The Bible Study Hour

Mark Daniels: The apostle Paul sat alone in a dark room in prison, writing a letter of encouragement to his son in the faith, Timothy. What were the most important words of wisdom he could leave his protege?

Welcome to the Bible Study Hour, a radio and internet broadcast with Dr. James Boice, preparing you to think and act biblically. There were doubtless many things on Paul's mind he would have liked to convey to young Timothy, but foremost in the apostle's thoughts was the resurrection. Join Dr. James Boice as he studies Paul's admonition to remember that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, the very foundation of our faith.

Dr. James Boice: The challenge comes from a letter of the aged apostle Paul to his son in the faith, the young preacher Timothy. Paul had been courageous and energetic in carrying the gospel to the civilized world of his day. He had preached in Syria, in Cilicia, Cyprus, Asia Minor, Macedonia, Greece, Italy. Now he was in prison and was writing a letter of advice and encouragement to the man who was to carry on much of his work.

So he says in effect, Timothy, do you want your preaching to be strong and effective as my preaching was? Do you want to win souls? Do you want to see the church remain strong? Well then, do not forget the great foundational truths of Christianity. And in particular, do not forget the resurrection. His exact words are, "Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead according to my gospel."

I am convinced that in this statement we have an effective clue to the success of Paul's ministry as well as an indication of how we can be effective in our own ministry, no matter who we are or where we may be. Remember the resurrection. We can forget many things about life, many things even about Christianity, but if we remember the resurrection, we will always have a gospel which has power to change men's souls.

But now we need to ask some questions about Paul's statement. Paul writes, "Remember that Jesus Christ of the seed of David was raised from the dead according to my gospel." But we might argue, Paul, we know what you're saying, but why is that so important? Why do you stress the resurrection? Why should Timothy remember this, and why should we? There are a number of answers, so let's look at them one at a time.

First, we should remember the resurrection because so long as we do remember it, we will always have a simple gospel. And a simple gospel is what men need. You'll understand as I say this, I'm sure, that I'm not talking about a simplistic gospel. A simplistic gospel would be one that's superficial, that does not really appreciate the problems or properly grapple with the facts. No one would want that in any area of life, and certainly not in Christianity.

But I'm not talking about a simplistic gospel. I'm talking about a simple gospel. And a simple gospel is something else. It is a gospel that is simple because it brings simplicity to areas that would be hopelessly confused without it. Probably all great scientific and intellectual breakthroughs are simple in this sense. Before them, there was confusion. Afterwards, there was clarity and light.

It's this way with the Christian gospel centered in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And the resurrection is the capstone of it all. Accept that, and the rest falls into place. Believe in the resurrection and you have no difficulty with the other miracles: the full divinity of the Lord Jesus, the inspiration of the scriptures, and many, many other things. Together, these truths simplify man's need and speak of that simple though profound remedy for that need which God has provided in Christ.

It's a great pity, you know, that Christian preaching does not always sound forth the clear note on this theme. Instead of the clear and certain sound of the trumpet, we hear musical variations, and the truth, the clear truth about the resurrection, is lost. A number of years ago, when the noted Swiss theologian Karl Barth was in this country for a series of lectures, he was invited to speak to the National Press Club of Washington, DC.

Carl F. H. Henry, the founding editor of Christianity Today, was there, and it was his job to present him to the other reporters. He did it, and then he asked this question, "Dr. Barth, you have written a good deal about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and you're standing before men who are accustomed to reporting unusual events. Tell us, according to your outlook, if these men had been present in the garden on that first Easter morning, would they have seen anything that they could later have reported in their papers?"

Well, Barth didn't like the question very much. He said, "What did you say your magazine was called? Christianity Yesterday?" Henry said he answered the only thing he could think of, "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, today, and forever." But then Barth went on to give a complex answer which, as anyone who knows his theology well would imagine, had to do with the belief that miracles are not actually a part of history, but rather are tangential to it. They're real, according to Barth, but unobservable.

After a time, Barth finished and Carl Henry turned to a reporter who was near him. "Did you understand what he said?" Henry asked. "I'm not sure," the reporter answered, "but I think I did. I think he said no." Well, my point is that men do not need that kind of confusion. And the true nature of the resurrection does not encourage it. Christ rose, literally and bodily. That we have received, that we believe, that we earnestly declare to others. Moreover, men understand such teaching.

Once when the late President Harry Truman and his fellow Democrat Adlai Stevenson were together in an office high up in one of our modern buildings, Stevenson was bemoaning his traditional lack of success in politics. "What am I doing wrong, Harry?" he asked. Truman walked to the window and pointed to the milling people many floors below. "You don't speak to the man down there," he replied. Unfortunately, we who are Christians often fail to do that also. But we do not need to fail so long as we have that simple gospel that is based on an historical and demonstrable resurrection.

Second, we should remember the resurrection because so long as we do remember it, we will always have a supernatural gospel. And we need that which is supernatural also. Aren't you just a bit tired of all the human schemes for human betterment, particularly since they do not really seem to be solving the deep problems or improving our culture or our environment? You do not have to be a Christian to be disenchanted.

Not long ago, a leading news magazine published a special series of essays under the general title Second Thoughts About Man. It was a good series, one of the best I've seen, and it was designed to examine the areas of modern life that have most often been looked to for solutions to the problems of crime, poverty, prejudice, and other things that trouble us. But what was the conclusion?

The conclusion, intended to reflect the views of those in the fields of behavioral psychology, religion, education, and science, was simply that these lines of approach have failed and that probably all purely human attempts to deal with man's perverse nature will also prove fruitless. The magazine said, "At the heart of the ferment of the seventies is a deep, even humble perception that man and his universe are more complex than he recently thought. Optimism has bred a false enthusiasm that this method or that system was somehow the answer. Now some of the growing skepticism questions whether any system can ever fully surmount the recalcitrance and perversity of man."

Those are amazing words from a secular magazine. If the behavioral psychologists, religious figures, educators, and scientists are telling us that the ultimate hope for man is not to be found in the fields in which they're working, where is that hope to be found? They're not saying, you understand, that there is no good in what they're doing. They're accomplishing much. They're rightly proud of it. But they are saying that even the best that they can do has its limits and that the ultimate problems lie deep in man's nature and are beyond merely human control. They cannot solve them.

But then we want to ask this question: If they cannot solve them, if the most brilliant men of our time cannot solve our problems, who can? The only answer is something beyond man and nature, something superhuman and supernatural. It is this that Christianity offers. It's wrapped up in our entire remembrance of the resurrection.

The resurrection is a proof of new life and of great power. It's seen in Christ. It can be seen in anybody who will commit himself to Christ through faith and thus be united to him by the Spirit of the living God. Christ can change lives. He has changed lives. He has done in millions that which no power on earth could ever accomplish. Has he done that for you? I'm thankful that he did that for me. I am glad to recommend to you a gospel which is frankly supernatural and which can therefore change both ourselves and our society.

Third, we are to remember the resurrection because so long as we remember it, we will always have a scriptural gospel. This means that our faith will not be a novelty. We will be saved from novelties. Instead, we will have a faith linked, as all true faith must be linked, to God's great and eternal purposes in human history. This truth that the gospel is not a novelty was of great importance to the early preachers of the gospel because they were proud of the antiquity of the faith, and they commended it partially on that ground to their contemporaries.

Jesus is an example. Jesus taught that all that happened to him happened because it was foretold in the scriptures. After his resurrection, for instance, we read that Jesus, as he talked to some of his disciples, opened their understanding that they might understand the scriptures and said to them, "Thus it is written, and thus it behooved Christ to suffer and to rise from the dead the third day."

Paul is another example. He wrote that he delivered to the Corinthians that gospel which he had first received, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures. Peter preached what David had written of Christ's resurrection, "Thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades, neither wilt thou allow thy Holy One to see corruption." Others of the early preachers did likewise.

These men were conscious of the fact that what they had been called upon to proclaim was eternal. It was not a fad, you see. It was not a novelty. Instead, it was the overriding theme of the universe. It was that which had been proclaimed from before the beginning of the world and would be proclaimed to the end. We preach no novelty. We preach no fads. America is filled with fads.

Americans are idealistic, but the difficulty lies in the fact that their idealism lasts for so short a time. Every year the theme of the crusade changes. Yesterday's burning issue is forgotten and another takes its place. But aren't you glad that our faith is not like that, that it's not so ephemeral? Our gospel is not something that man dreamed up in the twentieth century. It is God's great plan, and it's been known in all ages by men who have known him. We are part of that company. We are one with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, with David the king, Isaiah the prophet and all the other prophets, with James and Peter and John, with the early church fathers, the later church fathers, the reformers: Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, and others, and with those from our own time also. We will remember this if we remember Christ's resurrection.

Finally, we're to remember the resurrection of Jesus Christ because if we do remember it, we will always have a satisfying gospel. The truth of the resurrection of Jesus Christ satisfies. Oh, there's much in life that's not satisfying. In some areas we may be satisfied for a time, but the pleasures soon pale and the satisfaction fades.

When we are young and life lies before us, the offerings of the world are not so bad, it seems. There's an appeal to fame or wealth or companionship. The hunger of the imagination paints our goals in bright colors. We can live on dreams. But then what happens when the future, as is generally the case, does not bring all that we ask for? What happens in the face of suffering, death, or sorrow, which comes to all men? What happens in old age? If there's nothing more to life than the things which time takes from us, life becomes misery and a disappointment.

On the other hand, if we're united to the living Lord Jesus Christ, who has gone before to prepare for us a place in his presence, then life retains its meaning and is filled with joy. I think we find an illustration of this truth in the very chapter of Second Timothy which we're studying. Here is the apostle Paul writing to Timothy. But where is Paul? Paul's in prison. There had been times of great liberty when he was free to preach the gospel wherever he wished and to whoever would listen, but now he's confined. Those days are over and soon his life will be ended.

Does Paul complain? Is there bitterness? Does he regret his commitment to Christ? Oh no, not at all, he rejoices. And so a little further along in the chapter, we find him declaring, "It is a faithful saying, for if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him. If we suffer, we shall also reign with him. If we deny him, he also will deny us. If we believe not, yet he abideth faithful. He cannot deny himself."

Paul found that the gospel of the crucified and resurrected Lord was satisfying even at the end of life and in suffering. It's satisfying too in the moment of a person's death. In one of his sermons on the resurrection, the great evangelist D. L. Moody tells the story of a bright fifteen-year-old girl who was suddenly struck down with illness. She was completely paralyzed on one side and was nearly blind. She was not expected to recover.

One day as she lay on her bed, she overheard the family doctor say to her parents as he tried to prepare them for the inevitable, "I am afraid she has seen her best days, poor child." Fortunately, the girl was a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, and as she heard the doctor, she quickly replied, "No, doctor, my best days are yet to come, when I shall see the king in his beauty." Her hope, you see, lay in the living Lord Jesus, and in the hour of suffering and death that resurrection hope did not fail to satisfy her.

This is our hope also. It is that I call upon you to remember. Have you remembered the resurrection of Jesus Christ? If you have, then you have a gospel that is simple, supernatural, scriptural, and satisfying. And you have something that you will be able to communicate to those who need it desperately.

And our Father, we thank you for this great truth, the truth of the resurrection of our Lord and for all that it signifies. If there are those listening who have never trusted him as their savior and risen Lord, we ask that they might know no peace until they rest in him who is the source of all peace. And upon your own who do believe, may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, your love, and the communion and fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with them. Amen.

Mark Daniels: You're listening to the Bible Study Hour, featuring the teaching of Dr. James Boice. While we don't worship the Bible, we value its message. You can't separate God from his word, and the Bible is the only divine thing you can find on this earth. Learn all about it in our free CD entitled The Gospel of God by the late Donald Grey Barnhouse. This free offer is our way of saying thanks for listening today. It's yours when you call 1-800-488-1888. We'll be pleased to send you a copy of The Gospel of God. That number again is 1-800-488-1888.

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Reformation 21 and A Place for Truth are websites of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals, proclaiming biblical doctrine to foster a reformed awakening in today's church. Find blogs, articles, and podcasts from today's most influential reformed thinkers. Connect to it all from thebiblestudyhour.org. I'm Mark Daniels. As the shadows lifted early that first Easter morning, the women who came to prepare the body of Jesus saw the angels and, after quelling the women's fears, those angels gave them four words, four commands that would eventually change the course of human history. Join Dr. James Boice as he takes a deeper look at the meaning of the four words the angels spoke on that fateful morning long ago. That's next time on the Bible Study Hour, preparing you to think and act biblically.