137. Jesus Christ--Resurrection

Jesus Christ--Resurrection

John 2:18-25. Then answered the Jews, and said unto him, What sign showest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things? Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. Then said the Jews, Forty and six yours was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? but he spake of the temple of his body When, therefore, he was risen, from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them; and they believed the Scripture, and the word which Jesus had said. Now, when he was in Jerusalem at the passover, in the feast-day, many believed in his name, when they saw the miracles which he did. But Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men: and needed not thus any should testify of man: for he know what was in man. The actions and events of Christ’s life are the basis on which the truth and importance of his doctrine rest, and the solidity of the foundation must be estimated from the structure which it supports. The foundation of a building lies buried under ground, and cannot be examined by the eye; but when we behold a stately, lofty, and venerable pile, which has withstood the attack of ages, and which still presents undiminished beauty and strength, we justly reason from what we do see to what we do not; and we feel ourselves constrained to applaud the excellency of the design, from the perfectness and durability of the execution. “Behold,” saith the Lord God, by the mouth of the prophet Isaiah, more than seven centuries before the fabric began to appear, “behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believeth shall not make haste. Judgment also will I lay to the line, and righteousness to the plummet.” Here is the design of the sovereign Architect, not sleeping like many a beautiful human plan in the portfolio of the artist, never to be realized, but quick with the spirit of life, already executed “in the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will,” and to arise, in due time, the wonder of angels and of men. This building of God at length began to appear and to ascend. But it accorded not with human ideas of grandeur and magnificence. The very depositaries of the original design, were the first to resist the completion of it, because it justified not their prejudices and prepossessions. Their opposition, however, served only more illustriously to display the manifold wisdom and goodness of God, to expose the weakness and folly of man. Had the edifice been of man’s devising and rearing, it could not have stood “the washing of a tide,” for the “foolish man built his house upon the sand: and the rain descend, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it.” But infinite Wisdom founded the fabric of Christianity upon a rock. The rains have descended, the floods have come, the winds have blown and beaten upon this house, but it has not fallen; for it is founded upon a rock. In the gospel history we behold the ground floor or platform of the Christian religion. It principally consists in a narration of plain, unadorned facts, well authenticated indeed, but recommended by no artificial polish, and deriving all their importance and effect from their own native truth and excellence; serving, nevertheless, as a solid support to the precepts, the promises, the predictions, the doctrines, the consolations of our most holy faith. Take, for instance, the event which our blessed Lord, in the passage which has now been read, foretold concerning himself, namely, that the temple of his body should be destroyed, and in three days raised up again. Now when this event actually did take place, not only was the veracity of Jesus, as a prophet, completely established, but a foundation was laid of sufficient strength to sustain the whole weight of the Christian’s hope, of a resurrection to life and immortality. We shall, therefore, first consider this all-important doctrine, in the history which is the foundation of it, and then in the superstructure reared. In purifying the temple from the abominations practised in it, Jesus had undoubtedly assumed the authority of one invested in the office of magistracy, or with the character of a prophet. That he was no magistrate all men knew, and he never pretended to it. To have acted in this capacity might have been considered an usurpation. As a prophet, then, and oily as a prophet, could he appear in the character of a public reformer. But it is requisite that a prophet should produce his credentials. This suggested the demand: “What sign showest thou unto us, seeing that thou doest these things?” which plainly implied, that one acting under a commission from heaven, was obliged to support his claim by a sign from heaven. But is there need to produce supernatural testimony to a right to reform known, public, flagrant abuse? Did not their own history furnish a noted instance of a private person’s assuming the sword of justice, and acting at once as judge and executioner, in the case of open and gross violation of the divine law; that of Phinehas, who was but the grandson of Aaron the priest? He not only became liable to no censure, but obtained a deathless name, and an honorable office for his seasonable interposition. “Then stood up Phinehas, and executed judgment: and so the plague was stayed. And that was counted unto him for righteousness unto all generations for evermore.” Did not the sign, in the present instance, appear in the act? Did not the great Reformer authenticate his powers by the manner in which he exercised them, and by the effect which they produced? Did the guilty resist? Did they call in question his authority? Did they drag him, in their turn, to the tribunal? No, they feel his ascendant, and shrink from his rebuke. Who, then, call for a sign? Not the offenders; they had received sufficient evidence: not the populace, for they must have been equally overawed and confounded. The rulers of the Jews hearing of this singular transaction, some of them, perhaps, being on the spot, and eye-witnesses of what passed, jealous of their honor, and considering their prerogative as invaded; they, as men having authority, demanded a sign. From their general character, and from the inefficacy of this and other signs afterwards given, we know from what motive the present demand was made; not in the spirit of meekness, not from the love of truth, not to obtain conviction; but in the hope of finding occasion to censure, or of putting the assumed authority of Christ to a test which it could not stand. A sign is given them, and a most remarkable one it is. “Jesus answered and said unto them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” Whatever construction the Jews might put on these words, what Jesus intended to convey is obvious, and it was in every point justified by the corresponding event. He who is simplicity and truth itself could have no design to mislead. The action and emphasis with which he spake, clearly pointed out the object. The general attention had just been directed to a temple made with hands, a temple wickedly profaned by an abominable traffic, which was connived at by its professed conservators, and whose honor had been so nobly vindicated by a stranger. That stranger had already attracted general notice by the singularity of his speech and deportment; every eye was fixed upon him, his every attitude and gesture were observed, and these plainly indicated that the temple to be destroyed, and raised up in three days, could not be the venerable pile in the court of which this conversation passed. When he afterwards foretold the approaching destruction of that temple, he expressed himself in terms not liable to misapprehension. “As he went out of the temple, one of his disciples saith unto him, Master, see what manner of stones and what buildings are here! And Jesus answering, said unto him; Seest thou these great buildings? there shall not be left one stone upon another, that shall not be thrown down.” Now he points to an edifice infinitely more sacred. From both the first and second houses built on mount Zion the glory had long since departed. The sensible tokens of the divine presence were withdrawn. The holy oracle was no longer consulted by Urim and Thummim. But in Him, who was the only glory of the second house, “dwelled all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,” and the destruction of this temple he thus predicts as a sign not to the men of that generation only, but to all ages, even to the end of the world. From the very nature of prophecy, a vail must be drawn between the prediction and the event. “Hope that is seen is not hope,” and “faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” Christ indulges not those unbelievers with an immediate display of his miraculous power, in support of his pretensions to the character of a prophet, which they could easily have explained away, or misinterpreted; but he refers them to a sign shortly to be exhibited, which should be at once the exact accomplishment of a well-known prediction, and the greatest miracle that can possibly exist. That the misconception of the Jews was perverse and affected is evident from this, that when they had actually fulfilled the part of the prediction which depended on themselves, by destroying that sacred temple, we find them laboring under the most dreadful apprehension that Jesus would accomplish the other part, which depended on him, and they employ every precaution which terror could suggest, to prevent and defeat it. “The chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again. Command, therefore, that the sepulcher be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first.” And when the astonished watch came into the city, and made report to their employers of “all the things that were done,” did it produce conviction? No, it only filled them with mortification, and kindled rage. “The chief priests, when they were assembled with the elders, and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, saying, say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept. And if this come to the governor’s ears, we will persuade him, and secure you.” To what purpose then, ask for a sign? They resist and reject the most illustrious, which, with reverence be it spoken, God himself could give, thereby approving the truth of what Jesus on another occasion said, “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead.”

“Destroy this temple.” Let it be observed, that this is simply a prediction or supposition, and not a precept, equivalent to, ye will destroy this temple, or though ye should destroy this temple. It is a mode of expression that frequently occurs in Scripture. Thus in the Old Testament, Joseph says to his brethren, “this do; and live,” that is, do this and ye shall live. Thus God speaks to Moses, “Get thee up into this mountain, and die in the mount whither thou goest up, and be gathered unto thy people,” meaning evidently, thou shalt die in the mount, and shalt be gathered unto thy people. Thus, Isa 8:10, “Take counsel together, and it shall come to naught; speak the word, and it shall not stand:” that is, though ye take counsel together, and though ye speak the word. And in the New Testament, the word of Christ to Judas, “that thou dost, do quickly,” cannot be considered as a command to accomplish his plan of treachery, but merely as an intimation that he was seen through, and that under the impulse of a diabolic spirit, he was hurrying on to commit that dreadful enormity. Thus Paul exhorts, “Be angry and sin not;” surely not as if he meant to encourage violent transports of wrath, but in the event of a man’s giving way to a fit of passion, the apostle means to guard him against excessive indulgence in it, by restricting its duration to the going down of the sun. This early notice did Jesus give, not to his disciples only, but to all who came to worship in the temple, “of his decease which he should accomplish at Jerusalem;” that it should be effected by the hand of violence, not by decay, but by destruction, and that his own countrymen should be the perpetrators of it. This declaration was frequently repeated, and became plainer and plainer, till the fact justified every particular of the prediction.

“This temple.” Our blessed Lord in this place and elsewhere denominates his body a temple, as declaratory of his superiority to the lofty pile on mount Zion, even in its greatest glory, much more in its then degraded, defiled state. ‘‘I say unto you,” addressing himself to the Pharisees, “that in this place is one greater than the temple,” because Deity resided continually and inseparably in him, as the Jews believed he did in that which was built by Solomon, in answer to that petition; “O Lord my God, hearken unto the cry and to the prayer which thy servant prayeth before thee today: that thine eyes may be opened toward this house night and day, even toward the place of which thou hast said, My name shall be there;” according as it was foretold by Moses near five centuries before: “Then there shall be a plane which the Lord your God shall choose to cause his name to dwell there.” Josephus informs us that not only did the answer to Solomon’s prayer imply a real and sensible residence of Deity, but that it was the universal belief of the Jews and of the strangers who visited Jerusalem, that there was an ingress of God into the temple, and a habitation in it; and, in another place, that God descended and pitched his tabernacle there. The Jews themselves, however, admitted, that whatever glory these expressions might signify was now departed. To restore that glory, and to bestow it on the second temple in more abundant measure than the first ever possessed, was the end of Christ’s mission; and in him was the prediction fulfilled: “The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the Lord of hosts.” He was that oracle by whose answers all light and truth were emitted; the true Shechinah who had the spirit without measure; he was anointed with the “oil of gladness above his fellows,” and thus in all respects greater than the temple. That temple, says he, which you have defiled I have cleansed: and this temple of my body which you are going to destroy, I will raise up again. When this prediction was verified by the matter of fact, that fact became the foundation of one of the distinguishing doctrines of the gospel, the resurrection of the dead. Jesus early taught and frequently repeated it, that it might be clearly understood and carefully remembered. The impostor is at pains to conceal his purpose till it is ripe for execution. He fears prevention, and therefore endeavors to take you by surprise. The thief gives no warning of his approach, but comes upon men while they sleep. The true prophet discloses his design, prepares, forewarns, puts the person who doubts or disbelieves upon his guard, bids defiance to prevention. His own resurrection, and the doctrine of a general resurrection which is founded upon it, were not barely hinted at, or declared in obscure and equivocal terms. They were not the casual topic, and for once only, of private conversation with his disciples. No, this was a leading, a commanding object, presented continually to view, placed in the strongest light, announced with equal fairness and simplicity to friends and to enemies. “And Jesus going up to Jerusalem, took the twelve disciples apart in the way, and said unto them, behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of man shall be betrayed unto the chief priests and unto the scribes, and they shall condemn him to death, and shall deliver him to the Gentiles to mock, and to scourge, and to crucify him; and the third day he shall rise again.” He declares the same truth thus openly in the court of the temple. He repeats it in the presence and hearing of the multitude, “when the people were gathered thick together, then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee. But he answered and said unto them, an evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas. For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” The Sadducees, opponents still more virulent than the Pharisees, perfectly understood him as meaning on the basis of his own, to establish the belief of a resurrection of the body; for they argue with him on the subject, and frame a case which they supposed would reduce the author of the doctrine to an absurdity. This afforded our Lord an opportunity of showing that the doctrine in dispute was actually an article in their own creed, as being the disciples of Moses. Thus it runs through the whole of divine Revelation. The fathers beyond the flood lived and died in this faith. The dust of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob thus rested and rests in hope. It is indeed more clearly stated under the Gospel dispensation, and the ground of it is more fully demonstrated, that is, the dawning light of the morning gradually brightened into the perfect day.

“In three days I will raise it up.” This is an explicit declaration of his own inherent Deity, for God alone has the right and the power over life and death. An angel may be the delegated instrument in executing the sentence of divine justice, by taking away life; us in the case of the first-born of Egypt, of those who fell by the pestilence, to the number of seventy thousand, for the offence of David in numbering the people, and of the hundred, fourscore, and five thousand smitten in one night, in the camp of the Assyrians. But we no where find the power of quickening the dead delegated to a created being. Man has the desperate power of destroying his own body, but there it ends, and the disembodied spirit ceases from all power to repair the awful violence which it has committed. Man cannot by a mere act of his will even lay down his life, any more than he can reanimate the breathless clay. It is the incommunicable prerogative of him who has life in himself, to dispose of it at pleasure. This prerogative Jesus Christ claims and exercises. “For as the Father raiseth up the dead and quickeneth them: even so the Son quickeneth whom he will.” In the case of his own death, it was an act of sovereign, almighty power. “Jesus said, It is finished and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost,” while as yet the principle of natural life was strong within him, thus demonstrating that his assertion concerning himself was founded in truth: “I lay down my life, that I might take it again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself: I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again.” And on this power over his own life, he founds his right of dispensing life and death to others. “And this is the Father’s will which hath sent me, that of all which he hath given me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up again at the last day. And this is the will of him that sent me, that everyone which seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have everlasting life: and I will raise him up at the last day. Whether therefore it is said that “Christ was raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father,” or that he himself raised up the temple of his body, one and the same source of life, one controlling, irresistible will, and one supreme efficient power are displayed.

“Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? It has been already shown that this was a willful misapprehension: and it exhibits a humiliating view of the power of prejudice. Something may be made of a stupid child, if he be disposed to exert the poor faculties which he possesses, but obstinacy sets discipline at defiance. It is possible to assist weak eyes, but what can be done for the man who wilfully shuts them, or who madly plucks them out! To enter with commentators, into discussion respecting the period of the temple’s rebuilding, is foreign to our purpose. What is it to us how long time was employed in the work, by what prince or princes it was carried on, and what was its comparative magnificence, with relation to the first temple, and to other structures of a similar kind! But it is of high importance to know, that the prediction of Christ concerning it, already quoted, was exactly fulfilled, about forty years afterward; when Jerusalem was besieged and taken by the emperor Titus, was pillaged and burnt, the temple completely destroyed, upwards of one million and one hundred thousand of the Jews destroyed by famine and the sword, ninety-seven thousand taken prisoners, the whole nation expatriated and dispersed; and that the state of the temple from the year of Christ 70, down to the present 1802, and of this scattered, degraded, yet providentially supported and distinguished people, at this day, are a standing evidence of the truth and certainty of the things wherein we have been instructed. He is faithful and true who promises and who threatens. “When ye shall see Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desolation thereof is nigh. Then let them which are in Judea flee to the mountains; and let them which are in the midst of it depart out; and let not them that are in the countries enter thereinto. For these be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled. And they shall fall by the edge of the sword, and shall be led away captive into all nations: and Jerusalem shall be trodden down of the Gentiles, until the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled. And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity; the sea and the waves roaring; men’s hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken. Verily I say unto you, this generation shall not pass away till all be fulfilled. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.”

“When therefore he was risen from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this unto them.” Words as they are spoken, and events as they pass, frequently make a slight impression, but when recalled and fixed by some striking correspondent circumstance, they rush on the mind like a torrent, and we wonder at our own preceding carelessness and inattention. Had the disciples been men quick of apprehension, and of easy belief, the fabrication of a cunningly devised fable might have been suspected but they were persons of a simplicity of character that sometimes bordered on stupidity; they were “slow of heart to believe;” they often misunderstood their master; they were of all mankind the most unfit to plan and to support imposture. When Jesus spake of destroying and of raising up again the temple of his body, the Jews wilfully perverted his meaning, and his disciples seem hardly to have marked his words. The greatest of miracles must be performed to subdue the incredulity of the one, and to muse the attention of the other. In both we contemplate the wrath and the weakness of man ministering to the glory of God. It was meet that the mouth of malignity should be stopped, and that the truth, as it is in Jesus, should he taught to the world by men whose own ignorance had been instructed, whose doubts had been removed, whose faith had been established. “We still have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power, may be of God, and not of us.” The resurrection of Christ from the dead, therefore, so clearly predicted, and so exactly accomplished, supplies the Christian world, in every age, with the firmest basis of faith, and with the purest source of hope and joy. The apostle of the Gentiles, once the most violent opposer of the fact, and of the doctrine founded upon it, thus collects the evidence: “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins, according to the Scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures; and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: after that he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also as of one born out of due time.” Paul’s reasoning upon the subject is conclusive and satisfactory; it meets the human heart in all its desires and expectations. We resign ourselves to the stroke of death with composure. We bury our dead out of our sight, without bidding them a final farewell, because “the flesh also shall rest in hope.” “For if we believe that Jesus died, and rose again. even so them also which sleep in Jesus will God bring with him.” “This corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory.” The importance of this doctrine, in the scale of Christianity, will warrant our following up the article of our Lord’s history which we have been reviewing, to its more remote effects and consequences. This will accordingly form the substance of the following Lecture. This passover afforded occasion of working various other public miracles, which are not enumerated in the sacred record, but which attracted attention, and produced conviction in the minds of many who saw and heard hips. He was now at the metropolis of the country, and at the season of universal resort to Jerusalem. Of the multitudes who flocked thither to celebrate the feast of Passover, very many must have been in the habit of searching the Scriptures, and were, with Simeon, “waiting for the consolation of Israel,” and with Anna the prophetess, “looking for redemption in Jerusalem.” Persons of this description must have been forcibly impressed with the personal appearance of Jesus Christ, with the singularity of his manner and address, with the gravity and dignity of his deportment, with the authority which he exercised in teaching and reproving. His zeal in the purgation of the temple, and the sign which he proposed as the evidence of his mission, must have been noticed and felt. When these proofs of an extraordinary character were accompanied and supported by a display of miraculous powers, the effect must have been what the evangelist relates: “When he was in Jerusalem at the passover, in the feast-day, many believed in his name when they saw the miracles which he did.” Nor was this impression confined to vulgar minds, for we presently find a man high in rank and office bearing testimony to Christ’s prophetic character, and to the foundation on which it rested. “Nicodemus, a Pharisee and ruler of the Jews, came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him.” But the sacred historian subjoins a reflection most humiliating to human nature; for it implies that the understanding may be enlightened, and the conscience perfectly convinced, and yet the heart remain corrupted and malignant. “Many believed in his name, when they saw the miracles which he did.” But the Searcher of hearts discerned under a sound belief, a dangerous, an unsubdued perversity of disposition in which he could not confide. “But Jesus did not commit himself unto them.” In this Christ acted as a pattern to his disciples, and conformed himself to the doctrine which he taught them. “Beware of men: be ye wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.” There is all excess of caution unworthy of a noble and generous mind, which damps exertion and poisons society. But there is also an excess of confidence which puts the candid and sincere in the power of the crafty and designing. True wisdom safely conducts its possessor through the channel which divides them. “A prudent man,” says Solomon, “foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself, but the simple pass on, and are punished.” The chapter concludes with an ascription to Christ of one of the incommunicable attributes of Deity, the knowledge of the thoughts of men: “He knew all men, and needed not that any should testify of man: for he knew what was in man.” Of this he had given an illustrious instance in the case of Nathanael, whose character he clearly discerned before any personal intercourse had taken place: “Before that Philip called thee, when thou wast under the fig-tree, I saw thee.” Here it is reduced to a general proposition of high moment. “The Father hath committed all judgment unto the Son” and he is qualified for the discharge of this all-important office, by a perfect knowledge not only of the actions of a man’s life, but of the motives from which he acted, and of the end at which he aimed. May it be engraved on the living table of our heart, that God “hath appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead.”