All right, good morning everybody.
Good morning.
Welcome to our Resurrection Sunday service here.
So glad you're all here to join us.
If you are here at Hosanna in our sanctuary for the very first time,
or if you're watching online for the very first time,
we especially want to say welcome.
We're so glad you're here to worship with us today.
And we are here today to celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
The Lamb of God who was foreknown, the Bible says, before the foundation of the world.
The Lamb of God slaughtered for the sins of the world,
sins of all mankind, the Bible tells us, as a perfect atonement.
But you see, today we're here to celebrate that Jesus didn't just die on the cross,
but He rose again.
Not just paying the price for our sin, which is important enough,
but defeating the power of sin and death permanently and forever.
And then by putting faith in Him, granting us new resurrection life,
everyone who would put their trust in Him.
You know, this is a truth for us.
It is a life-changing truth for those who know Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.
It is a truth that many of us have experienced.
We have experienced the power of the resurrection of Jesus Christ in our changed lives,
but it's not an obvious truth for a lot of people.
And there's a question sometimes around this time of the year when people say,
what is it that makes Christians celebrate Resurrection Sunday so passionately?
What is it that makes this one day out of the year such a big deal
for those who are part of the church?
What is the big deal about the resurrection?
Well, the answer is this.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is central to everything that makes Christianity Christianity.
You know, Paul the Apostle said in 1 Corinthians 15 verse 17,
he said, 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.
But if we have put our hope in Christ for this life only,
we will be pitied more than anyone.
You see, if Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead, Paul says our faith is worthless.
That word there means it has no effect.
It's a pipe dream.
It doesn't do anything.
It has no purpose.
It's a false hope.
He says, If Jesus Christ didn't rise from the dead, we are still sinners.
We are still in our sin.
And the reality of that means that we are still unredeemed standing before our Creator.
But if he did rise from the dead, then we have hope for all eternity.
We can be saved.
We can be redeemed.
We can be forgiven and know for a fact that we are.
You see, the truth of the resurrection means that there is a real hope.
There is a real future for all of us.
It means that there can be real change in our lives.
It means that there could be real reconciliation now between us and God
and between us and one another.
It means that everything can be different.
And the truth and the reality is that he did indeed rise from the dead.
It's not a story.
It's not a myth.
It's not a fairy tale.
There is a tremendous amount of very good evidence supporting the fact that Jesus Christ,
A, really died on the cross, B, that he was buried and securely buried in a tomb,
and C, that he physically rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples and hundreds of others.
Christianity is based upon this amazing, wonderful, historical event.
And that is why we make such a big deal about our belief in the resurrection.
So today I'm going to walk through a little bit of why we believe this really happened,
why we dismiss the idea that it's just a fairy tale, that it's just a story told by some people,
that it might be a lie made up, that we dismiss all of that and say,
no, this man Jesus, who was God in the flesh, truly, really, indeed died and then came back to life
because it is foundational to everything.
And if you don't know Jesus Christ is your Lord and Savior today,
you may have come to church to support your friends or family,
and you know, you do that twice a year on Christmas and Easter.
I'm so glad you're here.
I'm really glad you're here.
And you are welcome here.
And I hope today you would just listen to what I'm sharing out of the Word of God
about the truth of the resurrection, because I believe you are here today as a divine appointment,
that God has brought you here to hear this message specifically because God loves you.
He loves you so much that He died for you on the cross,
and that's what we celebrated on Friday, and that He rose from the dead.
And if you put your faith in Him today, you too will have forgiveness and new life.
It is a wonderful thing.
But before we get into all of that this morning, we're going to spend some time in worship, praising God,
because what else are we going to do on Resurrection Sunday?
We want to worship Him as so many worshiped Him on that first Resurrection Sunday, and we want to praise Him.
Now, I do want to say this.
You know, when we have these big moments and these big times in the church that we want to celebrate,
the devil is never happy.
The enemy is never happy, and there is always spiritual attack.
And I just wanted to start today by praying for a member of our worship team.
You'll notice we don't have a drummer this morning.
He had a personal emergency this morning that prevented him from being here to worship with us today,
but we know they're in God's hands.
And so our youth pastor Rick is sitting on the percussion right there.
He's ready to step in and lead us and be a part of the worship today.
And so we're just grateful.
We're grateful for the people that God has raised up in this body to lead us in praise and worship.
But let's go ahead and pray, and then we'll get into that.
Lord, God, we're so grateful for You.
We're so grateful for who You are and what You've done.
And Lord, this day, this day is the foundation of everything we believe.
And so, Lord, we're excited to be here to celebrate together, to look into Your Word,
to be reminded and encouraged, Lord, that, yeah, You rose from the dead.
And it's provable, Lord.
There's evidence to support this, God.
It's not a blind faith we have, Lord.
And so, God, we just want to be reminded and encouraged at Your resurrection, Lord,
because the fact that You were raised means that all the promises connected to that resurrection are true in our lives.
So, Lord, may You be just praised today, Lord.
We thank You, God, for this opportunity to worship You.
And, Lord, we pray for our drummer.
We just pray, God, that You would bring just Your presence and Your healing and everything needed in his situation now.
That, Lord, today as he is just dealing with that personal emergency, Lord,
that he would remember, God, that You dealt with the most personal emergency we all have, Lord.
And that he would find that hope and that faith and that comfort and that reassurance in You, God,
in just dealing with what he's dealing with today, Lord.
And so we commit him into Your hands, Lord.
Just keep him safe. Keep him whole. Keep him at peace.
But, Lord, for those of us that are gathered here today, Lord, God, do the same.
Bless us as You bless all Your children.
We love You so much and we thank You.
It's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.
And so today we are, again, celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
We're so blessed to be able to do that.
You know, it is one of the biggest days of the year for us as Christians.
You know, people have big days. You know, football fans have the Super Bowl.
Well, guess what? We have Easter, all right?
And Easter is far more important than the Super Bowl.
Now, if you're a football fan, I hope you didn't take any offense at that.
Super Bowl might be a close second for you, but still, Resurrection Sunday is it.
You know, this is the biggest, most important day in our faith.
And this day holds the biggest and most important historical claim of Christianity,
that Jesus Christ did indeed rise from the dead.
And I say historical claim because the claim that Jesus rose from the dead
is not something that is unsupported by historical evidence.
You see, sometimes people go, oh, that's just a story you Christians believe in.
But there is evidence behind the belief that we have.
There are many individuals in our world today that have at one time or another
set out to specifically debunk what they call this preposterous story
of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, thinking that such an implausible story
that a person rose from the dead would be easy to discredit.
You have individuals like Josh McDowell, who was an agnostic in college
and was actually studying to be a lawyer, very, very intellectual man.
And he sat down at lunch one day with a group of Christians
in the cafeteria there at the school he was at.
And they were talking about Jesus, and he sat there and kind of, you know,
whatever about all the stuff they were saying, and they challenged him.
They said, well, if you're so smart and you're so intellectual,
why don't you go intellectually evaluate the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ?
And he thought, well, that's going to be easy because that's just a fake story.
And so he went out to investigate, and ended up becoming a Christian
because the evidence was so overwhelming.
You have people like Lee Strobel, who was an investigative journalist, right?
His job, his skill set was to investigate the details behind stories and claims.
And his wife got saved one day, and well, no, he couldn't have that.
So he wanted to set out to debunk this fake Christianity story,
and so he applied all his powers of investigative journalism.
Guess what? He became a Christian.
J. Warner Wallace is another man.
He was a cold case homicide detective.
That means he was a detective that would go and investigate cases that were considered dead,
that they had run into dead ends, that the case was so old,
there was no way they can get fresh evidence, and that's what a cold case is.
And he was skilled at investigating these things,
and he decided to go investigate the claim of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
And guess what happened to him? He got saved.
You see, the evidence for what we believe as Christians is pretty overwhelming
when you take time to look at it.
And really, as people piecing together evidence to come to conclusions,
that's what we do, right? We do that all the time, every day.
For example, if I came to your house and noticed that your car wasn't there in the driveway or on the curb,
and then I looked up and I noticed that, you know, the lights were all off,
and then I snuck up to your windows like a creeper and peeked in the windows
to see if there was any movement and there's nothing.
Everything's just dark, and it's the middle of the day, too, so I'm like,
well, you're not sleeping, and there's no movement at all.
I open up my phone, and I open up an app like Life360 or something that tracks GPSs,
and I see your phone is at the mall moving around.
Would it be difficult to conclude that maybe you're not home?
It would not be difficult at all.
Now, would you say because I'm not at the mall seeing you with my own eyes
that it's a possibility to come to that conclusion?
No, it's a thing we do, and it's easy to draw conclusions when the evidence is in front of us.
And so today, as we're here to celebrate this resurrection,
this pivotal event in the history of Christianity,
I want to look at some historical facts today wherein we conclude
that the resurrection of Jesus Christ did indeed happen,
and therefore all the promises that come from that resurrection,
all the promises that come with that resurrection are then indeed true as well.
And so I do want to say as we get started that much of the hard work
of researching these claims and presenting the following facts
has been largely done by others like the man I just mentioned,
Josh McDowell, who wrote a book called Evidence that Demands a Verdict.
If you're a skeptic, I really challenge you to get the book and read it.
Lee Strobel wrote a book called The Case for Christ.
If you're a skeptic, get the book and read it, please.
J. Warner Wallace also had a lot of work too,
and then you have other apologists like Charlie Campbell and Pastor Mike Winger
that have put together so much of this material,
and I really urge you that if you want to dig deeper,
and if you really want to find out if these things are true,
look up these individuals, get their resources, find them online,
and study what they've put together because I believe that once you look at the evidence,
your life will be changed.
But today I just want to deal with a few of these lines of evidence.
You know, and the first one that I think is important to look at when we want to say,
did Jesus indeed rise from the dead?
It's important to establish that he did indeed die
because one of the claims of skeptics is that Jesus didn't really die on the cross.
He just kind of like passed out.
He just kind of fell asleep, and they thought he was dead,
and then they put him in the tomb,
and then after being scourged and crucified,
he somehow got up and pushed a two-ton stone out of the way and flexed a little bit and flew off, right?
And you go, wait, you're going to believe that?
Okay, so let's deal with this a little bit.
You know, there isn't much contention between scholars today of ancient history
that there was indeed a person named Jesus who really lived on this earth,
that this man Jesus was really crucified by Pontius Pilate and the Roman government
at the time the Bible tells us this happened.
Even secular historical sources support this.
Now, it is well documented as well how well the Romans had perfected this specific type of death called crucifixion.
Crucifixion was invented between 300 and 400 BC by the Persians,
but the Romans really turned it into an art form.
Now, the Romans were pretty brutal people.
They were good at killing.
They were good at torturing.
And so crucifixion was something that, as historians have noted, was very, very, very, it was just bad.
It was painful.
And so it was considered the most painful death ever invented by man.
In fact, we have a word in our English language.
The word is excruciating.
Have you ever experienced excruciating pain?
Yeah, some of you have stubbed your toe in the middle of the night, right?
That's pretty excruciating.
But others of us have experienced things that we would clearly define as excruciating pain.
And that word excruciating means out of the cross,
because it's meant to describe this horrific pain that crucifixion brought.
Now, crucifixion very simply was a process where a victim would be nailed to a cross in a particular body position
that would then cause them to suffocate to death.
They were nailed through their hands.
And some people go, ah-ha, hands, that can't be.
Well, the actual word in the Hebrew for hand is referring to the elbow to the fingertip.
So we do believe that the nail went through the wrist as Jesus was hanging there on the cross.
And so he was also nailed through the feet.
And there was actually evidence of this discovered in an Israeli tomb in 1968
where they found a body that had a seven-inch spike driven through both the feet
as this victim was nailed to the cross.
And then the person was put in a position on the cross that would set up this horrific series of events
that just simply resulted in a very slow and very painful death.
Now, what happened is as they were hanging there on the cross,
their legs would get tired from supporting the weight of their body.
And so they would sink down, causing their entire body weight to be born on their arms and their shoulders.
And it was found through many different bodies that have been discovered that have experienced this,
that within minutes of being hung up there on the cross,
the shoulders and the arms and wrists would dislocate, causing the arms to lengthen by inches.
And then as the person would sink into this position, their rib cage would be lifted up
so they couldn't breathe out, they couldn't exhale.
And so in order to take a breath, they would have to push down on those feet nailed into the cross
to get their body up so they could go, oh, and take another breath.
But then their legs being nailed to the cross and all the pain and torture that they've already gone through,
they would sink back down and their rib cage would lift again and they couldn't take a breath.
And they would have to push back down on their feet to take a breath.
And so they would do this over and over and over.
But again, because of those tired legs and the feet in pain and the tiredness of just their body and everything,
their heart would start racing, their breathing would become shallow.
And in Roman crucifixion, sometimes victims would hang there in that position,
going through that cycle for day after day after day, just slowly dying and slowly suffocating.
Now, medical doctors today have studied the physiological effects of crucifixion
and really concluded that nobody survived crucifixion.
It really was a peak art form in execution.
And due to the extreme, horrible cardiac, muscular, and respiratory trauma that the victims suffered,
it was pretty conclusive by even secular sources that a victim of crucifixion could not possibly live through that.
But before Jesus even got to the cross, we know, according to the records, that he was severely beaten.
He was severely beaten and abused throughout the entire previous night.
We read the stories that as a part of his mock trials and all of that,
that he was gathered in a place by the soldiers and they struck him with a flagellum repeatedly.
The flagellum was a Roman whip that had all these bits of bone and metal in it,
and it was meant to not just strike you on the back,
but it was meant to really rip up your body and tear out your flesh.
And so he got beat by this before he even got nailed to this cross.
This beating that they would put him through before the cross was so bad, Romans called it a half-death,
because the beating was meant to halfway kill you before they even got to nailing you to the cross.
And then because the next day was Passover, as the story tells us in the Gospels,
they couldn't just let him hang there for days.
And so the soldiers went out to do what they would normally do to speed up the death of a victim.
They went out to break his legs, but they found that Jesus was already dead.
And as I said earlier, Romans were expert killers.
They knew what death looked like.
They knew what it looked like when somebody was dead, and they saw that he was there hanging on the cross dead.
But just to be extra sure, the Gospels tell us that they then pierced his side with a spear,
and the blood and the water flowed.
It was a horrific, gruesome thing to be crucified.
And to think that somebody went through that with all the evidence we have now,
both biblical and secular, that somebody would survive this
and then be able to get their own way out of a tomb that was locked behind a two-ton stone is just preposterous.
You know, it's amazing. Four hundred years before this particular type of death penalty was even invented,
Psalms 22 describes to us exactly what happened to Jesus on the cross in great detail.
In verse 7 of Psalm 22, it tells us that he was mocked, and we read that in the Gospels.
Verse 14, it tells us that his joints were dislocated. We just talked about that.
Verse 14, it tells us about his failing heart.
Verse 15, it tells us about the dehydration that came because of the process of crucifixion.
Verse 16 tells us that his hands and feet were pierced, as he was by the nails on the cross.
Verse 17 tells us that not a bone was broken, as we talked about the Romans went out to break his legs and found he was already dead.
And then verse 18 of Psalm 22, it tells us that his clothing was gambled for,
and we indeed know that that happened as the Roman guards cast lots for his clothing.
The reality is that Jesus died. He died on the cross.
He died by crucifixion, the most painful, horrible means of death ever invented.
This is historically verifiable, not just by the Bible, as I've said,
which itself, the Bible is a collection of historical documents by multiple authors,
but also by those outside of the faith.
You see, there's people like Flavius Josephus and Cornelius Tacitus,
which are well-known Roman historians, in their writings both mention that Jesus was crucified by Pontius Pilate.
And then you have people like Lucian of Samosada, Maimonides, and the own Jewish Talmud,
which is the Jewish writings, all corroborate that there were many, many, many Jewish,
or early Christian eyewitness accounts that Jesus did indeed die on the cross,
and also that they saw him resurrected a few days later.
Now, as you go through the story of the crucifixion, we find that when he died,
he was buried in a tomb that was provided by a follower of his, a rich man named Joseph of Arimathea.
And tombs in those days weren't like something we would find today.
It was largely a cave that was carved out of rock, so there was no back exit.
There was no secret hatch. There was no trap door to get out of this tomb.
It was just a hole carved into the rock.
And then what they would do is they would wrap up the body tightly in these burial clothes,
and they would pack into these burial clothes about 75 pounds of burial spices.
Then they would put the body in the tomb, and they would close the tomb,
as I've mentioned already, with this big round disc stone.
It would kind of roll over the front of this tomb.
And this stone was typically anywhere from between 1.5 to 2 tons.
And so it was also carved out of the rock, and it was set in this trough so it could be rolled over
with immense effort to seal up the tombs.
In Matthew chapter 27, we read about some of the security measures that were put in place
by the religious leaders because the Pharisees, it says, knew that Jesus had prophesied
that he would rise from the dead on the third day.
And they thought, no, he isn't. We're going to stop it.
And so they put a guard in front of the tomb, trained soldiers.
They put a seal over the front of the tomb, like this clay type of seal,
so that if anybody actually moved the stone or tried to open it, it would break this seal.
And they put all this there to make sure that nobody got in because they wanted to make sure
that the disciples themselves didn't break into the tomb and steal his body,
and therefore grow out and tell a lie that, hey, look, the body's gone.
He rose from the dead.
And it's important to understand that if you were a Roman soldier at the time
and you somehow fell asleep at your post, weren't paying attention,
you didn't just get slapped on the hand. You didn't just get written up.
It was the death penalty.
So it's not like the guards here were like, well, we kind of fell asleep and didn't know,
but we're going to see later that that's exactly the lie they were told to tell after the fact.
Then as the gospel narratives record, we see what I believe is a strong second evidence
that speaks to the truth of the resurrection. Jesus did indeed die.
Then in Luke chapter 24 verse 1, it tells us,
On the first day of the week, very early in the morning they came to the tomb
bringing the spices that they had prepared.
They found the stone rolled away from the tomb.
They went in but did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
Jesus is talking about a group of women, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James,
and others who wanted to go anoint his body after these three days.
It says they found the stone rolled away from the tomb and they went in
but did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
While they were perplexed about this, suddenly two men stood by them in dazzling clothes.
So the women were terrified and bowed down to the ground.
Why are you looking for the living among the dead? asked the man.
He is not here, but he has risen.
Remember how he spoke to you when he was still in Galilee saying,
It is necessary that the Son of Man be betrayed into the hands of sinful men
and be crucified and rise on the third day.
And they remembered his words.
Returning from the tomb they reported all these things to the eleven and to all the rest.
Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them
were telling the apostles these things, but these words seemed like nonsense to them
and they did not believe the women.
Now you might think, how is that an evidence that Jesus really rose from the dead?
You have to understand something here.
In all of the major resurrection narratives that we have in the Gospels,
women are credited as the first and primary eyewitnesses of the risen Jesus Christ.
Why is this evidence that it really happened?
Because in ancient Jewish and Roman culture, ladies you have to understand this,
this is not meant to be offensive or derogatory in any kind,
but in ancient Jewish and Roman culture, women were considered of very, very low value.
Women had no rights.
Women's opinions were considered incredible.
In fact, a woman's word, their testimony was not even allowed in a Jewish court of law
because they were considered so untrustworthy and incredible.
It was a really, really difficult time for women.
Now Dr. William Lane Craig said this,
when you understand the role of women in first century Jewish society,
what's really extraordinary is that this empty tomb story should feature women
as the discoverers of the empty tomb in the first place.
Women were on a very low rung on the social ladder in first century Israel.
In fact, there are old rabbinical sayings that said,
let the words of the law be burned rather than delivered to women.
And blessed is he whose children are male, but woe to him whose children are female.
A woman's testimony was regarded as so worthless in this time
that they weren't even allowed to serve as legal witnesses in a Jewish court of law.
In light of this, it is absolutely remarkable that the chief witnesses to the empty tomb are these women.
Any later legendary account or made up account would have certainly portrayed male disciples
as discovering the tomb, Peter or John for example.
But the fact that women are the first witnesses to the empty tomb
is most plausibly explained by the reality that like it or not,
they were indeed the discoverers of the empty tomb.
This shows that the gospel writers faithfully recorded what happened
even if it was embarrassing to them culturally.
See the idea of saying women, hey the women are the one that discovered it
and they came and told us, everybody would be like, that's ridiculous.
Like it would be like in our modern day.
You know if you wanted to make up a false story about the resurrection of Jesus
and have people to believe it, the last thing you would do in their culture
was to record that the first people who saw it and the first people that gave testimony
that it happened were women.
Now yeah, we understand today this is pretty unconsciousable, right?
This is a pretty ridiculous thing in our modern world,
but then we just simply have to understand that's how it was culturally.
And so like today it would be like finding someone,
the least credible person you could possibly find in our society,
the least respected, the least trusted person
and have that person to be the first one to go out and try and convince the world
of the truth of a fake story.
You can all imagine that if we did that today people would be like, come on,
nobody believes you, your word means nothing.
And yet that is exactly what we have recorded in the gospels.
That itself lends credibility to the truth of the story because if they knew it was fake
and if they were trying to get people to believe this fake story
they would not have had the least credible people in their culture
recorded as the ones who first declared it, first saw it, and first spread the news.
And then a third evidence I want to look at this morning
that I really believe supports the resurrection on the third day
is really just a demonstrably sincere eyewitness testimony by so many people that saw this.
1 Corinthians 15 verse 3, Paul says this,
For I passed on to you as most important what I also received,
that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures,
that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures,
and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve,
then he appeared to over five hundred brothers and sisters at one time,
most of them are still alive, but some of them have fallen asleep,
which is a euphemism for they've died.
Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles,
last of all as to one born at the wrong time, Paul says he also appeared to me.
Why is this important?
Paul is claiming multiple independent eyewitness experiences
of people seeing Jesus alive after his resurrection.
That's key.
He says Cephas, that's actually another name for Peter,
we know Peter one of the apostles, he says the twelve,
then he says five hundred at one time, then James,
Jesus' half brother, and then all the apostles, and then Paul himself.
But I want you to notice there, when he says they appeared to over five hundred brothers and sisters,
he says most of them are still alive.
Some of them have died, but most of them are still alive.
If you were making up a lie about an event,
and you were claiming that there was hundreds of eyewitnesses to this event,
hundreds of them, you wouldn't indicate that, oh, and by the way, you can go ask them.
You don't do that if you're making up a lie and you know it's a lie.
If it's a lie, we find that people will go, oh yeah, hundreds of people saw this,
but you know, they're out of town, you can't talk to them,
so there's no way to verify what I'm telling you.
But even in Paul's time, he was saying these people are still alive that saw it with their own eyes.
You can go talk to them, you can interview them, you can ask them.
And Paul is essentially saying, don't take my word for it.
Go verify these eyewitnesses, because they saw him with their own eyes.
That alone is something that we do all the time.
You go into a court of law, you have eyewitness accounts,
the court of law goes, hey, that eyewitness account is likely credible.
We do know people lie.
But what we also know from psychology and other things is that when a group of people are all making up a lie
and you all interview them separately, what happens?
The story changes, doesn't it? That's why cops separate people.
That's why they put them in different interrogation rooms, because when you're telling a lie,
people start to embellish, because people naturally, when they know it's a lie they're telling,
they want to keep making it more grandiose so it's more believable in their mind.
That's one of the ways that cops and others know that people are lying.
Your story doesn't line up with their story, and yet you're both telling me you were eyewitnesses to the event.
But when the stories line up, when the details are the same, you go,
hmm, that's probably credible eyewitness accounts.
The fact that Jesus was seen physically alive after his death and burial,
it was and is verifiable, because eyewitnesses abounded for years after it happened, for years.
And not only do interrogators and cops use these type of principles,
but this is what historians look for when they're determining whether a story,
a claim is something that was true years after it was written.
What they do is they look at, does the claimant, does the person writing the story say,
hey, there are other people that you can talk to to verify my story?
Usually when people in history are making up a lie, they don't say that type of thing.
Why? Because they know if you go talk to other people, it's going to fall apart.
And yet throughout scripture, we have it multiple times, people saying, hey, they're still alive, go talk to them.
Go ask them. And then on top of that, those Roman historians I mentioned earlier,
Josephus and Tacitus, they claim in their writings, and again, these are not Christian writings, they're historians.
They claim in their writings that these Christians kept claiming this for years and years and years.
Yeah, Jesus is alive. We saw him with our eyes. Yes, Jesus is alive. We saw him with our eyes.
Yeah, he talked to this person, he talked to this person, and the claims down the line didn't change.
And then on top of that, you have the fact that the testimony of the resurrection started in the very place where Jesus died.
That's a big deal. Because if there is a message you were preaching about a man who died and who rose from the dead,
and you were preaching that he is God because his resurrection proves it, and if you put your faith in him,
the things he said, that if you trust in him, you will find salvation.
The truth of that being proven by the fact that he rose from the dead.
If you were preaching that in the very place where you can go over to the tomb and verify whether it was true or not,
in the very place where eyewitnesses who had actually seen him could be interviewed,
if it was a lie and all it took was somebody to go over to the tomb, open it up and go, there's the body, you're a liar.
Or they could interview witnesses and go, their story is not adding up, you're a liar.
If that was the case, the story of the resurrection would have never gained any significant following.
It would have been easily debunked. But we know historically exactly the opposite happened, didn't it?
The story got traction, more and more people, as they heard the story of the resurrection, Jesus got saved.
We read that in the book of Acts. He added to the church. We have a number. He multiplied, right?
We have numbers and then the church grew so fast they just stopped telling us the number.
More and more, more and more. And then it kept growing and kept growing and kept growing.
And Christianity went on to change the entire world. It disrupted the Roman Empire.
It's still with us today as we are sitting here.
It's life changing. It's life changing. It's world changing.
Now, in Matthew 28, we read that even at the day, even at the time this happened,
there was already an effort to tell lies about it.
It says, after the priests in Matthew 28-12 had assembled with the elders and agreed on a plan,
they gave the soldiers a large sum of money. And they told them, say this,
the disciples came during the night and stole him while we were sleeping.
Now again, remember I said if you were a Roman soldier at the time and you fell asleep on your post,
it was the death penalty. This is why they say if this reaches the governor ears,
we will deal with him and keep you out of trouble.
Because they really had to convince these soldiers to put their life on the line to tell this lie.
How did they do that? Well, the soldiers took the money they were offered and did as they were instructed.
And the story has been spread among the Jewish people to this day.
Now, it doesn't tell us there, but it's not hard to surmise that it must have been an incredible sum of money.
To say, hey, we want you guys to tell a lie that can result in death.
And it wasn't like, hey, here's a dollar. It was probably a significant amount of money.
Now, if the disciples did indeed steal the body, as the claim started to spread there,
those disciples would have known their claim is a lie, right?
If they stole the body and then they were just making up the story that, hey, he rose from the dead.
We saw him. I don't think they would have been willing to suffer and die the way they did for this lie.
You know, people all the time that are lying about things, things they know for a fact or a lie,
once they're put under pressure, they recant.
They realize they're going to suffer either pain or loss, they recant.
But again, these independent extra-biblical sources record for us the very intense persecution
the apostles and the early Christians went under for their claim that Jesus rose from the dead.
They had this persistent teaching, and no matter what they did to these people,
they kept saying, no, he really rose from the dead. We saw it.
For example, Matthew, he was slain with a sword in the city of Ethiopia for the claim that Jesus rose from the dead.
Mark died in Alexandria, northern Egypt, after being drugged through the streets
for his claim that Jesus had rose from the dead.
Luke was hung to death upon an olive tree in Greece for his claim that Jesus rose from the dead.
You think after one or two of these guys would have died that way, the rest, if they knew it was a lie,
they would have been like, whoa, bro, do you hear what happened to Luke?
Maybe we should change our story a little bit. But because it was true, they stuck to their guns.
John was tortured and banished to the island of Patmos, we read about in Revelation 1.9.
James, the brother of John, was beheaded in Jerusalem, we read in Acts 12.
James the Lesser, as he's called in Mark 15, was thrown from the pinnacle of the temple.
Philip was hung against a pillar in Heriopolis in the province of Phrygia.
Bartholomew was skinned alive.
Andrew was bound to a cross and then left to die from exposure to the elements.
Jude was shot to death with arrows.
Matthew, who was the apostle chosen to replace Judas, was stoned and then beheaded.
Barnabas was stoned to death by the Jews at Salonica.
Paul, after a variety of tortures and imprisonments, was finally beheaded in Rome.
And Thomas was run through the body with a spear in East India.
And there's still a memorial to him today.
The horrific persecutions and deaths these men suffered for the claim that Jesus didn't just die,
but he rose from the dead.
The fact that they suffered these things is compelling evidence.
People don't suffer such brutality for something they know for a fact is a lie.
Now, yeah, people can die for something that they think is true,
and we see that all the time with terrorists and people that really believe in something
and they'll blow themselves up for it.
But we're talking about a first generation people who are eyewitnesses to a fact.
They didn't think it was true. They knew it was true.
And they also were able to know for a fact if it was a lie.
And yet they didn't recant. And so it's very unlikely that they would suffer
the historically documented suffering for their testimony that Jesus rose from the dead.
And, you know, again, just with so many hundreds of eyewitnesses,
someone surely would have confessed to the ruse after all the suffering,
if not just to end their own suffering, to end the suffering of their friends or their family.
And really that whole first generation of Christians, they were absolutely brutalized for their testimony.
Tacitus, that Roman historian we've talked about, he wrote a book called The Annals of Imperial Rome.
And in his book, he wrote about the fire that burned a big part of Rome down in AD 64.
And this is what he says, Nero fastened the guilt and influenced the most exquisite tortures
on a class hated for their abominations called Christians by the populace.
Christus, or another word for Christ, from whom the name had its origins,
suffered the extreme penalty during the reign of Tiberius at the hands of one of our procurators, Pontius Pilate.
And a most mischievous superstition, thus checked for the moment, again broke out not only in Judea.
The first source of the evil, but even in Rome, where all things hideous and shameful from every part of the world
find their center and become popular.
The superstition he's writing about there is that Jesus rose from the dead.
He says, accordingly, an arrest was first made of all who pleaded guilty.
Then upon their information an immense multitude was convicted, not so much of the crime of burning the city,
but as of a hatred against mankind.
And so mockery of every sort was added to their deaths.
They were covered with the skins of beasts and then torn apart by dogs and died.
Or they were nailed to crosses.
Or they were doomed to the flames and burnt to serve as a nightly illumination when the daylight had expired.
You see, we know from historical documents that Caesar Nero, the craziest of all the emperors,
would bind Christians up on torches lining the walkway into his palace,
and he would light them on fire to illuminate the path during the nighttime.
All of this because people said Jesus had rose from the dead.
People wouldn't stick to it like that.
We know that from modern psychology, modern behavioral studies, you know,
but the deaths experienced by these early Christians, especially the twelve apostles,
as I said, it speaks volumes, volumes, that they would face all of this.
You know, reading through the Gospels, we see that the twelve apostles, I mean, gosh, they were pretty scared dudes.
Right? They were pretty meek. They were pretty fearful.
You know, Peter at the end, as Jesus was going through his trials,
we read that he fled from the accusations as a little girl at the fire said,
hey, weren't you one of those ones that traveled with Jesus?
I don't know the man.
And he denied Jesus three times and fled in fear.
It tells us that after the crucifixion, during these days that followed,
that the entire group of his disciples, they hid in fear in the upper room after the crucifixion.
It tells us multiple times that the door is locked because they were afraid the Jews were going to come get them.
Yet following the resurrection, we read of these same fearful men
taking to the streets of multiple different cities, boldly proclaiming the resurrection of Jesus Christ
despite the intensifying persecution.
What accounts for their sudden change of hearts?
What accounts for them going from so afraid, lock the doors, please Jews, don't come get us,
to I don't care what you say, I'm going to say what God wants me to tell you
in the face of the Sanhedrin, in the face of the authorities.
I'm going to tell you that Jesus is alive, that he rose from the dead.
What accounts for their sudden conviction?
It certainly wasn't financial gain.
It wasn't fame.
It wasn't worldwide accolades, right?
It wasn't that everybody liked them.
It wasn't TikTok followers.
It wasn't YouTube subscribers.
In fact, they gave up everything for this confession that Jesus was alive.
They gave up everything including their lives for the truth of the resurrection.
What accounts for that dramatic change in their lives?
Is that he's really alive.
That they really saw him with their own eyes.
And they went to their graves proclaiming that truth because that truth had changed their lives.
And they knew that truth would change people's lives, that it started to do all over the world.
And they died with that truth and for that truth.
Now, there are a number of other strong evidences for the resurrection of Jesus Christ that he is risen.
And we don't have time this morning to get into all of them.
But, you know, there's things like the conversion of extreme enemies of Jesus, right?
People that were just against him, against Christianity.
Saul of Tarsus is one of them, right?
He was seeking out people who claimed to be Christians.
People that said, yes, Jesus is risen from the dead.
He would seek them out.
He would get papers from the authorities so he could go throw these people in jail and divide families and put them to death.
And yet, he became a Christian.
Why?
Because he saw the resurrected Lord on the road.
And then you have strong skeptics of Jesus like his half-brother James, right?
We read about that in the Gospels.
Can you imagine having a little brother like Jesus, right, without sin ever doing nothing wrong?
James is like, ugh.
Why don't you be more like Jesus?
Stop saying that, Mom.
You know, I don't know what it was like for James, but through life, he was a skeptic.
As Jesus came on the scene and started doing miracles and stuff, I don't believe it.
And people are going, no, no, we believe he's the Messiah, not whatever.
Jesus dies.
Jesus is resurrected.
And then Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15 that, yeah, Jesus appeared to him.
And we know that it's this James that became the senior pastor of the church in Jerusalem
during the early days of the church.
To lead a church in the middle of the most hostile place against Christianity,
how do people that are that against Jesus get converted and become that passionate for him?
It's because of the truth of the resurrection.
And then you have things like the beliefs of so many Jews at the time, right?
The culture was go to the temple and make the sacrifices and do all this stuff.
And yet we have historical records outside the Bible that say at the time of the crucifixion
and the resurrection of Jesus, thousands and thousands of Jews changed their worship practices.
They stopped taking sacrifices to the temple.
Why?
It's because the Lamb of God had been slain for the sins of the whole world,
and there was no need for the old covenant anymore because a new covenant had arrived.
They stopped going to church on Saturday, on the Sabbath,
and instead started meeting on the first day of the week.
They called it the Lord's Day, the Sunday we gather.
Why? Because they wanted to commemorate the day that he rose from the dead.
And there's so many other things too.
I just again urge you if you're a skeptic, look up some of the people that I've mentioned.
Charlie Campbell, Pastor Mike Winger, others.
Josh McDowell, Lee Strobel, look them up.
I challenge you. I challenge you.
Because I would bet my very life on the truth that Jesus is alive,
that he has risen from the dead.
And I've evaluated evidence myself.
I mean, just my own testimony.
I grew up in the city of Bellflower.
I used to drive down the street past this church and shake my fist and go,
how dare they allow a church on the boulevard? That's an affront.
They should burn that place down.
Guess what I do today?
I am the senior pastor of that church,
and I get the opportunity to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to feed his flock.
God changes lives because it's true.
It is all really, it happened.
And you can't get past the evidence.
Now, I could point out all the intellectual stuff and demonstrate all the evidence I could
for hours and hours and hours, and you may still not want to believe it's true.
You know, Pastor Mike Winger puts it this way.
It's because it's not our brains that keep us from God, it's our hearts.
Our fallen, sinful hearts love sin.
And we don't want to admit that there's a God who has a moral code
who says, do this, and it's sinful.
Do this, and you'll find forgiveness.
And that means you'll have to stop doing those sinful things.
Nobody wants that in their fallen nature.
They want to continue being sinners.
And so we try and rationalize that there's no creator.
We try and rationalize that there's no God we might have to answer to.
And so when we look at the evidence of the resurrection,
we come up with all kinds of silly stories that, yeah, after the crucifixion,
Jesus somehow pushed the rock away and snuck out by himself.
We go, well, I mean, I know there was like probably 16 trained Roman soldiers,
but these scared, frady cat disciples, they somehow overpowered them
and opened the tomb and stole the body.
Yeah, that's what happened.
And you go, that's silly. That's silly.
The reality is, if you were to die today without Jesus Christ,
God in the flesh is your Savior,
the one who died on the cross to pay the penalty for your sins,
to satisfy the wrath of God for your breaking of His law,
the one who then rose again on the third day,
demonstrating that He is indeed God, the one with authority and power
over life and death itself.
If you die without having received the promises that come from
your putting your faith in what He did, this resurrection,
God's Word says that you will suffer in eternity in hell, paying for it yourself.
But John 3.16 tells us God loved the world in this way,
that He gave His one and only Son,
so that whosoever, everyone, doesn't matter who you are,
it doesn't matter what you've done,
if you would put your faith and belief in Him, you will not perish
but have everlasting life.
That is the promise of Resurrection Sunday.
That God loved you so much that He came to this earth 2,000 years ago
and lived a perfect life without sin,
lived and example and taught how God wants us to be,
how He wants us to treat one another, to love one another, to serve one another,
how He wants us to be as the humanity He created,
not evil, not wicked, not tearing each other down, not backbiting, but love.
And then He went to the cross to die for every sin you and I have ever committed.
Every sin you and I will ever commit in our entire life to pay the price,
so that when God our Creator would look at us, fallen sinful creatures,
Jesus would say, yeah, but I paid the price.
I died for them.
And then God would say, come into my presence.
Be restored. Let's have this relationship reconciled
because when I see you through the blood of Jesus Christ, I see you without sin.
You're spotless. You're blameless.
Enter into the joy of your Lord.
That's what Easter is for us.
Paul said again in 1 Corinthians 15,
for I passed on to you as most important what I received,
that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
that He was buried and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures.
That is truth. That is life-changing truth.
And I want to end on this. Why do Christians,
why do we make such a big deal about the resurrection of Jesus Christ?
I touched on it this morning at sunrise.
Because Buddha still lives in a grave at the foot of the Himalayan mountains.
Mohammed, the founder of Islam, is still buried in Medina, Saudi Arabia.
Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, is still buried in Nauvoo, Illinois.
Charles Darwin is still buried in Westminster Abbey in London.
They are all dead and their graves still contain their bodies.
But Jesus proved that what He said was true by actually rising from the dead.
The tomb is empty. The tomb is empty.
Christian, our Savior, is alive.
He is alive today. We don't follow the teachings of some dead guy.
We follow the teachings of a living God who rose from the dead,
who gives us the power to live for Him.
That is who we follow today.
We live this life with the living true God in our lives,
teaching and leading and guiding and directing.
He's a God that we can know personally.
He's a God that we have a walk with, we can call on,
we can trust in every moment of every day.
It's Jesus Christ.
And if you don't know Him today as your Lord and Savior,
if you've never put your trust in Him, you can.
You can today.
He brought you here today to hear this message so that He could tell you,
I'm alive. It's real. It's true. And I died for you, too.
We proclaim that He is alive. We proclaim that He has risen.
And He is calling on you today.
Receive what He offers you.
Receive the new life, the forgiveness, and the eternal life to come
from the one who loves you so much.
His name is Jesus Christ. Let's pray.
Father, we love you.
God, we're so blessed to celebrate this day.
We're so blessed to be here to celebrate your resurrection.
God, it really is the foundation of our faith.
It is what makes Christianity Christianity.
Lord, you didn't just die.
So many other religious leaders preached and proclaimed their message
and died, and they're still dead.
But God, you said you would come back to life in three days.
And that claim would be the proof that you were indeed who you said you are.
God Almighty.
And Jesus, three days after you hung on that cross, you walked out of that tomb.
And Lord, you were seen by so many eyewitnesses.
Lord, in that eyewitness account was told from one person to another,
and down through the centuries, God, we are here today still celebrating
our resurrected Lord and Savior.
God, we're so grateful for who you are.
And Lord, many of us have known you for a short amount of time,
a long amount of time, but God, we have experienced the changing power
of resurrection life.
God, we are not who we used to be.
Yes, Lord, we still struggle with our old nature, but we have been given a new
nature that has the ability to say yes to Jesus, to say, God, I want to obey
you, to follow you as a disciple.
And Lord, we're so thankful for that.
And while we're praying, heads bowed and eyes closed here, if you were here
this morning and you do not know Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior,
maybe you've never put your faith in Him, maybe you did at some point,
but you know, you know your life never changed because you never truly
yielded to Him.
But this morning, God has spoken to you about the truth of His resurrection
and the truth of the promises that come with putting faith in that resurrection
and the God who resurrected Jesus Christ.
If God has spoken to you this morning while we're praying, just heads bowed,
nobody needs to be looking around.
This is between you and the Lord, and God is saying, you need to come to me.
You need to receive me today as your Lord and Savior.
I just want you to wear your seated right now.
Just raise your hand so I could see it and let me pray with you.
I see you in the back.
Anybody else?
God is speaking to you this morning.
This Resurrection Sunday is the resurrection of your life.
God is saying, come to me.
Trust in me.
I've spoken to you.
I've proved myself.
Step out.
Receive the salvation I have for you.
If you want to receive that this morning, you've never done that before,
raise your hand and let me pray with you today.
If you're watching online, obviously I can't see you.
But if God has spoken to you and you want to receive Jesus Christ as your Lord
and Savior today, simply type in the chat right now so our moderators can see it.
I want to receive Jesus.
Anybody else in this room before we pray?
God is speaking to you.
You know you need Him.
And your salvation, your eternity is the most important decision you will ever make
in your entire life.
Don't let anything be between you and the saving mercy and grace that is found in
Jesus Christ, your Creator.
Anybody else before we pray?
All right.
Those of you that raised your hand, those of you watching online, and if you're
sitting there right now and for whatever reason you didn't raise your hand,
but you know you need this, I want you to pray with me right now.
Say, Lord Jesus, I believe.
I believe that you died on the cross for my sins.
I believe you rose on the third day.
I put my faith in that, Lord.
And it's not a blind faith.
I believe in the eyewitness accounts.
I believe in the Gospels you've given us.
I believe in even the historians recording these things.
It happened.
And I believe that it happened for me.
I put my faith in you today, Jesus.
Change my life.
Give me a new heart.
Give me a new nature.
Forgive me of all of my sins and all the sins I will ever commit.
Teach me how to live for you.
Fill me with your Spirit that I would be and live who you want me and created me
to be.
Thank you for loving me so much that you would die for me.
Thank you for loving me so much that you rose for me.
Thank you for loving me so much that you are alive today for me.
Help me to tell everybody I know about you.
In Jesus' name I pray, amen.
Well, if you prayed that prayer this morning and you're here in the room, we have a little packet we want to give you.
We called it New Believer's Packet.
And it's really just a collection of resources to help you on this new relationship you've started with Jesus.
You know, because that's really what it is.
You've started a relationship with the God who created you.
And it's important to get to know him.
That's why we encourage you to read your Bible.
If you don't have a Bible, please talk to me.
We'll get you a Bible.
It's important to just worship him and praise him.
And we've provided Spotify playlists so you have some good worship music to listen to.
We also have a baptism coming up next week.
And one of the things that Jesus said is one of the first things in our obedience is to get baptized as a public proclamation of what Jesus has done in your life.
You see, if you've put your faith in Jesus Christ, you are a brand new creature, the Bible says.
It says the entire hosts of heaven are celebrating right now every time one person gets saved.
And next week we're having an opportunity to make that public profession to get baptized.
We're going to do it here in our sanctuary as a part of our service to say, hey, public, Jesus has changed my life.
I belong to him now.
That's what baptism is all about.
And so if you've given your life to the Lord today and maybe you've done it in the past and you've never been baptized, I encourage you guys to get our church app, go to our website,
sign up for the baptism so we know you're coming and let us celebrate that moment with you next week.
But starting today and every day, all of us, let's celebrate Jesus.
Let's celebrate him every moment of every day because he has changed our lives.
Let us never forget the power, the glory, the majesty of the resurrection.
It's not just a story.
It's everything.
Not just internalize it and live the truth of it, but tell people about it.
I know a lot of us are going places after church today, seeing family and friends, right?
You're like, oh, no, here it comes.
I challenge you.
Try and tell someone that doesn't know anything about Jesus about what you believe about this day.
It's not about bunnies and colorful eggs.
It's about the God of all creation who rose from the dead for you and for them.
And see where God blesses that conversation.
But have a blessed day.
Have a wonderful day as we celebrate this wonderful event.
Let God speak to you.
Let him shine through your lives.
Let him be glorified in all you do and all you say.
For he is risen.
We're going to do that again.
I know it snuck up on you, right?
For he is risen.
God bless you guys.