{"id":71,"date":"2018-11-06T16:28:22","date_gmt":"2018-11-07T00:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/migrate.bettersermons.org\/?p=71"},"modified":"2020-06-01T11:41:03","modified_gmt":"2020-06-01T18:41:03","slug":"can-jack-live-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/can-jack-live-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Jack Live Again?"},"content":{"rendered":"
Can Jack Live Again?<\/span><\/div>\n

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Key Text:<\/b>\u00a01 Corinthians 15:12-23Key Thought:<\/b>\u00a0The resurrection of the dead is a vital pillar of the Christian faith; we can never \u201cspiritualize\u201d it away.<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Media Illustration:\u00a0<\/b>More than ten years ago, millions of filmgoers watched in awe as \u201cTitanic\u201d disappeared beneath the waves. The James Cameron film had a huge global audience; many people attended six or seven times, according to reporter David Ansen. A cartoon strip had a mom saying to her family: \u201cI\u2019m going, uh, shopping. I\u2019ll be back in about four hours, maybe.\u201d The family exchanges knowing glances: \u201cTitanic<\/i>\u2014again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three Popular Stories: historians and statisticians report that the three most commonly told stories in the world are:<\/p>\n

1.\u00a0The life and death of Jesus
\n2.\u00a0The Civil War
\n3.\u00a0The sinking of the\u00a0Titanic<\/i><\/p>\n

Especially with the first and third stories, one element has captured the world: the possibility that a person who goes down with the ship into the icy Atlantic and drowns\u2014can someday live again. People wanted to believe that the ill-fated lovers, Jack Dawson and Rose DeWitt Bukater, could actually be united again on the grand staircase of Titanic. That heroic dads who put their wives and children into lifeboats and then perished might someday experience the Bible\u2019s promise of a Resurrection Morning.<\/p>\n

Faith Decision:<\/b>\u00a0Is what the Bible says about resurrection true? Did a dead person named Jesus come out of the tomb on Sunday morning? Or did His disciples steal the body, hide it, dry their tears, and then concoct this tall tale to beat all tall tales?<\/p>\n

The Bible Witness:<\/b>\u00a0It\u2019s not just the fate of \u201cJack and Rose\u201d which rests on Bible truth. All of us are intimately affected by what we read in I Corinthians 15 The possibility of US ever living again rests entirely and completely on the doctrine of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. . . . For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for THIS LIFE we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Two Elements:<\/b>\u00a0first, the general doctrine of the resurrection, which can affect all of us who believe. Second, and more specifically, the resurrection of Jesus after Calvary And what Paul tells us in emphatic language is that you absolutely cannot get one without the other A gives us B and B gives us A. The two are inseparably linked.<\/p>\n

Reject One<\/strong>\u2014Reject Both:<\/strong>\u00a0If we reject the doctrine of Christ\u2019s resurrection or begin to doubt that He really did come out of that tomb, then you immediately have to also embrace\u2014or at least wince and acknowledge\u2014the reality that when you sink into your own Atlantic Ocean and close your eyes in death, that It\u2019s all over for you . . . forever. Every funeral we attend has a terrible finality to it.<\/p>\n

Isn\u2019t the Resurrection Doctrine a \u201cGiven\u201d?<\/b><\/p>\n

Amazingly, a growing number of \u201cChristians\u201d are abandoning this pillar of the faith. What\u2019s more, many of these same people don\u2019t consider their non-belief to be a crisis or a problem with their Christianity \u201cI can still believe in the Christian message without accepting this \u2018myth\u2019 of the Resurrected Christ,\u201d they say Which is hard to comprehend considering the statement by Paul that without the Resurrection of Jesus, our faith is futile and we\u2019re still in our sins (v. 17).<\/p>\n

Jesus Seminar in 1994<\/p>\n

<\/b>\u201cWhat happens when some of the world\u2019s leading scholars of Christianity agree that the man behind the religion was just a man? \u2018He [Jesus] wasn\u2019t born in Bethlehem (Nazareth is more likely), his mother wasn\u2019t a virgin, he didn\u2019t come back from the dead, and He never fancied Himself a divine being. Further, He may not have been a carpenter, may well have been a husband and father, and He never delivered the words \u2018I am the way, the truth and the light\u2019 or any of the rest of the Gospel of John.\u2019\u201d From the \u201cJesus Seminar\u201d think tank\u2019s released book,\u00a0The Five Gospels<\/i>, quoted in \u201cCrossfire,\u201d published in\u00a0Gentleman\u2019s Quarterly<\/i>\u00a0magazine, June, 1994, by Russell Shorto.<\/p>\n

According to these professors and scholars, the Virgin Birth is gone. Also the miracles and the Resurrection. The entire Bible is a shoddy and unreliable report. In case we think this is just one or two liberal, weak-spined professors from some obscure college, the bibliography informs us that these are 73 major theologians from prestigious schools and religious universities. The writer for\u00a0GQ<\/i>\u00a0calls these men and women the \u201cadvance guard of what has become the hottest and most controversial area of religious studies: historical Jesus research.\u201d<\/p>\n

Voting About Jesus: T<\/b>hese 73 scholars used red, pink, gray, and black beads to vote on whether or not Jesus said or did this particular thing that\u2019s found in the Gospels. Red means He for sure said those words, and black means absolutely no way did He say or do that. According to the votes, 82% of all that Christ said was determined to be fabricated. Words put in His mouth by later sources or ghostwriters or maybe just plain made up.<\/p>\n

All 73 voted that Jesus never raised a widow\u2019s son back to life, as told in Luke 7.\u00a0A 100% rejection of a clear Bible account. They simply did not believe this miracle ever happened. In their \u201cexpert\u201d opinion the Bible writer Luke simply made up the entire experience to impress people who might be thinking of becoming Christians. To \u201cwow\u201d them, as one of them put it<\/p>\n

Bottom Line: No Miracles.<\/b>\u00a0These scholars just could not believe that a miracle could ever happen. ANY miracle. Jesus Himself, they thought, could not ever once perform a miracle.<\/p>\n

John Dominic Crossan of DePaul University, one of the major forces in this movement, completely discounts both the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection. Both of those events are miracles, and so, to him, are completely impossible. \u201cI don\u2019t believe anyone in the history of the world was born as the result of divine-human conjunction.\u201d To him, Jesus was nothing more than a \u201cpeasant Jewish Cynic,\u201d a \u201cJewish Socrates.\u201d Even God in heaven wouldn\u2019t be capable of a Calvary resurrection.<\/p>\n

Appeal: D<\/b>o we want chocolate eggs and bunnies or the plain Word of God? Do we want Jesus the wandering poet or Christ the Risen Lord? Do you want your end to be when a ship goes down or the lights go out . . . or do you look forward to a wonderful and everlasting life in God\u2019s eternal kingdom made possible by Jesus Christ breaking through the walls of that garden tomb?<\/p>\n

I AM the Resurrection and the Life,<\/i>\u00a0Jesus promises. Do we believe Him today?\u00a0He who believes in Me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in Me will never die.\u00a0<\/i>John 11:25, 26.
\n______________________________<\/p>\n

Submitted by David B. Smith. Better Sermons \u00a9 2005-2008. Click here for\u00a0<\/span>usage guidelines<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Can Jack Live Again? Key Text:\u00a01 Corinthians 15:12-23Key Thought:\u00a0The resurrection of the dead is a vital pillar of the Christian faith; we can never \u201cspiritualize\u201d it away. Media Illustration:\u00a0More than …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":72,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71\/revisions\/72"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bettersermons.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}