem is not our minds and the intellectual questions we have, but our hearts, what we love and what we desire. Well, I believe that is chiefly right. I also want to give some important aspect to the fact that many people may deny Christ because of Christians. Maybe you're not a Christian this morning and you've seen Christians act not like Christ. As I believe Gandhi himself said, the reason he has no problem with Christ, he has a problem with Christians. If you're not a Christian this morning and you are judging Christ based upon our actions. Stop. Don't judge Christ because of us. Judge Christ based upon what he taught and what he accomplished. We're sinners. We're going to fail you if you trust us. Christ will not fail you if you trust him. We are sinners and we are hypocrites. We preach we should be godly and we're not. That's why we go to the cross to find forgiveness. We all need to go to the cross and find forgiveness. Yes, we fail and we sin. So that's not Christ's problem. That's our problem. And he fixed our problem. And He can fix yours as well. But you must believe in His death and His resurrection. The second main point I wanted to make on the resurrection is that the resurrection gives us perseverance in suffering. Now, there's two particular passages in Paul that have really blown my mind this past week because I've been meditating on the resurrection. The first is Philippians 3.10. I'll say that I may know Him in the power of the resurrection. What a fantastic prayer, what a fantastic hope, what a great goal for us to have as believers, for us and our children and our spouses and our friends, that we may know Him in the power of the resurrection. As I first looked at the passage, I didn't really look at it as context. I was just doing a basic search. And I thought, well, surely that must be that I may know the power of the resurrection so I can fight against sin. But that's not what the context is. The context is that he may persevere in suffering. The context is that he may reject his idols of self-righteousness, that he would lay aside all the things that he once counted as gain and see them as nothing in light of the resurrection of the cross. What's amazing about that passage is that Paul had the perfect resume for God. He was of the right people. He had done the right things. He was the right kind of person. But it wasn't enough. He was still a sinner. No matter what his resume had on it, he was going to be condemned for his sin. He had done everything right. And he looked at it in light of the resurrection and said, that is rubbish. You see, we all try to build up our own worship. We all try to build up our own little ziggurat so we can have confidence in our self-righteousness. We have the hammer and nail of self-righteousness in our hand and we're constantly trying to build up a resume that will please God. And if we look at that self-righteousness, we need to look at it and discuss and say that I may know the resurrection of Christ. We need to stop nailing up the building parts of the ziggurat and trust the one who was nailed to the cross and risen again for our salvation. You see, we love to build up our identity and the things that we love and the things that make us feel good. But nothing saves us apart from the resurrection of Christ. We must seek to know him and the power of resurrection, because the power of our self-righteousness will only bring condemnation. The second sentence that really has challenged me is 2 Timothy 2.8. Paul commands Timothy to remember Jesus Christ in his resurrection. One translation just simply says, remember the resurrection. Remember the resurrection, what good counsel this is from Paul. Now, we don't know what Timothy is going through. He's going through some kind of a trial. I would love to know what it was. This is Paul, an apostle writing to a pastor that he had trained up. Timothy had been going through some discouragement, and his counsel to him is, remember the resurrection. I have to admit, as a pastor, I've gone through valleys of discouragement. That's not because of you. It's because of me. I'm a sinner. I have self-worth in my sin. I go through valleys of discouragement because of the spiritual nature of the work, my own sin nature and my lack of trusting in God to complete his good work. Now, I've just finished a year, and it's amazing to me how many different valleys of discouragement I've gone through. And the same day, or the next day, I'll also have these high peaks of praising God for His goodness. And you can see, as I reflect upon this, it's based upon how much I'm trusting God, how much I'm praising Him for what He does. You see, in both instances, my discouragement or my praise for what He's doing, I need to remember one thing, and it's the resurrection. When I'm discouraged, I need to remember the resurrection that he will bring about his good work. When we are discouraged and tempted and tried and in despair, we need to remember the resurrection because it gives us our only hope. We also need to remember the resurrection when we're praising God. Because we can begin to say, look how good I've done these things. We can begin to say, look how great everything is from what I've done. And we remember the resurrection because it's only because of God's goodness that we can do anything that pleases him. Remember the resurrection, this is the counsel for our souls in life's valleys and on the mountaintops, we must be thankful constantly for what he has accomplished for us. Finally. The resurrection gives us hope beyond the grave. Death was introduced with Adam's sin. We will all die. That's the foe we cannot conquer alone. We're all doomed to die. Death came through Adam. Life through Jesus Christ. There is no hope apart from the resurrection of Christ. We were created to have life. We were created to live. As Paul says in Acts, in Him we live and move and have our being. God created us to have life. That's why death is so difficult. That's why death is so painful. It's against our very nature. It's against what we were created for. We were created for life, but our sin brings death. We were without hope, but Jesus Christ came to conquer death. to conquer the grave, so that when we believe in Him, we know that death isn't the end. Death is the beginning. Death begins a new life, a resurrected life, where we have a glorified body, where we are no longer not able to sin, but in the glorified body, after the resurrection, we are not able to sin. God completely freed us from our sin nature, so that all we do is praise Him, delight in Him, and enjoy Him. If you're not a Christian this morning, you need that good news. Death is not the end. Death will bring about the judgment for everything we have done, everything we have said, everything we have thought, everything we have loved. Death brings about the judgment where you stand before God and you'll be speechless. There's no defense for you. There's nothing you can argue about. Your soul, your will will continue. There's hope. And that hope is only in Jesus Christ who rose from the grave, who will come in and say, no, this one's sins are forgiven in my death and my resurrection. If you're a believer this morning, How much does a resurrection change the way you make every decision? Paul says in 2 Corinthians 5.10, speaking of us, For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive what is due for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. Now, we will not be condemned if we believe in Jesus Christ. He has secured our salvation, but we stand before Christ If we're believers and after we die, we stand before Christ, we're going to have to give account for everything we did. We are called to be good stewards of this time. We are called to redeem our time. How much does your life reflect the resurrection? How much are you pursuing things in this world in contrast to the things that you're pursuing that are set apart for you in heaven, where there is no rust or moth? Are you living for the rewards you can receive today? Are you living to receive the rewards that you will receive at the resurrection? Where Christ himself hands out the crowns for those who are faithful and persevered to praise his name. Friends, the resurrection is the most important doctrine we confess. Because in it, it encapsulates the gospel. Jesus was God, He is man, and He is the mediator. And He alone gives us salvation. Let's go to the Lord in prayer. We praise You, our God, because You are our wonderful, merciful Savior. You have taken away our wrath. You have given us hope. We thank You, Jesus, for coming to be like us in every way. So that you can stand in our place and take on the wrath that we deserve. And you give us your righteousness. You give us the privileges of your sonship. I pray that we as a church will not take these things for granted. We will praise you and seek you out all of our days. I pray for anyone here who does not know you. I pray that they do not be distracted by other questions. Let the one question penetrate their heart. Are you the risen Savior? And I pray that your Spirit will convict and convince and convert their heart that you are absolutely our only hope and that you are our risen Savior. And you're letting me pray. Amen.