RESURRECTION LIFE: TALK 1

Acts 2:4247, 1 Peter 2:1925, John 10:110

1. How Our Lives are shaped by the Future

In 1946 the head of 20th Century-Fox dismissed the

chances of Television becoming popular by saying,
Television won't be able to hold on to any market it
captures after the first six months. People will soon get
tired of staring at a plywood box every night.

Although we might wish he was right, he was clearly

wrong.

There have been other failed predictions in the world of

technology.

Thomas Watson who was the chairman of IBM in 1943

was also wrong when he said "I think there is a world
market for maybe five computers."

Ken Olson, the president, chairman and founder of Digital

Equipment Corp. made a similar marketing mistake in
1977 when he said There is no reason anyone would
want a computer in their home.
Imagine if it was possible to go back in time to 1977 and
give Ken Olson the latest MacBook laptop, iPad or iPhone.
Not only do most homes have computers but most
handbags and school children have them as well. And we
can guess that if he could have got his hands on iPad,
Ken Olson would have immediately changed the direction
of his company.

The Bible teaches that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is

not simply a past event, but a foretaste of the future. The
Resurrection of Jesus brings the power and character of
Gods future, a future that would otherwise be
unpredictable, into the midst of human history so that we
can change the direction of our lives according to Gods
purpose.

2. The Hopes of the Jewish people at the time of

Jesus.
One of the big claims the Bible makes about our world is
that God has not finished with our world yet. In its current
state, whether that is due to the limitations of the natural
order or the result of human sin, the world is not
complete.
Before the coming of Jesus, faithful Jews looked forward
to the time when God would bring restoration and new-
life, to both the people of Israel and the world. Their
source of hope came from prophets like Isaiah who had
spoken on behalf of God hundreds of years earlier.

We hear God speak in Isaiah chapter 65:17-19

For I am about to create new heavens

and a new earth;
the former things shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
18
But be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I am about to create Jerusalem as a joy,
and its people as a delight.
19
I will rejoice in Jerusalem,
and delight in my people;
no more shall the sound of weeping be heard in it,
or the cry of distress.

This passage was composed during a time when the

Jewish kingdom was being swallowed up and enslaved by
the rise of the Babylonian empire. Clearly it concerns the
future of the Jewish people. But reaching further than the
Jewish hope that God would restore them, there was an
even greater expectation that God would actually renew
the whole world and bring it to completion. I am about
to create new heavens and a new earth.

By the time of Jesus most faithful Jewish people

envisioned the new heavens and new earth to be a
resurrection to life. Resurrection was the future event at
which God would bring human history to an end and
judge it in the light of his justice and purpose.
Resurrection would be the moment when Gods new
creation would begin. Those who were faithful to Gods
purpose would rise to life and those who were faithless
would face judgement and death.

Interlude1
1
Lets pause for a moment...because living 2000 years later in a thoroughly modern
and sceptical world means that we dont naturally think in these terms.

So I want you to imagine that youve been reading a novel, with great characters, an
absorbing plot and lots of twists and turns. Its so good you decide to do an all night
reading marathon to finish it, only to discover at two in the morning that its a flimsy
old paperback and the last three chapters have fallen out.

Something like that happened to me once, and I can assure you that its
disappointing. Because as we all know its only when we get to the conclusion of a
novel, or to the punch-line of a good joke, that we can make sense of it as a whole.

In a sense human history and even the history of our universe is like an unfinished
novel. We can make theories about what it all means, where its heading and what
our part in it should be, but our theories are always going to be incomplete because
the final event of history could suddenly upset our best guesses.
3. The Future Arrives with Jesus and is Confirmed
Through Resurrection
When Jesus began his ministry he proclaimed the
message, Repent for the Kingdom of God has come
near. Essentially he was claiming that Gods end-time
restoration and renewal had begun here and now through
his own work.

In other words: the healing, the restoration, the

forgiveness and reconciliation, as well as the judgement
that people received through their encounters with Jesus
were advance experiences of Gods restoration and
judgment we will all face at the end of history.

In John 10:1-10 Jesus described himself as a Shepherd

and he said, I came that they might have life and have it
abundantly Just as the 23rd Psalm describes God as
leading his people like a shepherd, Jesus leads us to a
future that God has prepared. At the same time he

Thats precisely what the Chairman of IBM in 1943 would have discovered when he
lived to see the global demand for computers go much higher than 5.

But what the Jewish and Christian worldviews tell us is that we can know the goal of
human history because God has revealed it. Gods future, Gods new creation, was
experienced by Jesus followers when he rose bodily from the dead. It was as if they
were reading a novel with some chapters missing, but they now had the final chapter
in all its glorious, climactic sense of completion.
warned that there are other ways of approaching life that
are wrong and lead only to destruction.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ was Gods ultimate

confirmation that Jesus really is the real deal. He is the
one in whom Gods forgiveness, purpose and future
restoration is revealed to humankind. He is the goal, the
end point of human history as a whole and of our lives
individually. There is no life in separation from him.

Because of Christs resurrection human lives may be

shaped to conform to Gods future.

4. Practice
The early Jesus followers recognised that Gods new age
had begun with the resurrection of Jesus. Of course they
knew that there was still more to come. But because of
their trust in Jesus and his resurrection they began living
there and then as citizens of Gods future rather than
according to the conventional wisdom of their day.

Our relation to God, our ethics, our morality, the way we

behave towards people and the world around us are to be
shaped by Jesus and not by other claims as to what is
true or how we should live.

The apostle Peter emphasised this when he wrote to the

churches (in 1 Peter 2:21) God called you to do good,
even if it means suffering, just as Christ suffered for you.
He is your example, and you must follow in his steps.

Don Brash, the former Governor of the Reserve Bank,

recently had his memoirs published and I had the
opportunity to hear him discussing it with Kim Hill on
National Radio. During the interview he bravely
acknowledged the mistakes he had made that caused
two marriages to fail. His mistake was to be repeatedly
unfaithful in marriage, but he justified his behaviour by
blaming evolution. In other words, he is biologically wired
by evolution to be attracted to multiple members of the
opposite sex.

This is where the Christian worldview parts way with

much of the modern, so-called scientific worldview. Im
not saying that Christians cant accept theories offered
by science, or that all people who accept evolution are
unfaithful in marriage. But purpose and meaning in life
are not found in being pushed from behind by our genes.
For us to think that is similar to the mistake the CEO of
IBM made in 1943. True meaning is revealed from the
future by Christs resurrection and our purpose is to be
lead and drawn into Gods future by the renewing,
resurrection power of Gods Spirit.

For us to rediscover vitality and purpose in life we need

only learn from the early church. Luke tells us in Acts 2,
how they were shaped heart, body, mind and soul by the
Resurrection of Jesus.

Their minds, their imaginations were shaped by Apostolic

teaching. In other words we need to take time to hear
and share the authentic story of Jesus, not only in church
but in our homes.
They were constantly reminded of the centrality of Jesus
in Gods plan by sharing the Lords supper. When we do
this today, we not only remember his death, but
celebrate his resurrection and his return at the end of
history.
Because they trusted Jesus, they were praying people,
empowered by the same Holy Spirit who raised Jesus to
life. They lived as people of Gods future. The fruit of that
were lives characterised by sharing and generosity. We
too can live out of the resources of Gods future by
trusting Jesus, practicing his way of life and learning to
live in the power of Gods Spirit.
To be Christian is rather like a 1970s computer company
chairman who receives a laptop from the future and
makes all his decisions on the basis of that gift.

But of course its more important than that because the

decisions we make in relation to Christs resurrection
concern our character and our purpose in the world and
whether we are assured of our ultimate place in Gods
future of new creation.

Our purpose is to do what the apostle Paul so beautifully

described in his letter to the Philippians:

I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection

and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in
11
his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection
12
from the dead. Not that I have already...reached the
goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ
Jesus has made me his own.2

2
The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version (Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers,
1989), Php 3:1012.