Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - Many Convincing Proofs

Episode Date: April 12, 2024

It’s a simple fact that in the Greco-Roman world, the claims of Christianity were found every bit as implausible, if not more, than people find them now. So why did so many people believe?  Fortunately, we have a case study in Theophilus. How does a cultured, intellectually sophisticated person living in a culture that’s hostile to the basic claims of Christianity come to believe Christianity is true? The answer in a nutshell: the resurrection.  Whether we already believe or aren’t sure we believe, because of the resurrection we can know three things: 1) the truth is out there, 2) the truth is up there, and 3) the truth is in there.  This sermon was preached by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on October 12, 2003. Series: The Necessity of Belief. Scripture: Acts 1:1-11. Today's podcast is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

Finding consensus in today's culture is hard to come by. We are surrounded by competing worldviews about identity, morality, and truth. It can be difficult to know how to engage with people about Christianity. How do we navigate the skepticism or even hostility toward the Christian faith? Join us today as Tim Keller explores how we can respond to a fragmented society with courage and hope that comes from the gospel. After you listen, we invite you to go online to GospelInLife.com and sign up for our email updates.

When you sign up, you'll receive our Life in the Gospel quarterly journal with articles that feature how the gospel is changing hearts, lives, and communities, as well as highlighting other gospel-centered resources. Subscribe today at GospelOfLife.com. The reading for today is taken from the book of Acts, chapter 1, verses 1 through 11. In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive.

He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them this command, Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my Father has promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with

water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit." So when they met together, they asked him, "'Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?' He said to them, "'It is not for you to know the times or dates the Father has set by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly

two men dressed in white stood beside them. Men of Galilee, they said, Why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven Will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven This is the word of the Lord Now it's very typical today to hear people say that Christianity once was plausible to the great breadth of people in society, but it's not the case now. We've changed as a society. For example, we are much more skeptical about claims of miracles. And even more than that, we're much more skeptical about claims of miracles and

Even more than that were much more skeptical about claims that one religion has the truth So you see we've changed and it was a time in which Christianity was more plausible to people in the world, but it that's That's not the case today now the problem with that statement is That is a simple fact that in the Greco-Roman world where Christianity was really born, the claims of Christianity were found by that older society every bit as impossible, every bit as implausible, every bit as inconceivable, if not more than people find them now. So the idea that somehow in Christianity, you know, years ago people still believed

things that fit in more with their view, but today we, that's just not true. At least the old world was at least as hostile to Christianity as we are. At least as implausible it was found as we do. Now, if that's the case, why did then people believe? Why did so many people believe when Christianity began to get spread? And fortunately, we've got a case study. We have a case study of how they did it. And the case study's name is Theophilus.

At the beginning of the book of Luke and the beginning of the book of Acts, this guy is mentioned. Because Luke wrote a two-volume work. The Gospel of Luke was, which we looked at last year, was the life of Jesus. And the Gospel, pardon me, Acts of the Apostles was of course the account of the early church and These both these works were addressed to this guy theophilus in my former book theophilus. That's Luke I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach now Who's theophilus we know a few things? He might have been wealthy might have been a person of nobility, because in Luke 1 he's called O Excellent Theophilus, which is a title. One thing we almost certainly know is that he was a cultured man, he was intellectually sophisticated, because unlike the other books

of the Bible and the New Testament and the other gospels. Luke begins, both Luke and Acts, his preamble is almost identical to the preamble of other works of literature and history at that time. He completely follows the conventions of the time, which means Theophilus almost certainly was a learned man. He was someone who read history and who read literature. And Luke is actually making a case to him about why Christianity is true. Because in Luke chapter 1, the first four verses, which you almost have to read in order to get started with Acts, because it's really a preamble to the whole two books, he says, Theophilus, I want you to be convinced. Theophilus, I want you to be convinced.

I want you to be absolutely sure in your mind that these things are true. Now, most of the people in this room fall into one of two categories. Most. Not everybody. Because we live in a place like New York, we live in a culture in which, yes, absolutely, the views of their culture are antithetical to the claims of Christianity. Therefore, some of us believe, but we're always struggling to try to understand why we believe it and how we know it's true because our friends want to know, and our friends very often we have trouble articulating to our friends, who are very often intellectually sophisticated and cultured people. So there's some people like that in this room and there's

some people who actually don't believe at all or at least not sure it's true at all. Now you know, theophilists, we're not totally sure ourselves. Commentators aren't sure whether he's a person who hasn't believed yet or whether he's a person who has believed but he's still trying to figure out how to articulate it and how to understand it. Fine, we don't know, but the full range of people's in here. We all need to know this How does a cultured intellectually sophisticated person living in a culture that's? Intellectually and culturally completely hostile to the basic claims of Christianity Whatever occurs to those kinds of people to make them believe

Christianity and The basic answer in a nutshell is it was the resurrection the resurrection That's how it happened the resurrection Now the resurrection because of the resurrection we know three things which we see in this text Because the resurrection we know the truth is out there and the truth is up there know the truth is out there. And the truth is up there. And the truth is in there.

Keep those prepositions in mind as we move on through. The first thing, the first thing we learn because of the resurrection is the truth is out there. What do I mean by that? If you read Luke 14 and Acts 1, I think they're supposed to be read together. Sometimes they correct misconceptions that you can have if you only read one of them. Luke 24 and Acts 1 are both accounts of Jesus' post-resurrection appearances. How after he was raised from the dead, he appeared to people. And the one thing you know, if you put them back to back, and read them through as I was doing, one thing that strikes you almost immediately

is how redundant Jesus is, and how many appearances there are. So for example, in Luke 24, first Jesus appears to the women, disciples. But as, and this would be another whole other sermon if I went off in this direction, that's not good enough for the men. They need to see him themselves, which raises a lot of issues which we'll just ignore at this point. And so Jesus begins to appear to

them too. He appears to the disciples on the way to Emmaus. He appears to his apostles in the upper room. But one of the things you you've begun to recognize, once is not enough. Jesus appears and they don't say, nobody ever says, oh at last we've been waiting. Nobody ever says, oh you predicted over and over again you were going to rise from the dead and we're so excited, we're so happy to see you. Never. They never believe it. Over and over. So even when he appears in the upper room, and he says peace be unto you and all that What do they do they're scared so he says give me a fish a fish yes?

Give me a fish he eats the fish he says now can a ghost do that. I'm really here Over and over and here of course in chapter 1 of Acts we see that for 40 days Jesus appeared with them over to them over and over and over. Why? Because there was absolutely, as we've been said in the introduction, there was absolutely nothing about these men and women's world view. There was nothing about what they'd been taught, nothing about what they believed. There was absolutely nothing that prepared them to see the physically bodily resurrected Jesus Christ. They couldn't believe it, they didn't believe it, they didn't believe when they were told about it before he died,

and they don't believe it when they see him, unless it's over and over and over again. What do we see here? What Luke is telling us is the early Christians believed because they encountered Jesus Christ at a worldview level. That he shattered their existing worldview. That's the reason why it had to happen over and over and over again. They encountered him at the worldview level. Now what in the world do I mean by that? Thank you for asking.

That gives me a reason to preach the rest of the sermon. What's a worldview? When we came in a Western society to the place where we started to say things like this, we started to say, well, we can't believe in miracles anymore. Yes, we used to, but we don't believe in miracles anymore. That's a worldview change. Or when we started to say, well, we can't believe that any one religion is the true religion. As a society, we just, we don't like that. We can't believe that anymore.

That's a worldview change. What's a worldview? A worldview is a mental map of answers to the big questions, like what is real, and is there a God, and how do we decide what is right and wrong, and how do we decide good and evil, and how do we know things?

Those are the big questions. And everybody, especially every culture or every society, has a kind of mental map. And this mental map is something that's extremely stable and very, very difficult to change. In fact, it's a stabilizing feature. Thomas Kuhn, famous book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, he talks about the fact that in the Middle Ages, in the Western world, people believed that the Earth was the fixed point and that the sun, the moon, the stars, that all other bodies revolved around the Earth. And Kuhn points out the fact that for years and years and years they were doing

astronomy, they were trying to study the motions up there years and years and years they were doing astronomy, they were trying to study the motions up there, and there was all kinds of information, data that they gathered that didn't fit the world view, didn't fit their basic construction, their basic mental map of reality, didn't fit it. But for years they just screened it out because the world view is a stabilizing feature and it just, things that you see that don't fit your worldview, sometimes you don't even know you've seen them, you just screen them right out.

You just won't admit them or you just discard them or you just shrug them off or you just laugh at them. It's very hard to change a worldview, but that's what happened in the first century and here's why. The resurrection. Think. You had two basic worldviews among the people there in this story, in this narrative, in this account. The early believers, who were they? Well there was two basic worldviews that they had their feet in to one degree or another. First of all you had the

Greco-Roman worldview and the Greco-Roman worldview didn't believe that material reality was a good thing. They thought the spirit was the good thing. And therefore, to them, the idea of a physical bodily resurrection was absolutely impossible and absurd. When you died, if your spirit left its body behind, that was great. That was good riddance. Why in the world would there be the idea of a bodily resurrection being a good thing? It's not only impossible. It was absurd. It was a contradiction. So the Greco-Roman worldview Completely found the idea of a physical bodily resurrection to be impossible silly ludicrous The Jewish worldview is a bit different of course

Because the Jewish worldview in a very fundamental way was quite different, it believed the material world was good. It was created by God. And they also believed that somehow in the future God was going to redeem the world. That God was going to renovate it, that he was going to heal it of its brokenness and of its disease and decay. That somehow God was going to put it straight. And that's the reason why Jews, as time went on, especially by the time of Jesus, quite a few Jews believed that when God renewed the world, there would be a bodily general resurrection,

that we would get our new bodies along with the rest of the world. And so there was some belief in that. But one thing that no one conceived of was the idea that an individual could be physically raised from the dead in the middle of history not at the end of history with Everybody else but in the middle of history all by themselves all by himself Would never have occurred to anybody in that worldview now the reason it's very important to understand what I'm telling you is Because it's extremely common in fact the average New Yorker has a defense mechanism that goes like this part of their world their worldview Yorker has a defense mechanism that goes like this, part of their worldview. They say, well yes, yes, yes, yes, I know the traditional Christian doctrine of the

physical bodily resurrection of Jesus, but of course we don't believe that, that couldn't have happened. What must have happened is some of the followers just so wanted to believe he was raised from the dead that they felt he was, they just so wanted to believe it, they felt he was. Or maybe some of the followers were so unscrupulous that they said, well, we just tell everybody he's been raised from the dead to keep our movement going. Or maybe it was a combination of both. And that's the way the average person today defends themselves about the, from the idea that Jesus was raised, the claim that Jesus

was raised from the dead. But, a book I read this summer, which is the biggest, best book I've ever read on the resurrection, and that just made my year, is a book by an NT Wright called The Resurrection of the Son of God. In that book, and by the way, if you want to read 800 or 900 pages of philosophy, history and religion, be my guest. It is the best thing. But in that book, which is an amazing book, he points out something that's pretty important for those of you who take the view I just gave.

He points out that for 50 years before Jesus and after Jesus, there was a whole slew, there was a whole series of Jewish messianic movements. There was a whole series of movements in which a figure was put forward as the Messiah who was gonna liberate us. There's quite a few of them. We know about them in history. And we also know that most of them were put to death

by the authorities because they were politically dangerous. But one thing that's pretty intriguing is that not a single one of them ever even imagined, even hinted, even breathed the possibility that their Messiah, now having died, was raised from the dead. Nobody. Why not? See, NT Wright points out, he said, nobody would do that. Here's the reason. He says, if you hear in the 21st century, think, oh, it's possible that people would say, some people would say, well, I'll just make believe that he's raised in the dead.

People will follow the movement. Or else some people will say, oh, I just wish he was raised in the dead so much that they felt he was. He says, you're forgetting the worldview thing. You don't really understand first century history. He says, whether you were Greek or whether you were Jewish, that is impossible. So no matter how much you're longing, no matter how much stress you're experiencing as a bereaved disciple of Jesus Christ, no matter how much duress you're under, you wouldn't imagine or hope for something that you thought was ludicrous and absurd impossible. And no matter how unscrupulous you are, no matter how much you would love to keep your

movement going, you wouldn't possibly Spread the word that his he was physically raised from the dead when you knew that absolutely nobody in the world would believe it Not only would no Greeks believe but the average you would say oh, yeah raised from the dead, huh? I noticed disease continuing. I noticed death continuing. I noticed the Romans are still in power the resurrection Jumping a lake. I mean, nobody would believe it. And that's the reason why you must realize that the worldviews kept anybody from ever thinking about this. And yet, now this is really intriguing to me,

and yet, immediately after the death of Jesus, unanimously across the board, all the Christians suddenly began to say, they began to say, our leader has been raised from the dead, not resuscitated, but has a physical body, a kind of trans-physical body, a body that really no worldview had ever even come up with, that can go through walls, lock doors, and yet eat a fish, that can see down here, eat with the disciples, verse doors, and yet eat a fish that can see down here. Eat with the disciples, verse 4, and yet go up into heaven in a cloud. In other words, this is unprecedented, and yet it happened, and it happened immediately.

There is not the slightest hint in any of the earliest writings. You know, the earliest writings we have of Christianity is like 1 Thessalonians by Paul 15 years afterwards and his other letters 20 years afterwards. There is no indication anywhere of any debate. There's no spectrum of belief. Now worldviews don't change like that, friends. You know there's been a big change in the worldviews of Americans, say from 100 years ago to today, but the world view didn't change overnight. You know, my children believe some things that are quite a bit different than my grandparents.

I mean the world views have changed, but it didn't happen overnight. When world views change, there's debate. There are parties. There's a spectrum of belief, and gradually, bit by bit, more and more people move into it. But here's what we have. The belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ was absolutely unprecedented anywhere. It did not grow out of any particular worldview.

It was unanimous. It was sudden. It happened overnight virtually. Hundreds and hundreds of people, Paul says 500 people saw him at one time in 1 Corinthians 15, said they saw Jesus Christ bodily raised from the dead and their lives were changed and they were willing to die for it. How do you account for that?

How do you account for that? The answer is a worldview shattering thing must have happened and the only possible way, it wasn't debated, it wasn't the normal way that worldviews change bit by bit by bit a little bit of data a little bit of data finally we say let's try this out the way world no all these people suddenly had the worldviews changed shattered there was nothing in their background that would lead them to believe this why did they believe this here's what they said we saw him we saw him there's no debate nobody wrote a book saying let's think about it like this the belief in We saw Him. There's no debate. Nobody wrote a book saying,

let's think about it like this. The belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ is not kind of an extension of some view that was already taking place or some worldview. It didn't fit any of the worldviews at all. How do you account for that? Huh? They said there's only one way to account for it.

We saw Him. How can we understand the meaning of life's milestones through the lens of the Gospel? In the How to Find God series, Tim Keller offers three short books on birth, marriage, and death that will help you understand the meaning of these milestones within God's vision of life with biblical insight for how the Scripture teaches us to face each one. These books of pastoral care are designed for specific life situations you or someone you know

will go through. When you give to Gospel in Life during the month of April, we'll send you the How to Find God series as our thanks for your support of this ministry. To receive this short three book set, simply make a gift at gospelonlife.com slash give. That's gospelonlife.com slash give. Your gift helps us share the message of Christ's love all over the world. So thank you for partnering with us because the gospel truly changes everything. Now, that's the reason why you see over and over again, he appears again and again and again and again and again.

And they never say, wow, Jesus, we were waiting for you. Never. Because they were having a worldview encounter. He was meeting them at their worldview level and shattering their very mental map of reality. Now, let's move to today. Yes, it's true that our worldview today is every bit as antithetical to the claim of the resurrection,

but not for the same reason. What is our worldview? We talked about this a few weeks ago. Robert Bellah, the sociologist who wrote Habits of the Heart, puts it like this. He says, we are marked by the worldview of expressive individualism. And that means this.

Almost every other culture in the history of the world has always believed truth is out there. The truth is out there. See, before X-Files, most of the rest of the world already believed that. The truth is out there. What does that mean? Almost every other culture has always said, the job of the heart is to discover the truth, which is either from God or from the community or from natural law. I mean, every culture is different. But every culture basically said, truth is out there and it's my job to conform to it. But today's contemporary culture is that we're expressive individuals, which we say is everyone

has to determine what is true for him or herself. Everyone has to discover truth in their own consciousness. The truth is not out there. The truth is in here. And I have to decide what is right or wrong for me. And I have to decide what is true or false for me. And no one can tell me what is true for me. But what if the resurrection is true?

What if Jesus actually rose from the dead? Physically rose from the dead saying, I am the savior of the world, then it doesn't matter what you feel inside. It doesn't matter what your self-consciousness tells you. This shatters that worldview, this utterly shatters the contemporary worldview just like it shattered the ancient worldviews. Well, you say I don't believe in the resurrection. Fine, but you should have therefore a historically possible alternative explanation for the birth of the Christian church.

It's something that happened in history, you know. Overnight, worldview total change, unanimous, absolutely unprecedented, no spectrum of opinion, people claiming, hundreds of people, cogent, rational people saying we saw him, people dying for it. You explain it. You got a better one? Well, you see, they say, you know, NT Wright puts it like this, and rather devastatingly, he says, it cannot be stressed too strongly that first century Jews were not expecting people to rise from the dead as isolated individuals. Resurrection for them was something that would happen to all only on the great future occasion

when God brought history to an end and a whole new world order. It will not do, therefore, to say that Jesus' disciples were so stunned and shocked by his death so unable to come to terms with it that they projected their shattered hopes onto the screen of fantasy and invented the idea of Jesus' resurrection as a way of coping with a cruelly broken dream. This has initial apparent psychological plausibility to modern people who don't know first century history, but it's not serious first century history. We know lots of other Messianic and similar movements in the Jewish world roughly contemporary with Jesus. In many cases, the leader died a violent death at the hands of authorities.

In not one single case do we hear the slightest mention of the disappointed followers claiming that their hero had been raised from the dead. They knew better. Resurrection was not a private event in that Jewish worldview. Jewish revolutionaries whose leaders had been executed by the authorities had only two options. You either give up the revolution or you find another leader. Claiming the original leader was alive again was absolutely no option unless, of course, he was alive again. Now why do I press this on you? I press it on you for this reason. The average person today, not just in New York,

but almost the average person in Western culture, when they find Christianity interesting and they start looking at Christianity, they say, I'd like to try it, and I need some help, and they go to church, they read the Bible, they try Christianity out, but you don't let Christianity challenge you at the worldview level.

In fact, many people even sort of embrace Christianity, sort of come on into Christianity, and you don't let it actually shatter your worldview. You don't let Jesus actually come in and encounter you at the worldview level and change you. What do I mean? Well, our worldview says, this is true if it works for me. This is true if it works for me. This is true if it works for me. It may not be true for you, but if it works for me, it's true if it works for me.

But the gospel is, if it's not... it won't work for you if it's not true. It won't work for you if it's not true. In fact, the gospel is this. It won't work for you if you believe it because it works for you and not because it's true. You hear that? It will never work for you if you believe it because it works for you and not because it's true. Think about, remember we talked about this last week, historic fact that during the great plagues that swept through the cities of the Greco-Worman world in the first and second centuries AD, that when the plagues swept through

the historical fact that Christians stayed in the cities and took care of the sick people even though there was great fear of contagion and everyone else is running for the hills all the other healthy people were running. Why do Christians do that? Now I'm going to read you something here in a second. The answer is they weren't afraid of death. Why weren't they afraid of death?

Because first of all their savior died to save them. And secondly because he rose again they're not afraid of the future. They're not afraid of what happens. But now think about this. So why was it that those Christians were capable of that kind of boldness, that kind of love, that kind of sacrifice, that kind of nobility, that kind of greatness? You know why they were capable of it? Not because Christianity was working for them. I'm sorry, at that point Christianity wasn't working for them. Christianity was killing them. It was killing them. It was because of their belief that they were willing to go to the death. It wasn't working for them, but it was killing them. It was because of their belief that they're willing to go to the death.

It wasn't working for them, but it was transforming them. You are naive if you think that adopting something because it's emotionally satisfying and kind of works for me right now is gonna get you to the end of your life. You're naive if you think that anything that's just emotionally satisfying and kind of fits for me is gonna get you to the end of your life. You know, if you think that anything that's just emotionally satisfying and kind of fits for me now is going to get you to the end of your life and help you face your own death

or face the death of the persons you love the most, it's just not going to happen. Luke does not say to Theophilus, Theophilus, I want you to know that this has worked for me, and I think it might work for you. No. In fact, you go into the book of Acts and you see this great place in Acts chapter 26, a terrific place, where Paul is in prison. And you know, it doesn't look good for Paul, and of course, eventually he is executed, eventually, but he's in prison.

But he's a curiosity. And the royals come to see him. And so King Agrippa and his wife and you know There's there's these two royal couples and they come in and they ask Paul to come out to kind of preach them and you know Tell us your spiel we hear this you're this incredible spiritual salesman We want to hear about it and so there they are all the Royals and she Paul in chains, but you'd never know it He's so bold. He's so poised He's so happy and he goes after them them. And he says, the resurrection,

Jesus rose from the dead, therefore you must believe. And at one point King Agrippa says, hold on. Are you trying to convert us? You're trying to convert me in one sitting, make me a Christian? And what does Paul say? He says, well King, it worked for me. It doesn't work for him, he's in chains. He couldn't have possibly said it worked for me. You're on the throne, I'm in chains. It worked for me, it'll work for you. King Agrippa says, oh great, you know, I'll have to become a Christian, then I'll be off my throne in chains. That'll make a great deal of sense. Here's what he said. He says, I am convinced, O King, that these things have not escaped your notice because they did not happen in a corner. Hmm. Christianity is a public thing. Christianity is a historic thing. He says, you know these things happen.

You know about the witnesses. You know the tomb was empty. You know those things. He says, I'm pressing you because it's not because this will work for you. No. He says, the reason I have this boldness is because it was true. It works for me because it's not because this will work for you. No. The reason I have this boldness is because it was true. It works for me because it's true. It works for me because I didn't believe it because it worked for me. Because it's true. If you simply say, let's come on into Christianity and see if it works. It won't work all the time.

Sometimes Christianity will ask you to do something that's terribly hard. And what are you going to do? Get rid of it? You're going to spend all of your life putting on and taking off things that you think are going to help. Nothing will get you to the end unless you say, this is true, is it true? You say, well, we can't believe in the resurrection anymore.

They couldn't believe in it either. That was no reason. They let it challenge them. Why don't you let it challenge you? You come up, just try, come up with historically possible alternative explanation for the birth of Christianity. Go ahead, one that fits, one that fits the evidence. You know, N.T. Wright says, go ahead, try. He says, you can't. And if someone says, but it couldn't have been a resurrection because resurrections

can't happen, he says, he says, okay, but now you're doing philosophy, I'm doing history. What you're really doing is you're holding onto your faith and your faith is, I don't want the truth to be out there. I want to be in here. I don't want to lose control of my life. Fine. Admit that you are on a leap of faith against all the evidence for how Christianity started. The truth is out there, whether you like it or not. Not only that, the truth is up there. What do I mean by that? Well, the second thing we learn here,

it's not just the fact of the resurrection that changed those early Christians' worldview, but it was the content of the doctrine of the resurrection. What is the doctrine of the resurrection? Well, two things. First of all, notice it says, in my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all the things that Jesus began to do and teach. There is a big difference. You know what the resurrection means? It means at least this. Buddha only saves us, if you're a Buddhist, you're only saved not by what he did, but by what he taught.

In other words, if you want enlightenment, you follow the teaching of Buddha. Muhammad did not save us by what he did, but what he taught. You follow the teaching. That's how you're saved. Now, it's not that Buddha and Muhammad didn't do a lot of wonderful things, but it doesn't help us directly. They just validate the teaching and so the teaching we're saved. But it's not the teaching of Christ that saves us.

It's Christ that saves us. It's what Jesus did. I've told you everything that Jesus did. He died in our place. He lived and died in our stead. And now he rose and he ascends. And this is the gospel. The gospel is not that you give God a record, then he saves you, but that in Jesus Christ, he's come and he's died the death we should have died and now he's been raised and he's ascended to the father and we're accepted in him. God doesn't accept us through our record and our worthiness but Jesus own record and Jesus worthiness and Jesus righteousness is before the father and we are beauty in him.

In him. This is the reason why Lucian of Samosata, who hated Christians, basically explains how people were utterly changed by the doctrine of the resurrection. Lucian of Samosata was a Greek, he was a satirist, he wrote a bunch of plays, he was always making fun of Christians. He lived during the early decades of Christianity. Here's what he says. He says, these deluded creatures, he's talking about Christians, these deluded creatures you see believe they will live forever, which explains the contempt

of death and the willing self-sacrifice so common among them. It was impressed on them too by their founder that from the moment they are converted, the moment they deny the gods of Greece, worship their crucified sage and live after his rules, they're all brothers. They take his instructions completely on faith with the result that they despise all worldly But did you hear what he said? Number one, because of the resurrection, they're not afraid of death. Well you say, well didn't some of the Greeks and Romans believe it in afterlife? Yeah, some did, some didn't. But think, think. If you don't believe it in afterlife, then death is terrifying because it's the end of love. The one thing, the one thing that makes life meaningful. It's the end of love. If there's nothing after death,

then everyone you love is going to become dead, fertilizer, and then you will. So if there's no afterlife, you're terrified. But if there is an afterlife in all other religions, you're still kind of afraid because you're never sure you've been good enough. But you see, if you're not saved by Jesus' teaching, but by what he did, and the resurrection proves that what he did was satisfies all the requirements,

then you live life with greatness. But not only do you live life psychologically with greatness, did you notice what he said, what Lucian said? They also are incredibly generous with one another. They just give to each other. They just give their money to each other. You know why? Because the resurrection not only tells us something about it doesn't only change us psychologically, it changes us socially. The resurrection is that God is someday going to come back and he's going to renew the world. The resurrection of Jesus means that God didn't just save the spirit but he's going to save the body. He didn't

just, he's not just redeeming us spiritually, he's going to redeem the world, the material world. And that means God is against disease and he's against death and he's against poverty, he's against injustice, he's against mental illness and he's against violence. And the people who know the resurrection start working against them now, because we have all this incredible hope, because we know eventually they're going to go away, and we know that God's going to do it. See, the resurrection changes you psychologically, trains you socially. Why?

Because the resurrection, Jesus Christ is now ascended to the Father. The truth is not just out there, it's up there. And lastly, it's in here. You will receive power. What does that mean? Augustine sums up very nicely the end of this passage when he says, and I quote, Oh Lord, you ascended before our eyes and we turned Oh Lord, you ascended before our eyes and we turned back grieving only to find you in our hearts. And here's what we mean by that. What Jesus is actually saying is I'm going to ascend, but you still need the Holy Spirit. See me ascend and you'll get power.

You know, Elisha saw Elijah ascend and down came a double portion of his spirit. And now these folks see Jesus ascend and down comes a double portion of the spirit. But it's not just a kind of naked zap. If you want to see how the spirit is connected to the resurrected and ascended Christ in the book of Acts, no better place than Stephen. Stephen, you know, Stephen, the great church leader who is about to be executed in Acts chapter 7, it better place than Stephen. Stephen, you know Stephen, the great church leader who is about to be executed in Acts chapter 7, it's a fascinating place where he's about to be stoned to death. Suddenly, he's about to be stoned to death for preaching

Christ. Suddenly, it says, full of the Holy Spirit, very significant, full all the Holy Spirit he looks to heaven and he says, I see heaven open and I see the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God. And when the people heard that, they stopped their ears, they rushed forward and they began stoning him and as he was dying he said, Father forgive them. You know why he had the power? The text says his face was like the face of an angel. You know why he had the power to die with calmness, to die with joy, to actually worship and rejoice in the middle of being executed? Here's why.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, God took something he knew intellectually and made it existentially real. At the very moment that an earthly court was condemning him, he gets an existential grasp of how in the heavenly court he is loved and commended. It's not that he didn't already know that Jesus Christ was his ascended representative, that Jesus was standing before the Father on his behalf. It's not that he didn't know that, but the Holy Spirit made it existentially real to him. The power is not just a naked abstract thing, it's connected to the truth. If and only if you know the truth is out there and up there will it be in here. The power will be in here. And only if you know it's true, not

because it works for me. Stephen would have said, I don't think this is working for me. And you never would have heard of him. It wouldn't have inspired millions and millions of people. He died smiling because he knew it was true and he knew that if I have the smile of God, all other frowns are inconsequential. If I have the commendation of God, all other condemnations are inconsequential. Don't you want to have that kind of boldness? Don't you want to have that kind of power? Believe the resurrection happened. Ask the Holy Spirit to make it real to your heart. Don't you see what the men and women who... The men and women, the early Christians are basically saying this to you during in through the scriptures. They're saying, we didn't believe it either. We didn't think it was possible either, but we saw him.

So don't trivialize what we are telling you. This is not true because it works. It works because it's true. Let the resurrection challenge you at the deepest level of your life. And it'll make you people who maybe a thousand years from now, people will know about you too. Let us pray. Father, we ask that you would help us to let the resurrection not just comfort us, not just inspire us, but change us from bottom

to top. And we ask that you would help us to do that because we ask it in the name of Jesus Christ through the power of the Spirit which you promised to give us to help us understand the meaning of the death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ. It's in His name we pray. Amen. Thanks for listening to today's teaching. We trust you were encouraged by it and that it gives you new insight into how you can apply God's Word to your life each day. You can find more resources from Tim Keller at GospelOnLife.com. Just subscribe to the Gospel On Life newsletter to receive free articles, sermons, devotionals,

and other valuable resources. Again, it's all at GospelOnLife.com. We also invite you to stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter. This month's sermons were recorded in 2003. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel in Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.