Christian
Basics Course Session 4: The Christ suffers for sins
- We saw over sessions 2-4 that the eternal King of
the universe would also suffer and die for our sins. The Christ had to be our Guilt
Offering. Today we’re going to look
at the fact that the Christ wouldn’t stay dead. He had to be resurrected.
- But before we look at what that means, does anyone
have questions from the homework?
Any questions from Luke 20-23?
- Now we looked in Session 2 at the promised
Christ. He’s the man who will rule
the whole world forever. But last
week we saw that this same man had to die.
Did you notice the problem:
How can someone rule forever, if they are going to die?
- There’s only one possible answer: It’s clear that the Christ will have to rise from the dead, to begin his
eternal rule. What’s more, he will
have to rise with a body that cannot
die. Because anyone who will
rule forever must also live forever.
Since the Christ will rule forever, he must rise from the dead and
then rule forever. One way to say
this is that the Christ had to be resurrected. So what we are going to look at now is
some of the bible’s teaching on resurrection.
- The passage we will read is Daniel 12:2-3. The author, Daniel, was living and writing around 600-550 BC.
2 Multitudes who sleep in the dust of the earth will
awake: some to everlasting life, others to shame and everlasting contempt. 3
Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens, and those who
lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.
- Here is the idea of resurrection: it’s the teaching
that one day there will be a judgment.
At this judgment, everyone will come back from the dead. Everyone will then live forever in some
sense. But some will have ‘life
forever’, while others have ‘shame forever’. This is another way to speak of ‘heaven’
and ‘hell’. This day when the dead
rise is called ‘the resurrection’ in the bible. So the idea of ‘resurrection’ isn’t
first about Jesus. It is firstly an
idea about the judgment day for everyone.
Lets’ read Luke 14:13 to see how the bible speaks about the
resurrection:
13 But when you give a banquet, invite the poor,
the crippled, the lame, the blind, 14 and you will be blessed. Although they
cannot repay you, you will be repaid at
the resurrection of the righteous."
- This passage speaks of the resurrection, but it’s
not talking about Jesus. The
resurrection is not just about Jesus, it’s about all the righteous. It’s about all those who might have a
banquet and invite the poor. The resurrection
is everyone’s judgment day.
- So what about the Christ – if he has to rule
forever, when will he get this immortal body that he needs for his
immortal reign? We discover in
Psalm 16 that the Christ will likely be resurrected before everyone else.
The passage is Psalm 16:8-10.
King David is writing, and the date is around 1000BC:
I have set the LORD always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I
will not be shaken. 9 Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue
rejoices; my body also will rest secure, 10 because you will not
abandon me to the grave, nor will you let your Holy One see decay.
- In
verse 10, David speaks about his confidence for the future. The first thing he says is that he won’t
be abandoned to the grave - he knows that he will not stay dead
forever. The second thing he says
is similar, but adds something more.
He speaks about God’s ‘Holy One’.
That’s another way of speaking of the Christ, the Messiah. David says that God won’t let his ‘Holy
One’ see decay. The Christ won’t
rot in the ground.
- But we’ve seen in previous sessions that the Christ
has to die. So here’s the
thing: Unless God does some miracle
[and stops the dead Christ’s body from decaying in the ground], the Christ
can’t stay dead long. If he did
stay dead too long, his body would rot.
And that’s what David said won’t happen – God won’t let the
Christ’s body rot. So we expect
that after the Christ dies, he will rise from the dead quickly.
- But we can say more about the timing of the
Christ’s resurrection. In the Old
Testament stories, the ‘third day’
is a day with some surprising patterns.
The first surprise is how often ‘the third day’ time stamp is
mentioned. There are 69 references
to ‘third day’ or ‘three days’ in the Old Testament.
[1]
By comparison, there are only 14
references to ‘two days’ or ‘second day’. There are only 8 references to
‘fourth day’ or ‘four days’. So the
Old Testament makes a lot of ‘three days’, and ‘the third day’. We can conclude that something is being
communicated. The day contains
special meaning. But what is that
meaning?
- We can see the meaning by looking at the pattern of
events on the third day. There are
fourteen passages in the stories of the Old Testament which use the phrase
‘on the third day’. Of these, nine
stories have a person saved from death that third day.
[2]
This is surprisingly high. Compare this sample with the twenty-four
passages where the Old Testament speaks of ‘the next day’.
[3]
Only 2 out of 24 passages on the ‘next
day’ have such an event, where a person is saved from death. This is much less than 9 out of 14 on
the third day.
- Our point is that the careful reader can notice a
special theme in ‘the third day’ stories.
This pattern is the ‘climactic reversal from death to life’.
- Let’s read a story to get the idea. Consider this story in Genesis
22:1-19: It’s a story from
Abraham’s lifetime, around 2000 BC.
NIV Genesis 22:1 Some time
later God tested Abraham. He said to him, "Abraham!" "Here I
am," he replied. 2 Then God said, "Take your son, your
only son, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him
there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about." 3
Early the next morning Abraham got up and saddled his donkey. He took with him
two of his servants and his son Isaac. When he had cut enough wood for the
burnt offering, he set out for the place God had told him about. 4 On the third day Abraham looked up and
saw the place in the distance. 5 He said to his servants, "Stay
here with the donkey while I and the boy go over there. We will worship and
then we will come back to you." 6 Abraham took the wood for the
burnt offering and placed it on his son Isaac, and he himself carried the fire
and the knife. As the two of them went on together, 7 Isaac spoke up
and said to his father Abraham, "Father?" "Yes, my son?"
Abraham replied. "The fire and wood are here," Isaac said, "but
where is the lamb for the burnt offering?" 8 Abraham answered,
"God himself will provide the lamb for the burnt offering, my son."
And the two of them went on together. 9 When they reached the place
God had told him about, Abraham built an altar there and arranged the wood on
it. He bound his son Isaac and laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. 10
Then he reached out his hand and took the knife to slay his son. 11 But the angel of the LORD called out to him from heaven, "Abraham!
Abraham!" "Here I am," he replied. 12 "Do not
lay a hand on the boy," he said. "Do not do anything to him. Now I
know that you fear God, because you have not withheld from me your son, your
only son." 13 Abraham looked up and there in a thicket he saw a
ram caught by its horns. He went over and took the ram and sacrificed it as a
burnt offering instead of his son. 14 So Abraham called that place
The LORD Will Provide. And to this day it is said, "On the mountain of the
LORD it will be provided." 15 The angel of the LORD called to
Abraham from heaven a second time 16 and said, "I swear by
myself, declares the LORD, that because you have done this and have not
withheld your son, your only son, 17 I will surely bless you and
make your descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as the sand on
the seashore. Your descendants will take possession of the cities of their
enemies, 18 and through your offspring all nations on earth will be
blessed, because you have obeyed me."
- In this story, the third day was the day when God
Abraham was to kill Isaac. God had
decreed Isaac’s death, so Isaac was as good as dead. Yet, in the climax to the story, Isaac’s
life is spared on the third day. It
is a reversal from life to death on the third day.
- A shorter story occurs in 2 Kings 20. This story comes from around the year
710 BC.
NIV 2 Kings 20:1 In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The
prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, "This is what the LORD
says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not
recover." 2 Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to
the LORD, 3 "Remember, O LORD, how I have walked before you
faithfully and with wholehearted devotion and have done what is good in your
eyes." And Hezekiah wept bitterly. 4 Before Isaiah had left the
middle court, the word of the LORD came to him: 5 "Go back and
tell Hezekiah, the leader of my people, 'This is what the LORD, the God of your
father David, says: I have heard your prayer and seen your tears; I will heal
you. On the third day from now you
will go up to the temple of the LORD. 6 I will add fifteen years to
your life. And I will deliver you and this city from the hand of the king of
Assyria
. I will defend this city for my
sake and for the sake of my servant David.'"
- Hezekiah had been told by God that he would
die. Yet in a great climax, on the
third day he is well enough to go to the temple.
- There is another passage in the Old Testament which
links the resurrection of the dead with the third day. This passage is not a story, but a
predictive prophecy. The passage is
Hosea 6:2, and was written around 730 BC.
[4]
ESV Hosea 6:1 "Come, let us return to the LORD; for he has torn us, that he may
heal us; he has struck us down, and he will bind us up.
2
After two
days he will revive us; on the
third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him.
The passage
is a poem. The first half of each line
is preliminary; the second half is the climactic prediction for the
future. For example, ‘he has torn us’ is
preliminary, a statement of the past.
But ‘that he may heal us’ is the climactic prediction for the
future. Just so, in verse two, ‘after
two days he will revive us’ is preliminary.
‘On the third day he will raise us up’ is the climactic prediction for the
future. So the third day is predicted to
be a day of raising up.
- We do not have time to cover all the stories in
question. The point is that the Old
Testament points to the third day as a day of climactic reversal from
death to life.
- With this ‘third day’ pattern in mind, we can
return to the resurrection of the Christ.
We know that the Christ must be raised with a resurrection body, so
that he can reign forever. We know
it is likely that he will be raised
quickly (as we saw above). Now we add the pattern we have seen
regarding the third day.
- Together, this leads us to a suggestion which the
Old Testament makes about the Christ.
The Old Testament strongly hints that the Christ will be raised on
the third day. And this is what in
fact happened.
- Let’s finish by reading how Jesus was historically
raised on the third day. It’s in
Luke 23:54-24:8.
NIV Luke
23:54
It was Preparation Day, and the Sabbath was about to begin. 55
The women who had come with Jesus from
Galilee
followed Joseph and saw the tomb and how his body was laid in it. 56
Then they went home and prepared spices and perfumes. But they rested on the
Sabbath in obedience to the commandment.
24:1 On the first day of the week, very early in the
morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2
They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they
entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they
were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like
lightning stood beside them. 5 In their fright the women bowed down
with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look
for the living among the dead? 6 He is not here; he has risen!
Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in
Galilee
: 7 'The Son of Man
must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised
again.'" 8 Then they remembered his words.
- Notice that it was the third day when Jesus was
raised. The Jewish day started at
sunset. So the Preparation Day was
the first day (
23:54
). The Sabbath (Saturday) was the second
day, and they rested (
23:56
). He was raised Saturday night (the third
day), so that on the Sunday morning the stone was rolled away (24:2). Jesus had been raised on the third day,
in accordance with the Scriptures.
The implication is that now Jesus will be King of the universe
forever. He is now the king of the
world forever, because he cannot die again. So the big question is - will we accept
Jesus as our king?
- Any questions? The homework for this week is to
finish reading Luke’s gospel.
- We’ve seen in this session a key teaching of the
Old Testament: The Christ will rise from the dead on the third day as the king of
the world forever.
Christian
Basics Course Appendix A to Session 5::
The third day pattern in the Old Testament – ‘Climactic reversal from death to
life
Christian
Basics Course Appendix B to Session 5: The
historical evidence for Jesus’ resurrection
Christian
Basics Course Session 6: Forgiveness of sins for all nations