Show Notes
Matthew 27:45 - 28:10
1 Corinthians 15:1-26
Pastor Christopher Chelpka
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Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Our Heavenly Father, our mouths open and praise you now and forevermore, because you have caused us to rise from the dead. You have given to us the resurrection of Jesus Christ and have made us to live. You have made us to be born again. A work that has begun so wonderfully, so powerfully, so beautifully, and will one day be brought to completion when our bodies are. When our bodies rise from the dead. On that great day of your return, O Lord, we thank you for these truths and the hopes that we have in you. You have lifted us up and conquered death and the devil and the sin and flesh that is in us. O Lord, be merciful on us now as we hear your word. Press these things into your heart, into our hearts, that we might praise you even more, that shouts of gladness might be even stronger, and that our lives might be lived even more so, to the glory of your name, we pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
[00:01:11] You may be seated. I have two passages to read to you this morning. First from Matthew, chapter 27, and then from First Corinthians.
[00:01:36] So, Matthew 27, we're going to begin in verse 45, hear of the death of Jesus, and then read through verse 10 of chapter 28.
[00:02:07] All right, let's hear the word of God now. From the sixth hour, there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour. And about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, eli, Eli lebek sabachthani. That is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And some of the bystanders hearing it, said, this man is calling Elijah. And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink. But the other said, wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him. And Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit. And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and the earth shook and the rocks were split. The tombs also were opened and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised. And coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. When the centurion and those who were with him. When the centurion and those who were with him, keeping watch over Jesus, saw the earthquake and what took place, they were filled with awe and said, truly, this was the Son of God.
[00:03:26] There were also many women there looking on from a distance who had followed Jesus from Galilee, ministering to him, among whom were Mary Magdalene and Mary the mother of James and Joseph and the mother of the sons of Zebedee. When it was evening, there came a man from Arimathea named Joseph, who also was a disciple of Jesus. He went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then Pilate ordered it to be given to him. And Joseph took the body and wrapped it in clean linen, a clean linen shroud, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had cut into the rock.
[00:04:02] And he rolled a great stone to the entrance of the tomb and went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary were there, sitting opposite the tomb.
[00:04:11] The next day, that is, after the day of preparation, the chief priests and the Pharisees gathered before Pilate and said, sir, we remember how that imposter said while he was alive. After three days, I will rise. Therefore order the tomb to be made secure until the third day, lest the disciples go steal him away and tell the people he's risen from the dead. And the last fraud be worse than the first. Pilate said to him, you have a guard of soldiers. Go make it as secure as you can.
[00:04:44] So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard.
[00:04:50] Now, after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.
[00:04:57] And behold, there was a great earthquake. For an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothes white as snow. And for fear of him, the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who is crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead. And behold, he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him. See, I have told you. So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and ran to tell his disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and said greetings. And they came up and they took hold of his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.
[00:06:04] Praise God.
[00:06:06] Let's turn to First Corinthians now. First Corinthians, chapter 15.
[00:06:30] First Corinthians 15:1 26.
[00:06:40] Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preach to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received. That Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, and that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. And then he appeared to Cephas, then to the 12. Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that is in me. Whether then it was I or they. So we preach. And so you believed.
[00:07:50] Now, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?
[00:07:58] But if there's no resurrection, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God because we testified about God, that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise. If it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only we are of all people, most to be pitied.
[00:08:42] But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. The first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive, but each in his own order. Christ the first fruits. Then at his coming, those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom to God the Father, after destroying every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
[00:09:22] Amen.
[00:09:24] Praise be to God.
[00:09:33] So when the Apostle Paul writes to the Corinthian Church, he has something. He has an error in mind that he's addressing. What's the error? The error is that people are saying there's no such thing as the resurrection.
[00:09:47] Something won't happen or didn't happen or doesn't happen, right? No such thing as the resurrection.
[00:09:56] But if that's true, then it has certain implications, just as the fact that if it is true, it has certain implications.
[00:10:07] Everything in this life affects everything else. And some things are so big they affect everything. And this is one of those things. It's kind of if you throw a tiny little pebble in a lake and it, you know, slowly ripples out, you know, that has an effect, right, on all the water around and that sort of thing. If you throw a big rock in, you get bigger ripples. If a giant meteor crashes into the lake and creates a giant hole and changes the landscape, that changes things, right? This is on that scale, only way, way bigger. If it didn't happen, then there's implications of that. If it did happen, then there's implications of that. There's no sort of neutral way of talking about this. And some people in Paul's day, as in our own day, say that doesn't happen. People don't rise from the dead. It's impossible. And people have different reasons for that.
[00:11:06] What does Paul say? Well, one, he says that if that's true, that there's no resurrection from the dead, then here are the implications. Number one, Christ didn't rise from the dead, right? If there's no resurrection, there's no resurrection. Jesus didn't rise from the dead. And if Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then we are still in our sins. And all the things that we talk about and believe, the way that we order our lives, all of it, it's foolish, it's vanity and worthless. He says, in fact, if the resurrection didn't happen and we're all doing this Christian thing, trusting in this, hoping in this, waiting for this, he says we are of all people, are to be the most pitied.
[00:11:51] If the resurrection, resurrection didn't happen, we should look at ourselves and look at Christians and say, oh, those poor people, so self deceived, so deluded.
[00:12:02] But in fact, of course, it has happened. And so as much as you might pity someone who's believing something that doesn't make any sense and is impossible and doesn't work, believing in the resurrection leads us to a great happiness for those who trust in him, a rejoicing and a desire to and should lead to a desire to believe him.
[00:12:30] Think about it this way. If you were planning on this morning on having a certain dish for your lunch, let's say you were going to Make a ham. And then you forget that you left it in the freezer instead of putting it into the fridge. You realize that it's not thawed. All of a sudden you get. Let's say you get home this afternoon. I'm not trying to make anybody worry, but let's say you get home this afternoon, you realize something. You say, okay, this changes everything. We're doing something different for lunch, right? Because something has changed in your reality. You thought this was true, but now this other thing is true. This happens all the time. Remember the story of Joseph and his brothers?
[00:13:10] Can you imagine being Joseph's brothers, talking to the second in command of Egypt, remembering all these ways in which you've betrayed Joseph and all that sort of thing. And then all of a sudden, this second in command of all Egypt who's holding your lives, right? And the lives of your family and the lives of your people, reveals to you that he's your brother that you betrayed.
[00:13:33] This changes everything, right? If he's merciful, we're going to be set.
[00:13:40] If he is not, we're all dead.
[00:13:44] Right?
[00:13:46] And when he reveals that he is Joseph, reveals that he is his brother and he is going to have mercy on them. Indeed, everything changes. They are saved from the famine, and for a long, long time they prosper in Egypt, of all places.
[00:14:01] There's these things that happen in our lives and even in the history of the world that when they happen, they change things.
[00:14:11] We say things like this changes things.
[00:14:15] And the resurrection of Jesus is like that. If it's true, which it is.
[00:14:21] If it's true, it changes everything.
[00:14:25] And so I want you to consider the question today. Is it true? Not everybody says that it is. What do we make of the claim that Jesus did not rise from the dead? What about the claim that he does? I want to think through some of those options with you.
[00:14:44] So what about the claim that it's all legend?
[00:14:48] It's all legend, right? It's a nice story. You could maybe say in a positive way, there's good things here, moral lessons we could learn. Maybe it's a metaphor for how we ought to live our lives. But some people say, yeah, that's all nice, but it didn't really happen.
[00:15:05] One of the problems with this view and a lot of the things that we're going to think about in a moment is that just like you have to account for the resurrection itself and the evidence that is behind it, you have to account for these other views. So if you say, for example, well, it's just a legend well, that leads to certain questions, right? Well, like this. Who made it up?
[00:15:29] How do you know they made it up? How do you prove that it's true, that it's a legend? There's a lot of things that you can say, a lot of ideas you can make up about what might have happened instead of the resurrection of the dead. But you have to have some reasons to believe it. If you think that the resurrection is just a legend, what are your reasons for believing it? And part of the problem is there aren't good reasons for believing that it's a legend. It's difficult, if not impossible, to prove who made it up and why they made it up and how they made it up.
[00:16:04] On top of that, you have a pile of evidence kind of pointing the other direction. What kinds of things do we have in mind?
[00:16:12] First of all, remember this.
[00:16:14] When we read the Bible, we have it all together in one book. All these letters, all these of different people speaking together. And it holds together indeed, as one unified piece, as the word of God. But they are. These letters and gospels are written by different people, different times, different relationships with Jesus and others.
[00:16:36] Remember that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and Paul and other writers, when they're writing, they're writing from their own perspective, their own lives, their own testimony, their own witnesses. They're sometimes drawing on what they hear from others. They're sometimes talking about what they've experienced themselves. And that all comes together in this one place, right? Imagine you receive calls as a 911 dispatcher, and you get a call and you say, let's make up an intersection. We'll say Speedway and Swan over here, right? At Speedway and Swan, there was just a big accident. You hang up the phone, nobody else calls Speedway and Swan. There's a big accident. You can pick up the phone, someone else calls it Speedway and Swan. There's a big accident. And this happens over and over and over again. Are you going to say they're all making it up?
[00:17:25] Right.
[00:17:27] You could.
[00:17:29] Maybe they are. But what reason would you have to believe that? What would be your reason for thinking that all these people are giving you all of these testimonies and just making it up? Right? Especially when their testimonies are corroborating one another. They're saying different things. Yes, they maybe have different angles and different perspectives, different ways of looking at it, but they're all testifying to the same thing. For some reason, when it comes to the resurrection of Jesus, all of these witnesses and all of this testimony, people just say, well, they're Just making it up.
[00:18:03] Or sometimes they'll discount some of the people. They'll say, well, anyone that was believing in Jesus, we can't trust them because clearly they would make that up. That would be like the 911 dispatcher saying, I'm not going to listen to anyone that was actually in the car.
[00:18:19] I'm just going to listen to anyone that was outside of the car.
[00:18:23] Well, why, why would you exclude the evidence of people that were there? And it's true the people inside of a car have a particular perspective and motives and things like that, but so do the people outside the car.
[00:18:37] No one comes to this from a sort of, as I said before, a neutral position.
[00:18:41] Everyone has their own biases and perspectives and things like that. Of course we know that. But what we have in the Bible and outside of the Bible are all kinds of witnesses testifying to certain things that happened. What kinds of things? Well, that there was a man named Jesus who lived both extra biblical outside of the Bible. Sources and sources inside the Bible testify to this that the things that the Bible talks about are true. There was a man named Pontius Pilate. There was. There were Roman rulers ruling at this time, centurions and guards and certain roads and places that they all existed. They're not just imaginary and made up. And there's all kinds of ways that to prove this.
[00:19:27] On top of that, we have all the testimony about these specific things, not only that Jesus lived, but that he was crucified, that he was buried in a tomb, that that tomb was empty, that many people saw him for about 40 days after he rose from the dead, and they saw the empty tomb as well.
[00:19:51] How do you account for this?
[00:19:53] How do you account for all of these things that happen?
[00:19:58] Well, most people, even people that don't believe in the resurrection, don't most scholars. Anyway, historians don't believe in a legend. There's enough evidence that they have to say, well, we know that there was a Jesus, we know that these things happened. It's just the resurrection piece we deny.
[00:20:15] And so how do you explain that? How do you explain an empty tomb? How do you explain the changed lives of the apostles? How do you explain all these things and all these people saying these things?
[00:20:28] One theory and one of the oldest theories, it's not a theory, but anyway, is this stolen body, right? We actually have it testified to in the Bible. Remember how we read in Matthew, Remember what happened there? The people remembered the Pharisees and the rulers remembered what Jesus had said during his life, that in three days he would rise from the dead. So they're thinking about this. Of course, they don't believe that that's going to happen, right? They don't believe that, that he's going to rise from the dead. But they're concerned that the disciples are going to pull this fast one, that they're going to go to the tomb, steal the body and be like, he rose. Look at that. Isn't it amazing? And then, and then you've got more problems on top of problems. So what do they do? They anticipate, they are concerned about this. So they go to Pilate and they say, we've got a problem. Yes, you killed him. Right? They recognize everybody, even Jesus enemies recognize that he's dead. They recognize that he's been buried, they recognize that he's been in tomb and they're worried about a stolen body.
[00:21:32] So they go to Pilate and they say, what do we do? And he says, I'm going to give you guards. You take the guards, you seal the tomb, you set the guards and establish them. Make it as secure as you can. And these are motivated people, as we've seen, if you remember the story of the gospel calling for Jesus death despite Barabbas giving Judas blood money to betray all kinds of things, right? These are very motivated people to make sure that Jesus and his movement is killed.
[00:22:03] So they set the guards and then the disciples, and then all of a sudden their tomb is empty.
[00:22:12] And so the Bible tells us that they lie about this and they try to say that the disciples stole the body. But how again, where's the evidence? What's the evidence? In fact, we have evidence of that. A false conspiracy theory has been set up to discount the truth.
[00:22:35] And how would they do this?
[00:22:37] How would the disciples. You'd have to account for this somehow in a stolen body theory, you have to account that somehow the disciples, who a day ago, a few days ago, were deserting, denying and afraid all of a sudden are super bold and really strong and can overpower Roman soldiers.
[00:23:01] Hide a body where, take it where, and then will, and then, and then live the rest of their lives without anybody ever saying anything.
[00:23:12] And on top of that, for what motive?
[00:23:16] Great wealth and fame. Most of them died for the name of Jesus.
[00:23:22] Most of they were beheaded, exiled, put on crosses.
[00:23:32] They would lie about an empty tomb so you could get crucified like the one who died.
[00:23:38] That doesn't seem very plausible.
[00:23:42] So if you affirm the historicity of Jesus and his life and his death and the empty tomb, and you don't believe that the body was stolen. Well, now what.
[00:23:59] What other possible explanations can we have if we're not going to.
[00:24:04] If we're not going to affirm the resurrection? Well, some people say it was a hallucination.
[00:24:10] It was a hallucination. Now remember what a hallucination is, right? A hallucination is something in your mind, right? You are seeing something that's not there. And they happen, right? People see things, they hear things that are not actually there.
[00:24:27] But in order for this hallucination theory to work, you would have to have all of these people, not just the disciples, but these 500 people that saw Jesus, this Roman centurion, all of these people hallucinating the same things at the same time. And multiple events over the course of. Over the course of these hours.
[00:24:51] Where in the history of the world has that ever happened? What proof do we have that it could happen? If we understand the mechanics of how. And even we don't understand a lot. But how would this work? Again, this is not likely.
[00:25:08] I would think it's impossible.
[00:25:11] Here's another possibility. Wrong tomb, right? They went to the wrong tomb. Again, a lot of these things I don't think are very thought out.
[00:25:19] Wrong tomb, right? First of all, remember that Mary and the other Mary and James and John's mother, they all were at the tomb, right? The night when he was buried. They know where it was.
[00:25:33] They come back to it, right? They didn't forget over a few days. Also, if there'd be any confusion, you could look for the guards that were stationed outside the tomb, right? There are guards there. This is a big deal. This place is known. And on top of that, we know that Joseph of Arimathea knew where the tomb was. It was his tomb. He bought it, he offered it, he placed Jesus there.
[00:25:57] So you have all these things and let's say they got it wrong. How long would it have taken them to figure that out?
[00:26:04] 30 seconds?
[00:26:06] A half a day? People like, guys, it's right there, right? If they had the wrong tomb, that means the right tomb was still there. Easily, easily provable that they had the wrong tomb and none of that. Instead, what do we see? Jesus's enemies trying to cover it up, right? If the, if they went to the wrong tomb, they could have just. The Pharisees could have just walked over and been like, here's the right tomb. You guys are fools. But they don't do that. Instead they go through all these things and cover up all this stuff and try to figure out what to do, because the tomb is empty. Because they went to the right tomb.
[00:26:47] All right, so what if Jesus didn't really die?
[00:26:51] What if he just sort of swooned, right? And he kind of was doing very poorly. And then he was put into the tomb and he resuscitated after some time. And that's why the tomb was empty, because indeed he was set in it and he came out and. But how, in order to believe this, you have to really not understand what Jesus went through.
[00:27:17] Remember, first of all, he's probably tired. He'd been up for a while. Indeed. Remember, while he was praying, before he was betrayed, he asked his disciples to watch and pray for him. Pray with him, watch with him and pray. Do you remember what kept happening? They kept falling asleep. Their eyes were heavy, and Jesus was staying awake during all this time. Then Judas comes and betrays him. They take him. This crowd takes him. They put a crown of thorns on his head and they beat him and they hit him. There's this sad scene in which various people are striking Jesus and saying, prophesy, prophesy, who hit you?
[00:28:05] And this is. It's not even begun really.
[00:28:10] Soon, Pilate will order Jesus to be scourged.
[00:28:15] Scourging is a kind of whipping, right? The, the way that the Romans would do this is they would take about an 8 inch handle and attach these leather straps to it, about, you know, 12 to 24 inches long.
[00:28:28] Now, if you imagine taking a leather strap, if you have got a leather watch strap right now or something like that, and you slap your wrist, you'll go, oh, that kind of stings a little bit, right? If you do it again, you'll be, ow. That you probably won't do it a third time, right? If you keep doing that, eventually it's going to start leaving a welt. It's going to start bruising that, that skin. Do it long enough, maybe it'll start tearing it. But they didn't just use leather straps. And at the end of these straps, they would attach things, pieces of metal, bone, glass, rocks. Because the intention was, as you whipped the body, sorry, as you whipped the body, you're not just slapping it and hitting it, you're tearing it and pulling the flesh away from the body.
[00:29:13] One early historian talks about this and not about Jesus's crucifixion or his scourging, but talks about others. And he says, you could see in, in this work that was done, arteries and veins and the insides of the body are exposed. Many people, many people would not survive the scourging before the crucifixion. They wouldn't survive. Blood loss was so heavy.
[00:29:42] So here's Jesus. He's beaten, he's mocked, he's tired, he's deserted, He's. He is exposed. And now he's been scourged. And now is when they crucify him. They drive nails through his wrists to attach him to a cross. They drive another nail through his feet in such a way that he's hanging and it's difficult to breathe. And of course, you know, his body is all tore up, he's still bleeding. All of these things are happening as this body's trying to deal with, right?
[00:30:18] The pain and the suffering and all the problems there. And in order to breathe, what you would do is you'd push up on your feet to get that breath until you couldn't hold any more than your legs would collapse and you go down. And eventually you would either die of blood loss or asphyxiation, something like that.
[00:30:40] Extremely painful. It would take sometimes a few days for this to happen, depending on how bad the scourging was and how these different things.
[00:30:51] And so what would happen oftentimes is to speed up the crucifixion or to speed up the death, rather, the executioner would take a club or something like that and break the legs on the, on the victim on the cross, they'd break the legs. That way you couldn't push yourself up to get that breath. And then you would die faster. Usually it would take a couple minutes.
[00:31:15] Well, that was the plan with Jesus. And Pilate tells him to. Tells executioner to put him to death. He goes to break Jesus legs, but he sees that Jesus is already dead.
[00:31:27] We read this in other. The other gospels. He sees that Jesus is already dead. How does he know? Well, if you've ever seen a dead body, you know what a dead body looks like, what a dead person looks like. They're not breathing, they're not moving, their heart's not beating, blood's not being pumped, pumped out of their wounds and other things like that. They've died.
[00:31:51] And this is an executioner, right? He's not just there to confirm that Jesus is dead. He's there to kill Jesus. His job is to make sure that he has died. And so he doesn't bother breaking his legs because he's already dead, but he takes a spear, stabs his side of. Stabs the side of the body, puncturing his lung, puncturing his heart. Blood and water come out of the body. After, of course, this, they take him off the cross. They would obviously be able to Visually inspect him and they place him in a tomb, seal the tomb, as we've said, with guards.
[00:32:31] This is what our Lord went through to save us from our sin.
[00:32:36] So the swoon theory, right? Under this theory, Jesus went through all of this and survived.
[00:32:48] Most of us can't survive a cold. I'm joking a little bit, but he, he would not have survived. Friends, they didn't survive. That was the whole point. He was there, everyone was focused on killing him and they were of course, successful. Using all of these, these means Jesus would have to have survived the, the beatings, the scourgings, the crucifixion, the spear going into his side, puncturing his lung, puncturing his heart. He would have had to survive then being locked in a tomb and then somehow being refreshed from the night air or something, Stand up on his crucified feet, put his dislocated arms and limbs and things back into place, roll away from the inside of the tomb, a big stone, sealed, overpower guards, and then not go seek medical attention, right? Because remember, the theory here is that he didn't rise from the dead. He just had a bad day. He, he then goes out into public with all of his skin and everything hanging off. And then nobody would have said anything. And all of a sudden everybody's saying he rose from the dead. It would be obvious that Jesus didn't rise from the dead. And of course, this is stuff of comic books, right? The human body does not do this. The only thing that accounted account for Jesus surviving, that is a resurrection, would be something supernatural, some kind of beyond normal functioning of nature, some kind of miracle which would cause him to live.
[00:34:38] It would be impossible, apart from supernatural help.
[00:34:44] So we can keep coming up with theories, aliens, a twin brother that was secretly kept for 30 years while Jesus then got him to go on the cross, right? You could come up with stuff, but with any theory that is advanced, you have to ask that question again. Well, what's the proof?
[00:35:07] And how do you account for all of this other evidence?
[00:35:12] And when you think through these things and the evidence that we have, very quickly things fall apart. And the more you examine it, the more you examine what happened, the more you will see that things fall apart.
[00:35:27] So what's the truth?
[00:35:29] Well, the truth is a really amazing, surprising, maybe even hard thing to believe, that Jesus rose from the dead.
[00:35:38] But it certainly fits all the evidence, it fits the facts, it fits the testimony, it fits. And not just what happened, but what was prophesied to happen way back from the old, in the Old Testament, God had been talking about this event, predictions of it in all kinds of ways. And throughout the Gospels, these writers are saying, and this happened to fulfill the Scriptures, and this happened to fulfill the Scriptures, and this happened to fulfill the Scriptures.
[00:36:07] Is it any surprise to us then that a supernatural resurrection happened from the dead when God had been saying all along and proving it through these fulfilled prophecies?
[00:36:19] It's an amazing thing indeed. And it did happen. This remarkable, supernatural, this changes everything kind of thing happened when Jesus rose from the dead.
[00:36:33] And not only did a resurrection happen, but it was the resurrection of the Son of God.
[00:36:40] Which means it had a plan and it had a purpose.
[00:36:45] The resurrection wasn't just some weird thing, some odd, you know, kind of weird, creepy thing that happened. It was something that was very intentional.
[00:36:56] And why God tells us all, many times, in many ways, John tells us, John the Baptist tells us, when he points at Jesus at the beginning of his ministry and says, here's the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
[00:37:13] This resurrection changes everything. And it did.
[00:37:17] By providing a sacrifice for sins, a once and final sacrifice for sins. God's wrath was poured out on Jesus. And he took all of this evil that was done to our Lord, done to our King, done to our friend, done to our Savior. He took all of that evil and all of that unrighteousness, and he used it for your salvation.
[00:37:39] God had a plan, and not just yours, but many, every tribe and tongue and nation, people all over the world and lives like the apostles that were formerly lived in fear and formerly lived and even denying that and denying Jesus, all of a sudden, these men and women were fearless.
[00:38:02] Sin and misery and lives, lives held and bound by slavery, all of a sudden were lived in holiness and with blessing.
[00:38:13] People that were destined for hell were all of a sudden given heaven.
[00:38:20] And what happened for them at that time is for us and continues to happen, this salvation being promised and given until he comes again.
[00:38:30] And so don't let alternate theories, don't let lies keep you from the truth.
[00:38:39] Something wonderful has happened. And that's what Paul's testifying to here. He says Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures. He was buried, he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. And he appeared to Cephas, then to the 12, then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time. That's a lot of witnesses, he says, most of whom are still alive. Implication. Go talk to them. Ask them, though some have fallen asleep.
[00:39:13] Let me finish with this. As you think about your own life and you think about what it might mean to believe and put everything and stake everything on the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Think about Paul's life, the one who's writing this letter to the Corinthians. This is a man who was persecuting the church, dragging people out of their homes, going after them because of what they were believing about Jesus. What in the world changed that man and made him willing to die for Jesus?
[00:39:47] It was the resurrection. He came face to face with the Lord Jesus, who said, saul, why are you persecuting me?
[00:39:58] And Saul's life was never the same again because he encountered the truth.
[00:40:05] Friends, Jesus is the way and the truth and the life.
[00:40:09] No one comes to the Father except through Him. And when we come to the Father through Him, we don't have to have the condemnation that Jesus went through and worse.
[00:40:22] The hell that awaits those who deny Jesus and fight against Jesus is one of eternal, one of eternal death, eternal suffering. Jesus endured what he endured, not just the physical things, but even worse, the spiritual things, as the wrath of God that was meant for us was poured out on him when we come to Him. We can know what Paul says in Romans, that there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because we have died in him and we have risen in Him.
[00:41:00] Instead of believing lies, instead of living our lives in vanity, let us live in the truth.
[00:41:08] Because he is risen.
[00:41:11] He is risen indeed.
[00:41:14] Let's pray.
[00:41:17] Our Heavenly Father, how glorious and awesome you are. We praise you for the powerful work that you do in the world and not only demonstrating your almighty power in judgment, but, Lord, you demonstrate that power in grace, giving to people what they don't deserve. A salvation in you, a salvation to glorify you and enjoy you now and forever. Lord, we praise you and we thank you that our hope is not in vain and that this hope that you give us is a hope that causes us not to mourn as those without hope. You give us a hope in which you promise to wipe every tear from our eyes, a hope in which all the sorrows of this world will one day, one day be perfected and made right in you.
[00:42:08] Lord, we ask that you would help us to remember who we are in Jesus, to trust him for what he's done and to look for that coming again.
[00:42:20] Lord, help us to look forward to our own resurrection from the dead with confidence, knowing that indeed it has already begun in Jesus.
[00:42:29] Lord, it makes us so sad to think about what Jesus went through in order to save us from our sins.
[00:42:39] It makes us so sad to think about all the evil in the world that unjustly persecuted him, hurt him and killed him.
[00:42:48] But we know that you are greater than evil things. We know that you are greater than sin. And we know that you are a conqueror over the devil. And so we praise you for the resurrection of our Savior, in whose name we pray. Amen.
