The King Who Defeated Death
Download MP3Thank you, Ford and Shareen. If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to Acts chapter 2. It should also be there in your worship guide. We have spent about 30 weeks now studying the life of David. The reason we took so much time to study his life is because ultimately we want to understand Jesus and David's life points us to Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Jesus was born in the city of David. He is called the son of David. He will sit on the throne of David. So you cannot cannot understand who Jesus is apart from understanding the life of David. And then in addition to all those things, if you want to understand the empty tomb of Jesus and the resurrection, you need to understand the full tomb of David.
Joel Brooks:And so we're gonna be looking at David's tomb and Christ's tomb this morning as Peter preaches from it in Acts chapter 2. I knew way back in August when I was plotting out the life of David, I knew where I wanted to end. I wanted to end with the death of David on Easter Sunday. I wish my girls, like, dad, really? Really?
Joel Brooks:Is that the appropriate text? I'm like, well, that's where Peter went and so that's where we are going to go. I know that when we think of Acts chapter 2, we typically think of Pentecost and the Holy Spirit coming, and filling the disciples and then going out, you know, with basically their heads on fire speaking in tongues. That's true, but don't ever forget this. That's also where we get our first sermon on the resurrection in which Peter preaches.
Joel Brooks:And so let's look at this in Acts chapter 2. We'll begin reading in verse 22. These are the words that Peter preaches. Men of Israel hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst as you yourselves know.
Joel Brooks:This Jesus delivered up according to the definite plan and fore death because it was not possible for him to be held by it. For David says concerning him, I saw the Lord always before me. For he is at my right hand that I may not be shaken. Therefore my heart was glad and my tongue rejoiced. My flesh also will dwell in hope.
Joel Brooks:For you will not abandon my soul to Hades or let your holy one see corruption. You have made known to me the paths of life. You will make me full of gladness with your presence. Brothers, I may say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and he was buried and his tomb is with us to this day. Being therefore a prophet and knowing that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would set one of his descendants on his throne, he foresaw and spoke about the resurrection of the Christ.
Joel Brooks:That he was not abandoned to Hades nor did his flesh see corruption. This Jesus, God raised up and of that we are all witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God and having received from the father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you yourselves are seeing and hearing. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool. So let all the house of Israel, therefore, know for certain that God has made him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom you crucified.
Joel Brooks:This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. You'll pray with me. Father, would you be so kind to us that in this moment, you would send your spirit to be in our midst to open up your word that we might hear from you, that we might see Jesus, that we might come to understand the new life that he has to offer us and that we might receive. I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore.
Joel Brooks:Lord, may your words remain. May they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. As we have seen over the last 30 weeks as we've gone through the study of David, that you've likely never known a man remotely like him.
Joel Brooks:He was a remarkable, remarkable man and his death had to be a tremendous blow to the people of Israel. I mean can you think way back in August when we started this series and and we began to look at why the people began to ask for a king. Can you remember the reasons why? They said, Lord give us a king who might go and fight our battles for us. Give us a king that might go and fight our enemies.
Joel Brooks:And that's exactly what they got with David. They got a champion. They got somebody who would go and battle for them. Has there ever been a greater champion than David? I mean, as a child, he he said that he fought with both the lion and the bear and won.
Joel Brooks:Anyone? And then he moved on to take on Goliath as a youth with nothing more than a sling and a stone and he defeated him. He then became a commander in the army and he took on the Philistines and the Syrians and the Moabites and Ammonites and the Edomites. If you had a ites at the end, he took you on and he won. He'd walk down the street and people would line up the streets and they would sing his praises.
Joel Brooks:Saul has killed his 1,000, but David has tens of 1,000. I mean, David was the hero of heroes, invincible, larger than life itself. The truth was this, there were some enemies that David cannot defeat. There were 2 enemies out there that David never defeated. Sin and death.
Joel Brooks:David famously lost his battle with sin when he was up on the roof rooftop that day and he looked down and he saw Bathsheba. But the truth is he lost the battle to sin daily, And he was completely powerless when he came up to death. No matter how great David was, there was no sling, there was no stone, there was no sword that he could use to possibly destroy those enemies. He might have killed his tens of 1,000, but he was powerless when he met death. As great as David was, he could never be the king that God's people ultimately needed.
Joel Brooks:He couldn't really even save himself, let alone others. He certainly couldn't defeat the enemies that really mattered And so, Peter points this out in his sermon when when Peter rushes out of that upper room and he's filled with the spirit and he begins to preach, he reminds the people that the greatest king they ever had lays dead in the tomb. As a matter of fact, he was probably pointing to the tomb of David. I recently or a few years ago, I got to go to Jerusalem, with my family and we visited the place that they mark as the upper room, the place where the spirit fell at Pentecost, and I never knew this until I went to visit there. Our guide was saying, and actually there's the tomb of David right there.
Joel Brooks:That the tomb of David, if you were to go into Jerusalem is traditionally held at the tomb there is actually in the basement of the upper room, And so when Peter rushes out of the upper room and he says, I say to you with confidence about the patriarch David that he both died and he was buried and his tomb is with us to this day. Peter's essentially saying look. I mean, look right there. There lies the greatest king in Israel's history. We could go visit his tomb.
Joel Brooks:You could go see his bones. Do you see how our greatest king was defeated by the enemy of death? But Peter here, he's pleading with the people to go and to look to see where their previous Have you ever gone to look at the tombs of the hopes you once held? I mean, all of us at some point in our lives, we placed hope in something or someone other than God. Some of us, you know, at times we have placed our hope and wealth thinking if we could just make enough money, and buy enough money, it's obviously just a little bit more than we already have.
Joel Brooks:If we could just make enough money, then we'll finally have that good life we've always wanted. Let me ask you, if you got all the money in the world, if you can have all the money of you know, a Bill Gates and a Elon Musk combined, do you think it would be enough to buy off death? No. I guess you could try to then put maybe your hope and your health. You know, join a gym.
Joel Brooks:Watch your carbs. Start eating kale. Now, you you you could just go all in. You know, possibly for a while you you could think you're winning. You can start to see results, almost like times going backwards, and you can think maybe death is retreating, But it will not forever retreat.
Joel Brooks:Some really fit guy at the gym I go to, they're always annoying. But but one of these really fit guys who's younger than me, you know, and I'm like, gosh this is getting harder. He goes, age is just a number. I'm like, yeah it's it's just it's crazy how as that number gets higher people tend to die, but it's just a number. Yeah.
Joel Brooks:You could go all in on your health but but death will come. You put your hope in your education, but do you really think you'll be able to outsmart death? And none of these things can save you. So, if you haven't, gone to look in the tombs of where your hopes and dreams now lie, you should. Because all of our hopes, all of our dreams will someday disappoint us.
Joel Brooks:They can't keep us from the grave. So I'm 1 month away from turning 50, and and as I get older, I found that I am bearing more and more of my hopes and dreams that I previously held on to. It could be a painful process as you keep burying them. And what once was a very distant enemy of death, now it's getting a little bit closer. I mean my father died when he was just 4 years older than me.
Joel Brooks:And, you know, you rarely think about those things especially when you're younger and I know some of you, you're like, most of you are younger than me who are out there and you're like, you know, death is just a distant enemy. You know, you gotta kinda squint, put down your vanilla latte, you know, pick up binoculars, look in the distance to kinda see death. That's that's how far away death seems, But that enemy is coming, and he might not be as far away as you think, He's coming. You've already battled with his friend's sin, how did that battle turn out? I mean, this past week as you've had the battle with envy, or you've had the battle with lust, battle with coveting, battle with anger.
Joel Brooks:How did those battles go? Some of us have lost our battle to sin coming here to church on Easter morning. How do we think we're gonna fair against death? So where's our hope in this? Our hope is this, we need a champion.
Joel Brooks:King David was a great champion. When he would go off to fight Goliath, he went as their representative. Meaning that if he lost, all of Israel lost, But if he won, all of Israel won. And when he went and he fought Goliath, he slew him, and that meant all Israel won. He was a representative.
Joel Brooks:But even David was no match for death. We need a greater champion. When Peter reminds everyone that David had once prophesied that God would send someone who would actually defeat death itself. Someone whose body would never undergo decay as he says here. A lot of people thought that when David wrote that, when he prophesied that he was actually speaking about himself.
Joel Brooks:But obviously he can't because Peter's pointing to his tomb. David couldn't have been himself because you can see his tomb to this day. David was talking about one of his descendants who would be known as the son of David, the son of God. He was talking about Jesus. Jesus came as our champion.
Joel Brooks:He came as our savior. Jesus came to take on the enemies that David, Israel's greatest king, can never defeat. He came to take on sin and death. Jesus battled with sin every day of his life. He battled temptation but unlike us, he won.
Joel Brooks:Jesus never sinned. He lived a perfect life. And then after defeating sin, Jesus went to take on the greatest enemy of all, death itself. You know, because Jesus never sinned, he would never die. Because the wages of sin is death.
Joel Brooks:But since Jesus never sinned, he would have never known death. And so since death wouldn't come to him, Jesus decided to go to death to take on the last and final enemy. He died and he was buried and he walked right out of that tomb as our victorious champion, conquering death itself. Even death could not hold Jesus. Or as Peter puts it here in verse 24, God raised him up, loosing the pains of death for it was not possible for him to be held by it.
Joel Brooks:I love that. Not possible for him to be held by The image here that Peter is using is one of childbirth. He said the grave essentially could no more hold back Jesus than the pregnant woman could try to hold back her child. You could try to hold back as much as you want, but that child is coming out. New life is coming out.
Joel Brooks:It was not possible for the grave to keep its hold on Christ. As a matter of fact, go through and read through all of the gospels and you're gonna see that death is always powerless against Jesus. Death seems to want to have no part of Jesus. When death goes to, when death fled, when from Lazarus, when Jesus approached Lazarus's tomb, death fled from Jarius's daughter when Jesus went into the room where she was at. Death fled from the widow of Nain's son when Jesus approached and touched the coffin?
Joel Brooks:It seems like anytime death and Jesus met, death ran away. Death could not be in his presence. Hear me church, the only hope, the only hope that we have in life and in death is that if is that Jesus conquered the grave. If you don't believe that, there is no hope. If Jesus did not walk out of that tomb, there is no hope.
Joel Brooks:There's no reason for us to be gathered here today. And hopelessness is exactly what the disciples felt after Jesus was crucified. You know Jesus rising from the dead wasn't even on the radar. I mean why would it be that the disciples they were not idiots. They knew dead people stayed dead.
Joel Brooks:I mean there's a reason that when Jesus walked out of that tomb, the disciples weren't there waiting for them. No one was. Jesus walked out of that tomb to an audience of no one because everyone then knew dead people stay dead. The disciples certainly knew that. It was a scientific fact, but then the unbelievable happened.
Joel Brooks:Jesus walked out of that room or that tomb and turned their world up side down. It's the only thing that could explain how Peter, Peter who previously denied even knowing Jesus to a little girl out of fear. Now is boldly proclaiming the lordship of Christ. It's the only explanation for how all of the disciples would go on to be tortured and killed rather to them to deny the resurrection of Jesus. Think of this, every morning, every good Jewish person would would wake up and one of the first things they would do is they would pray that what is known as the Shema.
Joel Brooks:Here oh Israel, the Lord is God and there is only one God. They would pray that every morning. Hear O Israel, the Lord is God and there is only one God. And then, overnight they're saying Jesus is God. No.
Joel Brooks:Well, I mean, yes. There's still there's there's a father God and now there's a son of God. We don't know how this exactly works, but I could tell you this, Jesus is God. And think of this, every Jewish person for 1400 years set aside the last day of the week for worship. What they know is the Sabbath.
Joel Brooks:It was a deeply embedded convictional practice of Judaism. Seemingly overnight, they threw that out the window and said, how about we worship on the 1st day of the week and we call it the Lord's day because that is when Jesus rose from the dead. And they're like, sounds good with me. Overnight, they make these changes. They do this because they saw him.
Joel Brooks:They ate with him. They touched him. There was no doubt in their mind that Jesus was the risen Lord. And when they saw the resurrected Jesus, they were looking at their future. His resurrection meant their resurrection.
Joel Brooks:His life meant their life. They were now looking at a hope that would never go to the tomb. Is this the hope that you have? Is this the hope that you trust in? Have you trusted in Jesus as your champion and as your king?
Joel Brooks:If you do, then you are given a new life that begins now, and one that will never go away. It will endure for all of eternity. And you can now do what Paul does. I I love how Paul in 1st Corinthians 15, he begins to taunt death Just like David taunted Goliath. Remember how when David met Goliath, he just taught him.
Joel Brooks:Paul does the same thing with death when he says, oh death, hey, where is your victory? Hey death, where is your sting? That is the mocking of an enemy we once feared. Do you have a fearless hope like that? That is what Christ offers you this morning.
Joel Brooks:Let's pray to him. Jesus, you are our champion. You have conquered the greatest enemies of all. You've conquered sin and so as a result, you now freely offer forgiveness to us. You have conquered the grave and now you freely offer to us new life everlasting.
Joel Brooks:You offer us the hope of resurrection. And for those who haven't surrendered, joyfully surrendered their life to you as as their king, I pray they would do so in this moment. Jesus, thank you for being the champion that we need. And we pray this in your name and for your glory.
