Resurrection
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 579 aired on October 2, 2016
Good morning and welcome to the FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few
minutes, please stay with me. As always, as usual, it’s the normal procedure here, no games, no
gimmicks. No, we’re not here to sell you anything. We’re not here to hustle you. We’re here to
give you some accurate information. Our job is to verify and identify the plan of God for your
life and your job, if you decide to accept it, is to orient and adjust to the plan. That’s up to you.
I’m Rick Hughes, host of the FLOT Line heard every Sunday morning here on this radio station
and I’d like to thank you for listening. Thank you for being a part of the show. All across the
United States this morning, people are going to hear this message. What an honor, what a
challenge, what a thrill it is for me to give this information. Recently my very own pastor, and I
always encourage you, find a pastor that can teach you God’s Word. That’s the most critical thing
for you, get under a well-qualified pastor so you can listen and learn God’s Word and wind up
actually living the Christian life in the proper way. So many people want to make the rules up as
they go along and you can’t do this. There is a properly prescribed procedure to live the Christian
life. It’s a supernatural life and it requires supernatural assets, you’ve heard me say this before.
You can’t live the Christian life based on just being a moral person saying, “Well, I’m a moral
person. I don’t do certain things, so I’m a good Christian.” Even unbelievers can be good moral
people but what I want to show you this morning is something that’s very interesting. It’s a real
challenge because so many people really don’t know the answer to this. In John chapter 11 Jesus
Christ our Lord is going to be confronted with the death of a very close friend. My pastor was
teaching this lately and I really enjoyed his message on this and I want to take part of what he
taught me and spin it off and show it to you. In John chapter 11,
“A certain man was sick named
Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha.”
Mary, Martha, and Lazarus,
brother and sisters all living in Bethany and Lazarus got sick and they sent word for Jesus to
come and for Jesus to cure Lazarus. Listen to John 11:3,
“Therefore the sisters sent unto Him
saying, ‘Lord, He whom You love is sick.’”
Now they knew that the Lord Jesus Christ and
Lazarus had a personal friendship and the Lord respected Lazarus. Verse 4,
“When Jesus heard
that He said, ‘This sickness is not unto death but for the glory of God and that the Son of God
might be glorified as a result of it.’”
In verse 5, John wrote these words.
“Jesus loved Martha,
her sister and Lazarus.”
What a tremendous thing to know that Jesus Christ the anointed Son of
God loves you personally. You know, I can say this for you today too. You might not have met
Him face-to-face like they did. You might not have walked with Him like they did, but He lives
in you. The Lord Jesus Christ is just as much with you as He was with Mary, Martha, and
Lazarus. He lives in you. There’s a song that says, “He walks with me and talks with me along
life’s narrow way. He lives, He lives, Christ Jesus lives today.” He does live and He lives inside
of you. It’s the most unique thing in the history of the world.
It’s the mystery doctrine of the
Church Age,
“Christ in you the hope of glory,”
Colossians 1:27, the confidence we have in
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our resurrection life.
We’re going to see this here today.
Jesus Christ, if you have made a
decision to believe in Him, He lives in you.
Isn’t that amazing to think about this? Now, let’s go
on with this passage.
“When Jesus heard that he was sick, He stayed where He was two more
days in the same place and then after spending two more days there He said to the disciples, ‘All
right, let’s go to Judea,’”
to the house of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. The disciples weren’t too
keen on this and they said, “Well now, just a minute Lord aren’t these Jews trying to kill You? Do
You want to go back there where they are trying to kill You?” And of course He had to correct
them about this and they did go back. And as He got back He found out that Lazarus had indeed
died. This was no surprise to the Lord Jesus Christ. In John 11:14,
“He said to the disciples,
‘Lazarus is dead and I’m glad for your sakes that I was not there to the intent that you would
believe. Nevertheless let’s go now.’”
Then Thomas said to the other disciples, “All right, all right,
let’s go. We’ll die with Him. He’s so set on going to Judea, they’ll kill Him, they’ll kill us, but
we’ll go along.” Isn’t that just like some people? John 11:17,
“Jesus came and found that he had
been in the grave four days already, and Martha
[verse 20]
when she heard that He was coming
she went out and she met Him and Mary stayed home with the people that were there grieving.
And Martha kind of admonished Him and said,
“If you had been there, my brother would not
have died but I know that even now, if you will ask God, that He’ll bring him back to life.”
And
in John 11:23,
“Jesus said, ‘Your brother will rise again.’”
Unfortunately, Martha thought He
was talking of the resurrection, the resurrection of the dead, but this is not what He was talking
about and so
“Jesus said, ‘I am the resurrection and I am the life and he that believeth in Me,
though he were dead, yet shall he live. And whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die.
Do you believe this?’ And she said unto Him, ‘Yes Lord, I believe you are the Christ, the Son of
God who should come into the world.’”
That’s what it takes to be saved. That’s exactly what it
takes to become a Christian. “Do you believe that I am the resurrection and the life? Do you
believe I’m the Son of God?” And she said it definitively,
“Yes, I believe You are the Christ, the
Son of the living God.”
That’s the most critical question I could ask you today. Do you believe
that Jesus Christ is the Son of God? If you do then that’s all that’s necessary for you to have
eternal life. You don’t have to join up. You don’t have to fess up. You don’t have to give up. You
just have to believe because this is something called grace. The Bible says,
“For by grace are
you saved through faith, it’s a gift from God not of works lest someone would brag about it.”
Grace is a wonderful gift, a free gift from God. We have this gift because Jesus Christ our Lord
went to the cross, took our place, died for us as our substitute, took our place on the cross. And
the Bible says,
“He who knew no sin was made sin for us so that we could be made the
righteousness of God through Him.”
Look at it this way. A perfect God required a perfect
sacrifice. You can manufacture nothing perfect. There’s nothing I can manufacture that’s perfect.
There’s nothing you or I could do to ever impress the justice of God. You see, the righteousness
of God is absolutely righteous and the justice of God is the guardian of the righteousness of God
and so, if the righteousness of God rejects us, the justice of God will have to judge us. This is
what happened on the cross.
“He that knew no sin was made sin.”
On that cross all of our sins
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were poured out on Him. Every sin I’ve ever done, and there have been many, every sin you’ve
ever committed, many, He was judged in our place. Therefore the Bible says,
“He that knew no
sin was made sin for us.”
This is a message people really don’t want to hear today. They would
rather believe that if they are good, if they are moral, if they attend church, if they give, if they
do things that nice Christians do, that when the evaluation time comes, it’s called the Judgment
Seat of Christ, they will be accepted into heaven because they have trusted God to save them and
they’ve been good people. Well, if you’re trusting God to save you and you’re trying to be a good
person, I have news for you. The works that you add are going to cancel out the grace. You can’t
be saved by trying to be a good person. You become a Christian by faith alone in Christ alone.
What did He ask her?
“Do you believe this?”
“I am the resurrection and the life; he that
believes in Me, will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never
die”
(John 11:25-26).
Do you understand what that’s saying? There will come a day when you
and I will die. We will face the grave and there may or may not be mourners, who knows? I don’t
know what kind of person you are and I don’t know how many friends you have. Hope not too
many for mine because I don’t want it to last a long time, it’s not about me. See, this is an
interesting thing about death. It’s not about us. People want to eulogize the person that dies and
talk about what a great and wonderful person he was. It’s not about us, it’s about God’s
faithfulness. It’s about Christ. It’s about what He provided and death is a celebration of His
faithfulness. Actually the person’s not dead. Yes, the person’s not dead. If you have a mother or a
father or an aunt or an uncle or a grandfather, some kinfolks that were believers in Jesus Christ
and they are in the grave, cheer up, they’re not dead. They’re in heaven. They’re in the presence
of God Almighty Himself. Now their body might be in the grave, it should be. It’s an infected
body. It’s an infected body with a sin nature that got there from Adam. Adam’s original sin
imputed to us at our birth means that we’re born sinful and this body will not operate in heaven.
We have to get a new body, a different body, a resurrection body.
What did the Lord say?
“I
am the resurrection.”
Does He live in you? Yes He does.
When He walked out of that grave,
this was a signature guarantee to you that you will walk out of the grave also.
Here’s the way
it works. When this time comes, when the coroner says, “He, she is dead.” They’re going to say,
“It’s all over. They’re dead, they’re gone. Okay, put them in the grave.” Wherever they put you,
whether they bury you or cremate you, it doesn’t make any difference. You’re going to resurrect,
you’re going to walk out of that in a new body when the Lord Jesus Christ returns. At the Exit
Resurrection in 1 Thessalonians 4, you will walk out of the grave in a new body, a resurrection
body. What about now? We know that now, any person who believes in Jesus Christ and departs
this earth, goes to be face-to-face with the Father and the only thing we can assume is there’s
some sort of interim body that we reside in until we get a resurrection body. We’re going to get a
resurrection body and this body is like the body of Jesus Christ but what we are going to see here
is not a resurrection body.
What you’re going to see happen to Lazarus was a resuscitation,
not a resurrection, like a lifeguard would resuscitate somebody.
This is a resuscitation
because Lazarus had to die again. As a matter of fact as a result of this, a plot was put out to kill
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Christ and this whole thing caused a lot of trouble. In John 11:53,
“From that day forth they took
counsel together to put Jesus Christ to death.”
They wanted to kill Him and they wanted to kill
Lazarus too because of what had happened in Lazarus’ life, they wanted to kill him as well to get
rid of Lazarus. You can read about it all in John chapter 11. So Lazarus had to die again but not
you and not me in our resurrection body, we don’t die again.
In a resurrection body that’s the
body we live in forever.
That’s the body we carry into the millennial kingdom when Jesus Christ
our Lord will reside here on this earth for 1,000 years and He will rule and reign on the throne of
David and we will be here with Him. “So Martha, do you believe that? Do you believe [John
11:25] that
“I am the resurrection?”
Do you believe that
“I am the life and He that believes in
Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live?”
“He that believes in Me,”
does that sound
complicated? John 3:16,
“God so loved the world He gave His only begotten Son so that
whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.”
John 6:40,
“This is the will
of God, that you believe in Me whom He has sent.”
In 1 John 5,
“He that believes that Jesus is
the Christ is born of God.”
What is necessary for you to be a believer is your faith. If you put
faith in the person and the work of Jesus Christ, that’s you saying, “I believe in Him.” When you
make this decision, you often express it in prayer. That’s the way I did it. I prayed and I simply
told the Father that I was believing in Jesus Christ and I wanted to accept Him as my Savior and
I didn’t feel weird. I didn’t feel tingly. Nothing funny happened that I could tell of, but I was born
again. I was made new spiritually speaking. You see, we are born spiritually dead. We have a
body, yep and we have a soul, yep. Some tall bodies, some short bodies, some skinny bodies, and
some heavy set bodies, we all have a body. We all have a soul. We all have mentality. We all
have volition. We all have conscience and self-consciousness, but the human spirit, without Jesus
Christ we are born spiritually dead. When the Bible says,
“We have to be born again,”
it’s not
talking about the body being born again. It’s not talking about the soul being born again. It’s
talking about a dead human spirit being made alive or quickened by means of God the Holy
Spirit who comes to live inside of you. Once the Holy Spirit comes to live inside of you He
establishes a tabernacle and this is where Christ lives in you. It’s the hope of your glory. It’s the
guarantee, signature guarantee that once they put you in the casket, you will walk out of that
thing alive. There is no doubt about it. This is what He had to demonstrate to Martha and to Mary
as well.
“Do you believe that I am the resurrection and the life and whoever it is, though he were
dead, he will live?”
And she said,
“I believe that You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Do you want to find out if someone’s a Christian? Just asked them this simple question, “Do you
believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God? Do you believe this?” You can ask them this
question, “Do you believe that Jesus Christ is the resurrection and the life?” Pin him down, ask
him and then you will see. If they believe that all that’s necessary to be saved is faith alone in
Christ alone, well then they’ve got it right. But if they tell you, “You know, that’s nice but that’s
not really enough because you’ve got to be a good person, you’ve got to you know, behave
yourself.” Remember the Bible says,
“Not by works of righteousness,”
nothing we’ve done but
by His grace.
“For by grace are you saved through faith, a gift of God,”
the Bible says.
“When
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she so said she went her way and called Mary her sister secretly saying, ‘The Master has
come.’”
She didn’t want to say it out loud. She didn’t want the whole town coming out to assault
Jesus on the highway because if they had heard that He was there, they would have all come out.
In verse 29,
“As soon as she heard that, she arose quickly and came unto Jesus, and Jesus was
not yet come into the town but was in that place where Martha met Him.”
In other words, they
were maybe at a roadside park, somewhere where He met with them. In verse 31,
“The Jews
then who were with her in the house and comforting her, when they saw her leave and get up
hastily, they followed her.”
Wow, they thought that she was going to go to the grave and weep.
They were going to stick right beside her.
“When Mary came to where Jesus was, she saw Him,
and she fell down at His feet and she said, ‘Lord, if You had been here, my brother would not
have died.’ And Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews weeping that came with her and He groaned
in His spirit and He was troubled, and He said, ‘Where did you lay him?’ They said, ‘Here
Lord.’”
Then in John 11:35, the shortest verse in the Bible,
“Jesus wept.”
Our Lord Jesus Christ
was a human and He was God. He was the God-man, undiminished deity, true humanity in one
body forever, the God-man. Did He have emotions? Yes. Did He laugh? Yes, I’m sure He
laughed. Did He cry? Yes, here it says He cried. Did He feel emotions? Yes. Did He feel
appreciation for Mary, Martha, and Lazarus and compassion for their suffering? Yes. Does He
feel for you? Yes. If you’re suffering now, if you’re going through hard times in your life, are you
not aware that Jesus Christ knows about it? Maybe He’s on His way right now to see you. He
knows about it because He lives in you. He lives inside of you. He is your Lord, He is your
Savior. He is your guarantee that in spite of whatever may happen, you will live again. You will
live forever, and so the Bible says,
“Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, ‘Look, you can see how
much He loved him,’”
and then Jesus said, “Okay, take Me to the tomb, take Me where he is,”
and Martha took Him and
“Jesus said, ‘Roll that stone away,’”
let’s get the stone off the door
and Martha about had a fit.
“‘You can’t do that Lord, he’s going to stink. He’s been in there for
four days.’ Jesus said unto her, ‘Said I not unto thee that if you would believe, you would see the
glory of God?’ So they took away the stone from the place where the dead was laid and Jesus
lifted up His eyes and said, ‘Father I thank You that You’ve heard Me and I knew that Thou
hearest Me always but because of the people who stand by, I said it that they may believe that
You sent Me.’ And when He had thus spoken, He cried with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come forth,’
and he that was dead walked out, bound hand and foot with grave clothes and his face was
bound about with a cloth and Jesus said unto them, ‘Loose him and let him go.’”
My pastor
made an interesting comment about this. He said, “Have you ever wondered why He said,
‘Lazarus, come forth?’”
I thought, yeah, sure I wondered about this. Here is why He said it. If
He had just said, “Come forth,” then every person that had died would have walked out of the
grave, so He had to identify who He was speaking to. This is God. Had He said, “The dead
should come forth,” every dead person would have walked out of the grave so He identified
Lazarus and Lazarus only. Then He said, “Take that wrapping off of his face so he can breathe.”
“Then many of the Jews who came to Mary and had seen the things that Jesus did, believed on
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Him.”
There are about seven miracles in the book of John and every time a miracle occurs,
people believe on Christ. They accept Him as their Savior and this was no different. This was a
signature guarantee that He is God. This guaranteed that He alone could raise people from the
dead.
No one else could do this, only God could do this and God raised Lazarus from the
dead just like God, i.e., our Lord Jesus Christ will raise you from the dead if you have
believed,
if you have put your faith and your trust in Him. Do you? Do you believe that Jesus
Christ is God’s anointed Son? Do you believe that He is the resurrection and the life as Martha
said she believed,
“Yes Lord, I believe.”
Do you believe this? Do you believe that even if you die
you will still live, that the grave cannot hold you just like it could not hold the Lord Jesus Christ,
that He guarantees you you’re going to walk out? Because if you don’t believe this, you’re living
in a horrible situation. What a horrible thing to worry about death and not to understand the
victory over death that we have as believers in Jesus Christ.
We have victory over death. Death
cannot hold us.
To be absent from the body, the Bible clearly says, is to be face-to-face with the
Lord. It happens to all of us. It happens to everyone that you know, sooner or later we all must
die and with Christ in us, we are guaranteed to walk out of the grave alive. What an amazing
thing this was. Can you imagine? Now a lot of people were blown away except for the Pharisees.
They were not blown away at all. They gathered a counsel, they convened a meeting and they
decided that they had to kill Him.
“From that day forth, they took counsel together to put Him to
death,”
John 11:53. A contract was put out on Jesus Christ. Can you believe that, because He
resurrected Lazarus from the dead? There’s a reason for this and the reason is that the Pharisees
and scribes, all the members of the Sanhedrin were afraid they would lose their power and that
the people would rally around Christ and Rome would put an end to everything. See they were
under Roman domination, and so they were afraid of Christ, afraid of losing their power, their
prestige. There is nothing to be afraid of. To be afraid of having eternal life, to be afraid of living
forever, to be afraid of resurrecting from the dead, what’s there to be afraid of? Jesus Christ
clearly said, “I am the hope, I am the life.” It’s true, it’s your guarantee. Wherever you are today,
whatever you’re facing, Christ lives in you if you have believed in Him, if you have received
Him as your Savior. He guarantees you that in spite of whatever happens, you will live again as
will other family members who are believers. Your grandparents will live again. Your mom and
your dad will live again. Your children will live again, in Christ. We will all live again forever
and forever and forever in the eternal status. What a magnificent thought, not resuscitated,
resurrected in Christ. Until next week, I’m your host Rick Hughes saying thank you for listening
to the FLOT Line.