Sermon: Our Hope is in the Resurrection of the Dead

Sermon Preached on Zoom by Pamela Sheppard in  July  2021  

Text: Acts 23:6

When we look at Acts 23:, we read: 

Then Paul, knowing that some of them were Sadducees and the others Pharisees, called out in the Sanhedrin, ‘My brothers, I am a Pharisee, descended from Pharisees. I stand on trial because of the hope of the resurrection of the dead.’”

Now, if we look at that and get what the backdrop of that was – I believe at that point, he was arrested – he was being accused – we look at the 30th verse of Acts 22. We find out that – Paul was preaching to a crowd, and – there’s more, we have to go up a little bit more. He’s telling his rebirth experience – and who was he telling it to? I believe he’s arrested. He starts telling his testimony in the first and second verse of Acts 22. He says, “I’m a Jew;” says where he’s born; who he studied under; how he had persecuted the followers of Christianity to their death; how he had arrested both men and women, throwing them into prison, “5as the high priest and all the Council can themselves testify. I even obtained letters from them to their associates in Damascus, and went there to bring these people as prisoners to Jerusalem to be punished.”

Then Paul  goes into his rebirth experience. (IActs 22:6-30; and Acts 23:1-11).

So, what I’m focusing in on in this short sermon is: the resurrection of the dead. That is where the Christian hope is. 

Because of the Lord’s resurrection, we who are born again believe that we also, when we die, if we die, we will be raised from the dead. And that is the ultimate hope. And if you can believe that, this – Jesus didn’t give them all the answers in that first scripture we looked at when He cursed the fig tree. He said to them, “If you believe, and if you have hope, and you don’t doubt, that whatever it is you say, whatever it is you believe, it shall come to pass for you.”

So, that’s the bottom line here for you. When you said that your hope was based upon your upbringing, I heard that, but it’s not our upbringing that brings this kind of hope. It is the born again experience. Because what the born again experience says to you, to the world, and to the devil, is that, “I may have been dead in trespasses and sins, but now that I have believed on the Lord and believed on His resurrection, now my spirit is resurrected. I am no longer dead in my spirit.”

But the next point is to move to that level where, like the Apostle Paul . think of it. and he had just heard all this; but he, after seeing Jesus, he was ready to die for his faith and his belief in the resurrection of the dead. when en you get to that kind of level, you are not afraid of people killing you, you are not afraid of death. Why? Because you know you’re coming back. 

There it is. We preach about the Lord’s resurrection, but the entire purpose of His resurrection is that we be resurrected, first in the spirit and then in the body. When in the body? When He returns.

Summary of two Main Points

Point 1 Resurrection in the spirit  occurs the day you got born again. 

If you are born again, your  mind has been  renewed to enable you to cast down thoughts, fears, imaginations, casting them down and submitting them to Christ. He says it – you may want to look at it yourself: 2 Corinthians 10:5. Let’s see. Corinthians has been standing out a lot to me this week. 2 Corinthians 10:5. Ok. This is what we do in the sessions. 

“4The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. 5We demolish arguments and every pretension (thought) that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive (in other words, we snatch it) every thought to make it obedient to Christ. 6And we will be ready to punish every act of disobedience, once your obedience is complete. 7You are judging by appearances. (And that’s saying it to you right there: you are judging by appearances. Appearances are: the feelings in the head. Appearances are: what the world has to say about chakras and how they should be closed or not closed. That’s all the world). If anyone is confident that they belong to Christ, they should consider again that we belong to Christ just as much as they do.

The thing is, most I’d not all of you  belong to Christ. So, every  argument, every thought, every fear, should be put into obedience to Him. How do we do that? We learn more and more and we take confidence in what we are learning out of the scriptures. We don’t ignore the signs that He sends to us. I’m sure He’s sent you some signs.  There’s probably something there in your subconscious mind that He sent to show you what needs to be done. But you may have overlooked the sign. I don’t know. But I’m pretty sure there’s a sign. If you are in bondage, The Holy Spirit will send you a sign as to what you must do to be completely delivered. 

One of the signs that you got is that you didn’t have to do anything to be born again. You didn’t even have to give up anything. Ok? You didn’t have to do anything. He just whooshed into your room for you and did what He did gently and so quietly., if you are afraid of the supernatural He will not  shake you up with the supernatural because He knew you’d be scared. So, He didn’t do you like He did me; He didn’t do you like He did Paul and blind him,. when Saul  got born again, the Lord made  him fall off his horse and sit there blind until Ananias came and said, “Be healed.” He won’t  do you every one like that. for you, . It may be very soft and easy. Because He knows you. He knows what would upset you. For me, He had to be supernatural because I was and still am a supernatural person. 

Point  2. Resurrection of the dead shall occur when the Lord returns to earth to rule. 

 

So, if we’ will be dead before The Lord Jesus returns, we don’t worry about it, now, because we know that one day, we’re coming back to earth with Him to get our bodies out the grave. And I do suspect that once we are dead, time is not the same as when we are alive; you know, going from day to day, year to year, thousands of years. I believe, just as the scripture says, a day is as a thousand years in the spirit real. —- on that other side. A day is as a thousand years, a thousand years is as a day.

Therefore,  I perceive that real spiritual maturity is manifested when  we get to the point where our hope in Christ includes not just our born again experience, but also that we believe that the dead shall be raised in Christ, and that is the completion of our faith. We hear a smattering of this messsage  at funerals, but most of the time it’s just glossed over. “We’ll see him one day again,” Have You ever seen that at a funeral, where they talk about the afterlife? They’ll say, “Oh, well this is not the end, we’ll see him again,” so forth and so on. Usually, they don’t explain why that is.

The WHY is of the Lord’s resurrection. Because of the Lord’s resurrection, and because we are His chosen ones, whether they kill us or they don’t – and that’s what the Apostle was facing right here. He was facing being killed by the Romans because the Jews were telling the Romans, “He’s a traitor. So Kill him.” So, Paul used his common sense, he knew the law, and he said, “I’m a Roman citizen, you can’t kill me like that. I have not been found guilty of anything.” And the Romans said, “That’s true. We can’t kill him, at least we can’t kill him now. He’s a Roman citizen.” pay attention that even though supernatural things were happening to the Apostle Paul, he still used his common sense and said, “Hey, you can’t kill me, because I’m a citizen of Rome.” And then the one who answered him said, “Well, I purchased my citizenship.” Paul said, “I was born here.” So, there you go.

Your hope has got to be built in Christ. There is a song that says – I don’t know if you know it. It’s a church song. I don’t know if the Catholics sing it. “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus Christ and righteousness.” Do you know that It goes, “My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness.” And it goes on. It’s all about hope, hope in Christ. That’s what your born again experience should help you to anchor on to, which is hope in Christ, hope in His resurrection and the resurrection of the dead in Christ. 

Father God, I come before You on behalf of those in this Zoom session and I ask You, Father, to give them hope. . And as the song says, our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus Christ. So, Lord God, I pray that You would cause them  to see that putting hope in an action is not where we ought to be; but our hope should be in Christ, our hope should be in His resurrection/ And the hope that His resurrection means for us is that as we have faith in the resurrection of the dead, we fear no one. Not psychics, not shamans, not the devil. We do not fear them, that they can in any way hinder Those who need  deliverance. Lord God, I ask You to do what You know to be the best thing to do to cause demonic bondage  and torment from coming back.

 If it’s closing chakras, that’s fine. But we know, and we put it in Your hands, that You know what is best, and what action You deem ought to be taken. Right now, Father, I come together with those gathered, , putting our hope and our faith in the One that the Holy Spirit raised from the dead. We put our hope and our faith in that experience. We also put our hope and our faith in the fact that we have been called to be Your chosen people, and that there is coming a time when the Lord shall return and shout, and the dead in Christ shall return with Him to also be resurrected from their graves. So, the power we anchor our hope iOS  the Lord’s resurrection, our hope in our own resurrection in the spirit to be born again, and also our hope is in the ultimate resurrection where our bodies are transformed and made immortal we  come out of the grave. In the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth I pray, 

Amen.