1. "Even the greatest in this age, in this world pass away in this world, in this life. Even here on Capitol Hill, where taxes seem so certain, death is even more so. And death is the dark background for the Christmas season, isn't it? I wonder if you've thought about that."

2. "We'll all be yielding back all of our remaining time soon enough, every single one of us. One day coming."

3. "As we grow still older, we come to understand that his was no ordinary birth. Where you and I begin our existence at conception, Jesus Christ came as the enfleshing of the eternally begotten Son of God, the second person of the Triune God. He came to be the one who was truly God, who also became truly man, specifically in order to deal with the scourge of sin and death."

4. "And so in Jesus death we find the death of death. And in Jesus resurrection to new life, we find assurance of our own life beyond this body's death, if we truly believe in Jesus as our Savior and Lord."

5. "When you get right down to it, the two basic and incontestable historical facts about Jesus are that one, he was crucified and two, that a few days later his disciples were going around saying that he was alive. You can't controvert either of those facts. If you look at the evidence carefully enough, I think you'll see that they were doing that because he was. He was alive."

6. "The simple fact that we're sitting here on a Sunday is one of the pieces of evidence for the historicity of the Resurrection. The Jews met when they gathered together in their synagogues on Saturdays. So why are we meeting on Sundays? Because the gospels tell us that Jesus was raised on the morning of the first day of the week."

7. "To use one simple pair of images: if the cross closes the door of hell to the one trusting in Jesus, then the empty tomb opens the door of heaven."

8. "To be a Christian you must come to the self-emptying realization that the best things are not done by you; they are done for you by Jesus Christ giving himself."

9. "So when we deposit the bodies of departed loved ones in the ground, if they were trusting in Christ, we deposit them not as lumps of clay to be forgotten, but as seeds to come to fresh fruition in the timing of God when he will bring his final harvest home."

10. "Do you see how in the plans of God, even the most unnatural of interlopers death itself is forced to serve the Lord of life? Death becomes a platform upon which the resurrection of Christ bursts and so displays God's power over all as goodness and love and truth and right personified triumph over evil and hate, falsehood and wrong."

Observation Questions

1. In Romans 4:23, what specific phrase does Paul say “was counted to him,” and to whom is “him” referring in the context of Romans 4?
2. According to Romans 4:24, to whom does Paul say these words “were not written for his sake alone, but for ours also”? How does Paul describe this group of people?
3. In Romans 4:24, what does Paul say will be “counted to us,” and who is the “him” we are to believe in?
4. Still in Romans 4:24, how does Paul describe Jesus in relation to God (what title does he give him, and what does he say God did)?
5. In Romans 4:25a, for what reason does Paul say Jesus was “delivered up,” and what word does he use to describe our condition?
6. In Romans 4:25b, for what purpose does Paul say Jesus was “raised,” and what key word does Paul use to describe our new standing before God?

Interpretation Questions

1. Why is it significant that Paul says the words about righteousness being “counted” were written “not for his sake alone, but for ours also” (Romans 4:23–24)? What does this tell us about how we are meant to read Abraham’s story?
2. What does the word “counted” (or “credited”) in Romans 4:24 imply about how we receive righteousness—does it describe something we achieve, or something we are given, and why does that matter?
3. How does Paul’s description of God in Romans 4:24 (“who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord”) connect justification directly to the resurrection rather than only to the cross?
4. The sermon noted that “delivered up for our trespasses” looks back and “raised for our justification” looks forward. How does this help us see Christ’s death and resurrection as one saving act rather than two unrelated events?
5. In light of Romans 4:25 and the sermon’s teaching, why is it not enough to say that Jesus died for our sins without also insisting that he was bodily raised from the dead?

Application Questions

1. When you think about standing before God, are you more tempted to look at your performance or to rest in righteousness “counted to us who believe” (Romans 4:24)? What would it look like this week to consciously rely on Christ’s righteousness instead of your own?
2. The sermon connected Christmas and resurrection to the certainty of death. How does believing that Jesus was “raised for our justification” change the way you face fears about your own death or the death of those you love?
3. Paul describes believers as those “who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord” (Romans 4:24). In what current struggle (sin, suffering, or discouragement) do you most need to remember that Jesus is risen and reigning for you right now?
4. The preacher said that the resurrection “captures our hearts with hope that this world cannot crush.” Where have your hopes recently been set mainly on things in this life, and how might you realign your hopes this week in light of the empty tomb?
5. If someone in your life is skeptical about Christianity, how could the historical reality and central importance of the resurrection (Romans 4:24–25) shape the way you pray for them and the kinds of conversations you try to have?

Additional Bible Reading

1. Acts 2:22–41 — Peter’s Pentecost sermon proclaims Jesus’ death and resurrection as the fulfillment of Scripture and calls hearers to repent and be baptized.
2. Romans 6:1–11 — Paul explains how believers are united with Christ in his death and resurrection, walking in “newness of life.”
3. 1 Corinthians 15:1–22 — Paul sets out the resurrection of Christ as of “first importance” and shows why our faith and hope depend on it.
4. Isaiah 52:13–53:12 — The prophecy of the suffering servant who bears the sins of many and yet “prolongs his days,” foreshadowing resurrection and justification.
5. Habakkuk 3:17–19 — A model of rejoicing in God and finding strength in him even when earthly circumstances are bleak, echoing the sermon’s call to resurrection hope amid trials.

Sermon Main Topics

I. Death as the Dark Background for Christmas

II. Jesus' Resurrection is Historically True

III. Jesus' Resurrection is Theologically Necessary

IV. Jesus' Resurrection is Personally Captivating

V. The Call to Believe in Christ for Justification

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Detailed Sermon Outline

Chances are many here today will hear the words, Former President Jimmy Carter died today.

I'm not saying he died today. I said many will hear those words.

And not just those words. Chances are that many will hear the words, Former President Bill Clinton died today.

And the words, former President George Bush died today. Maybe even the words, former President Barack Obama died today. And the words, former President Joe Biden died today. And the words, former President Donald Trump. Died today.

Even the greatest in this age, in this world, pass away.

In this world, in this life, even here on Capitol Hill, where taxes seem so certain, death is even more so. And death is the dark background for the Christmas season, isn't it? I wonder if you've thought about that. If you take death out of all of our Christmas hymns, they fall apart. We just sang just a few moments ago singing about the incarnation, mild he lays his glory by, born that man no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth.

Friends, a little after midnight on Friday night, Saturday morning, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer gave a brief speech summarizing the work of the 118th Congress and at the end of his remarks he said, I yield back all remaining time.

We'll all be yielding back all of our remaining time.

Soon enough, every single one of us, one day coming. Just as Congresses end, so too will the time on this earth of every member of its Senate and House of the Supreme Court too. There's no position of earthly power that puts us beyond the power of death. In the Bible, death is tied to sin, not simply the sin of the individual, though all of us individually are sinners.

But the original sin of our first parents that caused the whole world to fall away from God and out of His presence and left us all liable to aging and death.

The Christmas season bursts into our consciousness as children as a time of giving gifts and gatherings of friends and family at the end of one year and the beginning of the next. Cousins become more than mere names.

Rarely accessed memories are refreshed. As we grow, we become aware that it's a celebration of the birth of Jesus in Bethlehem some 2,000 years ago. And as we grow still older, we come to understand that His was no ordinary birth. Where you and I begin our existence at conception, Jesus Christ came as the enfleshing of the eternally begotten Son of God, the second person of the Triune God. He came to be the one who was truly God who also became truly man, specifically in order to deal with the scourge of sin and death.

And so in Jesus' death we find the death of death. And in Jesus' resurrection to new life we find assurance our own life beyond this body's death if we truly believe in Jesus as our Savior and Lord. Romans chapter 4 has been an extended meditation of Paul's on how all of this could be. Open your Bibles to it now. Romans chapter 4.

We've been studying this since May. We come to our final study this morning. You'll find it on page 942. If you're looking at the Bibles provided, page 900. 42.

In Romans chapter 3, beginning in verse 21 and following, Paul asserts that this is the case and he explains it concisely. Then in chapter 4, Paul shows how this has always been the way it is, at least since God first made promises to His people. And he uses two people as examples, Abraham and David. As he shows the people how they can be declared righteous, right with God, justified, because not of how they have lived, what they have done, but because of what they had believed that another had done for them. From these last couple of sentences then here in chapter 4, verses 23 to 25, we really find a summation of the first part of the letter, really the first four chapters.

And more specifically of this section from 3:21 to the end of chapter 4 on the saving righteousness of Christ. And then he turns to a new topic in chapters 5 and 6 of a new life. So in chapters 5 and 6, Paul will explore now more of the spiritual life and peace with God that the Roman Christians had found in Christ. Last week we considered the fact that Jesus was delivered up for our trespasses. Now we want to look at the last words in the verse to complete the thought.

So he died as a substitute in our place. Now the last words in verse 25 and raised for our justification, who was delivered up for our trespasses and then our text this morning and raised for our justification. So in our time together, we want to consider this resurrection of Jesus historically, theologically, and personally. So if you're a committed note taker, that's the outline. We want to consider Jesus' resurrection historically, theologically, and personally.

And if you understand it, you'll come to understand a lot of other things too, like why Charlotte is getting baptized today, or why that last stanza that we sing in We Three Kings, our voices swell together to sing, Glorious now behold him, arise, King and God, and sacrifice. In fact, you'll come to understand better why you yourself are alive.

All this from these final five words in Romans chapter 4.

First, let's look at Christ's resurrection historically. And what we find historically is that it is true. I mean, this is really the bedrock assumption we have to understand that Paul is communicating to these Roman Christians and to us. He is assuming that about 25 years before he wrote this letter to the Romans, a Palestinian rabbi who was publicly crucified a few days later was physically raised from the dead. That is where the body had been entombed, it no longer was.

And that many people, including Paul himself, had encountered this rabbi after he had died by crucifixion and been raised by God. That Jesus had himself taught that he would so die and that he would be so raised. Jesus Christ's earthly life is wrapped in the miraculous, from the virgin birth in Bethlehem to the bodily resurrection in Jerusalem. Really understanding and believing this helps to set our celebration of Jesus' birth off from our celebrations or remembrances of others. Vastly more than others, whether we have in mind scientists or inventors or politicians or philosophers, Jesus being born utterly changed the life of countless sinners who who apart from his birth would be left still in our sins and with a fateful expectation of death after life.

But in Jesus' coming, especially in his sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, his sacrifice of himself in our place has assuaged God's wrath against us because of our sins. He has made himself a substitute for us, so emancipating us from death's ultimate demand, not simply of our bodies, but of our souls as well. And this is why in that great scene at Pentecost, just a few weeks after Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection, the disciple Peter, not a trained man in any formal sense, could stand before a crowd of thousands and say, and this is the guy who was just denying that he even knew Jesus. Now all of a sudden, before thousands of people, he is saying, and you can look at it in Acts 2, starting in verse 22, Acts 2, beginning in verse 22, Men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know.

This Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of lawless men. God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it. For David says concerning him, I saw the Lord always before me, for he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken. Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced, my flesh also will dwell in hope. For you will not abandon my soul to Hades, or let your holy one see corruption.

You have made known to me the paths of life. You will make me full of gladness with your presence. Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus God raised up.

And of that we all are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, He has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says, the Lord said to my Lord, Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. Let all the house of Israel therefore know for certain that God has made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.

Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, Brothers, what shall we do? And Peter said to them, Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins, and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you and your children and for all who are far off, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to himself.

And with many other words he bore witness and continued to exhort them, saying, 'Save yourselves from this crooked generation!' so those who received his words were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls. Thousands being saved that day. Thousands. Why? Because they knew that Jesus had been crucified.

And they knew that he had been raised from the dead. That's the only reason that message could have such power among all those people. Person after person could give witness to the fact. We can believe Jesus and have faith in him because of the resurrection. If Christ has not been raised, our faith is futile.

Wrote Paul to the Corinthians. If Jesus Christ has in fact been raised, then our faith is made effective. It is ratified. It is made able. It is made powerful.

Jesus himself taught, I am the resurrection. Therefore, because he has risen from the dead, we believe his words. We have faith in him. Friends, all the earliest sources that we have of Jesus report this resurrection. Why?

Because they knew it to be true. In words as plain as day, they report the fact that Jesus died, and that he was buried, and that he was literally raised to life again. And there is the stubborn fact, of course, of the empty tomb. I believe it was Machen who said that Christianity wasn't invented It happened. And it clearly was not what the disciples themselves even were expecting, though Jesus had taught them about it.

The reports in the Gospels are so realistic. In Matthew 28 it even reports that some doubted. Again, that's a note of authenticity that we would not expect if they were making this up. And then there's the transformation of the disciples. I mean, how could Peter preach a sermon like that?

Peter who was himself denying Jesus out of fear just days earlier, from dashed hopes to death defying faith. Also there's a strange fact that a denial of the resurrection does not figure at all in the earliest anti-Christian apologetics. Nobody goes there. Why? Because everybody knew it happened.

The only question you could raise is, what does it mean? What's the significance of it? Dear friend, why would you be so certain today that there is no God?

Or if you know there is a God, why would you be so certain he would not have done this?

What is your faith based on?

When you get right down to it, the two basic and incontestable historical facts about Jesus are that, one, He was crucified, and two, that a few days later His disciples were going around saying that He was alive. You can't controvert either of those facts. If you look at the evidence carefully enough, I think you'll see that they were doing that. Because he was. He was alive.

If nothing else, the historical origin of Christianity requires some explanation. While this is not evidence for the resurrection of Christ in and of itself, it's a factor which really forces the question. When I was a graduate student at Cambridge, I had a good friend who was president of the Libertarian Society. And one of the positions that that group held at the time is they were anti-government. They didn't want any government at all.

You know, when you're in a university, you can say things like that. So long as the university government gives you a charter so you can meet, and you know. So they asked me to come and give a Christian view why Christianity thinks we need a government. And he was going to offer me some, you know, little honorarium. And I said to him, his name was Bill.

He was an atheist. I said, Bill, tell you what. Why don't you keep your honorarium, but you have to agree, if I give this talk, you will research one question, just one question for me historically. He said, what question? I said, I want to know where the Christian church came from.

I just want you to do your best work historically and tell me, where did Christian churches come from? Because I know we can point to this, you know, one church in Cambridge, it's from the Norman Conquest in the 1100s, I got that. But I mean keep tracing it back, where did they come from? Keep going back as far as you can and I wanna know what you find out. He said, okay.

Well a few weeks later go by, I give the talk, the talk went okay. He and I are taking a walk afterwards and I said, Hey Bill, you remember the question I gave you you were supposed to research? He said, yeah. I said, Did you look into it? He said, yeah, I really did.

I said, okay, so what's your answer? He said, Honestly, I couldn't come up with a good answer. I said, Really? Why is that? He said, well, it kind of doesn't make any sense.

You know, I won't recount the rest of the conversation mainly because I can't remember it.

But Bill got to a lot of where I wanted him to get to. You see, I don't mean to offend you at all, but if you're here as a Buddhist, I think I can explain where Buddhism came from. Here's a Muslim, I think I can explain the rise of Islam. I think we can do that with Hinduism as scholars organize Indian culture's thought. But with Christianity, I promise, if you don't believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ, you have a real problem in figuring out where it came from.

You can get really far back historically with no problem. You can get back to the second century, you can get back to the first century. And you can certainly find Jesus of Nazareth, but getting from his crucifixion to that sermon I just read you from Peter, if you take out the resurrection, I wanna tell you my atheist or materialist friend, in as pushy a fashion as I can, you don't have a leg to stand on. The fact that you think you can know there is no God, or if there is a God, that you would know he would not do this. I would just say you're exercising a lot more faith than the Christians sitting around you are today.

The simple fact that we're sitting here on a Sunday is one of the pieces of evidence for the historicity of the resurrection. The Jews met when they gathered together in their synagogues on Saturdays. So why are we meeting on Sundays? Because the Gospels tell us that Jesus was raised on the morning of the first day of the week. It's the fact that that happened, that this is still one of the echoes, one of the ripples out from the pond of that historical event, which explains even the fact of the day we're meeting on right now.

No surprise that a veritable army of scholars down the centuries have poured over this event, many beginning an understandable skepticism, and yet coming to the conclusion that Jesus was in fact raised from the dead. If you're interested in looking to an account, you can find many of them. You can find the journalist Frank Morrison or the newer one by Lee Strobel, the law professor J. N. D. Anderson, professor of medieval studies C. S. Lewis, many, many others have written on this topic as well. I'll happily suggest books to you if you want to talk to me about it. I'll be at that door at the back afterwards.

Paul here is standing on the acknowledged truth of the resurrection. And he sees this as basic and fundamental to our understanding of who Jesus is and what Jesus came to do.

Dear ones, I wonder how many of us here are painfully aware of the weakness and waning powers of life, even in our own bodies, or in the bodies of those we love.

Do you see nothing in this of God's providential warning to us? Not to put all of our hopes in this life, which is passing. And once it's the fact that God even allows sicknesses that are slow are a part of his mercy mixed in with our fallen state. Does it not seem fitting then that he would point us on from this life to the next in which we will rise as Jesus rose if we have faith in him. This last sentence in chapter 4 of Romans is a summation of Paul's argument of how we can be put right with God.

And then Paul will turn and work through implications of this in the chapters to come. But all this rests on the bedrock, not merely a religious idea, but on the historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth from the dead. As Tom Schreiner put it, the resurrection of Christ constitutes evidence that Jesus has been vindicated. At Jesus' resurrection, God declared that Jesus was in the right, so that his work on our behalf has been completed. Friends, don't doubt that Jesus was raised from the dead bodily.

It's the best explanation for the existence of this very congregation and other Christian congregations around the world today and down through the ages. It all had to start somewhere.

And this dispirited band of disappoiNted and disillusioned followers who deserted and denied Jesus at Calvary by themselves are no sufficient explanation. Jesus' resurrection is historically true. Trust I've been clear on that point. Number two, Jesus' resurrection is also theologically necessary, theologically necessary.

Do you understand what I mean by that? Sometimes Christians get so centered on the cross that the cross can almost eclipse the tomb. But friends, remember that if Jesus' body is in a tomb, then his death on the cross doesn't matter. It is the resurrection of Jesus which both completes his work on the cross and displays it. Understand that?

It completes and displays. You might say, There are other people in the Bible who were raised from the dead. What about them? Well, yeah, there are a few. Well, the stories are there, like the son of the widow in 1 Kings 17, or Elisha raising the Shunammite's son in 2 Kings 4, or the dead man restored to life in 2 Kings 13, or in the gospel, Jairus' daughter, or the son of the widow of Nain, most famously of course Lazarus in John 11, or Dorcas in Acts 9.

But friends, in all of these there was a human external agent. And even more significantly, they had not predicted their deaths. They claimed to bear no one's sins. And that becomes obvious because they themselves continued to be subject to the curse of Adam and they themselves died again. But Christ's resurrection was affected by God alone, and his death and resurrection were his saving work long predicted and so fulfilled.

He had no sins of his own to die for, only yours and mine. Christ's resurrection is part of his saving work. Had he never risen, his words would have been forgotten and they might as well have been. Part of Jesus' teaching was that he would be crucified and that he would rise from the dead three days later, and if he never rose from the dead, then his teaching was exposed as fallible and false. When we look at our verse, we see the whole sentence.

Look back starting in verse 24. It will be counted to us who believe in him, who raised from the dead our Lord, Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. People have asked about the two occurrences of the word for there in verse 25. Delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. Are they the same word?

Yes, they are. Are they being used the same way? I don't think so. In other words, is this a strict parallel?

I agree with the folks who look at this and conclude that, I'll quote Doug Moo on it, New Testament scholar, he said, It's probably best to give the word dia that's four, a retrospective meaning in the first line, and a prospective meaning in the second. That is, he was handed over because of our trespasses, that is, because we're sinners, and was raised for the sake of our justification in order to secure our justification. So Christ's resurrection is a display of his saving work, both of himself and his people. If you look back at the beginning of Romans chapter 1, You see how Paul introduced himself and all of a sudden those words take on fresh meaning. Look at just verse four.

Chapter one, verse four, that God's Son was declared to be the Son of God in power, according to the spirit of holiness, by his resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord. Did you notice that when you first read this? You see the idea of the resurrection as a public demonstration and proclamation. And therefore vindication of the claims that Christ had made and of what he taught his disciples. The resurrection is he's saying, See, what I said is true.

He's demonstrating it. So Christ's resurrection certainly confirms that his death on the cross was what he said it would be, a ransoming of the lost. And his resurrection itself was a vital part of that saving work, a work which stopped in death would have suggested that Justice's claims were not satisfied by the offered sacrifice. But our Lord Jesus' death did exhaust all the claims against his people. So death no longer had any claim on him.

To use one simple pair of images, if the cross closes the door of hell to the one trusting in Jesus, then the empty tomb opens the door of heaven. Listen to how Paul talks about this a few chapters later in Romans chapter six. Romans chapter 6, beginning at verse 4.

We were buried therefore with Him by baptism into death, in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with Him in His death, like His, we shall certainly be united with Him in a resurrection like His. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him.

We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again. Death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died, he died to sin once for all. But the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.

Let not sin, therefore, reign in your mortal body to make you obey its passions.

So in Christ's resurrection, we see the promise of our own resurrection. 2 Corinthians chapter 4, knowing that he who raised the Lord Jesus will raise us also with Jesus, and bring us with you into his presence. I love the way Marcus Lone penned it. The voice that spells forgiveness will say, you, may go. You've been let off the penalty which your sins deserve.

But the verdict, which means acceptance, justification, will say, you, may come. You are welcome to all my love and my presence. This is why Jesus' predictions of his death always included predictions of his resurrection as well. The resurrection was, as it were, sort of the rest of the swing, the rest of the follow through on the plan that the cross work was all part of. The great spiritual exodus of God's people out of the domain of darkness and into the kingdom of his beloved son, as Paul put it in Colossians 1.

So even the great substitutionary passage that we had read earlier from Isaiah 52:53 and that we'll hear from our brother Steve Boyer on tonight.

Lord willing. There's this idea of a future prospering of the servant beyond his time of suffering, where he shall see his offspring, he shall prolong his days. So it shall be for the servant who would make many to be accounted righteous. That's Old Testament language for justification. So Paul had said back in Romans 3:24, and are justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

And what we find is that redeeming includes Christ being delivered up and his being raised. We noted earlier that in chapter four it's all in the third person. It's like Paul's giving a lecture about Abraham, about David, about how justification works. And then right here at the end of the chapter, it's like he turns in verse 23 and he starts using Uh, first person plural, we, our, and even the second person, you. Do you notice that in chapter four?

Look again at verse 23. But the words it was counted to him were not written for his sake alone, and up to then it's been all the sort of objective lecture. But for ours also, now all of a sudden we are part of the story. It will be counted to us who believe in him who raised from the dead Jesus our Lord, who was delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. Friends, this afternoon, take some time to sit down and read chapters 5 to 8, just four chapters of Romans, 5, 6, 7, 8.

Just sit down and read them all at once. And I think with this idea of the justification happening because of the resurrection and the new life that we Christians now walk in, you'll see especially clearly the life that we have laid out before us. Because of Christ's resurrection. Romans 5, 6, 7, 8. Just make some time to read them together.

Finally, you see in that great swelling at the end of chapter 8, especially in verse 34, where Paul writes, who is to condemn? Christ Jesus is the one who died, more than that, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who is indeed interceding for us. Indeed, in the early creed in 1 Corinthians 15, Christ being delivered up and raised are the core of it. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. In fact, all of 1 Corinthians 15 is about the resurrection of the body.

And he tells us, if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile. And you are still in your sins. Those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied. Paul regularly pairs Christ's death with his resurrection.

And that makes sense because belief in the resurrection of Christ is central to Christianity. It is a sign both that there is a God and who this God is. The resurrection is true and is essential to the gospel and to our salvation. The promise of God that had showed itself foreshadowed in Isaac coming from a dead womb has now gone all the way through to its fruition in the Son of God coming out of the empty tomb. Brothers and sisters, God is utterly reliable and so are all of His promises.

As Paul had said back in chapter 4 verse 17, God is the one who gives life to the dead. The resurrection of Jesus showed that Jesus was who He claimed to be, and it showed that there is a day of judgment coming for all who've lived. Christ's death and resurrection together are one saving act. What would one be without the other? The resurrection demonstrated and proved, gave assurance that Christ was innocent and righteous.

It vindicated, in that sense, justified Christ from the condemnation that the earthly courts had given him. It said that, no, in fact, he is innocent. I love the way Martin Lloyd Jones put it. The resurrection is the proclamation of the fact that God is fully and completely satisfied with the work that his Son did upon the cross. Or as Donald Grey Barnhouse, pastor of a 10th president of Philadelphia put it, Christianity can be expressed in three phrases.

I deserved hell. Jesus took my hell. There's nothing left for me but his heaven.

Do you see how clearly the resurrection of Jesus Christ brings us into the hope that we have in him? And apart from that, we would have no hope. Dear friends, as we've talked of Christ so much this morning, what do you find that you rely on instead of him?

What are other ways that you think you can find acceptance with God? What are less radical solutions you're tempted to try?

I pray that in His mercy, God will pursue those other things you're tempted to trust in and will show you their emptiness and will turn you to look on His own love, sending His Son for sinners like us. And so fill your heart with Abraham-like faith in God, in Jesus Christ, in His promises of forgiveness and justification and new life. To be a Christian, you must come to the self-emptying realization that the best things are not done by you. They are done for you by Jesus Christ giving Himself.

Christ's resurrection is theologically necessary. Third point, Jesus' resurrection is personally captivating.

Jesus' resurrection gives us so much hope that it distracts us from the trials and tribulations, the sicknesses and fears that mark our lives. As Christians, we too are subject to all the problems of life in a fallen world, but we can't finally find our hearts attention being entirely absorbed by them because we keep being distracted by this other reality.

Yes, these trials are terrible. They're hard. And yet there is this other thing. There is this eternal hope that we have in Christ.

The passage of time, the approach of death that so masters some people's minds and thoughts find itself challenged, even tamed and domesticated by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The promise that we are to follow him, united with him as we are by faith. So when we deposit the bodies of departed loved ones in the ground, if they were trusting in Christ, we deposit them not as lumps of clay to be forgotten, but as seeds to come to fresh fruition in the timing of God when He will bring His final harvest home.

Brothers and sisters, what kind of fears do you find yourself particularly struggling with this time of year?

Regret?

Grief, loneliness, waning hope, sullen resignation, worldliness.

It's the resurrection of Jesus Christ that allows hope to always spring up in our lives, however dim our worldly prospects may seem. We can pray with Habakkuk, though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will take joy in the God of my salvation. God, the Lord, is my strength.

More than anything else, it is the resurrection of Jesus Christ that allows us to hope in the darkest night. I pray that God will capture these difficult times for you, even in these final days of the year, as trophies of God's trustworthiness in your own life.

Do you see how in the plans of God, even the most unnatural of interlopers, death itself, is forced to serve the Lord of life. Death becomes a platform upon which the resurrection of Christ bursts and so displays God's power over all as goodness and love and truth and right personified triumph over evil and hate. Falsehood and wrong. There is no Jesus Christ that ever died upon a cross at Calvary except one that was raised from the dead for our justification. And he will not go into life alone.

He was raised for all of us who would ever place our trust in him. Oh, friend, will you believe on him today? Will you rely on him today and so go with him into life? By faith you and I are united to the dying and the rising Christ. Therefore we are confident that even as we have died with him, as we've taken up our cross, died to our old selves, so we have been raised with him to newness of life, being born again by his spirit.

As I think of what weak and failing creatures we are, to have such confidence. I just want to say here that I'm encouraged by the example of so many of you that I've seen here. Some suffering, others caring for those suffering. Claudia's holding a bill last Sunday night.

As Bill's saying, he leadeth me. Kelly's testimony. A few Sunday nights ago, the old here who care for the young, the tired who care for the new, the barren rejoicing with the expecting, the sadly single helping with another wedding, the widowed rejoicing with the engaged.

Friends, in all of this, you see, we give testimony to having greater hopes, certainly fulfilled in Christ.

I love the image of Richard Sibbes' friend, William Gouge, as an old man taking communion, when he could scarcely hold the cup at the sacrament of the Lord's Supper with his paralytic hand, while he carried it to his mouth. With a firm and fixed confidence, he took hold of Christ. And with a holy and spiritual thirst applied His blood to His soul.

Friends, the resurrection of Jesus Christ captures our hearts with hope that this world cannot crush.

We should conclude.

What will that existence of death and judgment be like?

When they were within two paces of each other, Marley's ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Scrooge stopped. Not so much in obedience as in surprise and fear. For on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air, incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret.

Wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self accusatory. The specter, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge and floated out upon the bleak dark night. Scrooge followed to the window. Desperate in his curiosity, he looked out. The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste and moaning as they went.

Every one of them wore chains. None were free. Many had been personally known to Scrooge in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost in a white waistcoat with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle who cried piteously at being unable to assist a wretched woman with an infant whom it saw below upon a doorstep. The misery with them all was clearly that they sought to interfere for good in human matters and had lost the power forever.

That, of course, is from the best known of all those Christmas ghost stories we mentioned last week, Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol. As chilling as this picture was, I fear Dickens had too thin and godless a picture of hell and of heaven. The depiction of eternal realities in the Bible of death, judgment, heaven, and hell are full and vivid, and they center on our being accepted and loved by God or rightly judged by Him forever. The Bible makes this drama of the story of Christ's incarnation for us and of our own salvation all the more joyful. My Christian brother and sister, there is a final time coming when this journey is ended and we finally come home.

What Paul has been showing us throughout this chapter is that on that day we will have nothing to boast of in our own works. Nothing. Rather the Bible, Old Testament and New, tells us that our hope is in an alien righteousness, is in someone else's goodness that is accounted to us, imputed to us, that it comes to us only by means of the open, empty, outstretched hand of our faith, receiving it as a gift. That's how we can be that blessed one that David describes in Psalm 32, Whose iniquity the Lord will not count against him. We can know wonderful forgiveness, whoever we are.

Whoever we've been because God's Spirit needs no preconditions to be fulfilled in us before he gives us the gift of saving faith. That's what unites this huge and varied congregation together this Sunday morning. The cynical critical theories divide us, the hope giving Christian truth unites us. We're saved not by rule keeping, but as God's word has always shown us, by trusting God's promises. His Word as Abraham did.

His Spirit defeats our doubt and unbelief, just as Abraham and Sarah could look at an empty cradle and still trust God's Word of promise even more. So we can look at our own hollow goodnesseS and still trust God's good promises even more. Our heart looks out of ourselves to Christ to trust Him and God's providence in Him Our faith is in the one true Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was delivered up for our trespasses and was raised for our justification. Do you believe this? Dear friends, if so, Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas. Let's pray together.

Lord God, for us to come into youo presence knowing that yout understand every aspect of our heart and life, all those things we don't pay attention to, all those things we have done, All those loves that we play with, those things we've devoted our lives to, or that we can come into your holy and perfect presence and still know joy and merriness is only because of the Lord Jesus Christ being delivered up for our trespasses and raised for our justification. Lord, we give you praise for sending your only Son for us. Thank you for that gift. Lord, we pray that you would take our whole lives in tribute to you. We ask in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Friend, please turn to page 14 in your bulletin. To this familiar carol, it has a poetic density about it. Think of what it's telling us about Jesus Christ, even as it uses the image of these three kings. Let's stand and sing.