The Good News of the Resurrection
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2017 · 2 April 2017
The best news is that Jesus Christ rose from the dead and forever lives to make intercession for those who know Him and love Him. We live in a world where most news is bad news. A look at the internet will reveal that our world is not only bad, but seems to be getting worse. Our culture is negative, hostile and despairing. We seem to be progressively eliminating the once precious things that we hoped would result in a better world.
Many thought that when we are supremely educated, we would be able to solve our problems. We thought that when we have invented enough creature comforts, that we would be able to make life pleasant and meaningful. We thought that when we became adept at all the physical sciences, psychology, sociology and economics, that we would be able to use the genius of the human mind to make a better world.
But now there is a certain kind of despair. Men and women have become victims of constraining, unrelenting power within them, pushing them toward self-destruction. They are now face to face with the reality of sin. But no matter what we know in terms of enlightenment, no matter how we understand the human mind and what makes seemingly for meaningful relationships, we cannot overcome the reality of our own sin.
Let me discuss with you, four major areas where sin produces bad news for the human race. First of all, the basic element of sin is selfishness. It says that I am God and I will do what I want. And the basic element of sinfulness is pride. The dominant word in sin is I. Man wants to please himself, he wants to satisfy his own desires. He wants to do his own thing and he will press the limits of society that is tolerated.
Man, in his selfishness, will consume everything in sight, whether it is people or things, whether it is a possession or a friend; whether it is a career or a life mate; a family member or an acquaintance. When anything ceases to be satisfactory, it is discarded like a worn-out shoe, past its usefulness. And so people like that use up things, and they also use up people.
We now live in a world of people who demand their rights, who will fulfill their ego at all cost, who use and abuse each other to achieve their own personal satisfaction; whether in business, or marriage, or love. Selfish lust will twist everything. And their hunger for gain, or sex, or fame, or popularity, or money, or adventure, or thrills will cause them to destroy everything around them.
A second result of sin is guilt. Guilt, by definition, is a pained conscience. Guilt says this is wrong. And guilt produces fear: fear of retaliation and fear of judgment. And guilt produces anxiety, a tension that everything is going to go wrong. So people try to bury their guilt. And that guilt causes sleeplessness, illness, drunkenness, being hooked on drugs and ultimately suicide.
Or they go to a psychoanalyst who wants to shift the responsibility to somebody who negatively impacted their life or even their parents are faulted. And thus, guilt leads to further isolation and alienation. A fearful person becomes afraid of the people around him. A drunken person isolates himself into his own perverted thoughts. And a person who blames others for all his problems eventually will alienate the people he needs most.
And guilt leads to an inability to have a meaningful relationship. And man is pressed deeper and deeper into the pit of his own despair. And that leads to a third problem in sin. We could call it meaninglessness. Life becomes simply a pursuit of selfishness, and then a cover-up of guilt that is not fulfilling. Life becomes what Ecclesiastes 1:2 says, "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
In Ecclesiastes 2 it says, "I looked to my wealth and it provided me nothing. I looked for joy, they provided me nothing. I looked for sorrow and they provided me nothing. I looked in relationships but I couldn't sustain them. They provided me nothing. I looked at everything that had brought success in my career and it offered me nothing.” It becomes a string of twenty-four-hour periods that have no value.
And there is a fourth element, hopelessness. Looking ahead into the future, all of it looks bleak. We see a culture that would rather kill instead of compromise; that rather hates than love another person. After all, life has no meaning, and the future has no hope. The news is always bad. Death looks like the only escape if you believe it is an endless nothingness. And endless nothingness would be a better choice than this hopelessness.
You look at the world around you, You might assume that as clever as we are, as educated as we are, as capable and powerful as we are in terms of what we can produce; as clever as we are in discerning problems, we would have been able to solve these painful realities. But man in no way, by no means, has the capability to alter the human heart. Jeremiah 17:9 says, "The heart of man is deceitful and desperately wicked.”
And the longer human history goes, the Bible says, the worse men’s nature becomes. Men’s sinful nature is gradually becoming more sinful and more meaningless. And we have reached the limit in terms of our capabilities, so we are stuck with sin and selfishness, guilt, meaninglessness and hopelessness. Jesus said you will die in your sins and the destination of all unforgiven sinners is hell forever.
The manifestation of this sinful human life is bad news. We can see it on the internet every day. And the judgment of God, the worst news, is in the Bible. You say, well once in a while there is some good news. That's right. Even sinners have to sleep. And now and then there is a moment, or an incident, or an experience that brings us a fleeting joy.
But the question is, is there any long-term good news? Is there anything to say to a world that is rapidly descending down into the pit of hell? Is there anything that can take away men’s selfishness? Is there anything that can give us meaningful relationships? Anything that can deliver us from guilt? Anything to give us hope? Anything that tells us how to escape judgment? The answer is yes, there is a way out.
Look with me at Romans 1:1 written by the apostle Paul, “Paul, a bondservant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God.” Gospel means good news. "My task" he says, "is to preach the good news of God." Sometimes he calls it the good news of salvation, or the good news about Jesus Christ, or the good news of His Son, or the good news of the grace of God.
The good news is: You don't have to live in isolation. You don't have to live with fulfilling your lusts and finding them unsatisfying. You don't have to live with guilt and anxiety and fear. You don't have to live with meaninglessness and hopelessness. You don't have to live in the fear of judgment. The good news is forgiveness for all their sin and restoration to God, renovation of their nature and eternal bliss in heaven.
Why would God want to give good news to such bad people? Because God is love and He loves you. And that is why God gives good news to bad people, because the love of God could not even be quenched by the death of His own Son. John 3:16 says, "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but should have everlasting life.”
So Paul says in Romans 1:2, “He promised the gospel before through His prophets in the Holy Scriptures.” If you read the Old Testament, you will know that the prophets tell us that there will come a Savior. There is coming a Lamb who will be slain for the sins of the world. There is coming One who, being lifted up, will bear your sins and your iniquities. And Paul says, “It came in Jesus Christ. And I am here to tell you about it.”
Jesus said if you have seen me, you have seen God. They questioned Him about his age, and He said in John 8:58, “Before Abraham was, I am.” God came into the world, God, the second member of the Trinity that we call God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Jesus came into the world to bring about the good news from God. The Father promised He would send His Son. God has come into the world to save us. That's the good news.
Man longs to have the God-shaped vacuum in his heart filled. That's why there are so many different religions around the world and through human history. There is an emptiness in man's heart that can only be filled by God. And we create the god of our own confusion to fill it until our hearts are opened to the knowledge of the true God. Only the true God is able to send good news in his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
And Paul says He is man, born as a descendant of David according to the flesh, who is also God. And He was declared the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead according to the Holy Spirit. God's Son, came into the world as man and God. He was born a Jew. The fact that he is God was proven by the resurrection from the dead.
Socrates taught for forty years, Plato taught for fifty years and Aristotle taught for forty years. But Jesus taught for only three years, yet the ministry of Jesus infinitely transcends the 130 years of the world's great philosophers. Jesus wrote no poetry, yet more poems have been written of Him than any person who ever lived. Every sphere of human art and greatness has been enriched by the humble carpenter of Nazareth.
In Romans 1:3 it says, "He was born of the seed of David according to the flesh.” That descendant was Mary, who was in the line of David. Even Joseph, her husband though not the father of Jesus physically, because Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit, but Joseph was also in the line of David. Joseph was in the kingly line and had there been a king in Israel, it could have been Joseph.
So God had a Son who was fully man, born of a virgin. He was also a royal man with a right to reign. Why? Because God promised that He would send a savior who would be a king. He would be the king over a spiritual kingdom and an earthly kingdom, but more than that: an eternal kingdom. God will give Him the throne of his father David. And He will reign forever, His kingdom will have no end.
Why did He need to be a man? If He was going to be the substitute for our sins, He had to be one of us in order that He might bear the sins of men, that He might bear the guilt of men, that He might bear the punishment of men, that He might feel the wrath of God for men and be our substitute on the cross. That's good news! We don't have to feel His judgment on our iniquity because God became fully man and redeemed us.
But notice in Romans 1:4, “And declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of Holiness, by the resurrection from the dead.” He is not just man, He is God. He came down to us as a human through Mary. He came down to us as divine through the Holy Spirit. He is the God man. And it says, "He was declared as God when He conquered death through the power of his Spirit. God gave evidence that this is a divine Son.
Josephus, the great Jewish historian, lived from 37 A.D to 95 A.D., and wrote that Jesus Christ really lived, “Now there was about this time, Jesus, a wise man. He was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as received the truth with pleasure. He drew over to Him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was Christ. And when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us had condemned Him to the cross, those that loved Him at the first did not forsake Him for He appeared to them alive at the third day as the divine prophets had foretold these and thousands other wonderful things concerning Him. The Christians, so named from Him, are not extinct to this day.”
There is a description of Christ by Publius Lentulus to the Roman Senate, “There appeared in these days a man of great virtue named Jesus Christ, who is yet among us. Of the Gentiles, accepted for a prophet of truth, but his disciples call him the son of God. He raises the dead and cures all manner of diseases. A man of stature, somewhat tall and comely, with a very reverend countenance such as the beholder can both fear and love Him. His hair, the color of a chestnut full ripe, plain to the ears, whence downward it is more curling and waving about his shoulders.”
“In the midst of his forehead is a partition of his hair after the manner of the Nazarites, forehead plain and very delicate. His face, without spot or wrinkle, beautiful, with a slightly reddish complexion. His nose and mouth are faultless. His beard is abundant, in color like his hair, not long. His look is simple and mature. His eyes are changeable and bright.
“He is terrible in his reprimands. Sweet and amiable in his admonitions. Pleasant in conversation, without loss of gravity. He was never known to laugh, but many have seen him weep. In proportion of body, most excellent. His hands and arms are beautiful to behold. His conversation is grave, infrequent and modest. He is the most beautiful among the children of men.”
But He had to be more than a man if He was going to bear our sins, if He was going to conquer death. For, if He was only a man, He would have had to have died for His own sins. And so, the resurrection becomes the signal, the miracle that marks his deity. This is good news. As God, He conquered death. And He says, because I live, you shall live also. Have you confessed Jesus as your Savior? Let us pray.