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When I Am Raised Up, I Will Go Before You To Galilee
The following message is by Pastor John Piper. More information from Desiring God Ministries is available at www.desiringGod.org. The Gospel of Matthew, chapter 26, verses 26-32. Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it, broke it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, "Take, eat. This is my body." And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them, saying, "Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many, for the forgiveness of sins." I tell you, I will not drink again of this fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom. And when they had sung him, they went out to the Mount of Olives. Then Jesus said to them, "You will all fall away because of me this night. For it is written, I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered. But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee." Gracious Father, how good you are to us. This service, and one already downtown, eight o'clock, and another one going on right now, downtown is very, very precious gift to us that you would draw near to us, gather us as a people on this Easter Sunday morning. So I thank you from the bottom of my heart that Christ died for our sins, that he was buried, and that he was raised according to the Scriptures, and that you, Lord Jesus, reign at the Father's right hand today, and will come one day in power and great glory. And I ask that you would pour out your spirit upon us in these services, and that you would open the hearts of believers to see you afresh, and savor you, and enjoy you, and obey you, and, Lord, for unbelievers who have come in among us, we are so thankful that you have brought them here, and I pray that they would give you a fair hearing, and that you would break through whatever resistance or barriers may be in the way, and confirm your reality in their lives, so that they might have their sins forgiven, and enjoy eternal life with you. This is our prayer in Jesus' name, amen. On what basis now, I ask, should you believe that Jesus Christ has been raised from the dead? And I don't ask that question because my sermon is going to be an extended argument, but rather to simply wave a flag and give a signal that Christianity is based on historical events, in fact, not simply spiritual experiences or spiritual ideas. And what I mean by spiritual ideas are ideas like there's a God, humans have souls, or experiences like, if you believe Him in a time of crisis or believe in a higher power, then there might be equilibrium in your life, there might be a premonition of danger that would enable you to avoid it, things like that. True or false, those are not the basis or the sum of Christianity. Christianity is based on events in history, facts, that either happened or didn't happen, objective outside of us, Jesus was a real human being, died a real death, rose bodily from the dead, ate fish in His resurrection body, and ascended to God's right hand. We'll come again, these are facts, and if they aren't true, if they didn't happen, you can just forget about Christianity. Those churches that try to keep perpetuating a spiritual form and a tradition when they have denied these things are deceptive churches. We should just junk it all if the events are not true because it is the events. Christianity is based on built out of these facts plus others that God created the universe, that God sustains and guides the universe by His providence, that God broke into this world by His Son, Jesus Christ the God-Man, that this Jesus Christ lived a sinless life in Palestine about 2,000 years ago, that He died under Pontius Pilate, that three days later He was raised from the dead, that He appeared to His disciples for 40 days, giving the many infallible proofs that He was taken up into glory, sits at the Father's right hand, rings over the world today, will come visibly and historically into the world again. Those are all facts that either were, are, or will be true, and if they aren't true, just junk Christianity. Don't play games as though it's some kind of spiritual set of ideas or spiritual experiences that you can have no matter whether those facts are true or not. It's a really sad thing that there are even scholars who deny almost all of those facts and call themselves Christians, write books, earn money, and don't believe any of them. Well, let me give you, by way of introduction, five lines of evidence that you might follow out if you are asking on what basis should I believe that this fact, this resurrection, that this whole day is built around, what would be some evidences that I could follow out if I wanted to try to discern if this was so. And I'm only going to give you the lines of evidence rather than developing them and then we'll move to the main body of the message. Evidence line number one, the testimony of the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul, everybody knows existed, nobody denies that, that he wrote 13 of our letters, they're there in the New Testament, you can read them. He said that he saw the risen Christ. What's remarkable about the testimony of the Apostle Paul is that there is something that we call historical control because he said things like, "There are 500 people who saw Jesus Christ at once, many of whom are still alive." He said that in 1 Corinthians 15 and 7. Now, what historical control means is that when a person talks that way, when people are alive, they can falsify what he said. They can show up and say, "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa." That is not the way it happened. So when a person speaks publicly and boldly about others who have been involved in seeing a situation, there is this thing called historical control. That's the first line of evidence, the testimony of the Apostle Paul. The second line of evidence is the empty tomb in Jerusalem. And the reason the empty tomb in Jerusalem is so significant is that the claim that Jesus rose from the dead was spreading in Jerusalem amid a very hostile environment that wanted to do everything they could to deny that this didn't happen. And if they could have produced the body, that would have been proof, it's over. There is no Christianity and nothing to be built on here. And so the fact that it didn't happen and the body was unproducible is one other line of evidence, especially combined with this third line, namely the courage, the boldness, and the life-risking authority with which the disciples were preaching Christ's resurrection a few weeks after they had been terrified and run away and said on the way to them to Emmaus, we had hoped he would be the one to deliver Israel, had hoped it's over. They had said it's over and now they are risking their lives to preach that he's risen. And you generally don't risk your life for something you just made up a few days ago. Fourth line of evidence, the diversity of the testimony of Matthew Mark, Luke, John, Peter, James, the book of Hebrews, I would plead with you to do what I did about thirty years ago. And this hit me as a person in my late teens and early twenties. And I knew a lot about the skeptics that denied the validity of the New Testament and said these things really didn't happen and it just hit me like a ton of bricks. You know, I know a lot about these scholars that is unexemplary, private lives that are not exemplary, biases and prejudices. Why am I, along with so many other people, so ready to give credence to contemporary critical scholars instead of letting the original witnesses have a say to me to see whether or not they bear witness with credibility as much as these guys seem to automatically get because they open their mouth and call themselves authorities. And it just seemed to even out the playing field a little bit read the witnesses and see whether or not there is a way they talk and a way they argue and a way they present themselves and their truth that wins your confidence as much as a university professor would win your confidence. I have very little confidence in contemporary scholars. All human beings are shot through with prejudices, biases, desires that thing be one way and not another way. Give the New Testament a fair reading. That's all I'm asking, the diversity of witness coming at it from so many ways, from so many different people has a remarkably winning, compelling power. Last line of evidence, what I would call the ring of truth in the biblical vision of the world. What do I mean by that? I mean this, when you get the big picture in front of you of the Bible, from creation through history, God's redemptive work in Jesus Christ, the resurrection, the pouring out of the Holy Spirit, the emergence of the church, the analysis of our condition of sin, the analysis of God's character in all of his attributes. And you see all of that together, I ask you, if you'll do it seriously, will that not make more sense out of more things in the universe than any other competing philosophy of life? I asked my professor Leonard Gopult in Germany when I was a student there in 1972-3. I got up to courage one day because I wanted to know where this guy is coming from. I know he's a scholar, he knows a world-class, first-rate, book-writing scholar, and I just said to him one day, "Vahum glaubn zidin dastas noi attestiment ist vah." Why do you believe the New Testament is true? I just wanted to hear a simple answer in a hall in the library, that's what I ask it. Why do you believe the New Testament is true? And immediately, as though he had thought about it much, he said, "Because the message of the New Testament makes more sense out of more reality than anything I have ever discovered." That was the fifth line of evidence, and I think it is a very, very strong one because we can't become scholars in order to get saved. This idea that everybody has to become a knowledgeable, critical scholar in order to figure things out is absolutely unworkable if this gospel is to be what Jesus said it was, namely spreading to the nations. Well, that's by way of introduction. This is not a sermon about defending the resurrection. I want to develop two points, and they're simply these, namely, this risen Christ that we are proclaiming and singing about today is sovereign and merciful. That's my sermon. Jesus Christ is sovereign, Jesus Christ is merciful. We need both of those very, very much. We need mercy really badly. Everybody in this room, everybody knows that you need mercy because your conscience condemns you, at least from time to time your conscience condemns you. And you know when you're honest, in your most honest moments, you know that the law written across your heart, which rises up to say, "You're not measuring up to me." You know in your most honest moments that law written on your heart that condemns you from time to time is an echo of God's law. And therefore, if you are in trouble with you, you're more in trouble with God, if your conscience condemns you, God condemns you more because his law is reflected dimly in that law and this law is condemning you how much more, his perfect law and will, and when we're most honest late at night, the day's sins and our foul mouths and our selfishness and our quick-tempered crash and crush in on us as we're trying to go to sleep, we know we're guilty and we know we desperately need mercy. If there's not mercy, I am absolutely undone. We know that. The Bible teaches it and your conscience teaches it this morning and secondly we need sovereignty because if Jesus were merciful and he didn't have the power and the sovereignty to deal with the forces that threatened to undo us, what good would his mercy be? He would say, "Well, I really don't, anything bad happened to you, I really hope life goes well for you, I really hope you have a good eternity, but I can't manage this world. I can't manage your life, I don't have the authority, I don't have the power or sovereignty to care for you." That would be a very little use to us, wouldn't it? We are very vulnerable people and very fragile. Some of you may not feel that right now with the sun shining and maybe you're as healthy as can be this morning and all's going well in your life, but wake up. We are very vulnerable. What's going to happen in Iraq, in other Vietnam, Nicole is there, Doug is there, 125,000 others are there, what's going to happen to them and then out from there the rest of the world? What's going to happen between Israel and the Palestinians and the reverberations for the world from that tense situation? What's going to happen with North Korea and their continual claims about nuclear threat? What's going to happen when the next 9/11 on our soil happens? And what about my health? Just block out the big global issues for a moment and say, "What about my heart, my brain, my cancer, when am I going to wake up and there's going to be this strange feeling?" And I go to the doctor and he shakes his head, "What about my wife? What about her? When will she get sick? Which one of us will die first and what about my children and little children in this room right now?" I know, I talked to Talitha, my eight-year-old, I know children. She said to me the other night, "What will happen to me if you and mommy die?" Will I go with Abraham or Ben or Karsten? Karsten lives three hours away. She's dealing with it. She was thinking this through. I hadn't said anything. She just listens to me preach, I suppose. So we talked that through a little bit, but I know children ask those questions. Children know they're vulnerable. And if you're wise, if you're not got your head in the sand, you know you're vulnerable. All kinds of disasters, all kinds of calamities, all kinds of disease, all kinds of car accidents, strange things happen and you don't know about tomorrow. And if you think you do or that you can devote the rest of your life to protecting yourself, I plead with you, do not waste your time. Because if you try, if you try, all right, I know that that's true and I'm vulnerable and something might happen to me, that I can't control, therefore I will devote tremendous energy and I will spin and I will build in order to put walls around me. You know what? You're going to wake up in a few decades as a very whizzened, sad, self-pitying, selfish old man or old woman, barricaded behind the illusion of self-rot security. It will be an illusion. And the great thing about Christianity and having a sovereign Lord is that you don't need to waste your life protecting yourself. He will do just fine. He is sovereign over Iraq. He is sovereign over North Korea, Israel, 9/11, terrorists, mounds, view, city, council, and disease and disaster and accident for little children and adults. And since he's merciful and he's sovereign, he won't let anything happen to you. That is not ultimately good for you. I got an email yesterday from my wife's cousin in Georgia. Her husband had multiple bypass surgery about three weeks ago. Her son has advanced cystic fibrosis. On good Friday, he was in the emergency room coughing up blood. So a husband who's battling with heart disease and a son who is in the last stages perhaps of this racking disease called cystic fibrosis. And I want to read you her Easter response to this deal that the Lord has just dealt her in his sovereign mercy. God's grace is sufficient for each day. God grows us through. I'd never seen that phrase before. God grows us through. This type of problem happened on good Friday one other time, meaning her son coughing up blood. Every time it has happened, small bleeds or profuse ones, it has made me ponder how our heavenly father must have felt seeing his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, bleed and die for our sins. I can't possibly comprehend the love he has for us to sacrifice his son for me and for you. Praise the Lord. He did it and that he is risen indeed because he lives. We can face each day with his strength and the peace that passes all understanding. One of my goals in preaching by prayer is to bring about women and men and children who respond to heart disease and cystic fibrosis like that. Instead of the way the world does and some Christians who when they wind up at the emergency room, instead of seeing an emblem of the love of God, get in God's face and say, "Where are you?" It really matters a lot to me whether you believe that he is sovereign and that he is merciful. It will make all the difference in your life so let me show you where I got it from the text because the fact that I say it doesn't matter at all. What matters is that you see it in the Bible and the reason I chose Matthew 26, 26 following is because I saw it this week, last week, more fresh, more powerful in a new way that I had ever seen it before, so let's go to the text. First we'll look at the sovereignty of Jesus in this text and then we'll look at the mercy of Jesus in this text and I hope the two will come together in a very winsome, compelling way for you to love Christ this morning. The sovereignty of Jesus. Look at the predictions that he makes in verse 31 and 32. Verse 26, 31, "Then Jesus said to them, 'You will all fall away because of me this night.' So he predicts the disobedience and desertion of every one of these disciples. Verse 32, "But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee." In other words, I'm going to be raised up. I predict it. It's going to happen. You know, he's predicting their desertion and his resurrection and you should ask now, why do you infer sovereignty from prediction? Maybe he just knows them really well and they're the kind of whips who when crunch comes they're going to leave, it's just a good knower of character, nothing sovereign about that and maybe the fact that he's predicting his resurrection is because he's got this in with God that God says you're an innocent prophet and I'm not going to let you stay dead, nothing sovereign about that. So why does John Piper move from prediction to sovereignty? A couple more steps in the argument. The next one is found in verse 31. I left out part of what is in that verse. It says verse 31, "Then Jesus said to them, 'You will all fall away because of me this night.'" And then he gives the basis for saying that, "For it is written," this is Zechariah 500 years earlier, "for it is written, I will strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered." This is not a prediction based on his insightful knowledge of their character. This is a statement about a plan that God has for this night written down hundreds of years earlier. There's an invisible hand over this night, Peter, Danami three times, before the cock crows. I've got the cock in charge. He won't go early and I've got you in charge, Judas and all of you, you're leaving. This is written down. This is the plan. That is orchestrating the death of his son, that we might have the forgiveness of sins by a substitutionary atonement. God's in charge on this night, and he is sovereignly ruling everything to which you now ask, okay? We've got the sovereignty of God showing up here in that Old Testament quote and planning the night and with the invisible hand. But what about Jesus? You're saying Jesus is sovereign, and there is one more step in the argument. Jesus in John 1319 describes the meaning of his own predicting. It's a really powerful statement. He has just predicted Judas betrayal. He has predicted Peter denial and the timing of it, the person, the time, the number three, not two, not one. Jesus is doing something and then he gives the explanation and listened to it. John 1319, I am telling you this now, before it takes place that when it does take place, you may believe that I am period. Now those who heard that had they been listening with his own ears, they would have I think taken a deep breath that he didn't say anymore. He just said that you may believe I am, and out of their subterranean recollections of Exodus 3.14, tell them when you go down to Egypt, Moses, tell them I am sent you. I am who I am. It's my name, I am Jesus, the Emmanuel God with us comes and says, my predictions are not shrewd inside into character, my predictions are not mere reading of Old Testament texts, my predictions are the act of the incarnate God. I tell you these things beforehand down to the detail of human volition and timing and the volition of a rooster if he has any that you may know I am. And so my conclusion indirectly is that when Jesus says, after I am raised or you will all fall away, he's speaking as God and therefore he participates in God's sovereignty, Jesus is sovereign. What about the resurrection? We just dealt with the prediction of the falling away. What about the prediction of the resurrection? Is that just? Well, I kind of know that God will treat innocent prophets like me well, and that means he's going to get me out of the grave. No, no, no, no. Listen to John 10, 17, where Jesus tells us how to understand his predictions of his own resurrection. In John 10, 17, I lay down my life that I may take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it up again. And Jesus predicts his resurrection. He is predicting what he intends to do to his own body in the grave. He is sovereign over his own body now then and today. And therefore I say on the basis of both these predictions, Jesus is sovereign. Sovereign over Iraq, sovereign over Israel, sovereign over North Korea, sovereign over any future 9/11, sovereign over every disease that's going to come into your life, sovereign over every calamity, sovereign over accidents, and therefore nothing will befall you but what is good for you if he is merciful. Shall we turn to now? Where in this text do I see mercy? The mercy of Jesus, I have to have a sovereign who is merciful. I don't want to sovereign who is against me. And I don't want a merciful Savior who can't do anything for me because he's weak. I want, I have to have, if life is going to mean anything now and forever there's got to be a sovereign who is merciful. Where's that in this text? This is really what drew me to this text because this I had not noticed as clearly before. Let me show you mercy by putting two texts beside each other. You've probably already seen it. I hope you have. Let's put together the first part of verse 31 with the last part of verse 32. Verse 31, "You will all fall away because of me this night." Now just stop there and let this sink in. This is treason. Three years Jesus with crown rights in the universe has recruited to himself 12 to be his right hand emissaries in the world. He has taught them everything he had to say. He has given them authority over demons to cast them out and over diseases to heal. He has told them plainly over and over 8, 30, 9, 30, 10, 30, gospel of Mark, I'm going to die and rise again. And at his hour of greatest need they commit treason. We had thought he was the one to redeem Israel, to which Jesus responds in verse 32, "I will go before you to Galilee. I'm going to lead you. I'm going to care for you. I'm going to protect you. I'm going to commission you. I'm going to empower you. I'll go before you, but you have to do your treason now while I die for you." Well you call that. I call it mercy. Have you ever treated anybody worse than they deserve? Have you ever said anything to wife or child or friend? Have you ever done anything in your anger and afterwards you know it's just all terrible. What you said, way out of proportion or what you did, perhaps it was a much worse thing, perhaps some sexual assault or theft, or perhaps there's a murderer in this room. And then you discover to the one you perhaps spoke ill of that they never have spoken to anybody about it. They haven't badmouthed you in any way, they haven't plotted any revenge, and now they're going out of their way to be kind to you as though you had never done them any wrong. What do you call that? You call it mercy, and that's what Jesus did. They all deserted him at his hour of greatest pain, and he said, "When I'm raised up, I'm going to go before you to Galilee. Take you with me. Let you watch me ascend to my Father, commission you, tell you about power I'm going to give you." I want to be like that. I really want to be like that. It's like you have a friend, just the two of you, walking down a road, choose your town, mountains view, Roseville, Phillips neighborhood, the two of you walking down a road, and suddenly from out between two houses come to thugs. They really look mean, and they start to beat you up, and you get free and just run as fast as you can, and leave it two on one, and let your friend get beat up. You don't know what happened, you're just trembling safe. And the next day, you're walking down this road, same road, and you see your friend coming toward you, got stitches, and a big bruise, and swollen eye, and before you can say anything, a big smile comes across his face, and he runs up and he hugs you. So I'm so glad you're all right. Now where were we yesterday? Oh yes, we were talking about, and the tears, want the tears, come down your cheek at that moment. I mean, if that wouldn't make you cry, nothing will make you cry. If mercy doesn't break our hearts, nothing can break our hearts. Jesus is amazing, there's nobody like Jesus, there's nobody like Jesus who has all authority in heaven and on earth, and he sees his chosen ones commit treason, a capital offense. Some word, and they're dead. And before they go and finish their sin against him, he says, "See in a few days, I lead you to Galilee, and we'll make this Christianity thing happen all over the world." So I close, you may have been deserting him, denying him, and betraying him all your life this morning. I don't know who's here and where you are in relation to Jesus, or it may have just been a week's worth of denial and betrayal and desertion, whether it's a life or a week, aren't you encouraged by this? That he will have you if you come to him, and I just want to say he will. On the basis of Scripture, he is sovereign and he is merciful. He conquered death by his resurrection and security sovereignty. He conquered sin by his death and secured mercy so that today anyone who comes, anyone who comes to him, will be forgiven, and he won't let anything happen to his beloved, but what is good for them. Thank you for listening to this message by John Piper, pastor for preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Feel free to make copies of this message to give to others, but please do not charge for those copies or alter the content in any way without permission. We invite you to visit Desiring God Online at www.desiringgod.org. There you'll find hundreds of sermons, articles, radio broadcasts, and much more, all available to you at no charge. Our online store carries all of Pastor John's books, audio, and video resources. You can also stay up to date on what's new at Desiring God. Again, our website is www.desiringgod.org, or call us toll-free at 1-888-346-4700. Our mailing address is Desiring God 20601 East Franklin Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55406. Even God exists to help you make God your treasure because God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in Him.
John Piper | He is risen! Trust him today. By his mercy he can forgive your sins. And by his sovereignty he can turn all things for your good.