Looking for Jesus

Sunday Sermon
April 12. 2009
Rhema Community Church

Sermonic Skeleton

Sermonic Scripture: ESV John 11:25-26 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, 26 and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?"

Sermonic Subject: The Resurrection (Jesus has power over death.)

Sermonic Theme: The Glory of God, Eternal Life & Living Faith (The stewardship of time and relationships)

Sermonic Tension: Death (Death always comes at an inconvenient time.)

Sermonic Sentence: I am the resurrection and the life.

Sermonic Background: RESURRECTION The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most important doctrine of the Christian faith. Christians since the NT have argued for the centrality of the doctrine, convinced that it proved Jesus deity and the efficacy of His death for our sins. Paul, for example, considered the resurrection to be the cornerstone of the Christian faith: If Jesus did not rise from the dead, the whole structure of Christianity collapses. Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15.14-17: “And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God… And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile.”

The Christian faith and its claim to be Truth exist only if Jesus rose from the dead, because the heart of Christianity is a living Christ. See: Philippians 3.20-21; II Corinthians 5.1-5; I Thessalonians 4.16-17.

The fact that Jesus rose bodily (in a real physical body) from the grave has been fundamental to Christian teaching from the beginning. In the NT Jesus, appearance is depicted as spiritual in the sense of being independent of the ordinary laws of nature but also as material or physical. He invited them to touch His hands and feet “for a spirit does not have flesh and bones” (Luke 24.39-40; see also: Matthew 27.61-66; 28.1-20; Mark 16.1-20; Luke 24.1-53; John 20.10-31).

Resurrection of the Dead From the Latin resurrection, from resurgere, “to rise again,” from re, “again,” and sugere, “to rise.” Both the OT and NT teach that the dead will come back to life. From the Christian the resurrection will be a complete redemption, with a new body that will be immortal and incorruptible. See: Isaiah 25.6-8; 26.19; Daniel 12.1-4; I Corinthians 15; 1 Thessalonians 4.14-17.

Christian doctrine those who are redeemed in Christ are destined to live again in renewed, transformed bodies after death. The pattern for the resurrection is the resurrection of Jesus, whose body was raised from the dead on the third day after his crucifixion. The nature of resurrected bodies is mysterious, but the church has traditionally taught that there will be both continuity and discontinuity between our current earthly bodies and our “spiritual” resurrection bodies. (This is the seventh and greatest sign-miracle of Jesus. God’s delay is not synonymous with God’s denial.)

Sermonic Structure:

I. Look for Jesus to help you deal with the reality of Death

II. Look for Jesus to help you respond appropriately to Death

III. Look for Jesus to help you rise after Death