Do You Believe in the Resurrection of the Dead?

Tom: This is our Understanding the Scriptures segment. We’re in the Book of Acts; we are in chapter 3. Dave, I believe we left off last week with verse 24: “Yea, and all the prophets from Samuel and those that follow after, as many as have spoken, have likewise foretold of these days. Ye are the children of the prophets, and of the covenant which God made with our fathers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the kindreds of the earth be blessed. Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.”

Dave: These verses follow—we need to just go back and remind ourselves and our listeners—go back to Verse 22: “For Moses truly said unto the fathers, A prophet shall the Lord your God raise up unto you—” and so forth. So this is what it is talking about: the prophets—not only Moses but from Samuel on—have foretold of the time when the Messiah would come, and Peter is saying, “The Messiah has come. His name is Jesus, He’s the Son of God, He died for our sins. You crucified Him; you rejected the Lord of life and glory.” We have seen that in chapter 2, and “you asked for yourselves a murderer, Barabas, in His place. But the prophets have foretold these days, and Moses said, ‘You don’t believe Him, you will be destroyed.’” It’s that simple.

So, this One has come. Christ has taught, I mean, the Sermon on the Mount, the fantastic teachings of Christ to Nicodemus, to the woman at the well, and on the last day, the great day of the feast, He stands and cries, “If anyone thirst, let him come unto Me and let him drink,” John:7:37In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink.
See All..., and so forth. He’s offered Himself as the bread of life, the water of life, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.

And those days the prophets have foretold. “You are the children of the prophets—that is, you Jews—you are related physically. These are all Hebrew prophets. There are no Gentiles back there; there are no Greek philosophers and so forth. These are all your own prophets, Hebrew prophets, and God has sent Jesus to you.”

And everywhere that Paul went, he went first into the synagogue, and he says, “I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Christ; it’s the power of God unto everyone that believes, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.”

So, Peter is just saying, “Look, guys, here’s your chance—Christ came, you crucified Him; now we are giving you the chance with the gospel, and if you reject Him, you are in big trouble,” well, eternally—eternal trouble.

So it says, verse 26: “Unto you first God, having raised up his Son Jesus, sent him to bless you in turning away every one of you from his iniquities.”

Tom: Dave, I want to go on, because on the one hand, what Peter is preaching here, it had some consequences—some wonderful consequences—and some that many people might say, “Well, that’s not good.”

Acts:4:1And as they spake unto the people, the priests, and the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees, came upon them,
See All...: “And as they spake unto the people, the priests, and the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees came upon them, being grieved that they taught the people, and preached through Jesus the resurrection room the dead,” which the Sadducees didn’t believe.

Dave: Well, Tom, let me stop there—let me interrupt for a minute. They are really grieved about the resurrection from the dead because that’s what people are following. And Christ, you remember, He didn’t say, “Look, guys, after you have stolen my body, sneaked it past the Roman soldiers who are guarding the tomb, and hidden it in Peter’s basement, or wherever, you know, I want you to then pretend that I rose from the dead. And of course, you couldn’t pull that off in Jerusalem. Nobody would believe that because they would know the facts, so I want you to go as far as you can—get down to the tip of South Africa; get way up in Siberia, you know, and begin to tell them that I rose from the dead.”

No, Jesus says: “You begin at Jerusalem,” in the heart of the gospel. What we believe, what we preach, what the apostles preached is the resurrection from the dead, okay? And these Pharisees—they knew the grave was empty, they knew they had had Roman soldiers there guarding it, and they knew what the Roman soldiers told them—“Wow! Here comes an angel, rolls the stone away,” and they didn’t see Jesus—He has left that tomb. As soon as daylight begins to break, His time is up.

But the Pharisees, they knew the truth, and they had bribed the soldiers to say that the disciples came and stole His body while we slept. Tom, you just think about it, they had to be asleep, or the disciples couldn’t have tiptoed past them and stole the body. Roman soldiers, who are there to guard that tomb to prevent that very thing from happening, are not going to let it happen with their eyes open. But if they’re asleep, how do they know who it was that stole the body, and how did it happen? There is no way you can get around it.

Tom: Right. The consequences for Peter, verse 3: “And they laid hands on them, and put them in hold unto the next day: for it was now eventide.” So, they threw them in jail.

Dave: Tom, these guys are just selfish. They are self-centered. You go back to John 11, and they very clearly say, “If we let this man keep doing these miracles and people believe in him, the Romans will take away our position.” They are protecting themselves—protecting themselves in this life, which is very brief, at the expense of eternity. They are going to be lost eternally—they’ve made the wrong choice; they’ve rejected the truth. They are preaching a lie, and they don’t want the disciples to expose them. It’s a tragedy, Tom, and you quoted it earlier in our program, some segment—the first segment: “Those who refuse to receive the love of the truth will be given a strong delusion to believe the lie.” I don’t know how the Pharisees could talk themselves into believing the lie that they’re teaching, but they are determined to squelch this.

Look, if the Romans could have put the body on display to prove that Jesus was still dead, they would have done it, because this is an uproar. I mean, you remember a little later in Acts we read, “These who have turned the world upside down are come here too,” you know. The Romans would have stopped this—they could have squelched this Christian revolution that is upsetting the empire. If the rabbis could have put Jesus’ body on display, they would have done it—that would be the end. You don’t have to scold them or beat them; you wouldn’t have to say a word to anybody. Just put the body of Jesus on display, because the gospel that they are preaching is not only that Christ died for our sins, but that He rose again. They couldn’t—where’s the body? It didn’t just vanish. I mean, “Let’s torture these disciples to finally tell us where the body was put.” In fact, all of the disciples went to their grave as martyrs testifying that this is true. Now, you can’t get someone to die for what he knows is a lie, okay? So we have powerful proof of the resurrection.

Tom: And, Dave, that’s one of the points here. You have Peter—what’s he going to get out of this? Well, he’s going to end up in jail. But what’s he really going to get out of it? Verse 4: “Howbeit many of them which heard the word believed; and the number of the men was about five thousand.” Wow, is that worth going to jail for?

Dave: Well, if it’s really true, and if these 5,000 are going to end up in heaven. But if Jesus is a fraud and the whole thing is a fraud here, why would Peter die? I mean, he’s going to die; they are going to kill him, they are going to beat him—why would he persist in this lie? If anybody knows, Peter knows. Peter knows the truth, the apostles know the truth—you can’t escape it.

This is why Simon Greenleaf, you remember, co-founder of the Harvard Graduate School of Law, this is why he came to believe in the resurrection—because he examined the evidence, and he wrote a book to his fellow lawyers: Guys, here’s the evidence. You claim that you want to face evidence and come to a just conclusion based upon it. Here it is—you cannot deny Jesus is who He claimed to be. He died for our sins, was buried, and rose again the third day.