For a scripture reading this morning, we turn to Revelation chapter one. Revelation chapter one. Worth noting, before we read this, I think you're all aware that the book of Revelation is the revelation of the coming Kingdom of Jesus Christ. throughout the New Testament lays forth prophetically everything that Jesus will do to fulfill His kingdom. But it begins with the revelation of Jesus as the risen and ascended Lord who has conquered death. The revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto him, to show unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass. And he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John, who bear record of the word of God and of the testimony of Jesus Christ and of all things that he saw. Blessed is he that readeth And they that hear the words of this prophecy and keep those things which are written therein, for the time is at hand. John, to the seven churches which are in Asia, grace be unto you and peace from him which is and which was and which is to come. and from the seven spirits which are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, who is the faithful witness and the first begotten of the dead, and the prince of the kings of the earth, unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood. and hath made us kings and priests unto God and his Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever. Amen. Behold, he cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him. And all kindreds of the earth shall wail because of him. Even so, amen. I am Alpha and Omega. the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is and which was and which is to come, the Almighty. I, John, who also am your brother and companion in tribulation and in the kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ, was in the isle that is called Patmos for the word of God and for the testimony of Jesus Christ. I was in the spirit on the Lord's day, and heard behind me a great voice as of a trumpet, saying, I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last, and what thou seest write in a book, and send it unto the seven churches which are in Asia, unto Ephesus, and unto Smyrna, and unto Pergamos, and unto Thyatira, and unto Sardis, and unto Philadelphia, and unto Laodicea. And I turned to see the voice that spake with me, and being turned, I saw seven golden candlesticks, And in the midst of the seven candlesticks, one like unto the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and gird about the paps with a golden girdle, His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes were as a flame of fire, and his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace, and his voice as the sound of many waters. And he had in his right hand seven stars, and out of his mouth went a sharp two-edged sword, and his countenance was as the sun shineth in his strength. And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. And he laid his right hand upon me, saying unto me, fear not, I am the first and the last. I am he that liveth and was dead. And behold, I am alive forevermore, amen. And have the keys of hell and of death. Write the things which thou hast seen, and the things which are, and the things which shall be hereafter. The mystery of the seven stars which thou sawest in my right hand, and the seven golden candlesticks. The seven stars are the angels of the seven churches, and the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches. We read that far in God's holy and inspired word. We consider this morning the Heidelberg Catechism, the Lord's Day 17. What doth the resurrection of Christ profit us? First, by his resurrection he has overcome death. that he might make us partakers of that righteousness which he had purchased for us by his death. Secondly, we are also by his power raised up to a new life. And lastly, the resurrection is a sure pledge of our blessed resurrection. Beloved in our Lord Jesus Christ, the Lord's Day that we treat is brief, too brief. Really, if one simply looks at what the resurrection really is and what it implies, there's really much that could have been written here. And yet, the brevity of this Lord's Day is in part because some of the subject matter will be considered elsewhere. For example, The resurrection of Jesus Christ, its implications for us, will come up again in the Lord's Day 22, where we consider the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting. The first point that's made in this Lord's Day about making us partakers of his righteousness will come up again in Lord's Day 23. And the whole matter of the secondly, being raised up to a new life, really, you may see as the subject matter of Lord's Days 32 all the way to 52. Because it's speaking there about the renewal of us. The first point speaks to justification. The second, really, sanctification, which is the subject of Lords Day 32, and follow that Christ. who redeemed us, body and soul, by the atonement, then goes on to renew us. The point I'm trying to make is don't let the brevity of the Lord's Day, however, make you think that the subject matter of the resurrection of Christ is a minor thing. that in fact it is minor even to the death of Jesus, because that's not true. We are often fond of saying with the apostle that we preach Jesus Christ and him crucified, but sometimes in our thinking, we imagine that that excludes then the resurrection, that it's relatively unimportant And that even bleeds into the thinking then that the renewal of us, the power of the resurrection in our actual life is unimportant, really has nothing to do the gospel whatsoever. That's not true. The fact is, the resurrection is an integral, even inseparable part of the gospel, and Scripture makes that abundantly clear. 1 Corinthians 15 is irrefutable in this regard. There the apostle, almost shocking, And remember, it's the same man who the Scriptures or the Spirit inspired to write, I preach only Jesus Christ and Him crucified, said this, if Christ is not risen, then is our preaching vain. Then the preaching of the cross is in vain. The preaching of the death of Christ is in vain, and even your faith is vain, says the Spirit. Yea, and we have found false witnesses, because we testified of God that He raised Christ from the dead. And then he repeats, if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain, and ye are yet dead in your sins. There may be no preaching of the cross that has any value or worth, any even saving power apart from the resurrection. Let's keep that in mind. The power of the gospel is the power of the resurrection. A couple of other things we have to keep in mind that are being emphasized here by the Catechism is that it is the same person who died that is raised. That's emphasized in the very passage that we read. How many times did we read about Christ being the one who was dead but is alive? the one who is, but also was. What's it referring to? It's talking about the fact that we need to remember that what connects the gospel of the cross and the gospel of the resurrection is that it is the same person, the person of our Lord Jesus Christ, even brought out by the word resurrect. The word resurrect literally means to stand again. and implies that the one who stand is one who stood before but was not down. The idea is that he was standing, death took him, and now he stands again. The brevity of the Catechism here is also partly explained by the fact that the Catechism again shows it is interested in our comfort. The spirit of comfort takes the gospel of the resurrection and the fact of the resurrection and applies it directly to our lives. Notice, it's all about us. What's the benefit? What's the blessedness? What's the profit for us? And so that's the approach we're going to take this morning. We do need to talk about the resurrection. It begins with Christ. We're going to look at that resurrection and its application to us from two perspectives, or three perspectives. That of the victory of it, that it was victory. Secondly, the power of it. We need to look at the power of the resurrection. And then finally, the guarantee, or what the catechism calls the pledge of it. Part of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, an important part, and one that is in keeping with the fact that the gospel is a gospel of grace, is that God works victory through apparent defeat. Simply consider what we have been preaching out of the catechism about Jesus Christ. The humiliation of him, one who comes into the world, born of a virgin, laid in a manger, who suffered his entire life, shamed, ridiculed, scorned, and then is crucified by the whole world. Excommunicated by his own people and church. And that one now is ascended into heaven and sits at God's right hand. We saw the description of him in Revelation 20. What that means is that the Gospel of Christ on the one hand is one of humiliation and shame. Apparent defeat. And that remains to be true Over and over the scriptures remind us that the victory of Jesus Christ is not such that having ascended into heaven and sitting at God's right hand, now everything is just a bed of roses for the church. That it is done and accomplished in such a way that we are immediately loosed from all the bonds of sin so that we don't sin. And we live in a world where everything is just getting better and more wonderful, where we won't suffer shame and ridicule because Jesus bore it. No, that's pretty clear. That's not the way it's going to be. Revelation itself is going to make that clear. Nevertheless, it's important to remember that Jesus is already now victorious. When, for example, the church preaches the truth, the truth of the coming Kingdom of Christ, that it's a coming of Jesus Christ on the clouds of heaven that is accompanied with much, much apostasy. It's one of the great signs, according to the Apostle Paul in the books of Thessalonians. that before Christ comes there will be a great falling away, a great apostasy in the church. A church all over the world that once confessed and loved the name of Jesus Christ and reveled in the gospel of His atonement and the victory of His resurrection forsakes Him. forsakes Him for the kingdom of this world, forsakes Him for all kinds of earthly riches and pleasures, fears, persecution, and sorrow, and trouble, all the while imagining that they're building the kingdom of Christ on earth. The gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ presents his coming as the ascended Lord, as one in which the world is under the dominion of an Antichrist, the Antichrist. And all the nations of the world have turned their attention to persecuting the body of our Lord Jesus Christ out of the earth, suffering and pain and loss. And when you preach that, even as the apostles experienced, including John himself, the church cries out, you defeatist, you're a traitor, you don't believe in the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ. Same thing was done to the prophets in the Old Testament too. When they prophesied that the Christ would come, But the Christ would come through the captivity of God's people into Babylon. It would come by the loss of the throne of the house of David. It would come by the destruction of the earthly Jerusalem and the land of Canaan. They killed the prophets. They stoned them, exiled them. It's no different today. But the fact is, that message is really the victory of our Lord Jesus Christ, and we always have to remember that. And it's the resurrection that makes plain the victory. Even when you look at the fact of the resurrection, you see that two-fold side of the Gospel, what we read in Revelation, is the two-edged sword. Amazing how in that vision of Jesus, that glorious, wonderful vision of Jesus, He has a weapon in His hand, a two-edged sword. And I think even the children here know that that two-edged sword represents the Holy Gospel, the Word of God. How it cuts two ways. How it brings two messages. How it has two effects. Hardening, but softening. Cutting away, healing and that sword of our Lord Jesus Christ is about even His resurrection. But when you look at the fact of the resurrection, you see that twofold effect. On the one hand, when Jesus comes forth out of the grave, there's victory there. It's amazing. Amazing the change that you can observe in Jesus Christ, in His body, in His ministry, in the way He addresses His apostles. And he's only on earth for 40 days and he's gone. He ascends into heaven, all showing this is exaltation. This is victory. Remember? He went from humiliation to exaltation. Explains the change. And yet, it's a rather humble victory yet, isn't it? He's still on the earth. He comes out of the grave. His hands and his feet still show the crucifixion. He's still on the earth where he's eating and drinking. We find him eating and drinking. He still is in the presence of the apostles and other disciples who are bewildered, who are puzzled, even are filled with unbelief yet. And then, too, Even the message that Jesus gives them about what's ahead, what's going to be ahead, gives them their commission, but makes clear, this is going to bring sorrow and trouble. It's all there right in the resurrection itself. Nevertheless, it was victory, victory. And the church that believes in Jesus Christ believes in the resurrection. And here, too, we should remember that. Part of the apostasy that's going on in the church today is the church fools itself. It imagines that it can start having unbelief about certain parts of the Scripture, but we can hang on to the Gospel. The church today is being told, for example, that you don't have to believe all the stuff that's found in Genesis, especially about the flood and about the creation and how it all happened. Those aren't saving things. They're not really that important. It's not true. Such things as we said earlier, not so long ago. the church forgets, which is that these views that are being foisted because the church has been infected by the world. It hasn't Christianized the world like it promised to do according to common grace, but it's been infected by the world. is teaching death in the world before sin, that death has nothing to do with sin. A denial of the first Adam automatically is a denial of the second Adam. And these things show. If you do a little asking yourself, maybe if you get a chance to communicate with some of these people, because they're found awful close to us in Reformed churches even, And you do a little asking. Maybe they are bold enough to tell you, we don't believe that stuff anymore. We believe that the Bible doesn't speak to such things as origins. It only talks about Jesus. Maybe ask them once if they still believe the resurrection. And you might be surprised by their answer. It's increasingly common, also as a part of that unbelief, to be skeptical about the resurrection, to turn it into something that it's really not, something that is explained naturally, something that is explained some sort of… picturesque way, like to do with the creation. It's a story and it has a higher spiritual meaning, but it didn't really happen that way, so also the resurrection really kind of didn't happen. They might not be so bold as to say that, but that's what they're saying. It didn't really happen, but it's a story about a higher meaning, about Jesus being victorious. And if you dig a little further, you'll discover that the church they belong to and they themselves are busy are busy engaging the world, might go under the name Christianizing, might use the word evangelizing, but if you dig around a little deeper, you'll discover they're busy trying to establish a kingdom of heaven on earth. An earthly kingdom. In fact, you might even discover that they've gotten rid of the notion that Jesus is even returning again. Jesus is returning, they would say, only by the increase of the body of Jesus Christ on earth, and as it accomplishes the plan of Jesus Christ and the purpose of Jesus Christ in the earth, and they go right back, in essence, to the very things that the church was trying to do when Jesus was on earth. They go right back to the plan of the Pharisees and the Sadducees and all the Jewish leaders who rejected Jesus, and they reject Him all over again. That's what's going on. It has to do with the fact that even the resurrection, as victorious as it is, is offensive, because it's a spiritual resurrection. But there's a reason why The fact of the resurrection is very important. Just like the fact of creation is important, the fact of Moses, the fact of Abraham, the fact of David, the fact of the virgin birth, all these things are central to the Christian faith. We are an historical faith. Take away the history, take away the fact, take away the reality, and you're left with one big fat lie. That's one thing Paul reminded the Corinthians. If Jesus isn't risen, we're just a bunch of liars. Modern preachers today aren't honest about that. They should just come out and say, we're a bunch of liars. But if you look carefully, over and over again, the Bible emphasizes the record, the proof of His resurrection. It's all over Scripture. When Jesus arose, there were certain facts that proved The testimony of the angels. The empty grave. The arrangement of the grave clothes in that grave. The appearances of Jesus afterwards. Ten of them are recorded. Five of them on Easter Sunday alone. And then afterwards, there's more appearances with Jesus with His disciples at Galilee. He appears to James. He appears to over 500 on a mountain in Galilee at His ascension. Paul on the road to Damascus. Stephen. Even John. Even John. You could include the revelation of Jesus to John. Now, it's in a vision. But John links even the testimony of Jesus that he saw there in that vision with the fact that he bear record of the Word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. In other words, John was emphasizing that as an apostle, he bears record, not simply to the death of Christ, but the resurrection. And that, by the way, was one of the signs of an apostle. What allowed Paul to be an apostle was that he witnessed the resurrection of Jesus when Jesus appeared to him, even from heaven. So, the victory is a victory over death. what we have to see. And why, if one has unbelief about other aspects of the Scripture, it always ultimately ends in unbelief about the resurrection. Because if one is truly honest, if one really truly understands what death is, one will see that the resurrection of Jesus as the first fruits from the dead is is the most unbelievable of them all. That God could create the heavens and earth and everything they contain in six roughly 24-hour periods is nothing, nothing compared to raising His Son from the grave. We marvel often at the cross, rightly so, And we marvel, rightly so, as we stand around the manger at Christmastime. We marvel at how God could come in our flesh. How could God do that? How can God hide His glory? How can God, who fills the heavens and extends beyond the universe, the God who has always been, who's infinite and glorious, How can He be focused down and contained, as it were? How can He come in our flesh? That's amazing. We thought about that just a little bit ago in the catechism. And then later on, that same One goes to the cross and dies there voluntarily, willingly, under His own wrath. We marvel at the fact that there on the cross He is forsaken of God and yet at the same time God loved Him. This is my beloved Son. A God who is always in constant communion with Himself, was forsaken as the Son of God. And we marvel as we stand over the grave. There is God. He is God. And he's in a grave, a tomb, that's going to be covered up with a rock. And there he's going to be cut off from the world for three days as God. We marvel over those things. The greater marvel is that one now comes from the grave. The same one. The same one who is humiliated is exalted. And it's because it concerns a victory over death. Our problem is we don't truly, really understand death and what it is. We have a sense of it. But we haven't seen the reality of hell. Men and women who have been involved in great world wars, and one thing that explains the utter selfishness And the foolishness of the present generations is they don't know that kind of carnage. They didn't see the millions blown to smithereens and carted off in concentration camps and destroyed, man killing man with everything imaginable during the world wars. Millions. We haven't smelt the stench of that and seen the smoke of it. And then we stand there and say, that's hell on earth. No, that's not even close to hell. We do have a sense of death when we live in the midst of it, but even there we ignore it. We think someone only dies when their heart stops beating and they have to go off to the funeral home to be put in a casket and lowered in the grave. That's death to us. Well, that's true, but death is a power. And it's far more powerful than all the nuclear bombs of the world. It's far more powerful than gravity. It's far more powerful than anything man could ever conceive and do. The big lie of man is, he's going to save us all. He's going to save us as the next president. He's going to save us by his technological advances in labs everywhere. Man's going to save us by his economic prowess and his education and the culture of man's all going to save us. That's going to be the big lie of man touted by the Antichrist. Give your allegiance and your votes. Give your power. Give everything to me. I'll save you. And oh, is it going to be tempting. It is going to be tempting. Well, let's imagine. Let's imagine a man comes along who, as the Scriptures say, is going to receive the power of Satan himself. That's a lot of power. Satan has a lot of power. And let's just say he's able to condense it and give it to one man, his own representative, his image on earth. That's what the Bible says he's going to do, same book we read, Revelation. And let's imagine that that man is given the power to extend human life, I don't know, let's say 50 years, let's say 100 years. But let's go with an even smaller number. Let's just say 100. Let's just suppose He could promise us we're all going to live till we're 100. The world would sell everything it has for that promise, that guarantee. It would. They would kill you and me for that. They would. But the fact is, only Jesus Christ has victory over death. Man could make us all live like Methuselah a thousand years. Let's imagine if we could live a thousand years. Man would say, wow. Now, man, if he lived for a thousand years, would promptly make the world unlivable. He's that wicked and corrupt. He would develop in sin that much more. But the point is, only Jesus has the keys of death and hell. And that's the victory. He has now victory over the cancers, over the flus and colds, because those are all aspects of death. He has victory right now, power, over all the wars that are going on, the people that are being still blown to smithereens over in the Ukraine and Russia. All those things are in His hand. Now it's not fully revealed. It's believed by faith. It's a matter of faith. But that's what we have to see the resurrection was. An utter victory over death. Now that leads to understanding the power of it. You and I are impressed with power. The power to do this and the power to do that. We're very susceptible to someone flashing some power. If someone shows some power on the football field, why, we'll spend a lot of money and fill a stadium even on a Sunday to watch that. The country that has the most powerful weapons has the most influence in this world. What Jesus demonstrated by that victory over death is His power. And remember, he flashed that in his ministry when Jesus was healing, actually healing, when he actually raised people from the dead, when he opened the eyes of the blind. That was simply showing a little bit of that. Jesus was showing that power, in fact, when he came in earth in humble form. But what we have to remember now is All of that power is now in His hands as the one who died, the very Jesus who went to the cross. It's in the hands of a man. God, in the resurrection, showed that this one who died, a man, who also is God, not only died, but now is raised up and has His power. The revelation of Jesus Christ that we read is the prophecy how a man is now enthroned in heaven with complete victory over death and hell. That means he determines who will die and when and how, and who will be saved from hell and who will not. Now the Catechism is interested in the power of that victory as it relates to us. And what we have to see is that there's two sides of this. The one pertains to the victory as such, but notice the first thing the Catechism recognizes is that by His resurrection He has overcome death, or is victorious over death, so that something. Remember that. He overcame death to do something. The resurrection had a higher purpose, another end. And it's first of all that he might make us partakers of that righteousness which he purchased for his death. We have to pause there. Because that's not something that we would think of. In my experience, in our churches, when it comes to the resurrection, we immediately go to two and three. and usually just the three, that the resurrection of Jesus has implications for my death, but not so much for the here and now, and then certainly not anything that has to do with righteousness. This is important. The Catechism puts this first, and it puts it first for a reason, that He might make us partakers of that righteousness which He purchased for us by His death. Do you see the importance of that? The importance of that, in our own thinking, is this. We associate being partakers of the righteousness of Jesus Christ with His death. And rightly so. We preach, we remember in communion, we remember all kinds of things about the cross. There on the cross, He purchased righteousness for us. He atoned for our sins. We have words like redemption, satisfaction. We've seen satisfaction come up again and again and again and again and again. And so much as that true, we will say we were forgiven at the cross or we were justified at the cross. That's true. But it can't and doesn't stay there. It has to be applied. It has to become ours. The idea is it's, as it were, over there. It's in Christ. Now how does it become ours? And it's become popular in some circles to just, that doesn't matter. It's all about the cross. We preach Jesus Christ and Him crucified. The resurrection and all the other power that comes out of the resurrection, it's like it's not necessary, not needed. Christ could have, well, just as stayed in the grave. Please read the meditation of Herman Hoeksema that I have in the bulletin, very important. The idea is that Jesus had to come out of the grave now to make us partakers. That is the idea that it has to go from here to there. It has to come from Him to us. It has to become ours. Now the means by which that happens is faith. Paul in Romans 6 is going to call it baptism. that by baptism, that is, by the baptism of the Spirit, in that baptism of the Spirit we are given faith, and by that faith we are united with Christ, so that we're buried with Him and we're raised with Him to newness of life. That's really about number two here. But the first thing we have to understand is what we receive is the righteousness of Christ. And that's victory. The idea is we wouldn't believe it. The idea is that faith believes this. It actively believes this. It not only is joined to Christ, but it actually believes this, and this is the first thing it believes, that the righteousness of Christ is mine. And it's mentioned first here for that reason. The idea is that if you don't believe that the righteousness of Christ is yours, that you're a partaker in it, you will never believe the other two. And the full victory of the resurrection of Christ is forfeited, as it were, even in our own experience. I'll be very practical. If you don't believe that the righteousness of Christ is yours, that you partake in that, you're going to be afraid of death. And rightly so. And if you're afraid of death, you're going to find all kinds of other ways to defeat death. You're going to find all sorts of other ways to ignore death. This is central and foremost to the Christian life. The real Christian life of experience begins with being a partaker of the righteousness of Christ through his resurrection. That is, faith in his resurrection. Faith believes that Jesus Christ came forth from the grave and that had something to do with my righteousness. And that something is, is it proved he purchased that by his obedience. He fully satisfied all the justice and judgment of God, satisfied for our sins, so that God had to raise him from the grave. For God to leave him in the grave would have been unjust, unrighteous, wrong, sinful, wicked. Think that way. So that when he came forth, you see, The believer goes, that's proof right there. That's all the proof I need to know that all my sins were fully satisfied. And when faith believes that, faith also believes therefore then that his righteousness is mine. It's not just that he paid for my sins, but everything that God requires of me, he satisfied. God can't charge me with needing anything more to pay for those sins. And it's only then that we're freed from death. And not just in the future when we die, we're freed already now. The Bible expresses it as absence of fear. There's faith and then there's fear. Those are two opposite things. You can't be afraid and have faith. If you have faith, you're not afraid. And what you're not afraid of is death and hell. That's liberating. That's the power of the resurrection. It liberates us from that fear. But that's step one. Even there we can't stop and end it. Like, that's the sum total of the Christian life. As Lord's Day 32 is going to bring up in a little bit, it's going to expand on point two and say, Why must we do good works? And the answer is, we don't do good works so we're freed from death. We don't do good works so that we can atone for our sins. We don't do good works in order to merit and earn our salvation or as a condition to salvation. But we do good works because the same Christ who came from the grave, to put it this way, is we are by His power raised to a new life. This same Christ, who atoned for our sins in His grace, by His grace also renews us by His Spirit. And that's the power of it. It's the power of His Spirit. The same Spirit that raised Him up from the grave and brought Him out of that tomb, through the tomb, through the grave clothes, put Him on earth, then took Him to heaven. That same Spirit now comes back to us. You can call it faith. You can't have faith that makes you partaker of the righteousness of Christ without the same faith, the same Spirit that renews you to a holy life. You can't have it. You can't have one without the other. The one necessarily follows the other because it's the same faith, same Spirit. It's the same resurrection. And it's the same power of that resurrection. That's why we don't wait until we're actually raised from the grave to know anything about it. We don't have to wait until we die and our soul goes to heaven. The child of God here and now knows the power of the resurrection and knows it experientially in his own life as a new life. And you don't become living because you live that new life. But because you have a new life, you live. Pretty obvious. Now there's one last benefit that's mentioned. And again, we'll be brief here. because we'll pick this back up again in a few Lord's Days. But it's the fact that His resurrection is a guarantee. Now understand again, it's a guarantee only for those who have faith. If you don't have faith, you have no guarantee. If you can't believe the resurrection, if you can't believe Jesus Christ came from the grave, then you're not going to believe the righteousness of Christ is yours, and you're not gonna believe you have a new life, and of course, there'll be no pledge or guarantee either. They all go together. And if you have one, you have the other. But you say, what's a guarantee of? Well, the catechism says it's a guarantee or pledge of our blessed resurrection. But let's break that down a little bit, because you might immediately go to that and say, well, OK, so it's a guarantee that I'm going to be raised from there in my body. And it is that. But remember, it's also a guarantee of everything else related to it. It's a guarantee that seals to my faith that I'm righteous. You don't have to just look at the cross to know you're righteous. You have to look at the cross and the resurrection and say, there's the proof. That's why the scriptures call the resurrection of Christ our justification. Kind of interesting. You would think our justification would be associated with the cross, but the Bible connects it to the resurrection. So it's a pledge of that. It's a pledge that what he actually said he did, he actually did. And that by that, he earned the righteousness, and now it's mine. It's a pledge of that. It's a pledge of the new life. It's kind of amazing that one not only believes they're raised to do life, but they actually can see it at work, know it at work. It's a pledge of the fact of the resurrection. I know, there's times when we doubt. We doubt in our faith. We look around and we say, is all this real? Did Jesus really rise from the grave? Did He really die? And then you have to remember that if it's a pledge of the blessed resurrection, it means that part of it is that you believe the resurrection. And oftentimes, you can ask yourself that. Well, do you believe Jesus rose from the grave? Oh, yeah. Well, how do you believe that? They don't come from Satan. I don't come from the world. That's not the thinking of natural man. The resurrection is utter foolishness to man. How do you believe that? So it's a pledge of the gift of faith, what faith believes, how we believe it. It's a pledge of what kind of resurrection it's going to be. I think we instinctively know that the resurrection of us when Christ returns isn't going to be a resurrection like Lazarus. or others who were raised from the grave by Jesus or prophets and had to die again, that it's a resurrection to immortal life. We believe the fact of it. We believe that we'll be raised in this body. It'll be made immortal. It'll be made spiritual. It'll be made incredible. It's a pledge of that. Why? Because we can look at his body. We can see what happened to him. He's a man just like us. So our bodies will be raised like his body. And it's amazing faith should contemplate that and remember that. When we're sick or sickly, we have to deal with all the miseries and troubles. We have to remember there's a day coming when we shall have a body like unto our Lord Jesus Christ. And even then, this is helpful too, it's amazing to look at what he did on earth in that body. How he could eat and drink and walk and talk and go here and there. He wasn't a ghost. He wasn't a spirit. He had a real human body, but then go see Him in heaven like Stephan saw Him. Go see Him in heaven like Paul saw Him. Go see Him in heaven like John saw Him. And all that glory in a human body. Go look at the picture of Him. The vision here is of a man. And His resurrection is a pledge that that's what you and I are going to look like someday. We're going to share in that glory. Those glorified bodies. And then lastly, of course, is the fact that we will actually come out of the grave. I mentioned this recently with the death. I mentioned it in connection with the fact that Jesus went into the grave. The grave is the testimony that no man saves himself. It is the testimony that we don't even save ourselves by our own cooperation. It's the testimony we don't save ourselves even by our faith. We are saved indeed by faith, but we receive it through faith. Oh yes, and we're active. The child of God is alive. He's raised to a new life. But the grave nevertheless is the testimony that it is all the power and the victory, the resurrection power and victory of Jesus Christ. The fact that you have faith and can believe by faith that you're partaker of the righteousness of Christ, you didn't do that. You didn't work that. Oh yes, I believe. Oh yes, I will come out of the grave. Oh yes, I shall live. Oh yes, I live now. But that's not by your power. That's not by your strength. And the grave is the testimony of it. Because that's where you and I go. And there's only one way out. There's only one way out. On the one hand, you can say it's through faith in Jesus Christ. That's correct. But faith in Jesus Christ what? faith that Jesus Christ is returning and one day he's gonna stand over your grave and say, get up. Jesus Christ is as it were going to reach his hand down to the six feet of soil and find all the pieces, parts that were you and here you come out of the grave. From the humiliation and all that to the glorification that he has. That's what his resurrection is a pledge of. Believe that. Amen. Our Father which art in heaven, O Lord, we thank Thee for the resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ, and for faith that we might believe in Him. that being joined to him, we believe in the power and victory of his resurrection, that indeed his resurrection makes us partakers of his righteousness, that indeed his resurrection is the power of a new life for us and is a pledge, a guarantee of our resurrection. So help, Lord, our unbelief and increase our faith. In Jesus' name, amen.