Implications of Christ's Resurrection

The point: Go and stand by Joseph's empty tomb in your mind's eye and tell yourself the three meanings of the resurrection for God's people again and again.

Martin describes a person who identifies as Christian based on cultural upbringing, church attendance, and sacraments, but lacks true conversion, to clarify who he means by 'God's people'.

I'm not a Taoist. I'm not a Muslim. I'm not a Jew. I was reared in a home where there was a Bible on the shelf and where I was taken to church and christened and taken to church a few times later and confirmed and I occasionally partake of the sacrament.

31:23 - 31:43 Read in full sermon

The point: Go and stand by Joseph's empty tomb in your mind's eye and tell yourself the three meanings of the resurrection for God's people again and again.

Believers are encouraged to use sanctified imagination to 'visit' Joseph's empty tomb and repeatedly remind themselves of the three core meanings of the resurrection for them.

But there are three things so central to its meaning that we as the people of God need to come back to again and again and as it were in our mind's eye visit with the Gospel records open before us visit the tomb as Mary did and as Peter and John ran and went into the tomb we need by the activity of sanctified imagination to go and stand by Joseph's empty tomb and tell ourselves these three things again and again and again and again and again for the meaning of the resurrection to the people of God is this number one it is their receipt of full pardon the gift of righteousness. It is their rece...

32:56 - 34:24 Read in full sermon

The point: When feeling the weight of sin, go and stand by Joseph's tomb and say, 'He was raised for my justification,' trusting that the penalty for sin is paid in full.

The resurrection is presented as God's validation that Christ's payment for sin was 'paid in full,' like a judge's decision that cannot be overturned, assuring believers of their justification.

will make it stick I assume the cross bore Peter says bore our sins in his own body up to the tree discharged all the obligations that were against us in the court of heaven those for which he died if there was any question whether the thing were paid in full is upon which he has stamped for the wages of sin is death and when all the works of death were discharged against those death had no more claims over him and his resurrection is the validation of that fact so when you as the people of God feel the weight and the pressure and the shameful consciousness of your sin what are you to do well ...

37:18 - 38:47 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: For true believers, the resurrection signifies the receipt of full pardon and the gift of righteousness, the assurance of an indefectible salvation, and the pledge of their own…

Christ's resurrection is likened to the 'firstfruits' of an Old Testament harvest, serving as a pledge that the entire harvest (all believers) will also be reaped in due course through resurrection.

And the souls of believers go immediately into the presence of Christ, but their bodies, in biblical language, sleep in the earth. Now notice, Paul says that Christ's resurrection was constituted the firstfruits of them that sleep. And there he uses that imagery from the Old Testament when the harvest was just coming to its ripened state. An Israelite was required by divine law to take a portion of that freshly ripened harvest and to bring it as an offering unto God.

44:40 - 45:15 Read in full sermon

The point: Repent, turn from your sin, self-will, and indifference to God, and run to Christ for mercy and forgiveness before it is too late.

The empty tomb is personified as 'thundering' a message of coming judgment, contrasting with 'lovely little thoughts' about spring and Easter spirit, to emphasize the seriousness of the resurrection's implications for unbelievers.

Whereof he has given assurance unto all men in that he hath raised him from the dead. The resurrection of Jesus is God's certain pledge of the future judgment of all men by that very same Jesus. You see, dear people, that's why I cannot, as a preacher of the word of God, dabble in lovely little thoughts about the bursting forth of the newness of life in the spring and the Easter spirit and all this other nonsense. Joseph's open tomb thunders!

55:15 - 55:55 Read in full sermon

The point: Repent, turn from your sin, self-will, and indifference to God, and run to Christ for mercy and forgiveness before it is too late.

The absurdity of bringing 'a basket full of colored eggs' to the judgment of an omniscient God is used to highlight the utter inadequacy of human efforts or nominal religion to stand before divine justice.

Bring him a basket full of colored eggs and say, O God of faith, Almighty God, with no mediator to plead your cause, do you really want to go before the God who knows your every thought, every single time you felt the slightest motion of unrighteous anger, of envy, of lust, and of pride, the God who knows every time your lips have spoken anything but absolute truth, absolute kindness, and have Almighty God read out the transcript of all of the claims of his holy law against you? Are you so utterly out of touch with reality that you really think you'll come off such a judgment all right on your...

56:13 - 57:23 Read in full sermon

The point: Believe in your heart and confess with your mouth right where you are to be saved.

The concept of purgatory is dismissed as a dogma outside the Bible, and the futility of money or prayers to 'snuff out one of your sins' is used to underscore that only Christ's blood and virtue can atone.

He lives and reigns to administer grace and mercy to the neediest of sinners. But there is a moment marked in God's calendar, I don't know when it is, when he will leave that throne at the right hand of the Father and come forth in visible glory and power. And in that day all who have thrown themselves upon him for mercy will experience that for which they have longed and yearned, the full inheritance of their salvation. But you, my friend, will join those described in Revelation 6 when the kings and the rulers and the bond and the free will cry to rocks and mountains, fall upon us and hide us...

63:17 - 64:33 Read in full sermon