Acts 26:8

Acts 26:8

The Resurrection a Fact of History.

I The fact that Christ has risen from the dead is the assumption on which St. Paul builds up all his teaching on the subject of the resurrection. It is true that we should consider more carefully than we are in the habit of doing what is involved in this. There are signs that modern religious thought stands in need of the invigorating influence of the facts on which Christian theology is constructed. St. Paul preached two facts one, the resurrection of Christ in the body, as the firstfruits of the general resurrection of mankind; the other, the spiritual resurrection, as directly connected with the former, as flowing immediately from it. How easy would the Apostle's task comparatively have been, if he had thought it right to conceal the first fact and publish only the second! He would have pleased rather than alienated the intellectual Greek by expounding the miracle of a spiritual resurrection, if he had only consented not to press the physical resurrection of Christ God's power over our bodies as well as souls. The Sadducee would not have interrupted his discourse, but listened on, and smiled to listen to a dream so beautiful. But St. Paul had nothing to consider but truth, and he spoke it to the end.

II. If Christ has not risen, then is your faith vain and our preaching vain. Beware of dreaming that somehow, some day, there will be a change in you from evil to good from restlessness to rest from sorrow to joy while at the same time you hold it as an open question whether Christ rose again. Let us not dream that we can rise out of our dark selves, save by what St. Paul calls in no figure, but as the most literal of facts, "the power of His resurrection."

A. Ainger, Sermons,p. 195.

I. However far back the successive orders in creation may date, however dim and incalculably distant, or however comparatively recent the period of their first issue from the creative influence and however gradual the mode of it nay, however in the course of countless myriads of centuries they may have developed, according to some conjectures from some single, original, and very inferior type still the first production of that original and inferior type was a miracle, for nothing can come out of nothing except by an act, not of combination but of new creation; and the first appearance of that something, however imperfectly organised, was a miracle. It would seem to be an inference from this that for the performance by the Almighty of some transaction hitherto unprecedented, the only condition wanted is a competent necessity, an adequate occasion, a sufficient inducement.

II. With the competency of the occasion comes the special exercise of omnipotence. If the beneficent design of affording a life's happiness to the creature and its progeny was sufficient to evoke the exertion of omnipotence in the creation and animation of a worm, was the authentication of the sublimest hopes of mankind, the confirmation of their belief in Jesus, the revival of their confidence in immortality, was this too small an object to demand, to deserve, to justify, to render probable the employment of almighty power in the reanimation of the Son of God? If the enjoyment of one day's life to a little insect were enough to evoke a miracle in the creation of the ephemeris, was the assurance of immortality to all mankind, the verification of the gospel, and the planting of the foundation-stone of Christianity, was this too little to be worthy of even such a miracle, so vast, stupendous, and august as the resurrection of the Redeemer?

W. H. Brookfield, Sermons,p. 168.

I. Why should it be thought a thing incredible to us that God should raise the dead? If I am God's child, partaker of Divine nature, I have the right to say that the natural, the credible, the probable hypothesis is, that my Father would give me an immortal existence; and if I can say that, then I have the right to remind you that if revivification of the spirit of man be probable, all this mass of historical testimony that Jesus rose from the dead on Easter morning regains its old value, and that it becomes natural, credible, possible, that Jesus Christ rose from the dead.

II. What are the consequences of so momentous a belief as that? Why, first, that we believe Christ's testimony about God, that we have an eternal Father, that He so loved us as to send His only begotten Son to save us from our sins, that He would not that the vilest and weakest should perish, but that all should come to repentance. What is more credible than that message, in sight of the fact that on Easter morning Christ overcame death? Do not let any man mistake. If we let go our hold of this truth, there will necessarily follow a lowering of hope and effort in every direction. If man thinks himself to be no better than a beast, he will live the life of a beast, he will seek the joys of a beast, seeking his happiness merely in sensual gratification. If we are not immortal, how can we sustain heroic effort or prolong sacrifice? And if when we leave our beloved at the edge of the grave we have to pronounce over their insensible remains, "Vale, vale in æternum vale,"then I say it is madness to encourage those deep affections of the heart, which then would become a despair and a torment. How shall we escape these terrible consequences? Simply, I believe, by clinging to Him who is the Resurrection and the Life, who has on this blessed Easter day conquered death and opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers.

Bishop Moorhouse, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxix., p. 273.

References: Acts 26:8. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. xviii., No. 1067; E. G. Robinson, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxx., p. 250; W. M. Taylor, The Gospel Miracles,p. 61; Acts 26:9. Three Hundred Outlines on the New Testament,p. 120. Acts 26:9. Preacher's Monthly,vol. viii., p. 47. Acts 26:14. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. iv., No. 202; Ibid., My Sermon Notes: Gospels and Acts,p. 195.Acts 26:16. Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxx., No. 1774.