Bible Study 2023
Everyone Resurrected
Everyone lives forever. People who think that death is where they go out of existence are mistaken. They will go into an eternal existence with all their faculties heightened and intensified to a degree that’s incomprehensible to them. They will also be raised in a body that is fit for their dwelling place: either in heaven or in hell, a body suited to eternal service to God or a body suited to eternal punishment and suffering.
Every human being who dies will be raised to see God, there is no escape. Once you’re born, you’re forever. Look at John 5, where Jesus heals a man at the pool of Bethesda, a man who had been lame for thirty-eight years. As a result of that healing, the Jews escalated their desire to kill Jesus. The Jews were persecuting Jesus, because He was doing these things on the Sabbath.
They created false rules for the Sabbath. The Old Testament did say that you are to limit your travel on the Sabbath, but for a man who had been healed in a divine miracle to pick up his bed and walk away was a sin to them. They were so focused on externals that they saw this as an act of blasphemy. Verse 18, “For He not only broke the Sabbath, He called God his Father, thereby making himself equal with God.”
This is a terrifying set of claims by our Lord Jesus. He is saying, “I’m not subject to your rules on the Sabbath. I do what the Father does.” Everything you see Me do is the work of the Father, based on the will and purpose of the Father.” So He is one with God in nature; and He is one with God the Father in works. The third thing is that He has full knowledge of everything that God knows.
John 5:21-23, “For just as the Father gives life to those He raises from the dead, so the Son gives life to anyone He wants. 22 In addition, the Father judges no one. Instead, He has given the Son absolute authority to judge, 23 so that everyone will honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Anyone who does not honor the Son is certainly not honoring the Father who sent Him.”
Jewish people thought they knew God, they honored God; they did not because you can’t honor the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ if you don’t honor Him as well. So He pressed this issue of equality to a degree that was shocking to the Jews, who thought He was a fraud. Christ claims this power and authority when He says He has power to raise the dead and give them life, and He gives it to whomever He wishes.
Then He has the power and authority to judge everyone. This is true sovereignty: the power to give life and the power to judge. He is the one who will make everyone alive, and He is the one who will judge everyone. Verse 24, “I tell you the truth, those who listen to my message and believe in God who sent Me have eternal life. They will never be condemned for their sins, but they have already passed from death into life.”
When you hear about the gospel in our time, it seems that people only want to talk about what it can accomplish for you in this life. That’s not the truth. We are currently blessed with all spiritual blessings in heaven in Christ. So there are benefits in this life. But the reason for salvation is not to bring you bliss in this life, because even if you’re a believer in this life you still have to fight your way as a fallen person.
So what the gospel offers to you now is an escape from eternal judgment. Christ, the only one who can save you, will either be your Savior, or He will be your Judge. He will either raise you to life abundantly and eternally in His presence forever, or He will raise you to condemnation and judgment to suffer forever out of His presence in a place the Scriptures calls hell or Hades.
Verse 25, “And I assure you that the time is coming, indeed it’s here now, when the dead will hear my voice, the voice of the Son of God. And those who listen will live.” This is the focus for tonight. Here He is going to demonstrate His power to raise the dead and to judge. Listen to what it says in verse 26, “The Father has life in himself, and He has granted that same life-giving power to his Son.”
There are two aspects to resurrection that our Lord is referring to. Verse 25, says, “And I assure you that the time is coming, indeed it’s here now, when the dead will hear my voice—the voice of the Son of God. And those who listen will live.” Well, there was no physical resurrection at that time; the final resurrection is yet to come in the future. So what does He mean? He means our spiritual resurrection.
Look at the “indeed it’s here now.” Even at the time in our Lord’s ministry and life in which He was speaking here, He was giving life to people, He was saving people, and He was raising them from spiritual death. Jesus defined the people as dead. He said, “Let the dead bury their dead,” in the book of Matthew. And what He was saying is, “Let the spiritually dead bury the physically dead.”
In the familiar story of the prodigal son, twice Jesus defines the prodigal as Luke 15 says “dead in sin”. So Jesus is saying He is giving life to the spiritually dead. Before the cross and before resurrection, Jesus was giving life to people who believed in Him. Listen to John 1:12, “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name.”
There’s no cross yet. There’s no resurrection yet. They weren’t required to believe in His death and resurrection; it hadn’t happened. But to any who received Him, He gave them a right to become a child of God. So they could believe, and they could receive Christ and have nothing in their minds at all about His death and resurrection, and they would still be children of God.
Paul says about Abraham in Romans, “[He] believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness.” He’s the illustration of justification in Romans 4. And Abraham knew nothing about the cross or the resurrection. Romans 10 says, “If you confess Jesus as Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” Because on this side of the cross and the resurrection, you must believe that.
But before that, it was a matter of believing all that had been revealed. John 3:36 says, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life” and the wrath of God doesn’t abide on him. So already, people who believed in Him, like the disciples, who hadn’t gotten to the cross yet, were saved. And like many of the Samaritans; in John 4:41, “Many more believed because of His word.
At any point in progressive revelation, salvation came to one who believed what God had revealed. Spiritual life is being given to those who hear the voice of the Lord, who hear the voice of Christ. The hour of life is already here, as it always has been; salvation is available. But there’s more to come. “An hour is also coming when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.”
What’s coming is the cross and the resurrection, and an hour is coming when there will be a great response to the cross and the Resurrection, and faith will give birth to the church in Acts 2. But after that there would be an even greater explosion of faith. On the Day of Pentecost three thousand people were converted, and soon after that you have five thousand more being converted.
Romans 6:13 describes Christians as those who have been made alive. “You were dead in your trespasses and sin.” Colossians 2, “Dead in your transgressions”—dead because you are born spiritually dead; and only the Lord could give you life. How did it happen? By hearing the voice of the Son of God. Christ is the only one who can speak life into the dead. He is the one who gives spiritual life.
But let us also learn what follows that spiritual resurrection in the future, and that is the physical resurrection. Because it takes one who is a man to sit in judgment on men, lest men think they were judged by an unfair judge. Christ, who was in all points tempted like as we are, will be the judge of all men. So He is the life: “I am the way, the truth, and the life,” He said. “Whoever finds Me finds life.”
Verses 27-29, “And he has given Him authority to judge everyone because He is the Son of Man. 28 Don’t be so surprised! Indeed, the time is coming when all the dead in their graves will hear the voice of God’s Son. 29 and they will rise again. Those who have done good will rise to experience eternal life, and those who have continued in evil will rise to experience judgment.”
And that takes us to the physical resurrection, verse 28-29, “Don’t be so surprised! Indeed, the time is coming when all the dead in their graves will hear the voice of God’s Son, 29 and they will rise again. Those who have done good will rise to experience eternal life, and those who have continued in evil will rise to experience judgment.” Everybody comes back alive physically.
And notice that they will judged by their deeds. You say, “I thought salvation was by grace.” You’re right: “Not of works, lest any man should boast.” Salvation is by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone. So why are we judged by our works? Because that’s the validation of your salvation. “If any man be in Christ, he’s a new creation: old things have passed away; and new things have come.”
This speaks to this important issue that salvation is not a matter of some experience at some point in your life, or some prayer, or some emotional connection with Jesus. You will be judged on your works; they don’t save you, but they affirm the reality of your salvation. If you are truly transformed as a child of God, it will show by how you live your life day to day.
The power to do that is incomprehensible. Taking you back to the creation: In six days the triune God spoke the entire universe and everything in it into existence. In six days He created everything. So it’s really not a difficult situation for Him to raise the dead and reassemble them in some eternal form fit for heaven or hell, but the power to do that is beyond any kind of comprehension.
We know enough science to know that matter is never really destroyed; it just changes form. So the Lord will reach back into the creation and reassemble everyone. In some expression of who they actually were, they will continue to be who they were, only in a physical body suited for heaven or hell. Jesus walked and talked and ate. And all the believers will have a glorified body.
Now the unbelievers will have a body also that can feel pain. Hell is described as burning, darkness, pain, gnashing of teeth, agony. Jesus did something on the Sabbath, and then said He could do what God did because He was God. Then He said, “I have the power to raise every person from the dead and bring them to judgment, and then I have the authority to judge them.”
It is shocking when you think about how uninterested people are about the end of their life, how little they think about it. Luke 14 talks about the resurrection of the righteous; that will happen at the rapture of the church and at the end of the tribulation, as the saints are all raised and brought into the thousand-year kingdom with Christ. At the end of that thousand years is the resurrection of the unjust.
Christ comes in Revelation 19, and sets up His kingdom for a thousand years. Revelation 20:5 says, “The rest of the dead didn’t come to life until the thousand years were completed.” The saints will be taken at the rapture of the church; then comes the Tribulation. The remaining Old Testament saints at the end of the Tribulation, Daniel 12 indicates, will be raised from the dead.
And so you’ll have the New Testament believers and the Old Testament believers in glorified, resurrected form coming back with Christ. You see that in Revelation 19. They come back with Him, their robes are washed white, to reign with Him on the earth, all the resurrected saints. During that thousand years there will be still people who went into that kingdom alive on earth as believers.
They will have offspring over the thousand years. There will be a rebellion, an insurrection against God at the end by those who refuse to believe even when Christ is reigning in the world; and there will be a judgment at the end of the thousand years, but that will involve all the unrighteous dead. That’s exactly what it says: “The rest of the dead did not come to life until the thousand years were completed.”
The first resurrection in Revelation 20:6, however, is different, it is for the “blessed and holy” ones. “Over these the second death, which is that eternal death, has no power. They will be priests of God and Christ and reign with Him during His thousand-year kingdom.” So all the saints are raised to go into the kingdom, but when the kingdom is over, the rest of the dead are brought to life.
Go to Revelation 20:11-15, “And I saw a great white throne and the one sitting on it. The earth and sky fled from his presence, but they found no place to hide. 12 I saw the dead, both great and small, standing before God’s throne. And the books were opened, including the Book of Life. And the dead were judged according to what they had done, as recorded in the books.
13 The sea gave up its dead, and death and the grave gave up their dead. And all were judged according to their deeds. 14 Then death and the grave were thrown into the lake of fire. This lake of fire is the second death. 15 And anyone whose name was not found recorded in the Book of Life was thrown into the lake of fire.” If your name is not in the book of life, you’re going to be judged by your deeds, and you are lost. Let’s pray.