"Jesus' Resurrection: God's Public Guarantee"
#91-49Presented on The Lutheran Hour on August 4, 2024
By Rev. Dr. Gregory Seltz, Lutheran Hour Speaker
Copyright 2024 Lutheran Hour Ministries
Reflections
Text: 1 Corinthians 15:17-19
"If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we're to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep."
Christ is risen. He is risen, indeed and His resurrection means that we can have hope for today, tomorrow, forever. Amen!
Have you read the good news in the paper lately? The housing crisis might be over. In fact, there are a lot of people hoping against hope that this is true. Many are being told that now may be the time for you to put your money down and participate in the dream of home ownership again. But something seems to still be holding people back. What might that be? Well, for many, it's that nasty down payment. Houses still cost a lot of money and banks are requiring at least 20 percent down or more. After all, people need to have a stake in their investments, don't they?
Down payments, that's having a stake in the game, having "skin in the game," as it were; the higher the down payment, the more sure that the loan will get paid; the more certain that the promissory note will be fulfilled. That down payment is a promise that the contract is sure, and you get to move in as if the house were yours already.
When St. Paul calls Jesus' resurrection the firstfruits of those who have risen from the dead, he's not only reminding people that God has a stake in the game, he's reminding them of God's faithfulness in all things. Firstfruits talk is harvest talk. It is about God's faithfulness to provide all that we need in our relationship with Him. Israel would give the first tenth of the fruits of the field back to the Lord. Why? Because they were acknowledging His faithfulness in bringing forth not only the first sheaves of the harvested grain, but of all the rest to follow. They were celebrating God's enduring faithfulness first, acknowledging Him as the One who had always and would always fulfill His promises when He has a stake in the game.
That's what we see in our text today. It's Easter! We're talking about Jesus' resurrection and the fact that all those who trust in Him will have eternal, resurrected life just as He promised. For whatever happens to this Jesus, it can happen to you. If He lives, you can live also. His resurrection is God's firstfruit guarantee, a down payment, even better; a loan publicly paid in full concerning your eternal life with Him, now demonstrated for all to see in the resurrection of His Son for you. Faith in this Jesus is faith in a contract where God provides everything for us. It's like the word "covenant" in the Bible; it's something that God the Father establishes, puts in place, and offers so that we can dwell in His house forever! He did that in full when He sent His Son to live, to die, and to rise again for you. His resurrection means that His life can be yours, too.
The apostle Paul says this is no metaphor, no hope-against-hope wish; it is a promise of life for all. You can take that to the bank!
"For if only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep."
But we have a problem, don't we? Even with such good news. First, many have a cynical notion that such things can't be true in today's modern world. But, it's even worse than that. Even if it is true, we human beings don't like eternal hope especially when it comes as a gift from God, on His terms alone. The sin of Adam and Eve is ours as well. The rebellion of the Garden of Eden is the rebellion that lives in every human heart. Our sin makes us shortsighted, even blind, to the very cause of our own mortality. We don't like pure gifts from God because we still believe that we can handle things on our own.
Paul speaks plainly in our lesson today when he says, "... death came through a man ... For as in Adam all die!" Yet even here we dismiss our need for life, we dismiss God's resurrection message of hope. We continue to seek solutions of hope on our own terms alone. We strive for what I call hopeless hope. Most are looking everywhere else but the cross and the empty tomb of Jesus for life's meaning and purpose, and power! Most people today, if they believe in anything resembling resurrection, they believe it's a power that they possess, a work that they can do. If not, they don't believe at all.
Hopeless hope. We get our hopes up. We make our grand plans. We follow our clever schemes. But our schemes come to nothing; our knowledge always seems incomplete just when we need it most. Our hopes are eventually dashed.
Our modern temptation, though, is to continue to believe that the next technology will save us. First, the telephone, it would be the "next best thing to being there." Then, radio would bring us knowledge and bond our communities even beyond our shores. And, of course, television was to make us wise beyond our years. And yet, our problems are exponentially worse today than ever before. Do people turn to Christ in repentance and faith? No, the temptation of hopeless hope still lures many anew.
Have you heard about the "Google X Initiative"? I like that, the initiative! Sounds important. Google has a plan to solve the world's greatest problems. They call it the intersection of radical problems with radical solutions with radical technology. Sounds radical. Now, I'm no technophobe; if you are talking about things like driverless cars, or smartphones, or modern conveniences due to nano-technology or stuff like that, I'm a Google man. But if you are talking about sin and its shadows like destroyed relationships, violence, poverty, and the like, wake up from hopeless hope. There's already a radical solution. God in the flesh, born under the Law, born in the muck and mire of this world, born to save humanity from itself. There is a radical solution: God on the move to the cross, with the very power of His resurrection from the dead, building another kingdom through freed servants, believers, and receivers of His resurrection life, who will entrust their lives to Him and serve others, those whom God brings into their path serving them as God in Christ serves you. Now, that's a "Christian X Initiative," even more radical. It's the intersection of God in the world at work, the intersection of humanity's greatest problems and deepest needs, and the intersection of forgiven sinners, graced people at work in His Name for others.
But, Paul says it even more boldly: "If Christ is not arisen, then we are to be pitied because we are still in our sins." But we don't have to suffer the fate of hopeless hope. We don't have to hope against hope that life is worth living and that it has eternal purpose. Why? God is at work for the world, for you. Jesus Christ is God in the flesh at work for each one of us. Jesus' death paid humanity's debt to justice and His resurrection is God's public guarantee for your eternal life in Him. Because He lives you will live also. Eternally, starting today. Because He lives you can bank on the fact that your life has meaning and purpose today because the Resurrected One is your Lord and your Savior.
You know, Easter is one of those days when everything comes clear. Jesus' death, His willingness to suffer hell in our place, now in full view of His resurrection, now we see clearly that only such a sacrifice could bring such a blessing. Today's a day when we come to grips with the fact that God, in Christ, really does have our best interest at heart. When Jesus said, "I have come to give you life, and to give it to you abundantly," now we see that promise fulfilled, that offer clearly made. God has skin in the game, if you will, concerning your life and salvation. He dies on your cross and He offers His resurrected life to you, and He literally goes before you as the "Risen One," God's guarantee that eternal life is yours by faith in Him. He is risen indeed, hallelujah. And because He lives, you and I will live also, now and forever. When we learn that, when we realize that we are living in eternity and towards eternal life in Him, that His resurrection payment in full is only the beginning, then and only then, does this temporal life become the adventure of faith that it was meant to be.
Professional golfer Paul Azinger was diagnosed with cancer at age 33. He had just won a PGA championship and had ten tournament victories to his credit. But, suddenly, none of that seemed to matter. Temporal life seemed not only temporal, but even finite. "Is this all there is?" he wrote. "A genuine feeling of fear came over me," he said. "I could die from cancer. Then another reality hit me even harder. I'm going to die eventually anyway, whether from cancer or something else. It's just a question of when. Everything I had accomplished in golf became meaningless to me. All I wanted to do was live."
Then he remembered something that Larry Moody, who teaches Bible study on the tour, something Moody had said to him. "Zinger, we're not in the land of the living going to the land of the dying. We're in the land of the dying trying to get to the land of the living."
Well, Jesus' public resurrection guarantees that life is worth living because life in Him never ends, starting now. God, put Himself on public display in His Son for all to see so that all people might put their hope in Jesus Christ alone. In Him, God's promises are sure. In Him, the apostle Paul later says in 2 Corinthians 1, "For no matter how many promises God has made, they are yes in Christ. And so through Him the Amen is spoken by us to the glory of God."
In a world that is moving fast on an unstable course, we need something solid upon which to hang our hopes. We need to repent of our reliance on hopeless hope, but we need to see what God Himself has put in its place; a sure hope, a certain hope, a hope-filled, life-giving hope in Christ alone! The cross and the resurrection of Jesus that is the stuff that real hope is made of. Jesus' resurrection is God the Father's guarantee that abundant, eternal life is yours by faith in Him. Don't miss it and surely don't lose it!
But the apostle Paul isn't just warning us against hopeless hope. He's offering Christ's eternal hope for your life today. Like Paul Azinger, we need to realize today that we are a resurrection people. Today we live in the grace of God in Christ and in the power of His resurrection. Hope is a motivating thing because it tells the human heart that tomorrow is worth living for. Everyone needs some guarantees that life has purpose, today, tomorrow, even for the days to come. And Paul shouts that the cross and the resurrection—that's God's public guarantee that real life and salvation are sure to all those who believe in Him. He's the firstfruits, the public example, of what's coming next. Good Friday couldn't stop God. Bloodthirsty rebellious leaders couldn't stop God. Satan, himself, couldn't stop Him. He is risen. He's alive and He is already carving out a future for each one who puts their faith in Him. So, look in that empty tomb today. That's God's guarantee that your life is worth living, too! God the Father doesn't just offer eternal life. He embodies it for you in the resurrection of His Son. His resurrection guarantee is not just for tomorrow; it's for living today.
As Easter people, you and I get to live each and every day in the knowledge that your life is in Christ's hands! And even if that means that you are starting all over again today, your future is sure in Him, just the same. His resurrection is your destiny. His blessing is your promise. Easter faith repents of hopeless hope, and Easter faith can begin to live new life today. Easter faith receives joyfully what the Lord has for you! And that's what resurrection faith is about, discovering your value in Christ, discovering what you are meant to be in Him, what you can be in Him and for Him and for each other. You can't know who you are until you know the One who created and redeemed you. He literally died and rose again so that you could know how precious you are to Him. And because He lives for you and you live in Him, live today expecting there to be a tomorrow, blessed and eternal. That kind of life boldly lives even this side of heaven. That kind of life is, as they say, worth the risk!
It was August 13, 1961. The communists decided to build a wall between West and East Germany. Alongside that wall in Berlin lived a sweet, little old lady named Frau Schultz. They started to brick up that wall and they put barbed wire on the top, and many people started to make their escape, grabbing whatever they could and getting over that wall before it was too late! Frau Schultz was nervous and worried, too. She needed to get out. Her family was on the other side of the wall. But she was too scared to try!
A month later the wall was complete, and she was moved by the government to the second-floor apartment right near the wall. They moved her there because surely a 75-year old lady wouldn't try to escape. But there she was, alone, hopeless in a foreign apartment, jostled by people who didn't care. She had enough. Freedom, life, hope&@8212meant everything to her. She grabbed her cat and out the window she went!
Now, many of you may have seen movies of her escape. The sight of a 75-year old lady on the ledge caught the attention of the Germans on the West side, and they sent a fireman's squad with a net for her 20-foot jump. The communists saw it, too, and they beat down her door trying to grab her from the window to drag her back in! She literally hung there between the hopelessness of her past and the hope of a new life in her future! She had people grabbing her from all sides and then it happened. She first dropped her cat into the net and then, yes, you guessed it, she pulled herself free from the East German guard and she leaped to freedom. With that risky leap, a 75-year old lady's life of hope had just begun all over again.
Today you and I are invited to leave behind the confining walls of hopeless hope, invited to the risk of faith, the joy of resurrection life, to repent of our trust in humanity's bravado, and to trust in Christ's resurrection hope, not just to leap, but to fall into His hands by faith, the hands of the One who lived, and died, and rose again for you.
I don't know if the housing crisis is over. I'm not sure if the banks are going to loosen up their credit and help us get our economy going again. And I'm not even sure if the present political solutions will do anything for us at all. But I do know this: life is not to be found in bank accounts and mortgages. True life does not ebb and flow with the times of prosperity or times of adversity. Life is to be found in Jesus Christ and His resurrection for you. That is the power to live life now and forever.
Think of it this way: we were made for eternity and we were redeemed so that we could start to live in eager expectation now, making the most of these days and yearning to live all our days in Christ.
The late Keith Green, a wonderful Christian songwriter, had a song, entitled, "I Can't Wait to Get to Heaven," in which he describes his anticipation of meeting Jesus. The words go like this:
"Thoughts of heaven somehow seem to fill my mind, But I can't even imagine, what it is I'm gonna find. I can't wait to get to heaven, when You'll wipe away all my fears. In six days You created everything, but You've been working on Heaven two thousand years. Deep green forests, mountains reaching for the sky, grasslands and deserts, Your creation fills my eye. Thank You, thank You, Jesus, though this beauty is just a taste of all Your glory I'll see when I pass through those heavenly gates."
Christ is risen. He is risen, indeed. Hallelujah! And because He lives, you and I, as believers in Him, will live also, now and forever. You have His public guarantee to prove it. Amen.
Reflections for August 4, 2024
Title: Introducing "Archives August"
Mark Eischer: Welcome to Archives August, and thank you for your ongoing support throughout the year. To learn how your gifts and prayers help to Bring Christ to the Nations—and the Nations to the Church, go to lutheranhour.org. The Rev. Dr. Gregory Seltz was Lutheran Hour Speaker from 2011 to 2017. He is currently executive director of the Lutheran Center for Religious Liberty in Washington, D.C. To introduce today's message from The Lutheran Hour archives, here is our current Speaker, Dr. Michael Zeigler.
Mike Zeigler: Thank you, Mark. And I'm joined here with my friend and colleague, Dr. Jason Broge. Welcome, Jason.
Jason Broge: Thanks. It's great to be here.
Mike Zeigler: So Jason and I are going to be your conversation partners during these August programs when we revisit some classic sermons from our archives.
Jason Broge: And we're going to do something that might seem odd at first. We're going to start with Easter. I know it's August, but we're going to ask you to step all the way back to springtime and spend some time considering Easter.
Mike Zeigler: And one thing we want to talk about is that Easter was not always called Easter. At first Christians just called it "Pascha," which was a reference to the Jewish holiday of Passover, which celebrated how God had rescued His people out of Egypt from slavery in Egypt and led them to the promised land to be a light for all the nations.
Jason Broge: The term "Easter" that we're familiar with came much later, and it was taken over as some of you may have heard from an annual springtime celebration in England, which is why so many English speakers call it Easter. But many Christian cultures around the world still refer to it by its original name, Pascha, which is tied to Passover. Because it's understood that Christ is the fulfillment of the Passover, and that the actual celebration of Easter is tied to that time of the year when Passover is celebrated.
Mike Zeigler: And for Christians, everything starts with Jesus, with His death and His resurrection from the dead. As it says in 1 Corinthians 5:7, "Christ, our Passover Lamb, has been sacrificed," which means that Jesus brought about a greater Passover because His blood marks us as God's people and His body nourishes us for the journey ahead.
Jason Broge: And He is the greater Moses, as the book of Acts tells us, because He is God's Word to us. He, Jesus, leads us out of slavery to sin and death and the power of the devil and into the promised land of His coming kingdom, the new creation.
Mike Zeigler: So here is an Easter or Passover sermon, first broadcast in 2012 from Dr. Greg Seltz.
*********QA CONTINUES AFTER THE SERMON*******
Mark Eischer: That was Dr. Gregory Seltz with an Easter message that originally aired in 2012. You're listening to The Lutheran Hour, and this is Archives August. Once again here's Michael Zeigler and Jason Broge.
Mike Zeigler: How does that insight—that we live all our days in Christ—how does that help us approach the days of our calendars, the little square boxes in our calendars?
Jason Broge: We live by faith. We trust in Jesus. We are always the one leaping into that fireman's arms. And the one catching us is Jesus. And the church calendar reorients our life so that we see the seasons of the year, but also every single specific day in that way, as a day in which we rest completely in Jesus.
Mike Zeigler: This way of thinking about time for Christians, we can call it the Christian calendar or the church year sometimes, it is oriented around Jesus. And we start with Jesus because as 2 Corinthians 1:20 says, "All of God's promises find their yes in Him." And so one way you can think about the church calendar is that it's got a cycle of promise, fulfillment, and growth. So promise fulfilled in Jesus and our response and growth. And it just brings us through the different seasons of the year around the life and work of Jesus, not around all the things that we might plan. So say some more about how you've experienced the church year, Jason.
Jason Broge: I think that's really very helpful, seeing this path we're going through as one of God's promises in Christ, one of Christ fulfilling those promises, and one of growth is a way of anchoring yourself through the church year and remembering where you are and experiencing this cycle, which makes every season feel new and every season feel somewhat also predictable in a comforting way.
Mike Zeigler: So it's not just Christmas and Easter.
Jason Broge: No, it's not.
Mike Zeigler: It's more than that, and that's what people are most familiar with. But rather it is grounding us in a narrative, in an account of the whole creation, centered in God's promises, fulfilled in the birth life, death, resurrection, ascension, and return of His Son, and how we live in response to that. So going back to the original thought of how this helps us see the little square boxes or whatever, however they're represented for us on our calendar, how does this insight that we live all our days in Christ, how does this change the way we see those individual seemingly mundane moments of the days and the weeks?
Jason Broge: Well, it makes each one of those days both more important and less important. Right? It makes it part of a much larger narrative. It makes it something of cosmic importance.
Mike Zeigler: So it helps me see every moment as somewhere fitted in that story of promise, fulfillment, and growth. That's what these moments are about. They're not about the Olympics, they're not about making sure I have all my school things in order. Those are important and those are a part of our everyday lives, but what they're really about is God's promises fulfilled in Christ. And our response to that.
Jason Broge: Another way of thinking about it is it makes every moment holy, every moment becomes separate, set apart by God, even the mundane ones become holy.
Mike Zeigler: Thank you for visiting with us and getting this conversation started, Jason. We'll be back again next week to talk about a sermon from that season of growth, from the season of Pentecost.
Jason Broge: Thanks for having me.
Music Selections for this program:
"A Mighty Fortress" arranged by Chris Bergmann. Used by permission.
"Take My Life, O Lord, Renew" arr. Henry Gerike. Used by permission.
"Guide Me, O Thou Great Redeemer" From The Concordia Organist (© 2009 Concordia Publishing House) Used by permission.
