LCMS Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1998, Page 85

Transcription machine transcription, uncorrected

⤓ Download .txt · copy text

4. Bible Study 1
The easy answer to the question is, of course, that God
made it happen. God did it. This is the deepest answer, the
right answer. God made it happen.
Oh, what’s the question? The question is the one that
rises in our minds as we read the remarkable story that is
foretold in Acts 1:8 and then told as it unfolds. The question is “Why did they go to the ends of the earth?” What
made it happen? Besides simply saying that “God made it
happen,” we can give other answers from the book of Acts
that can empower us for the mission that Christ has given
also to us. Those first Christians went to the ends of the
earth because they believed certain things, three of which I
would like to highlight.
I. Because of Easter They Knew
WHEN They Were Living
A. The center of the message in Acts is this: God the Father had raised Jesus, His crucified Son, from the dead. The
Father resurrected Christ, His Son! As you read the
speeches and the sermons in Acts, this refrain occurs 17
times! It’s the bottom line: God the Father raised Jesus
from the dead.
1. Turn with me to Acts 4:2; this verse, I think, states it
well. The apostles are still in the temple precincts, not yet
openly persecuted and scattered as will happen in chapter
8. The religious leaders come upon them as they are teaching, and, verse 2, they are “annoyed because they were
teaching the people and proclaiming in Jesus [or in the case
of Jesus] the resurrection from the dead.” In the case of
Jesus, resurrection has happened. This is what the apostles
were proclaiming. It means they knew when they were living.
2. Now, in order to understand why this says something
about when these disciples were living, let’s be perfectly
clear about one thing. The message was not that Christ was
merely “revivified,” merely “brought back to life,” merely
brought back to the kind of life that He possessed and enjoyed in His human nature before His resurrection. No,
more than that, Christ was resurrected!
a. This is far different from what happened to certain
dead people during Jesus’ ministry. Although we have no
specific record, we would have to maintain that they all
died again: Lazarus, the widow of Nain’s son, and Jairus’
daughter all died again. They were not resurrected. For
Christ died; but after the third day He will never die again.
He is alive forevermore!
b. You see, to talk about “resurrection” to first-century
Jews was to talk about the Last Day, the Judgment Day.
They knew that this was one of the things that God would
do on the Last Day. No, true, not everyone in Israel believed the Old Testament Scriptures about this; the Sadducees specifically rejected this doctrine, while the Pharisees accepted it. But the point is this: Resurrection was to
happen on the great Day of the Lord, on the day when
God’s kingdom would come, when God would come down
and intervene in history for both judgment against unrepentant sinners, and salvation for his lowly and trusting

people. On that day resurrection would happen, and death
would not be put on hold—it would be destroyed.
c. They proclaimed, in the case of Jesus, the resurrection
from the dead! This means that God’s kingdom ... or better,
God’s royal power and reign have come into our world, now,
before the end of time. That power to save, promised at the
end, has begun already! The last days have begun!
d. Jesus, God’s Son, was crucified. Turn with me quickly
to Acts 3:13–15. There Peter boldly proclaims:
The God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, the
God of our fathers, glorified His servant Jesus, whom
you delivered up and denied in the presence of Pilate,
when he had decided to release Him. But you denied
the Holy and Righteous One, and asked for a murderer
to be granted to you, and you killed the Author of life,
whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses.

Jesus was crucified by sinners. But because it was also
according to the purpose of God Himself, Jesus was crucified for sinners. Jesus gave His life to make the needed sacrifice; to render the payment-price for all sin, all of theirs
and yours and mine.
e. Because it is the Crucified One whom God the Father
raised from the dead, Christ’s resurrection means at the
least these things:
God the Father has ratified, set His seal on the cross.
There on the wood, it was finished. There with His proper
title posted above His head, with God’s own royal power,
the Son of God saved the whole world. God has already
begun what He will do fully on the Last Day, when all the
dead are raised and death itself is completely destroyed.
God has ratified what Christ has done.
Christ’s resurrection means vindication and victory. God
vindicated His Son; He died once, for all, and never will He
85