Today, April 20th, 2025, people all around the world who call themselves Christians are observing Easter, celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ. His physical, bodily rising from the dead is considered the central event and the highest joy of the gospel—even more than his birth that we celebrate on Christmas Day. For most Christians, the cry, “He is risen!” is more than good news. It’s the best news. But today, let’s just step back and ask some bedrock questions: “What are we even talking about when we talk about the resurrection?” and “Why is it good news?”

The reality is, there are plenty of people who do not at all believe that bodily resurrection is good news. We’ll talk about why that is so today, and we’ll begin by noticing that it was already so in the earliest decades after Christ. We’ll see it right here in Acts chapter 17. The apostle Paul Is by himself, Without Silas Timothy, in the center of Greek culture and philosophy, Athens. And we’ll find that the idea of the resurrection of the body is the central issue in the passage.

In every other city Paul has visited on this his second missionary journey— Derbe, Lystra, Pisidian Antioch, Troas, Philippi, Thessalonica, and Berea—his most severe challenges have come from the leaders of the established Jewish communities in those cities, who almost invariably refused to believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah, and reacted violently to Paul’s preaching of that gospel. Now he’s in Athens, on his own. Let’s see what happens. Watch how people react to the idea of the resurrection of the body.

READ Acts 17:16-21

You should notice what he did first of all in Athens: he went to the synagogue to tell his Jewish brothers that Jesus their Messiah had come to bring a new covenant to God’s people and put an end to the old. The second thing he did was go to the marketplace so he could mix it up with the marketplacers. And it looks like it was there at the marketplace that he ran into some philosophers. Those philosophers got interested in the stuff he was saying, and invited him to the very center of Athenian culture and philosophy and tradition—the Areopagus, otherwise known as Mars’ Hill. The things he said to the philosophers there will fill up the rest of this hour, and next Sunday’s sermon too.

what they need to listen for

• 4 central facts about the resurrection of the body

Christians believe in the resurrection of the body

There are basically 3 different ways people respond to the idea of the resurrection of the body. Materialists, that is, people who believe that matter and nature are all that exists, and that there is no such thing as the spiritual or the supernatural or the miraculous, simply reject the possibility of the resurrection of the body out of hand. It is physically and scientifically impossible, and only an idiot would believe such a thing. Platonists and Gnostics are people who, whether they realize that that is the proper ancient term for what they believe or not, are people who believe that spiritual reality is superior to physical reality, and that therefore resurrection is a spiritual thing not a physical thing. We’ll see both of those ancient errors among the philosophers here in Athens. Christians, on the other hand, like our forebears the Pharisees, believe that at the end of time there will be a resurrection of the bodies of all humanity, and that all of us, in our resurrected bodies, will stand before God to be judged. You might remember that Paul was a Pharisee before he was ever a Christian. You may not realize that he continued to count himself a Pharisee long after he became a Christian, especially reaffirming their belief in the physical resurrection of the dead. If you want to see this yourself, you can just look up Acts 23:6-9 and 26:1-8 to see what I mean.

We find him right here, among the brightest minds in the ancient world, not Sadducees who reject the idea of resurrection, but Greek philosophers who also reject the notion of the resurrection of the body. And we find Paul clearly contending for the truth, even in Athens. Christians believe in the resurrection of the body. We learned it from Paul and Peter and all the other apostles at the very beginning of the Christian movement.

Of course, not everyone who calls himself a Christian believes that our bodies will be raised from the dead. Even in the 1st century after Christ, there were some people who claimed to be Christians but insisted that resurrection is only a spiritual resurrection. The Bible clearly corrects that mistaken notion, and so did all the first generations of Christian leaders. So let’s think about this together for a minute. There are a couple of reasons behind this belief.

       The resurrection of Jesus’ body long ago

First, we believe that the dead body, the corpse of the Lord Jesus Christ, was raised by the power of the Holy Spirit. His tomb was empty. We believe that his body was not merely resuscitated, like Frankenstein’s monster shocked to life by a jolt of electricity. No, it was resurrected in power and glory. It was no longer mere fallen flesh. It was transformed into a heavenly, glorified flesh, no longer weak and feeble, no longer susceptible the sickness or injury, never to die again—an eternal, glorified, heavenly body.

His resurrection body was physical. He could be seen and touched. He walked and he sat and he ate. Yet his resurrection body was not merely physical. Perhaps we could say it was trans- physical or uber-material. It could do things that normal human bodies cannot do, like walk through closed doors or rise from the ground into the heavens. We believe in the resurrection of the body because we believe in the resurrection of Jesus’ body long ago.

       The resurrection of our bodies on the Last Day

Second, we believe in the resurrection of our bodies on the last day. We do not believe that our existence in the age to come, in the fullness of the Kingdom of God, will be a disembodied existence, floating around in the ether like ghosts or phantoms. No, the scripture promises us that our bodies will be like his body, transformed, glorified, never again to know sickness or death through all the ages of eternity. Paul himself describes our resurrection bodies extensively in the 15th chapter of his first letter to the Corinthian Christians. It would be a great way for you to celebrate Easter Sunday afternoon to open your Bible and read carefully through that chapter and rejoice at the promise of the body that you will inherit and inhabit one day.

I realize that not everyone here calls himself a Christian may yet realize that the belief in the resurrection of the body is an essential Christian belief. But it is. If you do not yet believe that Jesus body was transformed and raised long ago or that your body will be transformed and raised on the last day, I can think of no better day to come to your senses and embrace a fully Christian belief in the resurrection of the body than Easter Day, 2025!

Christians believe in the resurrection of the body

Some scoff at the resurrection of the body

       I hope you noticed as we read through this passage that some of the philosophers that Paul was talking to made fun of him because of what he was saying about the resurrection.

It’s particularly noteworthy that Paul spoke with some Epicurean and Stoic philosophers there in Athens. It might be worth noting some things about what they believed so that we can understand why they responded the way they did.

Epicureans were materialists and skeptics who believed:

1. That the gods, if they exist at all, don’t intervene in human affairs.
2. That the human soul is simply a function of the human body, and so has no continued existence after death..
3. That the goal of life is to enjoy good food, good drink, good friends, and good times, in good balance and wise moderation.
4. That maintaining a devotion to balanced pleasure-seeking keeps people free from fear, especially the fear of death.

Paul’s message of a God who raises the dead to be judged would have sounded like a worthless superstition to the Epicureans, far more absurd that even than the gods of classical Greek mythology. The Epicureans were the original secular humanists.

Stoics were more spiritual, but still had no room for the idea of bodily resurrection. They believed:

1. That there was a “rational divine order” behind reality, not a conscious, personal, creator like the Hebrews believed in
2. That humans do have a soul that is more important than the body, and that might continue after death in some form.
3. That virtue and reason are the keys to living life well life—not faith in a dying and rising savior.

Bodily resurrection would have seemed irrational and pointless to the Stoics. They were famous for their ability to control their passions and emotions by reason alone—even facing death.

Back in Jerusalem, Paul the highly-trained biblical scholar was perched atop the cultural and social hierarchies of that really comparatively minor city. Athens, though, was a center of intellectual pride for the entire Greco-Roman world. The philosophers there saw Paul, a foreigner talking about a crucified and resurrected man, as a rube, a hick. They call him a “babbler”  in v 18. The Greek word means “seed-picker,” like a hen scratching and pecking in the barnyard, or a toddler picking up random words from her parents and proudly repeating them without a clue what they mean, or a fake philosopher-wannabe, picking up scraps of random ideas and pretending to know something. Can you imagine how that fine scorn felt for Paul?

Of course, we aren’t strangers to mockery. The devil’s people have been moking and scoffing at Jesus-followers and Bible-believers for centuries. It’s nothing new. They still think of us as babblers all too often.

What is interesting is how similar modern philosophies are to ancient Greek philosophies, and how today’s worldly thinkers mock and scorn Christian truth just like the Athenian philosophers made fun of Paul. We can live with that that’s why this sermon is titled, “Babbling about Jesus and the Resurrection of the Body.”

Christians believe in the resurrection of the body

Some scoff at the resurrection of the body

Some are curious about the resurrection of the body

But did you notice that not everybody simply dismissed Paul out of hand. Some of them were interested, or at least curious to know what in the world he was talking about. Maybe he was a babbler, but at least his babble was kind of intriguing. So they invited him up to the Big Leagues.

¹⁸ Some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers also conversed with him. And some said, “What does this babbler wish to say?” Others said, “He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities”—because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. ¹⁹ And they took him and brought him to the Areopagus, saying, “May we know what this new teaching is that you are presenting? ²⁰ For you bring some strange things to our ears. We wish to know therefore what these things mean.” ²¹ Now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.

Yes, there were some there who were far too sophisticated and much too set in their ways to pay very much attention to Paul. But there were others. They were curious. They wanted to hear more.

No doubt part of that was just that, as Luke puts it, their national pastime in Athens was just hearing about some new thing. And we can be reasonably sure that some of them just wanted Paul to come up the hill just so they could mock him more. But there were a few who actually wanted to listen.

For Paul, those few were worth it all. He was used to being mocked, or scorned, or rejected, or imprisoned, or beaten with rods, or stoned and left for dead. That was pretty much just his standard order of business for him. So of course he went up Mars Hill. Next week we’ll look more carefully at what he said at the top of the hill. I might even show you a picture of the hill today.

The truth is, in the last year or so there has been a profound change in the way people respond to Jesus, his resurrection, and his gospel. Lots of folks have been noticing this more and more over the past few months. People are coming back to church in many places. Baptisms are up across the Americas and even in Europe. Young people, especially young men, are coming to Jesus at a rate that hasn’t been seen in decades. I saw Franklin Graham remarking on this just two days ago. He called it “a genuine move of God.”

Yes, there are people who are curious about Jesus and his resurrection and his gospel. The question is, are we willing to talk to them? Resurrection Day, April 20th 2025, is the perfect day to recommit yourself to sharing the good news of Jesus with every person you get a chance to, for the rest of this week, the rest of this month, and the rest of your life.

Christians proclaim the resurrection of the body

For now, let’s just ask ourselves if we are so in love with our resurrected Lord Jesus Christ and so devoted to reaching our friends and family and neighbors and enemies with the gospel of our resurrected Lord that we will gladly walk into difficult or even dangerous situations for him and for them. On this Easter Sunday, how tightly do we hold to our lives and our comforts? Paul, as near as we can tell, is all by himself and happy to walk into an absolute pressure cooker of a situation for the gospel. What about me? What about you?

No, I am not really asking you if you could do what Paul did. I’m sure you couldn’t. I’m reasonably sure I couldn’t either. What I am asking is are you talking to anybody about your resurrected Lord Jesus? When was the last time you actually did have a conversation with someone about Jesus? The truth is, you might find that there are people you never would have expected who claimed that they are Christians. And there are people that you never would have guessed who don’t know anything about Jesus at all. You thought that they were such good kind helpful people they must be followers of Jesus. But that’s not always the case, is it?

GOSPEL

Creator

Curse

Covenant

Christ (DBR&A)

Communion

Crown

Christians believe in the resurrection of the body

Some scoff at the resurrection of the body

Some are curious about the resurrection of the body

what God wants them to do

• believe in the resurrection of the body 1 Co 15:34ff
• cry out to the Father for courage to face the mockery and the resentment
• give yourself to sharing the gospel of the resurrected Lord Jesus Christ