There is an old epic, an old tale,
called the Epic of Gilgamesh.
It's one of the earliest recorded writings of humans.
And in the Epic of Gilgamesh, this Sumerian king
is on this mission, this journey, this quest,
to find eternal life or immortality.
And he goes out, so from the very beginning of time
in our written history and our written stories,
we were looking at how can we live forever.
And you may, some of you guys, maybe if you took history
or in high school or whatever, you remember the explorers
and you had Christopher Columbus.
Well, he also had a guy named Ponce de Leon
and this legend formed around him as he went to the islands,
the same islands that Christopher Columbus went
in the Caribbean and then he also ventured his way
on over to Florida and the legend formed
that he was in search of what?
The fountain of youth.
The fountain of youth that would give him
an eternal source of youthfulness
that he would never have to get old and die.
Jump to a little bit more modern era
and you had Indiana Jones in The Last Crusade.
Anyone watch that movie?
You had the quest for the holy grail, right?
If you just get the grail and fill it up
with some of that holy water and drink it,
you too could live forever.
We have been on this quest for immortality
since as long as we've recorded things in writing
and yet I wonder if the answer to this quest
could be not in a legend or a story
but instead in an actual historical event
and more than just a historical event,
a person that that event centers around
and that person that we celebrate this morning,
Jesus Christ.
Could that be the answer that we've all been searching for?
Revelation chapter one, verse 17 and 18 says this.
John is having this vision and he sees the risen Lord
and the Lord says to him, don't be afraid.
I am the first and the last and the living one.
I was dead but look, I am alive forever and ever
and I hold the keys to death and Hades.
Today we're going to look at this resurrection story.
We're gonna look at this resurrection
and begin to examine it and we're gonna be examined
in under three points, the purpose of the resurrection,
the proof of the resurrection
and the power of the resurrection.
And so first, the purpose of the resurrection.
Why was the resurrection necessary?
Why did God determine before time began
that Christ would die and be resurrected?
And the first point underneath the purpose
of the resurrection I'll have you write down
is that it validates Jesus's claims.
It validates Jesus's claims.
The first reason was in validating Jesus's claims,
the resurrection proved them to be right
because Jesus made a lot of claims about himself.
Jesus said a lot of things
that put a lot of people on edge, especially at his time.
He claimed that he was the preexisting one.
He said before Abraham, which was the patriarch
of their nation who had lived many, many, many, many,
many years before the first century,
Jesus said before Abraham, I am.
And in saying I am, he invoked the name of God
that was revealed to Moses back in Exodus.
The name that says I am the preexisting one, the one.
I am that I am.
Jesus claimed to be that one.
Jesus claimed that he had authority to forgive sins,
something that was reserved for God alone.
Jesus said that I and the Father are one.
Jesus even made claims about his exclusivity,
that it was only through him.
He was the only way, the only truth and the only life.
No one comes to the Father except through him.
He also said that he was the divine judge of all the world.
Again, something reserved for God.
And so with all these claims,
it leaves you wondering, was he right?
Well, what's up with these claims?
You can't just make those kind of claims
and get away with it, can you?
In fact, C.S. Lewis famously wrote,
and others have wrestled with it,
he wasn't the first one there,
many before him had wrestled with this problem.
And basically said, you can come down to,
originally it was three, the trilemma they called it,
but there's a fourth one that we can add to it.
You can come down to these four basic conclusions
with all the claims that Jesus made.
Either he was a liar or a lunatic
or he was a legend.
Maybe he was a lunatic,
and if he wasn't any of those three,
if you can dismiss all three of those,
then what you're left with is he was Lord.
He was Lord.
Is he a liar?
Is he a lunatic, a legend, or Lord?
If Jesus knew that he was not God,
but he claimed to be God, then he was a liar.
And set aside the resurrection for a moment,
he also made a lot of claims,
and we also look to Jesus, what, as a good moral teacher.
But does a good moral teacher lie about who he is?
No.
And so not only would the resurrection no longer be valid,
but also all of his other claims
to be a good moral teacher,
you shouldn't listen to any of them if he's a liar.
If he's a liar, then his claims have no value.
Have no bearing.
C.S. Lewis, in his dialogue in this, though,
points out that the moral teachings in the life of Jesus
were not consistent with someone
who would be a deliberate liar,
essentially to extend a lie,
to extend all the way to the place of dying this lie.
But that's something you have to wrestle with,
and some of you wrestle, was Jesus a liar?
The other point is, was he a lunatic?
See, it's one thing, Jesus is a liar
if he knew he wasn't God, but claimed to.
What if he thought he was God?
What if he actually believed it and claimed to be?
Well then he'd be a lunatic, he'd be delusional, right?
If he wasn't actually God, he'd be delusional.
And as Lewis points out,
it's one thing to think that you're a poached egg
just in search of a piece of toast to land on.
It's a whole nother thing to think you're the son of God
with all of these claims and to hold that over all of us.
You wanna be a poached egg looking for toast, go for it.
Have at it, get crazy.
You wanna make the claims you made,
you existed before everything, from you,
everything was created.
You wanna make the claim that you are the only way.
You wanna make the claim that you're the divine judge
of the whole world.
There better be some proof.
Lewis notes that the wisdom and rationality
evident in Jesus' teachings and actions and life
do not align with the behavior
of someone who was mentally ill.
But maybe you wrestle with that, was he a liar?
Was he a lunatic?
Or was he a legend?
Maybe you wrestle with the idea
that maybe Jesus' life and his miracles
and his claims to divinity were just exaggerated
and mytholized over time by his followers
who wanted to make him into something that he wasn't.
Maybe Jesus was a historical figure,
but all of the exaggerated divine claims about him
were all made by his followers
either at that time or much later.
Maybe Jesus was just a legend, at least the one
that we have come to know.
But if he's not a liar, if he's not a lunatic,
and if he's not a legend, then Lewis says,
after rejecting all those other ones,
then you have to come to the conclusion
that he must be Lord.
And if he is Lord,
then you would have to take every one of his claims
and every one of his statements and see that he's Lord.
And seriously consider them as true.
The resurrection of Jesus that we celebrate this morning,
if it happened, means that all Jesus' claims
must be taken seriously.
The late Dr. Timothy Keller has a quote that said,
if Jesus rose from the dead,
then you have to accept all that he said.
If he didn't rise from the dead,
then why worry about any of what he said?
The issue on which everything hangs
is not whether or not you like his teaching,
but whether or not he rose from the dead.
It's the crux of the issue.
And so the resurrection is put out there
as a way to validate Jesus' claims.
If the resurrection happened,
then you have to take him seriously.
And I believe that the resurrection did happen
for that very reason, to validate all that Jesus said.
But I think it also happened for another reason.
The second reason why the resurrection had to take place
is it was a part of God's purpose from the beginning
that he was going to remake everything,
that God was going to renew everything,
that God was making all things new.
See, man had fallen into sin and chaos,
and the world had been corrupted by sin
from the very beginning in our first parents, Adam and Eve,
but then it translated all the way down
through the generations to you and I,
and every one of us has sinned and fallen short
of what God made us to be.
And the penalty for sin, according to the Bible, is what?
Death.
The penalty for sin is death,
and we have all fallen short,
and therefore we all are owed for our labor of falling short.
We're owed the wages of death, every one of us.
But God, in his infinite wisdom,
before time had even began,
could look down through the passages of time
and see what was going to happen,
and determine in advance in what was classified in Hebrews
as an everlasting covenant that God made within himself,
a covenant that he made that he would send
his one and only son,
and the divine nature would be united together
with the human nature in one person, Jesus Christ,
and Jesus would live out his life,
and he would go to the cross,
and there on the cross,
he would pay the penalty for our sins.
That he would redeem humanity.
But it wasn't going to stop there.
His plan was never to end at redemption,
but it was also to remake everything,
to restore all that was broken.
Acts three in a famous passage,
a preaching in the early church,
the preachers there talk about how God,
Christ had ascended after his resurrection,
had ascended up to heaven in order that he would
come back to heaven in order that he might complete
the work of restoring all things.
And in 2 Corinthians chapter five,
we're told that if anyone is in Christ,
they are a new creation.
God had looked for what eternity was to be for us,
and he said, you know what,
we're gonna start it with Christ.
And that anyone who enters into that relationship
trusting in him can join with him
in that eternal life today.
Can begin to live in the eternity, in the life today.
I'm gonna read a quote from a scholar, N.T. Wright,
who's probably written one of the great works
on the resurrection, and he says,
the message of the resurrection
is that this world actually matters.
That the injustices and pains of this present world
must now be addressed with the news
that healing, justice, and love has won.
If Easter means Jesus Christ is only raised
in a spiritual sense, then it is only for me
and for me to find some new dimension
in my own personal life.
But if Christ, Jesus Christ has truly risen from the dead,
bodily risen from the dead,
Christianity becomes good news for the whole world.
News which warms our hearts precisely because
it is just the kind of news that isn't intended to.
And yet, we find new life in Christ.
And it's not the kind of life that is
some sort of out of balance that says
the physical world doesn't matter,
or the spiritual world is all that matters.
We can go to those extremes as many have throughout history
and say the goal of life is to leave the body
in the physical and find your home in the spiritual,
to ascend above the physical.
And others have gone to the other extreme
and say forget the spiritual, there's nothing else.
All you got is this life.
Maximize it, squeeze it for all it's got
because once it's over, it's over.
And then you're just worm food.
Those are the extremes and yet the true gospel says no,
there is a purpose still for the created world.
There is a purpose still for the body.
God is remaking and renewing what is to become what we'll be.
And there is a purpose for the spirit
because this isn't the only thing.
There's something that comes after this
in which we're being invited into in the resurrection.
God aims to make all things new, to restore all things.
This means God hasn't abandoned creation either.
Yes, creation has fallen into chaos.
Yes, creation is marred by sin and death,
but God hasn't abandoned it.
Creation is still good and worth redeeming.
And therefore, that is what the resurrection represents.
It's the first fruits of the redemption.
It's the first actions of what God is doing
to make all things new.
It's where we can look, to look with hope and say
we see it in his resurrection
and therefore we can see it coming in all things.
The resurrection was a miraculous display of God's power,
but it wasn't a suspension of the natural order
of this world.
Rather, it was the beginning of the restoration
of the natural order of this world,
back to what God had always intended.
Number two, the purpose of the resurrection,
to validate Jesus' claims and to show that God
is making all things new.
Number two, the proof.
What is the proof of the resurrection?
I'm gonna read to you a passage out of
1 Corinthians chapter 15, beginning in verse one.
This is Paul speaking and he said,
now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters,
the gospel I preach to you, which you received,
and on which you have taken your stand
and by which you are being saved
if you hold to the message I preach to you,
unless you believed in vain.
For I passed on to you as most important
what I also received, that Christ died for our sins
according to the scripture, that he was buried
and that he was raised on the third day
according to the scripture, and that he appeared to Cephas,
then to the 12, then he appeared to over 500 brothers
and sisters at one time, most of them are still alive,
but some have fallen asleep.
And then he appeared to James and then to all the apostles
and last of all, as one, born at the wrong time,
he also appeared to me.
Now, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead,
how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?
If there is no resurrection of the dead,
then not even Christ has been raised.
And if Christ has not been raised,
then our proclamation is in vain and so is your faith.
Moreover, we are found to be false witnesses about God
because we have testified wrongly about God
that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise
if in fact 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 worthless, you are still in your sins.
Those then who have fallen asleep in Christ
have also perished.
If we have put our hope in Christ for this life only,
we should be pitied more than anyone.
Paul, speaking to the church in Corinth,
is basically saying if Christ did not rise from the dead,
then this message is worthless, the faith is worthless,
very similar to what Tim Keller had caught on to there
talking about if he rose from the dead,
then all his claims we have to take seriously.
If he didn't rise, then why take any of them?
And so we know the story.
We know the story of the resurrection, or most of us do,
that Christ died on the cross,
and in a rush, they hurriedly took his body down
in preparation for the Passover,
and they buried him in a tomb
and rolled a big stone in front of the passageway
in order that no one could come and take his body
to make any claims about Jesus.
And with that stone in front,
early on that Easter morning, that first Easter morning,
some women went out to the grave,
and they were prepared to add spices to the grave
as they were supposed to,
it was very common for the ritual of burial at that time,
and because he had been hurriedly taken down from the cross
and rushed to the grave, all the preparations,
all the things that they were needed to do,
they were prepared to do.
And so they went out there with the hope that they could
somehow prepare his body for its resting place.
When they arrive, what do they find?
Those women find that the stone has been rolled away,
and in one gospel account that there's an angel
sitting upon that stone,
the angel sitting upon the stone,
saying he's not gonna die, he's gonna die,
sitting upon the stone, saying he's not here.
The grave is empty.
The grave is no longer there.
And so what you have at this beginning
of the very story of resurrection
is you have women who have come as the first witnesses.
And back to our idea of the purpose of the resurrection,
if the purpose of the resurrection,
if it was really just a legend,
if it was something that was created by his followers,
one thing you would not do at that time in the first century
is you would not have women being the first eyewitnesses
to the resurrection of Jesus.
Because women at that time were not held at the high value,
and they did, their reputation and their witness,
their testimony was not taken with any seriousness.
And so if you're going to write a good legend,
you're not going to put women
as the first ones to witness it.
That'd be a surefire way for people to write it off.
Say, oh, well, you said it was women.
Women, we don't trust their word.
And so the proof of the resurrection begins with a story
that has women as the eyewitnesses,
the first eyewitnesses, but it goes so much deeper than that.
There are four ancient biographies that are written
about the life and death of Jesus.
These four ancient biographies,
they're all written by eyewitnesses,
and they're all based upon eyewitness testimony.
And not only that, but these writings were circulated
among people while the eyewitnesses were still alive,
which means if someone had fabricated any stories,
they could raise their hand and go,
nope, that's not how it went.
Rewrite it, rewrite it.
But instead, these gospel accounts are circulated
as eyewitnesses are still alive.
And every single one of these biographies,
these four ancient biographies,
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,
every one of them claim that Jesus rose from the dead.
In addition to that, you have pagan and Jewish writers
who are outside of the Christian world,
and they report that Christians believe
that Jesus rose from the dead, contemporary writers.
You also have many of the principal eyewitnesses
to the resurrection of Jesus.
They died because of their claim that Jesus had resurrected.
Now, we all know that some people will die for a cause.
They'll get behind a cause and they'll die for it,
but will people just die for a set of facts?
Oftentimes people, at this time, the early church,
were taken to the place of their death
simply because they claimed that their God rose from the dead.
That claim alone was enough to get early Christians killed,
simply saying, my God died and was raised to life.
And yet we have story after story
and eyewitness after eyewitness
who were willing to die for that set of facts,
that he did die and he did rise.
They went to their graves rather than to say
that those facts were untrue.
Also have the historical evidence.
If you were to weigh the historical evidence
related to the resurrection with an objectivity
in the way that we would weigh any old ancient claims,
then you would find that the historical evidence shows
that the grave was empty,
the grave clothes were neatly left behind,
the stone enclosing the tomb was rolled away,
the body of Jesus was never found,
the grave was guarded by Roman soldiers
and no one ever claimed to have stolen the body.
There's more.
Jesus appeared to quite a few people
even after his resurrection.
He appeared to men and women, individuals, couples, groups,
one large crowd.
He was physically touched, he was audibly heard,
he was visually seen,
he ate food in the presence of witnesses
and none of these witnesses believed
that Jesus was going to rise from the dead before he did.
And yet they claimed after, that's exactly what he did.
You've ever thought about even the idea
and confronted the proofs of the resurrection,
then you know that many people have arguments
and claims that they like to make against it.
But one of the things that I think is really encouraging
to me is that our God is not afraid of that.
He's put plenty of evidence out there and proof.
We tend to think of faith as this thing
that we're supposed to just believe no matter what.
We're to believe it with no evidence whatsoever
and just believe it, just believe it.
And yet God didn't see it that way
with regard to the resurrection.
Even Paul writing later in that passage out of Corinthian
says, you've got to settle on this.
Christ actually was raised from the dead.
If you don't believe that, if you can't come to that place,
then your faith is worthless.
Because without that, none of the other stuff matters.
And what we find is that God made it possible
with regard to the resurrection to actually verify it,
to actually go to the source.
If you will go with an objective heart,
seeking to actually hear the truth,
all the breadcrumbs are there to lead you to the truth
that Jesus actually rose from the dead.
He died and he rose from the dead.
In fact, even in the narrative,
if you remember the narrative of the stone rolled away
and the fact that Jesus had passed through the grave clothes
because they were left neatly folded there
on the burial bench.
Jesus had passed through and left it there.
He hadn't ripped them off and tore them.
There wasn't burial clothes all over the room.
Instead, they were nicely folded
right where his body would have laid.
And when the late women showed up
and the tomb was rolled away, right?
If Jesus could pass through the grave clothes
to leave them perfectly folded,
did Jesus need the stone to be rolled away?
No.
So why was the stone rolled away?
The stone was rolled away so we could see.
God said, I wanna show you.
I want you to see how amazing this is
that he's no longer in the tomb.
Ain't no grave gonna hold his body down.
The stone has been rolled away,
not so that Jesus could get up and walk through.
We know later on that he appeared in a room.
He just appeared there.
The stone was rolled away so that we could come and see.
Even this many years later,
God still invites us to trust in him
and he invites us to verify.
Trust but verify.
If you are here and you have doubted
the story of the resurrection
and any of this starts to kind of bubble within you
and you have questions and you start to think,
yeah, but what about, I encourage you, go on that search.
Go on the journey.
The evidence can handle it.
God can handle it.
He can handle your questions.
He can handle your doubting.
He can handle your wrestling.
Go on that journey.
Because I believe the answer will come out.
The resurrection is true and if the resurrection is true,
then you have to take Jesus seriously.
Number three, the power of the resurrection.
Romans chapter eight, verse 10 and 11 says,
now if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin,
but the spirit gives life because of righteousness.
And if the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead
lives in you, then he who raised Christ from the dead
will also bring your mortal bodies to life
through his spirit who lives in you.
The power of the resurrection is that
Jesus is just the first fruits.
Jesus is just the first one to go there
but is inviting all the sons and daughters
who are in Christ who come after
to experience the same power,
the same power that raised Jesus from the dead
to experience that new life today.
You don't even have to die.
You don't have to wait.
The new life can be yours today.
Jesus was the pioneer.
He was the perfecter of faith.
That word pioneer is that Greek word archegos
and it means one who goes before a leader or a champion.
It's good down.
It's all good.
It says in Hebrews chapter two,
in bringing many sons and daughters to glory,
it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom
everything exists, should make the archegos,
the pioneer, the one who goes before, the leader,
the champion, to be the champion of our faith
or to be the champion of their salvation,
the sons and daughters, perfect through his suffering
or perfected through his suffering.
He too shared in their humanity so that by his death,
he might break the power of him
who holds the power of death and free those
who all their lives have been held in slavery
by the fear of death.
The word archegos is a word that means champion
and if you think about the word champion,
draw your mind back to another Bible story
you might remember, David and Goliath.
Remember the story of David and Goliath
if you grew up in Sunday school or in the church?
But if you didn't, I'll go ahead and fill it in a little bit.
David and Goliath, they went out onto the battlefield.
The people of Israel were on one side,
the Philistines were on another.
And they were kind of in this standoff face to face.
And it was determined that each camp, each group,
each nation should send one fighter to go out
who would represent the nation on the battlefield
against one fighter from the other one.
And these two would fight it out to the end
and whoever won, that other nation would be enslaved to them.
And so if David went out and won,
selected by the people of Israel, if David went out,
then the victory of the entire army was imputed to them.
His victory was imputed to the entire army.
If Goliath had won, then all of Israel
would have been enslaved.
In other words, instead of the two armies hacking
at each other, mowing each other down in the battlefield,
these two individuals would go out and fight.
And the defeated one or the victorious one,
their people would either be enslaved or free.
And so you have this idea of a champion who goes first,
who represents the whole group.
And whatever he does gets imputed to them.
If he wins, if he gains victory, it's their victory.
If he gains defeat or if he suffers defeat,
it's their defeat.
Well, Jesus is that for our salvation in our new life.
He went there first.
He went to the grave, but the grave could not hold him.
He went there first.
And because he was able to go and face death
and fought against death, he defeated death for us.
In defeating death, it was imputed to us
that we too could overcome death.
He broke the hold of death.
The reason that he rose from the dead
was because death no longer had any right over him.
He had paid the penalty for sin.
We said earlier that the penalty for sin is death, right?
Well, if you commit a crime
and the penalty for that crime is two years in prison,
well, then you've committed the crime
and that crime has to be paid for
and therefore prison has a hold on you for two years, right?
You go to prison for two years, you can't get out.
But what happens on that last day?
What happens on the day after the last day
of your two year term?
You're released, right?
You're free and prison can no longer have a hold on you.
The prison guards can no longer tell you what to do
or what you can't do or can't do.
Prison no longer has its hold on you.
It has no power over you.
Well, Jesus went to the grave
and Jesus defeated the grave
and he paid the penalty for all of our sins
so that sin and death could no longer have its hold on us.
We are that next day after our sentence has been paid.
We live in that day after, the freedom day,
the day where no more is our sin counted against us,
no more do we owe for the penalty of our sin.
Yet Jesus has completely freed us and released us
through his death and his resurrection
and we can live in that new life today.
We can be so confident of God's power and his love
that no fear of worldly loss and no greed for worldly gain
can lure us out of his obedience to who he is.
We can live our lives no longer afraid
of what is because this is not it.
If you live your life as if this life is it,
then you're in prison to that.
You're in prison to what you can accomplish
or what you do within this life.
But if you live and you understand
that Jesus has freed us from death,
death's no longer the end of it all,
but it's just the beginning in a sense,
that we can be free to love,
to go with no fear into this world.
If death is overcome, then this world and this life
isn't all there is.
And in fact, in view of eternity,
this life is actually pretty small
and insignificant, isn't it?
If it's true that Jesus rose from the grave,
then everything is different and nothing is impossible,
and everything will be okay for you and I.
George Herbert, a 17th century poet,
says that death used to be an executioner,
but because of Jesus Christ,
the gospel has made him a gardener.
Death used to be an executioner,
which means that when I died,
I knew I was just going to nothing.
Or if I was religious
and I believed in some sort of life after death,
I probably feared that death,
because after death,
there might be something like an eternal death,
some kind of hell awaiting me.
And so we would be in a state of eternal death,
and there might be a hell awaiting me.
And so we walk around as humans desperately afraid.
But if you believe in the death and resurrection
of Jesus Christ, and you put your hope in that,
then death is now a gardener,
meaning all that death does is plants us.
It puts us into the ground like a tulip bulb.
All it can do now is make us better.
Question this morning on this Easter is can you believe it?
And if you believe it, if you say,
I believe, I believe in the resurrection of Christ.
I believe that his claims were validated.
I believe that God was making everything.
If you can believe that,
can you reorient your life around that truth?
Can you live into that truth?
Can you allow his life into you
and allow him to transform you within?
The same power that God worked to raise
the dead body of Christ is available to everyone
who believes to completely change our insides
and to make us new.
The fact of his resurrection is the hope of ours
that one day we too will be raised to life anew.
Our series was titled Ain't No Grave.
I think it's Ain't No Grave gonna keep his body down.
And if that's true,
then Ain't No Grave gonna hold my body down.