The Resurrection
Transcript of FLOT Line Episode 608 aired on April 23, 2017
Good morning and welcome to the FLOT Line. I’m your host Rick Hughes and for the next few
minutes I would like to ask you to stay with me. We always have a few minutes of motivation,
some inspiration, some education, and we always try to do this without any type of manipulation
which means we don’t con people, we’re not hustling you for money. We’re not going to ask you
to join up or fess up or give it up. We’re just going to ask you to listen up, listen to the message.
It’s my objective to verify and identify God’s plan for your life and it is indeed my hope that if I
can do this, you can orient and adjust to the plan. I mean, that’s always up to you. My job is to be
accurate, not to give you some sort of human speculation, but to give you divine revelation from
the Bible, from the Word of God. We just got through with the Easter series, Easter weekend.
What a wonderful time it is to remember the resurrection of our Savior, the anointed Son of God,
Jesus Christ our Lord. Paul had a lot to say about the resurrection. I want to talk to you about the
resurrection
because I was speaking to a friend the other day, we’re fishing buddies. Maybe you
know I like to bass fish and that’s kind of my hobby, bass fishing. I love to get on the lake and go
bass fishing. We were fishing and I asked him a question. I said, “Could you tell me how to be a
Christian?” He told me what he thought you had to do to be a Christian. He’s a good guy but he
simply didn’t get it right and so it made me think about some things and this is what I want to
talk to you about today. What is the gospel message? What is the good news of Jesus Christ? We
celebrated the resurrection of Christ this weekend, the Easter weekend. We understand how He
went to the cross and bore our sins and let’s listen to what Paul said. Reading out of 1
Corinthians 15 and this is something you may want to pay careful attention to because not only
am I going to speak about the resurrection of Jesus Christ but I’m going to speak about your
resurrection. What will happen for you when you are resurrected? Here’s what Paul said,
beginning at 1 Corinthians 15:3.
“For I delivered unto you first of all that which I received,”
and
how did he receive this? Well, he got it from God the Holy Spirit and he heard it from other
apostles,
“that which I received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scripture.”
Now
where do the Scriptures say Christ died for our sins? There are two passages in Isaiah that
foretold of the suffering Messiah, Isaiah 53:4 and 6. This is many, many years before Jesus
Christ ever came into this planet as an infant.
“Surely, He
[that’s Christ]
has borne our griefs and
carried our sorrows, and yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But He
was wounded for our transgressions
[here’s what you’ve probably heard before, He was
wounded for our transgressions],
He was bruised for our iniquities and the chastisement of our
peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep
[that’s you and me]
have gone astray. We have turned everyone to his own way and the Lord hath laid upon Him
[that’s Christ]
the iniquity of us all.
[verse 7]
He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He
opened not His mouth. He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter and as a sheep before her
shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth.”
This is a prediction of Jesus Christ on the cross
608-The-Resurrection-transcript.pdf
and how He handled this. He didn’t scream, “Let Me down. You got the wrong guy.” You know,
someone sang a song once, “He could have called 10,000 angels to destroy the world and set
Him free, but He died alone for you and me.” That’s exactly what He did. He, Jesus Christ, the
anointed Son of God went to the cross. God’s plan was for Him to go to the cross, that’s the
reason why He came to this world, to go to that cross because on that cross,
“He who knew no
sin was made sin.”
He became my sin, I’m the one that should’ve been there. You’re the one that
should’ve been there. We are the sinners, not Him. In Isaiah 53:8-10 again,
“He was taken from
prison and from judgment and who shall declare His generation? For He was cut off out of the
land of the living, for the transgression of my people was He stricken and He made His grave
with the wicked, and with the rich in His death because He had done no violence, and neither
was there any deceit in His mouth. Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise Him.”
Bruise Him goes all
the way back to Genesis 3:15, the first protoevangelium where it’s predicted that Satan would
bruise Christ, but Christ would crush his head.
“It pleased the Lord to bruise Him but He had put
Him to grief when Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, and He shall prolong His days
and the pleasure of the Lord shall protect His hand.”
Then in 1 Corinthians 15:3 as I go on Paul
said,
“I delivered unto you first of all that which I received that Christ died for our sins
according to the Scripture.”
I just gave you two passages in Isaiah that talked about this, Isaiah
53:4-6, Isaiah 53:8-10. Now I’m going back to
1 Corinthians 15:4,
“And that He was buried,
and that He rose again the third day according to the Scripture.”
According to what Scripture?
According to Psalm 16:10,
“Thou will not leave my soul in Sheol, neither will Thou permit Thine
Holy One to see corruption.”
We know from understanding the Word of God that when our Lord
Jesus Christ gave up His spirit, when He cried,
Tetelesti,
or
“It is finished,”
when He said these
words,
Eloi Eloi lama sabachthani,
“My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me,”
we know
that He willingly gave up His spirit. His human spirit went to be with the Father. We know that
from this verse, Psalm 16:10. His soul went to Sheol. Sheol is the place of the dead and had two
compartments. It had Abraham’s Bosom, which was called Paradise and it had the place of
Torments. We know the Lord did not go to Torments, He went to Abraham’s Bosom, the place of
Paradise. He made a victorious proclamation and explained what had happened and took all of
those people to the third heaven that were believers being held in Abraham’s Bosom. We know
that His body went into the grave. We know that three days later His body walked out of the
grave and His soul came out of Sheol and reunited with the body. We know that His spirit was
reunited with His soul. We know
He has a body and a soul and a spirit that is alive, alive
today and face-to-face with the Father, awaiting the shouted order to return. Christ is alive.
Paul said in 1 Corinthians 15:5,
“And He was seen by Peter. Then He was seen by the twelve.”
This is a dead man walking. I’m sure they were just blown away, even though He had told them
He would not stay in the grave. He had told them He would walk out of the grave. Here they are
seeing Him face-to-face and then in 1 Corinthians 15:6,
“After that He was seen of about 500
brethren all at once.”
And Paul said most of these still remain alive.
“Some have died. Most are
still alive.”
And then in 1 Corinthians 15:7,
“And after that He was seen of James and then all
608-The-Resurrection-transcript.pdf
the apostles and last of all, He was seen by me also, as one who was born out of due time.”
In
verse nine,
“For I am the least of all those apostles. I’m not fit to be called an apostle, because I
persecuted the church of God,”
and he did. He was on his way to Damascus to persecute the
church of God when Christ appeared to him. And he said in 1 Corinthians 15:10,
“But by the
grace of God I am what I am.”
That’s a wonderful verse. You and I can claim this also. We don’t
deserve to go to heaven. We don’t deserve to have eternal life. We don’t deserve anything, and yet
it is by God’s grace, free unmerited favor, He loved us. He loved us before we loved Him. It is by
His grace that we are what we are. We are believers, we are Christians, we have the guarantee of
eternal life.
“And His grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain.”
Paul went on to say,
“I labored more abundantly than all of the others, yet not I, but the grace of God which was with
me and therefore
[verse 11]
whether it were I or they, we preached and you believed.”
That’s the
act of becoming a Christian, someone gives the information and someone believes the
information.
“We preached and you believed,”
and then he says in verse 17,
“And if Christ be
not raised, then your faith is vain and you would still be in your sins.”
Yes, He was raised. If He
wasn’t raised from the dead, then I don’t care what He did, it wouldn’t mean anything for us.
That’s the point I want to make to you.
If Christ did not resurrect from the dead, then
everything He did is meaningless because we would have no guarantee that He’s alive and
no guarantee that we have eternal life.
But the fact that He walked out of the grave and He was
seen by so many is proof positive that Jesus Christ is alive. He is alive in the presence of His
Father right now and it is proof positive that we also will be alive after we die. Now listen as I
read on, 1 Corinthians 15:19,
“If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men most
miserable.”
In other words if it’s just in this life and not the future life, then we don’t have much
to go on. Then in verse 20,
“But now Christ is risen from the dead, and He has become the first
fruits of them that sleep.”
Who are the ones that sleep? The dead in Christ, the ones who are
believers in Christ, the ones in the Old Testament that believed through the sacrifices and
through the Passover and saw the image of Christ and believed. People were saved in the Old
Testament the same way they are saved in the New Testament. You don’t understand this? We
look back at the cross. They looked forward to the cross. It was the same cross. They didn’t know
His name like we know, but they had all of the sacrifices which were pictures of what was to
come and they believed and they were saved just like you, by faith.
1 Corinthians 15:21-22,
“For since by man
[that’s Adam]
came death
by man
[that’s Jesus]
came also the
resurrection from the dead. For as in Adam all die and even so in Christ shall all be made
alive.”
Get ready for this, when you die and you’re going to die, don’t think you’re not, you will,
when you die it’s not over, it is just the beginning.
The amazing thing is we are guaranteed,
promised, provided a resurrection body just like Jesus Christ.
It’s all right here. Here are the
principles you need to understand. One, without the resurrection of Jesus Christ there would be
no hope for those of us who believe in Him. If He didn’t resurrect then what do we have going
for us? Yes, He resurrected. Yes, He walked out of the grave. Yes, He’s alive today. Yes, He was
seen by many. Yes, they could not kill Him, He is God, He is man. He is the God-man,
608-The-Resurrection-transcript.pdf
undiminished deity and true humanity and He is in heaven waiting, seated at the right hand of the
Father and interceding for you and for me. The Bible tells us in 1 John that He prays for us. He’s
our defense attorney. He intercedes for us. So the first principle, without the resurrection of
Christ there is no hope for those of us who believe in Him. Two, to begin with you know His
own brothers didn’t believe in Him, did you know this? In John 7:5 it says,
“For even His own
brothers did not believe in Him.”
In Acts 1:13-14 we see where His half-brothers had in fact
finally accepted the fact that He was the Messiah and it was due to the resurrection. In Acts
1:13-14,
“When they had entered the city, they went to the upper room where they were staying.
That is Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip, and Thomas, Bartholomew, and
Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas the brother of James
[this
is not the Judas that betrayed Him].
These all were with one mind and continually devoting
themselves to prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His
brothers.”
There they are, now they believed. Now they know, now He’s resurrected. I don’t
know how you live your whole life and not know your brother is God. You know, we will
understand this someday, but they didn’t believe and Saul likewise. Paul saw the resurrected
Christ on the road to Damascus and this is when he became a believer. It took this unbelievable
incident to convince Paul that Jesus Christ is the anointed Son of God. Here are some principles
to understand. Without the resurrection of Christ there is no hope for those of us who believe in
Him. At the beginning His own brothers didn’t believe in Him, John 7:5 and then in Acts 1:13-14
we see where they are believers and they are assembled in the upper room along with the
disciples. Paul likewise saw the resurrected Christ on the road to Damascus where he was
intending to persecute the church. Paul was a persecutor, a killer of Christians. In Acts 9:1 we
have the story. It says,
“Now Saul
[who we will now call Paul, Saul]
still breathing threats and
murder against the disciples of the Lord went to the high priest, asked for letters from him to the
synagogues at Damascus. He said that if he found any one belonging to the way
[those are
people that are believers in Christ]
both men and women, that he might bring them in chains
bound up to Jerusalem
[Acts 9:3]
As he was traveling it happened that he was approaching
Damascus and suddenly
a light from heaven flashed around him and he fell to the ground and he
heard a voice saying, ‘Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?’ And he said, ‘Who are You
Lord?’ And the voice said, ‘I am Jesus whom you are persecuting.’”
Saul had an encounter with
Jesus Christ right there. Can you imagine the shock? Can you imagine the amazement from one
moment being a man who was a murderer of those who followed Christ and the next moment
meeting Him on the road to Damascus face-to-face?
“Jesus said, ‘Get up, enter the city of
Damascus, and it will be told you what you must do.’”
Acts 9:7 says,
“The men who traveled
with him stood speechless. They heard the voice but they didn’t see Him. And Saul got up from
the ground, and though his eyes were open he could see nothing. They led him by the hand and
brought him into Damascus and he was in Damascus three days without sight, and neither did he
eat nor drink anything.”
What a shock to his [Paul’s] system. What a shock to be blinded by the
glorious image of Jesus Christ. Don’t think it wouldn’t do it to you too. If you saw Him today in
608-The-Resurrection-transcript.pdf
His resurrected body and all of His glory, it would do the same thing to us. He is the most
glorious creature of the universe. He is the God-man, Jesus the Christ, the anointed Son and Paul
had this encounter. Such an encounter that it changed his life, changed his life forever and he
became a tremendous apostle. Others saw Christ as well. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 15:6
that,
“He appeared to more than 500 at one time.”
I already told you this, and here’s another
principle I want to remind you of. The Jewish leaders had devised a plot to deceive the people
into thinking that actually He did not resurrect from the dead but that the disciples stole the body.
That was their way of dealing with this because they knew He was missing also and they didn’t
know what to do, so they said, “let’s come up with this plot.” So listen to Matthew 28:12-15,
“And when they had assembled,”
that’s the Jewish leaders, the Sadducees, the Pharisees, the
scribes,
“when they had assembled with the elders and consulted together,”
and by the way,
these were the people that our Lord called snakes and vipers, dead men. Outside they looked
really nice and inside they’re full of dead men’s bones. They rejected everything He said. They
rejected Him. They hated Him. They devised the plot to kill Him because He threatened their
authority. He threatened their power. He called a spade a spade, looked them in the eye and told
them what losers they were.
“When they,”
the scribes, Pharisees, and the Sadducees,
“had
assembled with the elders and consulted together
[listen here it is]
they gave a large sum of
money to the soldiers,”
Matthew 28:12. Then in verse 13, and here’s what they said,
“You are to
say that His disciples came by night and stole His body while we were asleep. And if this should
come to the governor’s ear
[in other words if Pilate hears about this]
we will win him over and
keep you out of trouble. And so they took the money and they did as they were instructed and this
is the story that was widely spread among the Jews and still is to this day.”
You know, they had
to come up with something. Where did He go? What happened to the body? You know, there
were a lot of questions being asked around town. There was no CNN, no MSNBC, no Fox News,
but the word got around, the body. I mean this was the biggest event they had seen in years. The
crucifixion of this fellow that called Himself the Messiah and now the body is gone. His body is
gone. He is not around. Can you imagine the rumors and the gossip? And so they devised this
malicious, evil, scheming plan to claim that the disciples actually stole the body. Here’s a
question I’d like to ask you. What guarantee do you have that you will be resurrected after you
die? Is there any guarantee for you about this? Should you worry about this? I mean, when you
die is that all there is to it for you? I mean, here you are. You are a believer in Jesus Christ.
You’ve accepted Him as your Savior. You’ve joined your local church. You’ve supported your
local church’s ministry. You pray and you’ve gone on mission trips and you’ve sung in the choir
and you’ve been faithful in attendance to whatever programs the church had and when you die
they’re probably going to do your funeral at the church and the pastor’s going to tell them what a
great person you were but where will you be when they put you in the grave? I’ve done a lot of
funerals, I’ve seen a lot of bodies put in the graves. They’re going to put your body in a grave
someday if they don’t cremate you first. And down you’ll go into the grave and where are you?
Are you still in that body? Now remember, you have a body, you’re created in the image of God,
608-The-Resurrection-transcript.pdf
you know this. You have a body and you have a soul, remember this. Your soul has mentality.
Your soul has consciousness, so you will be aware of what’s going on. You will be able to think
what’s going on. Your soul has volition, you make decisions. You’ve already made a decision to
believe in Jesus Christ. Then also you have a human spirit. That’s where God the Holy Spirit
lives in you. This is what was dead before you accepted Christ, your human spirit was dead and
when you believed in Jesus Christ, you had a spiritual birth. You were, “born again,” not your
body, but your spirit, your dead spirit. You see, when you were born into this world you were
identified with Adam’s original sin. That’s why it says,
“For by one man sin came into the world,
and death by sin and death passed on all,”
spiritually dead. That’s why you had to make a
decision to be born again, to believe in Jesus Christ, to be made alive spiritually. Because the
Bible says if you’re going to worship God, you’re going to have to
“Worship Him in spirit and in
truth.”
Now here you are, now your old body, this wrinkled, decayed, cancer filled, arthritic
body, whatever it is, is put into the grave whether into the ground or cremated. What about you?
Are you aware of all of this? In John 14:19 here’s what Jesus said.
This is what we take our
hope and confidence in,
“After a little while the world will no longer see Me but you will see
Me. Because I live, you will also live.”
These are the words of Christ. The fact that He is
alive today is guaranteed proof that we are alive today.
1 Thessalonians 4:16-18,
“For the
Lord Himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel and with
the trumpet of God and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then those of us that are alive and
remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air and so shall
we always be with the Lord. Because of this comfort one another,”
comfort one another. In 1
Corinthians 15:22,
“As in Adam all die, but in Christ all will be made alive.”
Alive, no you
won’t die. Your body will cease to exist. Your body is useless. It won’t work in heaven. It’s a sin
infected body, it’s plagued with sin. You will get a new body, a body like His body, a glorious
body, a resurrection body. The Bible says,
“No more pain, no more tears. The old things will be
all passed away, all things will be new.”
A perfect body, what an amazing thought, it’s beyond
our comprehension. How can we even fathom something like this? I mean it’s almost as if it was
some sort of science fiction thing but it’s not.
It’s real. You are going to have a new body, you
are going to have a resurrection body, and you are going to be with Jesus Christ face-to-
face.
Those who left before you that are believers, the members of your family, they are there.
They are alive and they are waiting to see you. Never doubt it, never fear, never worry. We are
going to see what happens in this resurrection body and how there could be a difference in these
bodies in eternity. You stay with me next week, we’ll press on and see a whole lot more about
this. Until then, this is your host Rick Hughes saying thank you. Thank you for listening to the
FLOT Line.