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.” 27 And he took a cup, and when he had given
thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you,
28 for this is my blood of thecovenant, which is poured out for
many for the forgiveness of sins. 29 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.” 30 And when they had
sung a hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. 31 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.’ 32 But after I am
raised up, I will go before you to Galilee.”

On what basis should we believe that Jesus was raised from the
dead and is alive today, reigning as Son of God? That’s not
mainly what my message is about today. But I begin with this
question to make sure you know it is foundational; and to stress
the fact that Christianity is based on historical events and facts,
not just spiritual ideas and experiences. (By “spiritual
ideas and experiences” I mean things like: the idea that
there is a God; or that humans have souls; or that faith in a
higher power has good psychological effects; or the experience of
peace in the midst danger; or a spiritual premonition that helps
you avoid trouble; or the assurance that you will go to heaven or
be reincarnated. These are all spiritual ideas and experiences.)
True or false, spiritual ideas and experiences are not the
foundation or the sum of Christianity. Christianity is based on
historical facts, or it is nothing. If Jesus Christ did not live
and die and rise from the dead as a historical person at a point in
time and in a particular place, then Christianity is a sham.

Christianity is built out of these truths: that God created the
world; that he guides and sustains the world; that in his divine
Son, Jesus Christ, he entered the world; that this Jesus Christ
lived a perfect life and that he died for our sins on a particular
day about 2,000 years ago, in a particular place just outside
Jerusalem; and that God raised him from the dead the third day; and
that he sent his followers throughout the world to make disciples
of every nation; and that he ascended to heaven where he reigns at
God’s right hand, and from which he will come again to
establish his kingdom on the earth.

These are all objective, historical events, not just spiritual
ideas or experiences. And if these events are false—if they
did not happen or will not happen—then Christianity is false
and no one should believe it.

So I pose the question at the outset: On what basis should we
believe that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, and is alive
today reigning as the Son of God? Before going to our text in
Matthew, I just want to point you toward five lines of evidence
that you would want to follow in answering that question.

Five Lines of Evidence That Jesus Rose From the Dead

1. The testimony of the apostle Paul. We have 13 letters from his
   pen. He was a contemporary of Jesus. He claimed to see the risen
   Christ. He spoke of others that he knew who saw him alive after his
   crucifixion, even 500 at once, many of whom were still alive when
   Paul was writing (1 Corinthians 15:5). This gives to Paul’s
   writings what is called “historical control,” which
   means that there is good reason to take seriously what he says
   because there were so many people around who could easily falsify
   his claims if they were not true.
2. The empty tomb in Jerusalem where Jesus had been buried. This
   is relevant because the claim that Jesus was raised from the dead
   spread in a city that was hostile to that claim and would have done
   anything it could to squelch it if they could. The one thing they
   could have done was to produce the dead body of Jesus, but they
   could not (Acts 5:30-33).
3. The courage of the disciples of Jesus and their willingness to
   lay down their lives to preach that Jesus was raised from the dead
   just weeks after they abandoned him out of fear and thought that
   they had been badly mistaken about his Messiahship (Luke 24:21).
   What had changed them from fearful to courageous so suddenly? And
   do men really risk their lives for what they know to be a
   fraud?
4. The diverse testimony of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Peter,
   James, and the writer to the Hebrews. Here you need to get to know
   these men as witnesses, and see if they are credible. Give them a
   hearing and see if they do not win you over, and prove themselves
   to be more worthy of your confidence than the skeptics of our
   day.
5. The ring of truth in the biblical vision of the world. Does not
   this whole story of God and creation and sin and Christ and
   salvation help make more sense out of more things in this world
   from beginning to end than any other vision of reality?

Five lines of evidence. I hope that you will pursue them. Your
eternal life hangs on what you conclude from these.

Christ Is Sovereign, Christ Is Merciful

But the point of my message today is not merely the historical
fact that Christ died or that he was raised from the dead, but
rather that Jesus Christ is sovereign over us because he was raised
from the dead, and he is merciful to us because he died for our
sins. Sovereign over us, merciful to us. Sovereignty secured by his
death-defeating resurrection. Mercy secured by his wrath-removing
death for sins.

Or to put in a rhyme:

Sovereign mercy reigns today
In the God-Man, Jesus Christ.
Sovereign? See where once he lay!
Mercy? See him sacrificed.

The reason I focus on these two things—that Christ is
sovereign and that Christ is merciful—is, first, that I saw
them in this text in a fresh new way, and, second, that these are
the two things we need in a world like ours more than we need
anything else.

We Need a Merciful Savior

We need mercy because everyone of us has a guilty conscience. We
know that we have failed to live up to our own standards, let alone
God’s. We are sinners, and our own hearts condemn us. In our
most honest times, we know that the law written on our hearts is an
echo of God’s law, and therefore we are in more trouble with
God than with ourselves. We need mercy. If God is sovereign, but
merciless, we are done for. There is no hope, and we may as well
eat, drink, and be merry, because we are all damned anyway. We
desperately need a merciful Savior. Our hearts tell us this. And
more clearly the Bible tells us this.

We Need a Sovereign Lord

But just as much as we need a merciful Savior, we need a
sovereign Lord. If Christ is merciful to us, but doesn’t have
the sovereignty to rule the forces that threaten us, what good will
his mercy be? Our lives are fragile and vulnerable in hundreds of
ways. What will happen in Iraq—another Viet Nam, or worse?
What will happen between Israel and the Palestinians and the global
tension that situation creates? What will happen with North Korea
and its nuclear threat? When will the next big 9-11 to come on
American soil? What will happen to my health? Or the health of my
children? My spouse? My parents? (Little children ask: What if
mommy and daddy die?) What natural disasters will befall me or my
family? What car accident or sniper or kidnapper may turn my world
upside down? We are fragile and vulnerable—all of us.

If you are honest, you know that you cannot protect yourself
from these things. And if you devote your life to trying, you will
become a pitiful old man or woman barricaded and lonely behind the
illusion of self-made security.

In other words, we need a sovereign Lord over the world. We need
one who rules over Iraq and Israel and Korea and terrorists and
disease and disaster and accidents—right down to the details
of our lives. Not that he would always spare us calamity—the
Bible doesn’t teach that he will—but if he is merciful,
he will not let any calamity happen to us that he did not design
for our ultimate good.

My point this morning is that Jesus Christ is both
merciful and sovereign. Because he both died for
our sins (so he is merciful) and rose from the dead (so he is
sovereign).

So let’s look at the text in the Bible to see this in the
words and actions of Jesus.

In Matthew 26:26 it is Thursday night before the Friday when
Jesus was crucified. It is the last supper. First let’s look
at the evidence for Christ’s sovereignty and then secondly
the evidence for his mercy.

Evidence of Jesus’ Sovereignty

The evidence for his sovereignty is seen in his predicting the
behavior of all his disciples and in his predicting his own
resurrection. Notice verse 31, “Then Jesus said to them,
‘You will all fall away because of me this
night.’” So he authoritatively predicts what every
one
of them will do. Then notice verse 32: “But after I am raised
up, I will go before you to Galilee.” He predicts with
authority his own resurrection from the dead.

But you should ask me this question: Why do you think that
prediction implies sovereignty? Maybe Jesus simply has penetrating
insight into these fellows after three years with them, and knows
they are the kind of men who will wimp out when the crisis comes in
a few hours. That wouldn’t prove sovereignty. And maybe his
confidence that he will be raised from the dead is because he
believes God will help an innocent prophet, no more. That
wouldn’t prove sovereignty.

But there is more to it than that. Notice the last part of verse
31 that I didn’t read: “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.”’” Jesus’
prediction is not owing to his penetrating knowledge of human
character; it is owing to God’s written plan for this night.
“It is written” (Zechariah 13:7). That is the ultimate
reason why the disciples fall away. There is an invisible hand at
work in these hours. Everything is going according to plan. This is
the sovereignty of God, accomplishing our salvation through the
orchestrated death of his Son.

But you say: All right, there is sovereignty there, but is it
Jesus’ sovereignty? Does his foreknowledge of what others
will do this night—and who will do it—point to his
sovereignty? It does. We see it most clearly in John 13:19. Jesus
not only predicts the behavior of all his disciples before it
happens, he knows perfectly the specific behavior of Judas before
it happens (the betrayal, Matthew 26:25), and he knows perfectly
the specific behavior of Peter before it happens (the three-fold
denial, Matthew 26:34). And when it will happen: before the rooster
crows.

And Jesus interprets this amazing foreknowledge with these words
in John 13:19, “I am telling you this now, before it takes
place, that when it does take place you may believe that I
am.” And the words “I am” refers to his deity.
“I am” is the great Old Testament name for God in
Exodus 3:14. Therefore, the significance of these detailed
predictions—not just general statements about groups, but
specific behavior of specific people down to the details of
specific times (before the cock crows) are Jesus’ way of
saying: I am not a mere man. I am God-incarnate, and therefore I am
sovereign.

And with regard to the prediction of his own resurrection in
verse 32 (“But after I am raised up, I will go before you to
Galilee”), this is not mere conviction about what God might
do for an innocent prophet. Listen to his explanation in John
10:17-18: “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.” When Jesus predicted his own resurrection, he was not
saying what God would do for an innocent prophet, he was saying
what he would do with his own divine sovereignty.

Therefore, I conclude that Jesus Christ, the God-Man, is
sovereign. He is what we need in a world like ours. He said, after
his resurrection, just before he returned to heaven, “All
authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.”
Easter means that Jesus is risen. And the resurrection of Jesus
means that Jesus is sovereign. He has all authority over Iraq and
Israel and North Korea and terrorists and natural disasters and
disease and accidents. This is what we need, a sovereign Lord.

If he is also merciful!

Evidence of Jesus’ Mercy

Otherwise maybe he would use his sovereignty not for us
but against us. So we turn finally to the mercy of Christ.
Where is this seen in our text? It is seen in a very pointed and
precious way by comparing the first part of verse 31 and the last
part of verse 32. Jesus says in verse 31, “You will all fall
away because of me this night.” And in the last part of verse
32 he says, “I will go before you to Galilee.”

Have you ever let someone down? Or worse, have you ever treated
someone far, far worse than they deserved, and later felt horrible
about what you’ve done? And then, to your amazement, you find
that they haven’t spoken to anyone about it, they
haven’t bad-mouthed you, they haven’t plotted any
revenge, and they go out of their way to be kind to you and help
you and treat you as though you had never done anything wrong? What
do you call this? You call it mercy. And it is one of the sweetest
things in the world.

And that is what Jesus did. They all deserted him in his
greatest hour of need. And he said, “After I am raised up, I
will go before you to Galilee.” I will be your friend and
your leader and your God—after you have deserted me.

It is as though you and a friend were walking down a road
together speaking of your friendship, and two thugs attack you and
grab your friend, and you just run away to save your skin. And the
next day, you see your friend coming toward on the road, with
stitches and bruises on his face, and before you can say anything,
he hugs you and says, “Oh, it is so good to see you, friend,
I am so glad you’re OK.”

Would it not break your heart? Does not mercy break our
hearts?

Well, that’s what Jesus did for them. And that is what he
does for everyone who comes to him for forgiveness and acceptance.
You may have spent a lifetime deserting him or betraying him or
denying him. But if you will come to him he says to you this
morning, “I will be your sovereign, merciful Savior and Lord.
I will be everything you need.”

Sovereign and Merciful. This is the risen Christ. Trust him
today. By his mercy he will forgive your sins forever. And by his
sovereignty he will guide you and protect you so that nothing
befalls you but what is ultimately good for you.

He is a great Savior and a great Sovereign.