I believe No.7 in the resurrection

I'm going to read at verse 57 and we will go through to the 10th verse of chapter 28 Matthew 27 beginning at the 57th verse. As evening approached there came a rich man from Arimathea named Joseph who had himself become a disciple of Jesus. Going to Pilate he asked for Jesus' body and Pilate ordered that it be given to him.

Joseph took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and placed it in his own new tomb that he had cut out of the rock. He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were sitting there across from the tomb.

The next day, the one after preparation day, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. Sir, they said, we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said after three days I will rise again. So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day.

Otherwise his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first. Take a guard, Pilate answered.

Go, make the tomb as secure as you know how. So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard. After the Sabbath at dawn on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to look at the tomb.

There was a violent earthquake for an angel of the Lord came down from heaven and going to the tomb rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothes were white as snow. The guards were so afraid of him that they shook and became like dead men.

The angel said to the woman, do not be afraid for I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here. He is risen just as he said.

Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples he has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.

Now I have told you. So the woman hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them.

Greetings he said. They came to him, clasped his feet and worshipped him. Then Jesus said to them, do not be afraid.

Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee. There they will see me. Amen.

I want you to listen to two passages of scripture. Turn to them if you like but it's not important for you to. I'd rather they just sink in.

But for reference and for those who'll be listening to this tape later, I'll quote my verses. Luke chapter 16 is the first and from the 19th verse. There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day.

At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man's table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores. The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham's side.

The rich man also died and was buried in hell. In hell where he was in torment he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, father Abraham have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue because I am in agony in this fire.

But Abraham replied, son remember that in your lifetime you received your good things while Lazarus received bad things but now he is comforted here and you are in agony and besides all this between us and you a great chasm has been fixed so that those who want to go from here to you cannot nor can anyone cross over from there to us. He answered, then I beg you father send Lazarus to my father's house for I have five brothers. Let him warn them so that they will not also come to this place of torment.

Abraham replied they have Moses and the prophets let them listen to them. No father Abraham he said because if someone from the dead goes to them they will repent. Abraham said to him if they do not listen to Moses and the prophets they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.

Now here's another two verses of scripture which are highly interesting. They're quoted by Peter in his first sermon in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles and in the 27th verse he's speaking of the Lord Jesus but the psalmist is the original author of the words because you will not abandon me to the grave nor will you let your Holy One see decay. You will not abandon me to the grave nor will you let your Holy One see decay.

We're working our way through this creed and I suggested to you last Sunday that there's a suggestion of tennis theology here speaking about our Lord Jesus because halfway through the creed or just before the halfway mark you read Jesus Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and was buried. Crucified, died, and was buried. Game, set, match.

It would seem that that sort of sums it all up. There's nothing beyond that full stop. At least there wasn't for Socrates.

He wasn't crucified but he was poisoned. He died and was buried. Full stop.

Same for Muhammad. They didn't crucify him but he died and was buried and get an air ticket to the Middle East and provided the Muslims will let you in you can see his shrine, his tomb. But that's not the end of the creed.

The creed goes on to say of the Lord Jesus Christ that something followed. He descended to the dead and on the third day he rose again. I want somewhat briefly because it's so hot this evening to try to speak on those two statements and it's very rare I suggest to you that you'll ever have heard an address on the first of the two in particular.

He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again. You've got the picture the Lord Jesus we saw last week how terribly he suffered under Pontius Pilate.

They pinned him to a cross outside the city of Jerusalem and there he expired and died. And according to this statement there are two days in particular which are important and held in contrast the one over against the other. The first day he descended to the dead.

The third day he was raised. So I want to look at those two days and to some degree the interval between and certainly the consequence afterwards of what happened when Jesus came back. The first day he descended to the dead.

Well we all die. We may not like the idea but it's true. Most of us tend to disbelieve it for all practical purposes and think that somehow or other we will cheat death and become an exception to the general rule.

But we won't. Unless Jesus Christ comes back again in our lifetime everyone here will ultimately die. Jackie Vernon speaks of his grandfather reading the obituary column in the local newspaper and saying to his grandson strange is it isn't it how everyone seems to die in alphabetical order.

Well that's the tidiness of Fleet Street. Actually I think he was American so the tidiness of the Washington Post. We all do die.

Time and time again I've been up to the crematorium or ministered from a grave side. Very often as a beloved friend has been put to rest as far as the earthly remains are concerned. I was quite amused to see during the time when there was a go slow or rather a strike of grave diggers a sign appear at the entrance of one cemetery.

Quote due to the strike all grave digging for the duration will be done by a skeleton crew. Well whether that was deliberate or accidental I don't know. But the fact of the matter joking aside is Erlangu and I are consigned to a coffin and to burial or cremation.

Well if that is the case and as Jesus died so we will all die. How do you approach the concept of death? How do you look at the inevitability that one day alas we will not be favored with your company here in the tabernacle. John Preston was a great Puritan preacher and he was asked if he feared death.

He was on his deathbed at the time and he whispered no. I shall change my place but I shall not change my company. I shall change my place but I shall not change my company.

What did he mean? Well Psalm 23 would give you something of the answer. Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for you are with me. Preston had a belief that God who had been with him during his life here on earth would be present when he passed through the jaws of death and ultimately receive him into the heavenly kingdom.

Now at this point I want you to quote my good friend Dr. Toza to shake your head because here is the only difficult thing that I want to say this evening and in saying it I want to offer a correction and make an explanation. The correction is this. Sometimes those of you who look at the authorized version and maintain that as your Bible to study and I'm not speaking against that will come across the word hell.

For example in that last verse that I read from Acts of the Apostles speaking prophetically about the Lord Jesus the psalmist says thou wilt not leave my soul in hell nor will you let your Holy One suffer corruption. Now the English language changes from time to time and words mean somewhat differently in these days from what possibly they meant a couple of hundred years ago and that does apply to the word hell. The 18th century it didn't have the connotation of eternal punishment.

Rather it just had the idea of going somewhere after death not necessarily to be eternally punished. Now and this is where you need to keep on shaking your head as well as your leaflets to keep the air circulating around you so you don't expire and die by the end of my address to prove incidentally if you did that all that I'm telling you is true. Bear in mind that in the Old and in the New Testament before the death and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ there are two words which are used to describe the place where people go to when they die.

One is the word Gehenna and that is hell literally absolutely translated as hell. Actually it takes its origin from a place just outside Jerusalem where they used to burn the rubbish in Old Testament days. The fires were always aflame they never went out and the valley of Hinnom eventually gave us the word Gehenna which means hell in the sense of being eternally punished.

But there is another word that is used in the Bible and the NIV translators generally speaking refer to it or put it as a footnote when hell is referred to in this context and it is the word Sheol and it describes in the Old Testament what happened to people who were righteous in death who had endeavored to serve the Lord God. They went according to the authorized version into hell but the translators had in mind that hell was in two compartments and one compartment was the compartment of those who were damned. There was no hope for them at all.

The other Sheol was the compartment where there was hope where there would ultimately be a glorious liberation. Now if you've heard what I've had to say and you're still just a little bit trying to work your way towards that truth here's the illustration that will make it so simple for you and that's why we read together from Luke's Gospel. You remember the story of the rich man and also of the beggar.

The rich man who went to hell Gehenna and the beggar who went to Sheol otherwise known as Abraham's bosom. Here are two people who have died one relatively righteous and the other who didn't care a fig for God nor the things of God and as a result he suffered eternal condemnation and you've got the picture of this one-time rich man in hell asking that his suffering might in some way be lessened by water being conveyed across what he discovered was an unbridgeable chasm and he is told that Lazarus the beggar cannot come no help can be given but the point that I'm trying to make is not to explain that parable but simply to emphasize the fact that in Old Testament times the abode of the dead was in two separate compartments. Now there are those and the Creed seems to make it very clear who believe that when our blessed Lord Jesus died on the cross of Calvary he descended into hell but not hell in the sense of Gehenna the place of the damned but hell in terms of Sheol where the righteous dead of the Old Testament are and there our Lord Jesus is reckoned by some great preachers shall we say quoting names like Charles Spurgeon and John Calvin there he liberated them and brought them from Sheol eventually into the heavenly realm when he returned to glory and so you've got the comment in scripture in Ephesians chapter 4 when he our Lord Jesus this is verse 7 and 8 when he ascended on high he led captives in his train and gave gifts to men.

Charles Spurgeon has a great sermon which I read when I was 16 years of age I've never read it since and it's still in my mind which indicates the ability of that man to make an impression upon his on his readers and he has a tremendous sermon on the 24th Psalm also taking certain information from the 16th Psalm and the ideas of Jesus going back into heaven and in the 24th Psalm the concept is of the gates of heaven swinging wide open and Jesus in glory and in triumph returns to the celestial land and in his train there are the righteous of the Old Testament and Spurgeon has a tremendous time telling us how able and righteous people from his time onwards rejoiced in heaven and the great jubilation that there was. So this is part of the ministry if you please of our Lord Jesus Christ as some people understand it when the creed says that he descended immediately on his own death at Calvary he descended to the dead. In Hebrews chapter 12 and verse 23 you get a little reference which it seems to me is quite significant bearing in on our subject for there we read this talking about those who are now in heaven you have come to Mount Zion to the heavenly Jerusalem the city of the Living God you have come to thousands upon thousands of angels in joyful assembly to the church of the firstborn whose names are written in heaven you have come to God the judge of all men to the spirits of righteous men made perfect and there are those who believe that the perfection of the righteous dead of the Old Testament was made absolute by our Lord Jesus as he descends into Sheol.

Now whether or not you agree with that explanation of the text in one sense is immaterial what is vital and is beyond dispute is this that the Lord Jesus Christ has in his control the destiny of every man and woman in Old Testament and New Testament times and therefore on to modern times who have trusted the Living God and who have died in full faith for such people as those death has no fear whatsoever. I remember though I can't quite get it back in detail reading an illustration some while ago of a doctor who went to visit a patient and his patient was right in the attic room of one of these old Victorian houses and the doctor had his dog with him and he left the dog downstairs and he went up to this man who was terribly sick indeed on his deathbed he was a Christian doctor and he was trying to minister to this man who was afraid to die and so the doctor says you hear my dog downstairs he's barking away you know why he's barking because I'm here and he can hear my voice he's never been up those stairs he's never been in this room but if I was to say the word he'd come bounding up and he'd fling himself right through this room and he'd land on my lap. Now that's precisely how those who have died in the Lord Jesus can look at death he has gone before and sometimes we can almost hear his voice as he speaks in the world that is beyond and those of us who really love him often find the same dilemma as the Apostle Paul when he said look I'm active here on service for the Lord and I don't have a death wish but my how great it would be just to go and to know the Lord Jesus Christ better in the heavenly dimension.

So what I'm suggesting to you is this that when the creed makes that pronouncement he descended to the dead on the first day or during the days of his death at Calvary our Lord's ministry was effective for the releasing of Old Testament righteous and ultimately bringing them into the heavenly dimension but let me move on as I said I wanted to try and keep this reasonably brief let me move on to the third day he descended to the dead on the third day he rose again. Confucius's tomb is occupied you can go and have a look though they'll not let you take the lid off but at least you can discover whereabouts his remains are and that's the same for Buddha it's the same for Muhammad for Mao Tse Tung and also Lenin I should have slipped the latter in first because he met his death before Mao Tse Tung but Jesus even if we could demonstrate that the garden tomb in Jerusalem was the actual place where his body was deposited you can't find any remains at all and a question that needs to be put and asked and answered is this does it really matter the fact that he was raised from the dead or the assertion that he was raised from the dead does it really matter well I guess if Jesus wasn't raised from the dead he could still be your hero but he couldn't be your savior he could be your mentor but he couldn't be your master he could be your guru but he couldn't be your God if Jesus wasn't raised from the dead then though the ethical code that he gave the brilliance of his teaching is how we ought to behave one towards the other remains intact he does lose a great degree of credibility the Lord Jesus Christ tells his disciples that the reason why he dies is because he wants to that's an extraordinary comment isn't it I'm quoting from the 10th gospel of John sorry the 10th chapter of John's gospel and the 18th verse no one takes my life from me but I lay it down of my own accord I have authority to lay it down and authority to take it up again this command I received from my father now that wasn't fatalism some of you if you read the newspaper will have remembered that a few months ago a brilliant philosopher by the name of Arnold Koestler died to be more specific he didn't die in the natural sense he and his wife had a suicide pact and I believe they swallowed tablets and as a result they died it was determined on their part this is what they wanted to do the Koestler was somewhat fed up of life and admittedly he was getting on to say the least and when he died because he was a rich man he wrote a will and he left half a million pounds which with the royalties from his books will turn into 1 million pound and he wants some department in a university to be dedicated to study the psychic and the possibility of life after death even though he Koestler hadn't got much hope that there might be such a thing and although he was ninety-nine percent confessed atheistic in his view on God and then after life he nonetheless less believe that there might be a faint hope somewhere that survival beyond death is possible and he wanted it to be looked into now Jesus wasn't like that there was no death wish there was no suicide and neither did he die as a result of a tragic mistake as though Pontius Pilate played an ace and that was it there was no hope for Jesus game set match not a bit Jesus offered himself into the so-called power of Caiaphas the Jewish high priest you remember from my previous addresses and the power of the Roman government they sent him to death but in one sense he wanted to go he offered his life in order that he might raise it up again on one occasion he said to the disciples speaking of his body destroy this body let it be killed and in three days this temple will be reconstructed it will be remade Jesus never spoke about death you can check me by reading the whole of the Gospels he never spoke about death without speaking also about resurrection so you see if Jesus didn't come back then his credibility would be questionable and as I say he might still claim to be a guru but not a God but the Lord Jesus Christ was not mistaken he was raised from the dead had he not been then Paul says our faith would be hollow it would be the eclipse of hope we would have all men says Paul be the most miserable but he came back as the reading made it very very clear as you heard it earlier from one of the Gospels he came back and he proved to his disciples who weren't expecting it they thought it was failure game set and match Wimbledon all over no possibility of Jesus coming back it never dawned on them indeed they were scared stiff that they might go the same way too and that the police might get hold of them and once more you can check me out by reading the Gospels but Thomas the doubter he was convinced and incredibly Paul who was not even sympathetic to Jesus during his life was convinced women folk were convinced they became the best and the first of the testimonies the eyewitnesses and on one occasion 500 people saw him now I know there's such a thing as hallucination but you don't hallucinate with 500 people all having the same hallucination there's no drug in the world you can have LSD until it's almost coming out of your ears and you will never get everyone having the same hallucination and I'm not recommending LSD or any other of the rubbish that some people take I might add very very soundly very sternly our Lord Jesus Christ comes back from the dead and there are those who see him and who testify John says we touched him we saw him we handled it he wasn't a mistake it's terrible to make a mistake isn't it when you're when you think you've seen someone and it wasn't that person I remember telling the ladies some while ago at our ladies meeting oh I was jogging on the seafront and the story comes to my mind because the lady was with us and her husband this today for for lunch and tea and I was coming up Heane Road and I was panting away I'd done a couple of miles or so and you know I'm rather old so take some effort on my part to to keep going and I saw this lady looking in the antique shop at the bottom of Heane Road and I thought I know her I can't go past her I'm the pastor she might see him sorry for the quip there I didn't mean it I can't go past her even though I'm the minister she might have seen me so I put my arm around her and I said to her panting away you don't want to buy any of that old rubbish she turned around and I suddenly discovered it wasn't my friend someone completely different I mean people have had to go before the local magistrates for putting their arms around folk who would claim that they'd been accosted and Heane Road anyway this dear old lady seemed to enjoy it so I didn't come to any trouble at all it's a terrible thing to make a mistake in recognition but John didn't make a mistake neither did Mary nor did the rest of the 500 people and the fact that Jesus came back from the dead what did it do well says Paul when he's writing to the Romans in chapter 1 it guarantees that he is the Son of God because no one else has ever had such a comeback no one else it guarantees that he's the Son of God what is more says Paul writing elsewhere or rather Peter speaking in Acts 2 and 24 it demonstrates that Jesus has victory over death over death and what's more it guarantees our forgiveness Jesus's death is the payment for our sin and we know that because he's been brought back by the Heavenly Father through the power of the Spirit and his blood is the down payment no not the down payment it's the utter complete payment for the sins that you and I have committed and what's more Jesus's resurrection is just like one seed in a packet of Sutton seeds you say what do you mean by that well we've got some tomatoes desperately trying to come up with all this heat in our in our garden and and they obviously came from from one seed in the first instance and the fact that one seed germinates and comes to fruition and ultimately you benefit from it almost guarantees inevitably that the rest will act in the same way and the Bible says of Jesus he's the firstfruits from the dead and if you trust him and are linked into his life and know his spirit pulsating through you as he has been raised the power of an endless life so you will be raised and ultimately receive a body like unto his body I think I once said before from this pulpit but it bears repeating if I ever had an offer to go to the moon I would like to go in the company of Neil Armstrong I don't want to go in the company of anyone from the tab not because I find you disagreeable quite the contrary most of you find you very agreeable all of you let me smuggle in quickly to stop the resignations why would I prefer Armstrong because he's made it once and he's come back he knows the way he can prove that he knows what it's all about and that's the same with Jesus he came back he came back from the dead he liberated those who are held bound and fettered by the shackles of death he's been raised and as he has been raised so he gives us that pledge that when we die we shall go into his immediate presence to enjoy him and in a way that I have not got words to express to describe at the end of time our spirits will be reunited with a glorified body and in a rejuvenated universe we shall live for the praise and for the glory of God that's what the Creed means when it says of the Christ he descended to the dead and on the third day he rose again let's pray father we praise you for the reality of the offering and the resurrection of our Savior the offering of his life on the cross and him being raised from the dead and we ask that his benefits of his life and death and resurrection may accrue to us as we simply transfer ourselves to him and say Lord Jesus forgive my sin and make me a new child and enable me to enjoy fellowship with you by the power of the Spirit have my sins forgiven and be set on the course that ultimately will take me through the jaws of death into your eternal presence amen father I have in mind that picture of the dog looking into the old-fashioned gramophone system and the little label underneath his master's voice help us to have heard your voice through the explanation of scripture this evening and we pray that the hearing may have calmed all our fears and built up our faith so that come life come death we shall know your peace and your blessing and face every day with fresh confidence amen . 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