1 Corinthians 15 - Death & Resurrection Part 1
Tom Shrader examines the foundational gospel message from 1 Corinthians 15, emphasizing that Christianity stands or falls on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He walks through Paul's summary of the gospel: Christ died for our sins, was buried, and rose again on the third day according to the Scriptures. Using Peter's denial and restoration as an illustration, Tom shows how the resurrection transforms hopelessness into hope for believers.
“If Jesus Christ did not literally, physically rise from the dead, then our faith is useless, your future is hopeless.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Death & Resurrection
Recorded: March 28, 2002
Duration: 41 min
Themes: resurrection, hope, faith, gospel, salvation, forgiveness, transformation, grace, doubting faith, feeling hopeless, new believer, struggling with doubt, questioning christianity, pastor, seeking truth, adult
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 15:1-8, 1 Corinthians 15:3-4, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Luke 22:24-62, Galatians 1:12, Job 4:4
Theological Themes: resurrection theology, christology, soteriology, gospel message, biblical authority, redemption, atonement, eschatology
Full Transcript
A little bit different today - different in the sense that we're going to take the study on the Sermon on the Mount and put it on hold for two weeks. The reason is really twofold. One, we in church have been working our way through the book of 1st Corinthians and we have been, in God's perfect timing, in the 15th chapter, which you may know is simply identified as the Resurrection chapter. That ties in so perfectly with Good Friday tomorrow and Easter Sunday, that I thought I would take a week, but I've decided it's going to be two, to talk about the Resurrection.
I mentioned this last week and got a pretty interesting response, more than I normally would. Normally I'd say I'm going to do whatever and that's how everybody views it. Whatever you want to do, do it. But I got phone calls, a couple of them. I got an email from somebody saying, would you do that? That would be helpful to me. It would also provide me an opportunity to talk to some people. So what we hope to do is when we're done here, have a tape that will have two sides on it, really dealing with the crucifixion, resurrection, and what that means to you and me.
The Fundamental Question of Christianity
If you've got your Bibles with you, you can open them to 1st Corinthians chapter 15. Let me just give you some background. I assume you know this, but maybe not. So Ray Steadman writes this: everyone who's a Christian knows that the fundamental question upon which Christianity ultimately rests is this: did Jesus Christ actually, literally, physically rise from the dead? Everything hangs on that question.
One author writes this: just as the heart pumps life-giving blood to every part of the body, so the truth of the resurrection gives life to every other area of gospel truth. The resurrection is the pivot on which all of Christianity turns, and without which, none of the other truths would much matter. Without the resurrection, Christianity would be so much wishful thinking, taking its place alongside all other human philosophies and religious speculation.
John Locke, the British philosopher, wrote this: "Our Savior's resurrection is truly of great importance in Christianity, so great that His being or not being the Messiah stands or falls with it."
Christianity's Vulnerability and Strength
If you're here today and you're not a Christian, you're perhaps neutral or maybe even antagonistic, then all you need to do to destroy Christianity - and this is not hyperbole or exaggeration - all you need to do to bring Christianity down, to make a mockery of this, to destroy it once and for all, is to disprove the resurrection. Those are not overstatements that I read you; those are absolutely accurate statements. If Jesus Christ did not literally, physically rise from the dead, then our faith - and we're going to see next week what Paul says as he plays that card out for a while, what if there was no resurrection - if there's no resurrection, then all of this is a giant waste of time. Your faith is useless, your future is hopeless.
It's not often that you have somebody that you want to tell where you're vulnerable. I read an article the other day - this sounds interesting - about a guy who will come to your company, and what he will do is a profile of your competitor, and he will tell you where your competitor is vulnerable. We like to hide where we're vulnerable. If we're in the final four, and we've got a spot that's weak, we're weak down on the post, we're going to try to somehow compensate the best we can and hide that. Well, we're doing something here exactly the opposite today. We will tell you where we're vulnerable. You destroy the resurrection, you destroy Christianity.
In reality, it's not a vulnerability at all, because what you're going to find is people better than you, and smarter than you, have been trying to do this for years, and what's happened is God's converted many of them along the way. When you look at the resurrection, this isn't just wishful thinking. These are accurate statements. If Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then He's not the Messiah at all. He's just like you, and He's just like me, but He did rise. We're very comfortable in that. Attack away, study away, but at the end of the day, what you're going to discover is that Jesus rose from the dead.
Paul's Approach in 1 Corinthians 15
Well, that's what Paul has in mind here in 1st Corinthians 15. He's actually, in a sense, dealing with this question about what happens to us when we die, but in order to do that, he says you need to understand the resurrection in the gospel. So let's take a look at it, and again, for some of you, I know this is very familiar territory. I find in my own life that I never grow weary of this story, never grow tired of this.
Here you go, 1st Corinthians 15: "Now I make known to you, brethren." You have the NIV in front of you. It says, "I remind you." In other words, he's writing back. Paul's writing to this church at Corinth, and he's saying, I want to remind you of some stuff. This is stuff we covered. We talked about this before. You guys know this stuff. He said, I want to remind you about the gospel. The gospel means good news.
What is that good news? Well, he's going to tell us in a minute, but before he does - and it's very strange - before he tells us what the gospel is, he tells us what the gospel does. It's kind of a strange way of presenting. To me, you would say, here's the gospel. Now let me tell you what it does. He says, well, here's what it does.
What the Gospel Does
He writes this: "which I preached to you, which also you received." He said, this is something that I received, and I believe he received it from Christ Himself. I believe this was something, not that Paul cooked up, but that he received from Christ. He said, I preached this. He said, I got it. You received it. "You also stand in it."
Job 4:4 says this: "Your words have kept men on their feet." You live in a world that's changing constantly. Everything around us is in flux. It seems to me, it feels like - whether this is accurate or not, I don't know - it feels like...
To me, something of huge importance is taking place in the Middle East right now. That's what it feels like. This is really serious stuff. It feels like you have a handful of extremists who are willing to blow themselves up, at which point you aren't going to stop them, to make certain that there's no peace. It seems to me that you may have two sides that are so polarized that there's no way to fix this. I don't know. Things are in a constant state of flux.
Remember what we used to say? It took X amount of years for information to double, and then for decades we've said it takes five years for information to double in terms of quantity. So if we stack everything we know a foot high, it would take us five years to have two feet of information. Information and knowledge, last I saw, is now doubling every 12 to 18 months. That's how fast things are exploding around us. We're in a world that's changing, and the world is trying to figure out what's right, what's wrong, what can we do, what can't we do. As Job says, your word keeps men on their feet. That's where you find solid ground in the midst of this.
Speaking to a Changing Generation
In just a couple of months now, we'll do my annual junior high, high school retreat, and every year it's the hardest thing I do. What do you do with the kids? What do you want to say to them? What we're going to do this year is basically living a life that's counterculture, and the first point is going to be: you can know truth. That's the first point to them.
See, this cuts across all age lines, gender lines, everywhere. You can know the truth. You stand in this. He said also, it's the gospel that saved you. The word means literally rescued you, delivered you. You may not even realize it.
The Challenge of Easter Sunday
One of the great challenges for me personally, and I presume it is for every guy who has to speak on Easter, is just a great challenge of what to say. What do you say on Easter? I have always gone down the road that you speak to those people that you won't see again until Christmas. That has always been my venue. I think that's the best way to do it. I think to speak to the Christians is not an encouraging time—we do that every week—but to talk to people that we aren't going to see again for a while.
I didn't hear it yesterday, but I guess one of the secular call-in shows was, "Hey, if you go to church on Christmas and Easter, call us and tell us why. Why do you do that?" Which is a great point. Why do you do that? People called and said, "Well, I'm really busy a lot of the year, and I work, and I can be a Christian and not go."
See, right there, I think, is the issue. I've spent a lot of time thinking about this, because I have to deal with it every year. Here's what I think: the reason that somebody comes to church on Christmas and Easter and that's the only time is because they think they're okay. They think everything is fine. "I don't bug God, He doesn't bug me. I'm a good person, I'm a Christian. I'm not a member of any organized religion, I don't need organized religion," that kind of thing.
The Reality of Sin and Its Consequences
One of the hardest things that I found to convince people is that they're really in jeopardy. To convince them that they're a sinner is not hard. Everybody kind of agrees, "Yeah, I sinned." But to help them see that the sin has consequence, that's the hard thing. Because after all, wouldn't a loving God—He is loving—send anybody to hell forever? Nobody's perfect, right?
And I'm going, that was point A of the outline: nobody's perfect. There's consequences to it. You're saved, you've been delivered, you've been rescued from the consequence of sin. You deserve hell, and you've been saved from the bondage of sin.
The Gospel in a Nutshell
Well, that's all His setup. Now look at verse 3, verse 3 and 4. He gives us what Larry used to call and identify as the gospel in a nutshell. Here's the gospel. If you're one of those that did the dragnet, "Just give me the facts, just the facts, man," here are the facts of the gospel.
First Corinthians 15:3: "For I deliver to you"—and again I want to emphasize to you, I think this is something that he got not from the other Apostles, but from the Lord Jesus Himself. In Galatians 1:12, "For I neither received it from man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a revelation of Jesus Christ." Paul's an Apostle. He got this, I think, directly from the Lord.
"For I deliver to you as of first importance"—that means supreme in its importance, but it also means that it's foundational to all other things—"first importance to you, I delivered, number one, that Christ died for our sins according to the scripture, number two, that He was buried, and number three, that He was raised on the third day according to the scripture."
The Importance of "According to the Scripture"
Let me point out a couple of things to you. The first one is the repetition of that phrase, "according to the scripture." This isn't something that just happened. This is something that had been prophesied for centuries. Every Jew who understood and read what we call the Old Testament should have been able to see the prediction of a suffering Messiah. This is no surprise, this is no accident.
Three points—here's the facts of the gospel. Number one: Christ died for our sin. Now this is going to sound, I assume, really stupid. I know that, and you know that, if you've been around, we've said that a billion times. But for whatever reason, it's become very clear to me in the last three, four months, that there's a link between Christ's death and our sin. When I just say Christ died for our sin, our tendency is to race off to the next one. Well, let's spend just a second and think what that means. What Paul says is, Christ's death is linked, inseparably linked, to our sin. Christ died for our sin.
When Paul starts here talking about the gospel, isn't it interesting? Not one word about the life of Christ, not one word about the miracles, not one word about the teaching. Those things are all fine. But if you look at some of the great moral leaders in history, they've embraced the teaching of Christ, and the life of Christ, and the model of Christ. But what they don't embrace is the death of Christ for their sin.
Gandhi did that. Thomas Jefferson did that. Very openly embraced the teaching of Christ, but they push away the substitutionary death for Christ. In other words, He died in your place.
Here's a verse that you ought to know. It perfectly links to this. It's 2nd Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 21. Paul, writing again to the same church, he said this: "He made Him, this is God the Father, made Him, God the Son, He made Him who knew no sin, to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him."
The Substitutionary Death of Christ
Here's what happened. On that cross, this is very important, on that cross, Jesus took the guilt of our sin. He didn't become sin. Jesus didn't sin. Jesus was perfect. Jesus was holy. Jesus was righteous, like us in every way, except sin.
On the cross, the Father treated the Son as though He had sin. He substituted for us. He didn't become a sinner. He remained holy, but He was treated as if He was guilty. On that cross, Christ died for our sin.
We're going to lose a few of you right here, but we'll be right back to you in about two minutes. We're going to lose a few of you, and that's okay, but I want to hang with you on this.
Understanding Imputation and Substitutionary Atonement
This gets into this idea, a little more technical, of imputation and substitutionary atonement. Now, it sounds like big words, but imputation just merely means one person doing something either good or bad that's credited to another. So, for example, in our life, imputation's really important. We received, as imputation, Adam's sin. When Adam sinned, we sinned. It was imputed to us, reckoned to us.
As Christians, when Christ died, what was imputed to us was righteousness. Christ died for a purpose. Now, I hear people say, our sin is what put Christ on the cross. I don't think that's right. What put Christ on the cross was His love. His love put Him on the cross, but the reason that He had to go to the cross was because of our sin.
Christ died. Now, this is going to get a little technical, but this is absolutely critical. When He died on the cross, He actually saved people. He didn't die so potentially one day you may believe and may be saved. When He died on the cross, there was a specific group of people for whom He died. He died for His people.
The Nature of Christ's Atonement
He didn't theoretically pay the price for some sin. He paid the price for the sin of His people. There is a world of difference there. One belief says, when Jesus says, "it is finished," He meant the price is paid for the sin of His people. The other says, well, He paid a price, but it's all really theory. Maybe He'll believe or maybe He won't.
And as I said, for some of you, this gets very technical, but let me tell you, don't you be afraid to go there. This is critical. This gets in to the very nature of Christ's atonement. He either did die for somebody specifically or He didn't die. He either died in reality and paid the price or He paid it in potential and there's a world of difference there, a huge difference there.
Here's the gospel. He died for sin and then He was buried. That's what they do with dead people. It seems to me that Paul just kind of inserts that in there. It could have been a given, but Paul wants to insert that so we understand He was dead and they buried Him. And the reason he puts that in there is He's going back to the empty tomb. If the tomb is empty, then that body had to rise from the dead.
Christ Was Raised from the Dead
In fact, that's his third point. Christ was raised from the dead. And he says it in a matter of fact way. It is a fact.
Let me read to you because I think sometimes what happens to us is we almost get intimidated by the thought that we've got to sit and explain that Jesus rose from the dead and we don't have a lot of empirical data of this happening in other situations. So we kind of look around and wonder, is it true?
It was exactly this time of year, probably about 15 years ago, I'm in a restaurant and I'm talking to some friends, some friends of my mom and dad as a matter of fact, and they were here visiting. And so I'm talking to them and I hadn't seen them for a long time. I used to know them when we were little kids.
A Restaurant Encounter
And so they're talking, so there's two guys at a table next to us. And they're the engineer types, not types, they're engineers. They got the little cards and they got the swap card and all the stuff. So these people are talking to me. And you know, what about this? And do you remember back in Davenport and all the stuff?
And the one guy says to the other guy, "What are you doing this weekend?" And the guy said, "Well, I'm going to church." He said, "I'm sorry, what'd you say?" He said, "Well, I'm going to church." "I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you." He said, "Well, I'm going to church."
And I wanted to say to the people because they're terrific people, "I'm going to say hang on one second because I need to eavesdrop through the rest of this over here because this is very important to me."
And he said, and so the one engineer, bright, bright guy says to the other guy, "You're going to go to church? Why would you go to church?" He said, "Well, you know, I became a Christian not long ago and it's Easter. Christ rose."
He said, "Christ didn't rise from the dead." He said, "Really, what happened?" "Well, you know they beat Him and they scourged Him and they crowned Him with thorns and they nailed Him to a cross and they stabbed Him in the side. That's all fact and then they wrapped His body up and they stuck Him in a solid rock tomb. They put the stone in front, all fact." Guy never denies any of that. There's the
The Reality of Christ's Resurrection
There's the seal of Rome and there's the Roman Guard. He knew all the facts, but he said here's what happened: Jesus just resuscitated Himself and got out. This poor guy—and that is by the way one of the different theories about what happened and why the tomb's empty. The resuscitation theory has a lot of backing that He kind of went into a coma-type state and then He just shook it off.
But it denies the fact that He was pronounced dead by professional executioners, that there were guards there whose life was taken because the tomb was empty. Then you have to get into a whole physiological part of how He shakes this off, moves over, and then takes a 2,000-pound stone and moves it. It's silly, and I wanted to say to the guy, "You got way more faith than we got, my friend. I don't have enough faith to believe something like that happened. I just believe God raised Him from the dead."
Historical Evidence for the Resurrection
Here is what Brooke Foss Westcott writes: "Taking all evidence together, it's not too much to say that there is no historic incident better or more variously supported than the resurrection of Christ. Nothing but the antecedent assumption that it must be false could have suggested the idea of deficiency in the proof of it." In other words, unless you want it to be false and that's the way you approach it, you could never get there with the facts.
Paul Meyer, who teaches at Western Michigan, writes this: "If all the evidence is weighed carefully and fairly, it is indeed justifiable according to the canons of historical research to conclude that the tomb in which Jesus was buried was actually empty on the first Easter morning. No shred of evidence has yet been discovered in literature or in archaeology that would disprove this."
In his book The History of Rome, Professor Thomas Arnold writes this: "I know of no fact in history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort to the understanding of a fair inquirer than the great sign which God has given us that Christ has died and rose again from the dead." This is a fact.
The Gospel According to Scripture
This is the fact of the resurrection, and what Paul is saying is this: the gospel that saves you, the gospel that we preach, what we believe is this—Christ died for our sins, Christ was buried, and Christ rose again. He adds to that this idea that it was all according to the scriptures.
If you look at the Old Testament, I'm reading through just a really good book right now on a kind of an overview of all of scripture, obviously starting back with Genesis 1. It's the idea that in Genesis 1 and 2 you have creation, in Genesis 3 you have the fall, and basically the rest of the whole Old Testament is God showing you how He will make a provision for your sin.
We've Lost the Sense of Sin
We've lost it, my friend. We've lost the sense of sin. I was home on a Monday and on C-SPAN 2 they were doing the great authors or something, and they were live at Plymouth, Massachusetts. They were interviewing a guy who's role-playing William Bradford, the first governor of Plymouth.
He's talking about the sovereignty of God, the provision of God, the providence of God—how God had delivered them and brought them here, here they were safe through God's provision. He starts talking in terms of the Calvinistic truth of God's Word, God's provision, God's sovereignty. Well, now they got callers, so this guy's staying in person for whatever the date is. He's in person for this, now he's getting calls from 2002.
The calls go like this: "Hey, you're telling me that a holy God, righteous God would send somebody to hell?" And he basically said, "That's what I'm saying, my brother. God hath decided who doth say." All of a sudden he just lays this out. It was so foreign that we couldn't even get our arms around it because to us sin is just something that's expected and accepted.
Sin Excused Away
In fact, it's even in many cases just excused away. You were a victim of this or a victim of that, or you're a product of your social economic background. Or you didn't get this or you didn't get that, and in a sense, you can't even really help yourself, can you?
That's not God's view of sin. Until you have God's view of sin, you're never going to get this gospel right. You're always going to have this salvation wrong, and you're always going to be on the liberal side. You're always going to be over there with a man-centered belief. This Bible is not man-centered. It's God-centered, and that's the difference. He said He died according to the scripture, so you better figure out what you want to do with it.
The Eyewitnesses
Then he says this: "And then He appeared to Cephas"—that's Peter—"and then to the twelve. And after that more than 500 brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, some have fallen asleep. And then to James and then all the Apostles." And then he's going to go on and say to me.
Here's what he's saying: Christ died, Christ was buried, Christ rose again. If you don't believe me, there's no more powerful proof I can give you than an eyewitness, and they're all around. Go talk to Peter. Talk to the Apostles. You know what? If you're saying, "Well, they all have a vested interest in this thing. They're too close to the deal," then he says, "You know what? There's 500 of them out there—500 people who saw Him at one time. Some have died."
Understand this: Paul's writing this about 23-25 years after the fact. He said, "But there's still many of these live eyewitnesses around. Go ask them."
No One Changed Their Story
We have no record in history of one person that's identified here who ever changed his mind, who ever said, "I was just part of a cover-up." We have great illustrations in history, especially recent history, of how fast a cover-up falls apart.
Chuck Colson in his book Loving God has a terrific chapter titled "Watergate in the Resurrection." The whole premise is this: once John Dean decided he was going to talk, within two weeks everything fell apart. He said, "We were the most powerful people on the planet. We could summon armies."
We had limousines and cell phones and Secret Service. We had everything we wanted and yet within two weeks we wouldn't cover up for a lie. We immediately decided to save ourselves.
He said now compare that with the disciples. Guys who have no power, no resources, who risked not just a couple of years imprisonment but who were going to be killed. And yet every one of them except for John, every one of them martyred for their faith. That alone provides enormous human evidence of the resurrection.
But the reality is He rose. He appears and He gives us this sequence, but He starts with Peter, and that's where we'll end today.
Christ Appeared First to Peter
It's interesting as you read through the four gospel accounts that we see very clearly that the first person that He appeared to is Mary, Mary Magdalene. That's recorded in all the Gospels. But as Paul writes, he singles out first Peter. Why Peter?
One author suggests this idea: that Peter perhaps needed that visitation. He said this: "We are not told why the Lord appeared first to Peter or separately. It's possibly because of Peter's great remorse having denied the Lord, maybe because of his leadership role. In going to Peter first, Jesus emphasized His grace. Peter had forsaken the Lord, but the Lord had not forsaken him. Christ did not appear to Peter because Peter deserved to see Him most, but perhaps because he needed to see Him most."
The Human Drama of Peter's Story
Turn with me to Luke's gospel in the 22nd chapter. We'll end there today. We've got about 10 minutes, and you're going to hear me use this word. Every time I use it, it feels so inadequate to me. Luke chapter 22, and we'll start in verse 24.
The word is this: the word is imagine. Imagine, because I'm convinced in my life, so I always assume if it's true of my life, it must be true of yours. I'm convinced that I've become so familiar to this story that it's lost its punch. That I've become so familiar with this, or the fact that here it is in a black leather bound book with gold leaf, that what I've done is I've lost the drama humanly of what happens here.
Will you try not to add to scripture at all? We don't want to change scripture, but let's at least try to understand some of the human drama here. In a sense, if you could, will you try to insert yourself into this setting?
Here's what's happened. Christ knows He's going to die. He's prepared them for this. They've just celebrated the Lord's Supper. Now get that moment - here it is, the intensity of this moment. Christ teaching them and preparing them for His death.
The Disciples' Dispute About Greatness
Luke chapter 22, verse 24 records this: "And there arose also a dispute among them." So all of a sudden there's a disagreement. It must be something to do with Christ or His death or His provision or His atonement. No, the dispute was which one of them will be regarded as the greatest?
How do you not love these guys? They cannot get past the fact that they want to know who's number one. And Jesus begins to speak and He talks to them about kings and He talks about leadership. He talks here - great picture. If you're a boss of a business or a manager of a business or in a position of leadership in your church, you've got to read this because He talks about servant leadership.
Jesus' Warning to Peter
And then He says, "Simon, Simon, behold, Satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat." Satan's asked Me if he can just sift you. He's going to test you. And I can imagine that Peter would be sitting there saying, "You told him no, didn't you? You said no, didn't you?"
No, here's what I did. "I prayed for you that your faith might not fail and you, that once you've turned again, shall strengthen your brothers."
And now Peter responds. And I believe in this moment, Peter responds as honestly and sincerely as he possibly can. I believe he means every word of this. And he says this: "Lord, with you, I'm ready to go, both to prison and to death."
Here's what Peter says: "You can count on me, my friend. These other guys may fail you. Others may walk away. But Jesus, I want you to know this - never am I going to let you down. If we got to go to prison, we go. If we're going to die, we die. But I'm with you. I got your backside covered, my buddy."
So he must have been stunned when Jesus said, "I say to you, Peter, the cock will not crow today until you have denied three times that you know Me."
Imagine that. Imagine that moment. Imagine you with somebody that you love, and you say to them, "I'm telling you something, buddy. I'm with you every step of the way." And they say, "You know what? You're not going to make it through the night." Hurt, confusion, anger, disappointment - I don't know, all sorts of emotions.
Peter's Denial Unfolds
Look at verse 54. Jesus has now been arrested. And you don't have CNN and you don't have breaking news and you don't have MSNBC. So they gather at the house of the high priest to say, "What's going to happen?" And Peter's there. Luke tells us at the end of verse 54, he's following at a distance. And they kindle a fire in the middle of the courtyard, and they sat down and Peter's sitting among them.
So here's this group of people, most of them antagonistic and curious about what's going to happen. Peter's among them.
A certain servant girl, seeing that he'd sat in the firelight, was looking at him intently. Now my picture is this: that she's sitting looking and the light off the fire is probably not very bright, or she's looking through it and the flames kind of have things distorted just a little bit. So she has to look intently. She's looking closely and she draws a conclusion. Here's the conclusion: "This man was with Him too." But he denied it saying, "Woman, I don't know Him."
A little bit later, another saw him and said, "You are one of them too." And Peter said, "Man, I am not."
And after about an hour had passed, another man began to insist, "Certainly this man was with Him for he's a Galilean." In other words, now some time has passed and they're hearing Peter speak. That's how they picked up on this. They heard his dialect.
They heard his accent. They said, "You can tell from his accent, he's a Galilean. You must have been with him too." And Peter said, verse 60, "Man, I don't know what you're talking about." And immediately while he was speaking, a rooster crowed.
Now all the gospel writers record that. They record this: "I don't know him. I don't know him. I don't know him." Then the rooster crows. Luke adds something very important right here, and I want you to imagine this: "And the Lord turned and looked at Peter and Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how he had told him before a rooster crows today, you'll deny me three times."
Can you imagine that moment? At that moment, he denies Him once and then twice. After that second one, an hour had passed. I have to believe—and again, I acknowledge it's not in the scripture, I'm just leaning on human understanding here—I have to believe for that hour, Peter's sitting there saying, "What am I doing? What is going on? Twice already, I've said, 'I don't know him.' I'm intimidated by the circumstances." He's got to be saying, "I told Him I'd go to prison or I'd die with Him. Here I am with the first challenge and I'm saying, 'I don't know Him.'"
The Moment of Recognition
And after an hour or so passes, the third one comes and he says, "I don't know him." The moment he says, "I don't know him," he hears the rooster crow. And he looks and his eyes meet the eyes of Jesus.
I don't want to go beyond scripture. I don't want to read into that what isn't there, but you've got to believe at that moment, his heart is broken. I remember when the girls were little, that's what I used to have to do when I disciplined them. When they did something wrong, I'd have to say, "Look at me, look up here at me." Because they didn't want to meet me eye to eye. They didn't want to look in my eye. And I'd have to get over and I'd say, "Look up here, look at me." Now I have to go like this, "Look down here at me." But either way, it's still the same thing. I have to say to them, "Look at my eyes." Because when I look in the eye, something happens.
And here's Peter at this moment, looks into the eyes of the Savior he's denied three times. That's why I don't think it's a stretch to say, imagine, look at verse 62: "He went out and he wept bitterly." I think he was just heaving and sighing and weeping.
Peter's Despair and Exhaustion
Again, I understand it's extra-biblical. I'm going to guess that he dozed off in exhaustion, but didn't sleep well, woke up in an hour or so and began to relive all this again and again. And now see what happens in just another few hours. Now Christ is killed. Now He's buried. Now He's put in the tomb.
Imagine how Peter had to have felt. Not only did I betray Him, not only did I deny Him, but He's the one that I've given everything to. And He's dead. We know that when they come to tell him that He'd risen from the dead, we know that these twelve were sequestered in fear of the Jews. Imagine how hopeless and desperate that situation.
The Hope of Resurrection
And then let me just close with this. That's how you should feel with just a dead Christ, just a dead Jesus. There's no hope there, but He rose from the dead. He appears to these twelve and these five hundred and individually to Peter. He appears to James. James was His brother. Mary, the mother of James, mother of Jesus. Joseph, James' father. We're told in John chapter 7, verse 5 that even His brothers didn't believe in Him. We know later in his life, James writes a letter and he identifies himself as a slave to the Lord Jesus Christ.
In the midst of this, after Paul tells us about appearing to Peter and the others, he said this: "And last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me." That's where I want to pick up next week. There's this appearance of the risen Christ to Paul, and what I want to do is pick up on the same theme. I want you to see yourself as being in the same stead that Paul's in. And I want to talk to you a little bit next week about how you become a servant of God.
The Gospel Choice
So here's this gospel. It has to be believed. If you don't believe it, hell is your future. If you believe it, heaven is your future. But what about here, and what about now, and what about this life? So we'll pick up right there next week.
Father, help us see this truth. Thank You. Thank You at this time of the year. We can pause, and we have before us indisputable fact. Jesus was raised from the dead. God, let that truth change our life. We ask it of You in Jesus' name. Amen.
Have a great Easter. We'll see you next week.