Actes 26:8

Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?

Why is the resurrection incredible

I. Incredulity has many causes and justifies itself with many reasons. It has never seen a resurrection, and it thinks it believes only what it sees. There have been plenty of funerals, but nothing more, so far as its experience goes. Some appear to have merely the rudiments of a soul, and are scarcely conscious of superiority to the brute creation. One such said to a minister, “Your preaching does me no good; I have no soul; I want no one to talk to me about an imaginary hereafter; I shall die like a dog.” Others shrink from the righteous retributions of the future. They resist the evidences of judgment, and fight the thought of justice. The sophistries of self-sufficiency; the solicitations of curious and overweening ambition; the deceptions of pride; the superstitions of the ignorant and credulous; the whisperings that emanate from the father of lies; all marshal their forces to crucify hope. There are those who count the thought of resurrection too good to be true. Others dwell so narrowly upon the mechanical and material side of life, that they forget the spirit. Natural science and its literature are fettered with earthly limitations.

II. Natural religion balances the improbability with its own probability. Negative evidence is worthless. Fifty millions of people did not see Garfield shot, but they could not clear Guiteau. Love is not measured with a yard stick, or focused under a microscope, but that does not breed scepticism. The soul expects immortality, and hungers for it with a Divine and deathless famine. Analogies prefigure it. It seems within the boundary of the thinkable to say that the Creator has power to recreate. It taxes no one’s faith to believe that the watchmaker is able to repair his handiwork. Probabilities prevail on a priori grounds. Pantheism with its impersonal mysticism, has its Nirvana. Hellenic verse has its Elysian fields. The Arctic Circle has its Walhalla. The antipodal aborigines have their happy hunting grounds; and Judaea had its Paradise.

III. Christ brings many infallible proofs to corroborate and confirm the hopes of benighted peoples. It is very common to demonstrate that certain things are impossible, but that amounts to nothing in the presence of facts. While science was showing that the Sirius could not carry coal enough to take her over the Atlantic, she crossed. While men were proving that lightning rods, railroads, gas, telegraphs, cables, and telephones were visionary, inventors were realising their dreams. No fair and honest man can discredit the witness of the best book on earth, nor can he invalidate the testimony of the only sinless man who ever lived. What does this history and this witness prove? Christ answered the hopes of the patriarchs. Job stood on the chasm between the quick and the dead, saying, “I know that my Redeemer lives.” Christ promised to rise again. “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will build it up again.” The empty tomb is evidence. The soldiers could not account for it. The Romans were baffled. The Jews were nonplussed. The disciples were most amazed of all. Witnesses testified to what they knew. Their testimony could not be silenced. There is absolutely nothing to discredit their story. Their testimony convinced the prosecution. Within fifty days three thousand men changed front. The Sabbath is evidence of the resurrection. The first day of every week is an Easter. Christendom is evidence. It is a nineteenth century miracle. (J. B. Donaldson.)

The resurrection of the dead

It would be difficult to explain how the identity of the body can be preserved while the matter composing it is changed; but our difficulty in explaining can present no reason for denying the fact.

I. It is neither against the power, the wisdom, nor the will of God. God wills nothing that is not wise and good, and whatever He wills He has the power to accomplish. He has performed greater things than raising the dead.

II. We see vital exemplifications of it daily. The matter of our bodies undergoes a change every seven years, yet our body’s identity is preserved. Look at trees and plants in winter time, and see them when the breath of spring has touched them into life. Study the insect, at first a crawling worm. The hour arrives when it bursts its cerements and becomes a pure-winged, beautiful creature, sailing in sunny skies. Paul saw our grave in the furrow of the plough; our burial in the corn dropped in the soil; and our resurrection in the grain bursting its sheath to wave its head in summer sunshine.

III. The resurrection of the body is less inexplicable than its creation. It is not the same thing to rekindle an extinguished lamp and to show fire that has never yet appeared.

IV. The Lord Jesus Christ purposely rose again in His human body as a pattern and first fruit of our resurrection. (Homiletic Monthly.)

The resurrection of the dead

The strength of Christian evidence consists in this--that its leading truths rest on facts, and that those facts rest chiefly on sonic form of sensible demonstration. The resurrection respects a fact of which the witnesses must have been competent to speak if they were but honest; and dishonesty in the first Christians is out of the question. If it were so, it was a dishonesty which sought everyone’s good but their own. And as far from all rational probability is the alternative supposition that the witnesses were incompetent to testify concerning this fact. “In the mouth of two witnesses shall every word be established,” it is declared. What, then, shall it he in the mouth of five hundred? Why should it he thought incredible?

I. It supposes no greater amount of miraculous power than is required for the ordinary operations of nature. It is no greater miracle that a body should have a second existence, than that it should have a first; that dry bones should, at God’s bidding, put on holy and bright forms, than that a dead seed should have power to fill the air with perfume, or a torpid chrysalis burst forth into new activity and life. The only difference is that the one is a familiar miracle, the other we have yet to see.

II. It puts honour on that human nature which the son of God condescended to assume. The work of redemption throughout may be called a work of substitution and interchange of relations between Christ and His people. He took the form of a servant that we might receive the adoption of sons; He is made sin for us that we may be made the righteousness of God in Him; He is humbled by assuming the fashion of our bodies; we are to be exalted by being fashioned into His. Noble therefore as our body is by the original designation of its Author, nobler still as it has become by association with incarnate Godhead, it is, until it has put on its resurrection form.

III. The deliverance of the body from death is necessary to the completeness of Christ’s victory. The redemption of man may be considered either as virtual or as actual. We are virtually redeemed when the covenanted price has been paid, but actual redemption takes place only on the complete liberation of the captive. The former of these describes our present condition. We are bought with a price; we are the freedmen of Christ; but actually liberated we are not, because we are “waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body”; when the spoils of death shall be given up, and the captive of the grave shall be set free, and, with the rising of saints that sleep, shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory.” Indeed we cannot conceive of Christ’s taking away sin without taking away also the death that came by sin. The enemy must have nothing--not even man’s dust.

IV. It is necessary to the confirmation of our hopes of a blessed immortality. I mean not to say that there could have been no immortality to the soul without the body rising, but that the body being raised is to be to us an assurance that the soul should live also. I much doubt whether ignorance on the part of the ancients of this doctrine did not lie at the foundation of all that troubledness, and obscurity, and myth which we see connected with all merely philosophical views of a life to come. Their conscious, intelligent life was connected with a visible substance, and that substance they saw went to decay, and had received no intimation that that decay could ever pass away? How, then, was this snapped thread of personal identity to be joined again? Can we, then, marvel to find in every page of the New Testament traces of the godly jealousy entertained by the apostles about this one doctrine? They felt it was the very keystone of the Christian arch--the life, and power, and strength of our revealed system--the one visible door opening into immortality. Matthias might be a great man and a good, but he must not be of the number of the apostles unless he had been a witness of the resurrection. The Corinthians might have strong faith and good preachers, but faith and preaching were alike vain if Christ were not risen. (Daniel Moore, M. A.)

The credibility of the resurrection

The resurrection is credible because--

I. Possible. It is exhibited in the Bible, not as a speculative truth which must be believed because taught, but as so intimately bound up with our salvation that to prove it false were to prove the human race unredeemed. “If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.” The question is, whether there lie such objections against its possibility as justify us in rejecting the testimony of Scripture. But, then, nothing short of distinct impossibility would bear us out in such rejection. It is not its stupendousness, nor that it countlessly outmatches all finite ability, which will warrant our questioning it. The alone point is, Can we demonstrate that the effecting of it would surpass the Omnipotent? If the Bible had ascribed it to a finite agent the disproportion between the thing done and the doer would furnish ground enough for rejecting it. But will anyone say that it exceeds the capabilities of Him who is to achieve it? We cannot see why the work should be reckoned too great for God, unless we are prepared to say the same of the other works confessedly His. I look out on the wonder workings of creative wisdom and might, and I gather from the magnificent spectacle witness in abundance that a resurrection is possible. It is possible that that august Being, who cannot be perplexed by the multiplicity of concerns, may, yea, and must, take cognisance of each atom of dust, as well as of every planet and of every star; and why should He be unable to distinguish what hath belonged to man, and to appropriate to each individual his own?

II. It rests on sufficient evidence. Christ rose, why should not we? It is impossible that the apostles wilfully propagated a lie. Who would undertake the advocacy of falsehood, if, instead of being a gainer, he was certain to be a loser? We have only then to decide whether their belief rested on sufficient proof. The length of their previous acquaintance, and the ample opportunity of after identification, concurred to secure them against taking a person for Christ who was not Christ. If, then, they were neither deceivers nor deceived, we prove, with a kind of mathematical precision, that they must have been both rightly intentioned and informed. And when you add to this, that the number of these witnesses is greater than is required for the establishment of a matter in a court of assize, we think that the vindication of the credibility of their testimony is to be set aside by nothing short of an obstinacy which will not, or an infatuation which cannot, be convinced.

III. In the details which are given as to the body in which the dead shall appear. The grand characteristic of the resurrection body is to be likeness to the glorified body of Christ, seeing that St. Paul declares of the Saviour that He shall “change our vile body,” etc., and there is every reason for concluding that Christ, when transfigured, appeared in that glorified humanity in which He now sits at the Father’s right hand. And if so, we learn that our bodies, though made wondrously radiant, shall be distinguished as now, the one from the other, by their characteristic features. We, then, shall be changed, but not so changed as to interfere with recognition. And if we would examine more minutely into the change which shall pass upon our bodies, enough is told us by St. Paul in 1 Corinthiens 15:1, to satisfy all but a presumptuous curiosity. “It is sown in corruption; it is raised in incorruption,” etc. (H. Melvill, B. D.)

The resurrection of the dead

I. The credibility of this doctrine.

1. The resurrection of the dead is not in any way incompatible with the power of God, by which, according to the representation of the Scriptures, it is to be accomplished. Where, we ask, a few years ago, were the particles which now exist, organised and animated in the person of any individual in this assembly? Were they not as scattered as ever death and the grave can make them?

2. However great and amazing as an event, the resurrection of the dead is not dissimilar to many of those renewals which we witness in nature. Doth God take care for flowers? and will He abandon man, His last, His fairest, His most loved workmanship, to an everlasting winter in the tomb?

3. The resurrection of the dead is indispensable in order to give rectitude and perfection to the retributive government of God.

4. Stupendous as this event must be, it has already in some instances taken place. How big with instruction, how confirmatory of our faith, are those examples recorded by the evangelists!

5. The resurrection of the dead forms one of the leading and peculiar doctrines of the new covenant dispensation, taught by many unequivocal, incontrovertible words, as well as by historical record.

II. The consolation which this doctrine is calculated to afford. This great truth, ever delightful and consolatory to reflect upon, is especially so on two very solemn and important occasions.

1. The first of these is the loss of our friends by death. Is there in this assembly a mother who, in the course of providence, has been called to part for a term of years with her little son, to be apprenticed or educated far from home, or perhaps to go on the long, long voyage. It was not without a struggle of feeling, not without many tears, that she could take the parting look at the lad, although she knew that his absence was both for his and for her advantage. During that absence many a thought, many a wish, is sent after him; the months and the weeks are counted; and their slow advance is cheered by the reflection he will return, and every day brings it nigher. At length the day arrives; the youth enters his parent’s dwelling, and stands fair and full in his mother’s view. What that mother feels as her eye wanders in ecstasy over his figure--so much taller, so much stouter, so much improved! what that mother feels as in transports of tender delight she presses her offspring to her bosom! that or something like that! that or something more pure, more exquisite, more Divine, is what we shall feel when in the day of God we shall meet with those who are gone before, and meet to part no more!

2. The second occasion on which the strong and holy consolations of this doctrine will doubtless be required is the season of our own death. With a conscience washed in the atoning blood of Jesus Christ, and a soul firmly believing His resurrection, and ours through Him, we shall be prepared to meet sickness, and death, and the grave, with sweet composure and holy triumph. Oh! grave! I have misconceived thy character! Since Jesus has descended into thy dreary regions, the passage to them is smoothed, they are illumined, they are sanctified. Oh! how is thy character changed! Thine is now the sweetest pillow on which the wearied head ever reclined! Thine the safest retreat till this storm be over-past! Soon wilt thou faithfully return the inestimable deposit, and return it to “glory, and honour, and immortality.” (James Bromley.)

The resurrection credible

Concerning the souls of our departed Christian friends we suffer no distress. Our main trouble is about their bodies. Even the perfect Man could not restrain His weeping at Lazarus’ tomb. The doctrine of the Resurrection teaches us that we need have no trouble about the body, it has not gone to annihilation. The Lord’s love to His people is a love towards their entire manhood. He took into union with His Deity both soul and body, and redeemed both, and both are sanctified by the Divine indwelling. So our complete manhood shall have it in its power to glorify Him forever. This being our hope, we nevertheless confess that sometimes the evil heart of unbelief cries, “Is it possible?” At such times the text is needful.

I. Let us look this difficulty in the face. We rejoice in the fact that there will be a great change in the body; that its materialism will have lost all its grossness and corruption, and that it will be adapted for higher purposes; but there shall be an identity between the body in which we die and the body in which we rise. Not, however, that identity is the same thing as absolute sameness of substance and continuance of atoms. We are living in the same bodies which we possessed twenty years ago; yet no single atom remains that was in it then. Admit the like identity in the resurrection, and it is all we ask. Now this hope is naturally surrounded with many difficulties, because:--

1. The large majority of dead bodies have been utterly dissolved.

2. Think how widely diffused are the atoms which once built up living forms.

3. The difficulty increases when we reflect that all men will rise again. Think of the myriads who have passed away in countries like China, of those who have perished by shipwreck, plague, and war.

4. The wonder increases when we remember in what strange places many of these bodies now are. In fact, where are not man’s remains? Blows there a single wind down our streets without whirling along particles of what once was man?

5. And, moreover, to make the wonder extraordinary beyond conception, they will rise at once, or perhaps in two great divisions (Apocalypse 20:5). Where shall they stand? What plains of earth shall hold them?

6. And then this resurrection will not be a mere restoration, but in the case of the saints will involve a remarkable advance. We put into the ground a bulb, and it rises as a golden lily; we drop into the mould a seed, and it comes forth an exquisite flower; even thus, the bodies, which are sown in burial, shall spring up by Divine power into outgrowths, surpassing all imagination in beauty.

7. One of the difficulties of believing it is, that there are positively no full analogies in nature by which to support it. Some have seen in sleep the analogy of death, and in our awakening the resurrection. But a continuance of life is manifest to the man in his dreams and to all onlookers. The development of insects is quoted as a striking analogy. But there is life in the chrysalis, organisation, in fact, the entire fly. Nor is the analogy of the seed much more conclusive, for a life germ always remains, and the crumbling organisation becomes its food from which it builds itself up again. The resurrection stands alone; and, concerning it, the Lord might well say, “Behold, I do a new thing in the earth.” Here, then, is the difficulty. Is it a credible thing that the dead should be raised?

II. Remove the difficulty. It might seem incredible that the dead should be raised, but why should it seem incredible that God should raise the dead? Grant that God is, that He is omnipotent, and that He has said the dead shall be raised, and belief is no longer hard but inevitable. Difficulty is not in the dictionary of the Godhead. Is anything too hard for the Lord?

1. When Paul uttered our text he was speaking to one to whom he could say, “Believest thou the prophets? I know that thou believest!” It was, therefore, good reasoning to say, “Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you?” etc. For, as a Jew, Agrippa had the testimony of Job--“For I know that my Redeemer liveth”; and of David (Psaume 16:1); of Isaiah (Ésaïe 26:19); of Daniel (Daniel 12:2); of Hosea (Osée 13:14).

2. To us as Christians there has been granted yet fuller evidence (Jean 5:28; Jean 6:30; Romains 8:11; Philippiens 3:21; 1 Corinthiens 15:1).

3. At the same time it may be well to look around us, and note what helps the Lord has appointed for our faith.

(1) There are many wonders which we should not have believed by mere report, if we had not come across them by experience. The electric telegraph, e.g. When our missionaries in tropical countries have told the natives of ice, the natives have refused to believe. After the resurrection we shall regard it as a Divine display of power as familiar to us as creation and Providence now are.

(2) Will resurrection be a greater wonder than creation? To create out of nothing is quite as marvellous as to call together scattered particles and refashion them.

(3) Christ rose again and He is the cause of your resurrection, the type of it, the foretaste of it, the guarantee of it.

(4) Remember also, that you who are Christians have already experienced as great a work as the resurrection, for you have risen from the dead as to your innermost nature.

III. Our relation to this truth

1. Comfort one another with these words. You have lost those dear to you. Sorrow ye must, but sorrow not as those that are without hope.

2. Let us cheer our hearts in prospect of our own departure.

3. Expecting a blessed resurrection, let us respect our bodies. Bodies that are to dwell forever in heaven, should not be subjected to pollution here below.

4. The ungodly are to rise again, but it will be to a resurrection of woe. “Fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell.” (C. H. Spurgeon.)