Word of Salvation – Vol.39 No.30 - August 1994

 

The Resurrection And Our Righteousness In Christ

 

Sermon by Rev. J. Rogers on Acts 3

Scripture readings:  Psalm 130, Acts 3

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ,

In Lord's Day One of our Catechism, we confess that, 'my only comfort in life and in death is that I am not my own, but belong, body and soul, to my faithful Saviour, Jesus Christ.' I am very glad about that.  To be left to ourselves in death, or in life, is a terrible thing.  And the reason for that is that we have a terrible problem in both death and life.

The Psalmist put it in these words: ‘If you O Lord kept a record of sins, O Lord who could stand?’  And the terrible fact is: the Lord does keep a record of sins!  Abel's blood cried out to God from the ground.  Psalm 65 says, 'Our sins rise up against us, prevailing day by day.'  And in Ezekiel we read, ‘The soul that sins, it must die.'

So this is our problem: We have sinned against God and He does mark sin.  It is highly offensive to Him for 'He is of purer eyes than to behold evil and cannot look on iniquity’ (Habakkuk).  Therefore we cannot stand in His presence.  All mankind is aware that it has this problem.  The history of mankind is to a large extent the story of the search for answers to that question.  But this search has always been a lonely one.  When man tries to put himself right with God on his own, he never gets it right.  He always messes it up.

Just as God's people did 1960 years ago.  They knew they needed a Saviour.  And they had looked for one for many years.  But far too many of them had come to see the salvation they needed in material and political terms; from Roman domination and from poverty, rather than in spiritual terms.  So when God's Saviour came, they did not recognise Him.  And we would have to say, when they almost recognised Him, they decided they did not want to recognise Him.  He was a problem to them.  He was a threat to them and had to be dealt with.  So they did deal with Him on their own.  It was not a godly solution to their problem.

Let us have a look this morning, firstly at

1.   MAN'S WAY OF SALVATION

Man's way of salvation is to begin all over again.  Man tends to throw out the old completely and bring in a new thing altogether.  Bring in a new social order or a new world order.  In other words, man is at heart a revolutionary.

And we can see this in the world at large.  The French Revolution was a watershed in Western history.  It really made a break, at least in practical terms, with the old Christian past.  Intellectually and spiritually, the break had been made a hundred years before.  But in the French Revolution man gave up all pretence of trying to find a Christian solution to his problems.  In the French Revolution man said: Christianity IS the problem and we must overthrow it.

And this century has followed that path of revolution very consistently.  Lenin's solution was to throw out the old order completely and bring in a new one.  And we have seen the same thing elsewhere also, particularly in some African countries.  But has it brought salvation?  No, not even in material or political terms.  Africa is not able to feed itself.  And her people have probably never been more enslaved.  In every country in the world where ‘salvation' has been brought by revolution, the new tyranny has always been greater than the old tyranny which the revolution was designed to overthrow.

So what did these rulers in Israel do 1960 years ago?  Acts 3:14 tells us.  ‘They disowned the Holy and Righteous one.'  But not only did they disown Him.  They asked for someone else instead.  And who was that?  They exchanged the glorious Jesus for the notorious Barabbas.  And why was Barabbas notorious?  Our text continues; you 'asked that a murderer be released unto you.'  But not only a murderer.  He was an ‘insurrectionist who committed murder in an insurrection', so the Gospel tells us (Mark15, Luke 23, John 18).  Insurrection means attempting to overthrow the government.  That's just what they charged Jesus with (Luke 23)!  In other words, when they rejected Jesus and chose Barabbas, they simply chose a man after their own heart – a revolutionary!

And what was the sad outcome of all this?  This ultimate revolt against God brought about the complete destruction of Jerusalem and God cast off natural Israel from the kingdom of God, by and large, for at least 1900 years.

He who sits in the heavens must truly laugh at us at times.  For man's solution is just another expression of the problem!  We are so riddled with sin that, even when we do good, sin in the same form still abounds!  When we try to put something right, our solution is always wrong and it sinks us deeper still into misery.  It was because we revolted in the first place that we are where we are.  It's really a huge joke if it were not so horribly sad to think we could solve our difficulties by revolting again.

The high priest, Caiaphas, had prophesied that one man should die for the people in order that the whole nation should not perish.  On a true and spiritual level, that prophecy was fulfilled because God used Caiaphas to say that.  Yet, on the level at which Caiaphas understood it, it was utterly unfulfilled.

‘You disowned the Holy and Righteous one and asked that a murderer be released unto you’.  That was your solution, said Peter.  "You killed the author of life.' And when the author of life is dead, life must die too.  So the whole nation perished.  That is always the result when man seeks to solve any problem, let alone the problem of comfort in life and death, ON HIS OWN.  Thank God we are not on our own.

Let's have a look now at

2.   GOD'S WAY OF SALVATION

Man would save by having a revolution throw out the old and bring in the new.  But God does not do that because God is love.  ‘His thoughts are higher than our thoughts and His ways are higher than our ways,' Isaiah tells us.

We see people who oppose us and don't agree with us or get in our way and it's, ‘Oh blow them; get them out of the way!  Forget about them.  Liquidate them.'  That is our final solution.  But God is very, very slow to do that.

True, ‘the soul that sins, it must die.'  But look at God.  Look at Him with Adam and Eve.  First, He seeks them out and promises them salvation!  Look at Him with the nation of Israel.  Time after time He gives them a break and a second chance.  Yes, the point of no return does come.  And our text speaks about that too: 'Anyone who does not listen to Christ will be completely cut off from among His people' (v.23).  But it does not come without a long time of pleading first.

God never casts His rebels away quickly.  God's way is to cry out, even as Peter does here on his behalf.  ‘Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord, and that He may send the Christ, who has been appointed for you - even Jesus.  He must remain in heaven until the time comes for God to restore everything, as he promised long ago through His holy prophets' (v.19-21).

Unfaithful we may be, but God is very slow to act in kind.  He is the faithful creator.  He loves what He made, despite what we have since made of ourselves.  And He will not lightly cast us off.  He who began a good work with man will bring it to completion.

He is a faithful husband, like Hosea.  Even when his wife went off and played the prostitute, he did not divorce her.  He went and wooed her back again.

And even now, so soon after His people had rejected his only Son and nailed him to a cross – even while that wound was still fresh and smarting, God comes and cries out:

REPENT...!

 - that times of refreshing and renewal may come,
 - that God may send the Messiah appointed for you,
 - that the restoration promised long ago may come;
 - not that He may throw you out,
 - but that he may bless you by turning each of
            you away from your wicked ways.

As if God could make man very good and then just cast him off!  Even though man had in effect cast off God.  See the difference?  We would cast off.  We would revolt.  We would throw out the old and bring in the new.  But God...?  He takes the old, yes, even old pots confirmed over many years of sin, by now kiln-hard.  He takes even them and softens them and reworks them.  He refashions them.  He renews them.  He refreshes the old and gives it new life.  Wonderful!

But of course we have another important question:

3.   HOW DOES ALL THIS BECOME OUR SALVATION?

We began this morning by seeing that our problem is that we can no longer stand before God.  We can no longer live with Him anymore because God is holy and man has sinned and God does take notice of sin.  He is deeply offended by it.

We have also seen that the salvation that God brings is not that He would cast man off and go right back to the drawing board and start all over again.  No, brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ, the salvation of mankind is this: God will make the same race of mankind that He made in the beginning to stand again.  Did you know that is exactly what the word resurrection means?

‘You killed the author of life, but God raised Him up again,' said Peter.  You put Him on His back, but God stood Him on His feet again.  The Greek word for resurrection is anastasis.  It is from two other words: the verb histeemi which means to make stand, and the prefix ana which means above or again.

You have all heard the word ‘Anabaptist’.  Anabaptists were people who were not satisfied with being baptised as children and so they required people to be baptised again.  So they are called Anabaptists – re-baptisers.  With the word Anabaptist we have simply anglicised the Greek word.  But with anastasis we actually gave it a completely different word: resurrection.  But if we had anglicised the Greek as we did with Anabaptist, we would now speak about the ana-standing, the again standing.

See, the resurrection is the solution to our problem.  If Christ is not risen the cross is meaningless and Christ's death would be meaningless.  If Christ is not risen, that means God was not pleased with his death.  It did not satisfy His anger.  Our problem, as we framed it this morning, was this: 'Oh Lord, if you should mark iniquities, who should stand?'

If God were a revolutionary, there would simply be no question of salvation or redemption.  He would simply have had us annihilated and started all over again.  But because God is God, He is faithful to what He has already made.  He takes those very same creatures He made and who revolted against Him and makes them stand again before Him.

Now we can stand before Him again because we are clothed in the righteousness of His holy, un-sin-blemished Son, Jesus Christ.  And God's way of salvation is so anti-revolutionary that He even uses His people's revolt to bring it about!  “You acted in ignorance when you did this wicked thing,' said Peter, 'when you disowned and betrayed and put to death God's holy servant, Jesus.’  But in all your terrible sin, God simply fulfilled what He had foretold through all the prophets – Moses, Samuel and the others – that His Christ would suffer.  And that He would raise Him up again – and that to bless you first!

Isn't that amazing?  'And to bless you first.'  The first people God was going to bless was this nation of Jews, the very people who were responsible for putting His Son to death!

Are not God's ways truly higher than our ways?  Hey, if you kids are waiting in line for an ice-cream and you push in and elbow someone else out, mum says, “you can be last.'  But look at God.  The Jews elbow Jesus out and God says, “you can be first.'

But that brings up something else; something quite important in today's theological world.  Peter says, ‘when God raised up His servant, He sent Him first to you to bless you by turning each of you from your wicked ways.'

In this work of salvation God is saving this race of mankind that sinned.  But He's not doing that by bringing about improvements in some way so that, at some time in the future, there will grow up a generation who have not sinned.  No, it is this race that sinned and the very individuals of this race who have sinned whom God is saving.  He saves us by turning us from our sin.  ‘You first,' Peter said.  God was not just going to save Jews.  He was going to save some of those very Jews who had been most responsible for Jesus' death.  And so we read later in Acts about a good number of priests being saved.

The point is, congregation, that God is concerned about individuals.  He is concerned about you and me in person.  People speak today about saving mankind, and saving the race.  They speak about mankind in general and if certain individuals have to be dispensed with to do so – well, as they say in business, the fat must be shed!  If certain individuals have to be disposed of – so be it.  So President Clinton promotes abortion as part of the solution to the problem of overpopulation and calls it birth control.  And in that way he plans to save the rest from starvation.

In Buddhism, salvation is for the individual to merge into the impersonal universe.  But that's not how God goes about things brothers and sisters.  God loves the individual.  When Jesus rose again, He could say to his disciples, ‘Touch my hands and my feet; it is I myself.'  He was recognisable as the man they had known before.

And so it will be for us too, people of God.  When we are saved and when we will be raised again, we will be recognisable as the same people we are now.  Yet already now there is a great difference; for we are blessed by having been turned from our sins.  So, in another way, we are not and will not be the same.  The final resurrection is the same work of salvation that God is doing now – only brought to perfection.

So congregation, we can now answer that question of the Psalmist: 'Oh Lord, if you should keep a record of sins, Oh Lord who could stand?'  Indeed: Who could?

But He took that record of sins and nailed it to the cross with the Lord Jesus Christ.  And because He was satisfied with Jesus' sacrifice, He raised Him to life.  He made Him to stand again.

And He took Christ's record of righteousness and clothed us with it.  And therefore, since our personal sins have been done away with in Christ, so we also, in the resurrection, will stand again before a Holy God.

Praise God and Amen.