SPEAKER_00: We're just gonna pray for that together.
SPEAKER_00: So if you could be seated, um, and we're just gonna pray, and I'll come back and close this in a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Father, I pray for the Palambung people in Indonesia and in Singapore.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray that they would hear the truth of your gospel and that it would change their lives.
SPEAKER_00: Father, I pray that you would grab hold of their hearts, Lord, that they would be changed and that they would see um how they can be made new, Father, that they would see the freedom that comes in the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray that you would provide means for them to be able to read the Bible, Lord, for them to be able to have access to just your word.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, I pray for the workers who you have sent to minister to these people.
SPEAKER_00: I pray that you would strengthen them.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray that you would help us to know how we can, as the church, support these efforts of your gospel going forward to the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I also right now pray for the preaching of your word that's going to happen this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray that you would prepare our hearts to hear the truth of your gospel that will come through Jonathan.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, I pray that we would be ready to receive it, and Lord, that we would be ready for our hearts to be changed by the message of your word this morning.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
SPEAKER_00: If I haven't met you yet, I'm Betsy Anderson.
SPEAKER_00: I've been a member here for about two and a half years.
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm gonna read our scripture this morning.
SPEAKER_00: So this comes from Matthew twenty-eight.
SPEAKER_00: Now, after the Sabbath, toward dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: His appearance was like lightning, and his clothes white as snow.
SPEAKER_00: And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men.
SPEAKER_00: But the angel said to the women, Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified.
SPEAKER_00: He is not here, for he has risen.
SPEAKER_00: 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.
SPEAKER_00: There you will see him.
SPEAKER_00: See, I have told you.
SPEAKER_00: So they departed quickly from the tomb, with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples.
SPEAKER_00: And behold, Jesus met them, saying greetings, and they came up and took hold of his feet and worshipped him.
SPEAKER_00: Then Jesus said to them, Do not be afraid, go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.
SPEAKER_00: While they were going, behold, some of the guards went into the city and told the chief priest all that had taken place.
SPEAKER_00: And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave sufficient sum of money to the soldiers, and said, Tell people, his disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.
SPEAKER_00: And if this comes to the governor's ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.
SPEAKER_00: So they took the money and did as they were directed, and this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.
SPEAKER_02: Thank you, Betsy.
SPEAKER_02: Good morning, Harbor City.
SPEAKER_02: Good morning, college students.
SPEAKER_02: We're glad you guys are back.
SPEAKER_02: All right, imagine this you're a business owner, you wake up in the middle of the night, you go to your business, there's an alarm that's gone off, the door is open, and the safe is empty.
SPEAKER_02: Gotta figure out what's going on.
SPEAKER_02: And so you go and ask some of your employees who are there.
SPEAKER_02: One group of employees says there's some thieves who broke into the business, robbed the safe, they stole everything that was in it.
SPEAKER_02: Some other employees say no, it's actually an inside job.
SPEAKER_02: Some of the employees actually let people into the building and your business has been robbed.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, so if that's you, what do you do?
SPEAKER_02: Um, well, you don't just believe what you want to believe.
SPEAKER_02: You would probably try to figure out what happened by looking at the evidence in the in the in your business, right?
SPEAKER_02: You would look and ask questions of all right, what what time did the break-in happen?
SPEAKER_02: Who was actually there?
SPEAKER_02: Did anybody see anything?
SPEAKER_02: What was the motivations of anybody involved?
SPEAKER_02: Um, that's the exact scenario that we find in Matthew chapter 28 with the empty tomb.
SPEAKER_02: Because what we see is that everybody in the story that the account that Betsy just read for us in Matthew 28 agree the tomb is empty.
SPEAKER_02: That's the established fact, right?
SPEAKER_02: But there's two groups of people who have two very different stories about what happened.
SPEAKER_02: So Matthew 28 is an invitation for us to come to the empty tomb with a question: what happened at the tomb of Jesus?
SPEAKER_02: Um I'm excited to walk through this passage with you.
SPEAKER_02: And I don't know if you've ever thought about this, but uh Christianity is not a faith that is built on faith.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: We we don't just believe in the power of belief.
SPEAKER_02: It's not just, hey, this is the doctrine, believe it.
SPEAKER_02: But Christianity is actually a come and see faith.
SPEAKER_02: Like come, bring your intellect, bring your questions, and see if the claims of Christianity are really true.
SPEAKER_02: Can you really base your life on them?
SPEAKER_02: As a matter of fact, the Apostle Paul would say in 1 Corinthians 15, verse 17, that the entire Christian system is built around a central event, the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_02: He would write about it this way if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, if Jesus didn't rise, Christianity is not just missing the final chapter.
SPEAKER_02: It's not Christianity at all.
SPEAKER_02: Because at the very center of the Christian faith is the resurrection of Jesus, is the empty tomb.
SPEAKER_02: And so what I want to um what I want to do is I want to tell you about why this um why you understanding the evidence that we have for the resurrection of Jesus is so important to me.
SPEAKER_02: And I just want to tell you a little bit of a personal story about how it really, frankly, just changed my life.
SPEAKER_02: It was 2015.
SPEAKER_02: I was preaching a sermon um for Easter to a group of students.
SPEAKER_02: I was a student pastor, and I was just kind of going through a series of just kind of doubts.
SPEAKER_02: And, you know, I'd grown up in a Christian family and went to a Christian university, went to a seminary, was serving as a pastor at the time, and just had doubts about the the claims of Christianity.
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, and do I just believe this?
SPEAKER_02: Because I grew up where I grew up, and I've been around in this environment where it's just an echo chamber of everybody saying the same thing.
SPEAKER_02: Like, do I really believe that this is true?
SPEAKER_02: Uh, something that you should you should understand about me is um I'm a horrible actor.
SPEAKER_02: Um, I'm just not good at acting.
SPEAKER_02: In third grade, um, I was in a school play, and they cast me as the nerd in the school play.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: And you know why they did that?
SPEAKER_02: Because I was a nerd and they knew that I couldn't act.
SPEAKER_02: Um, all I had to do was get up and be myself, and I would do a great job.
SPEAKER_02: Guys, this is super embarrassing.
SPEAKER_02: I didn't realize that until years later.
SPEAKER_02: I was like, wait a second.
SPEAKER_02: Um I I I've always struggled with like uh trying to uh do something that didn't deeply resonate with me.
SPEAKER_02: You know what I'm saying?
SPEAKER_02: And so 28, 29 years old, preparing for an Easter sermon uh to a group of students, and I was just really wrestling with the the questions did is the resurrection of Jesus is true.
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, I don't care how many people believe this, is it true?
SPEAKER_02: And um I went through a study on some of the very things that we're gonna walk through in this passage, and it it felt like um by asking the difficult questions and coming to the conclusion I came to that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is in fact true and it changes everything.
SPEAKER_02: It it became like a rock solid foundation in my life that there's a bunch of stuff about life that I don't know, guys.
SPEAKER_02: There's probably a bunch of stuff about life that you don't know.
SPEAKER_02: But you know what I know with with confidence?
SPEAKER_02: I know that Jesus is alive and that he rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_02: I know that.
SPEAKER_02: And in the midst of all this other uncertainty that I have, that's that's one sure point that I can build my life around.
SPEAKER_02: And I want to show you from this passage how I got there.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: So can you come on this journey with me to the empty tomb of Jesus in Matthew 28?
SPEAKER_02: We're doing these first 15 verses.
SPEAKER_02: And um, before we before we get get really going, I want to just tell you that the empty tomb demands a response, right?
SPEAKER_02: Like if if Jesus said that he was the Son of God, um, if he said he was going to go to the cross and die for our sins according to the scriptures, then he did it and he rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_02: That that that's an event that we have to wrestle down to the ground.
SPEAKER_02: Because if Jesus has been speaking the truth through this gospel of Matthew that we've been reading through these nine months now, then it's then it's a truth that changes everything.
SPEAKER_02: The empty tomb demands a response.
SPEAKER_02: The question I want to ask you is how will you respond?
SPEAKER_02: And so let's go on this journey together.
SPEAKER_02: Um, let me tell you how I got my outline.
SPEAKER_02: Um, the the angel who meets the uh the the Marys, the women in this passage basically get gives us our outline.
SPEAKER_02: The angel tells the women, come and see, and then go and tell.
SPEAKER_02: So that's my outline, all right?
SPEAKER_02: Number one, come, bring your questions to the empty tomb.
SPEAKER_02: All right, the angel's first word is come.
SPEAKER_02: Um I I I love that Christianity.
SPEAKER_02: Do you love this about Christianity?
SPEAKER_02: That Christianity is a come and see faith.
SPEAKER_02: It's not a just trust us, we're in charge, or trust us.
SPEAKER_02: It's uh, no, you if you have doubts, like bring them, bring your doubts, bring your questions, and come and see.
SPEAKER_02: The angel is an angel.
SPEAKER_02: And yet the angel, when it comes, doesn't just make this announcement and say, you have to believe.
SPEAKER_02: The angel tells the women, come and see the place where he, that's Jesus, see where he lay.
SPEAKER_02: The Christian message, again, is not stop asking questions, just believe harder.
SPEAKER_02: It's bring your questions and bring your questions to the empty tomb.
SPEAKER_02: Listen, I was um, I have a son named MJ.
SPEAKER_02: Um, some of you know MJ.
SPEAKER_02: Um he doesn't always talk a lot, but Friday night we were out running some errands.
SPEAKER_02: We were at Lowe's, and um he just got the unlimited questions plan, okay?
SPEAKER_02: Because he was not stop asking questions.
SPEAKER_02: We're walking through Lowe's.
SPEAKER_02: Dad, what's that?
SPEAKER_02: Well, that's cleaner.
SPEAKER_02: That's what we're getting.
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna clean the outside of the house with that.
SPEAKER_02: Dad, what's that?
SPEAKER_02: Those are creepy Halloween decorations.
SPEAKER_02: Lowe's, I don't know what you're doing.
SPEAKER_02: All right, you're taking this too far, all right?
SPEAKER_02: Um, Dad, what's this?
SPEAKER_02: Like, Dad, do we really need this?
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, all of a sudden, all these questions start piling up.
SPEAKER_02: And as a parent, I'm starting to get a little bit frustrated.
SPEAKER_02: I'm like, well, do we need this?
SPEAKER_02: Like, am I supposed to be here?
SPEAKER_02: Shouldn't we go to agave instead?
SPEAKER_02: You know, that's that was what he was asking.
SPEAKER_02: Um as a parent, sometimes it's easy to get tired of your kids' questions.
SPEAKER_02: You know what I mean?
SPEAKER_02: Um, some of you who are parents in the room, moms in the room, you know this.
SPEAKER_02: Um, especially if you have younger kids, you you get to the end of the day, and you can't wait for that beautiful time when your loving children sleep.
SPEAKER_02: And you've tucked them in and you have this plan of what you're gonna do, and you start to make your way to the edge of the room, right?
SPEAKER_02: Chelsea Patino, you get this, you're at the door, and all of a sudden, mom, the questions start.
SPEAKER_02: And you're like, you've had 12 hours to ask all these questions.
SPEAKER_02: Like, do we really need to ask like these deep philosophical, where does God live?
SPEAKER_02: You know, do dogs go to heaven when they die?
SPEAKER_02: Like all the deep questions seem to come out at the end of the night.
SPEAKER_02: As parents, we can get tired of our kids' questions.
SPEAKER_02: And listen, I I would guess that some version of this, if you grew up in in church at all, um, some version of this happened with you.
SPEAKER_02: When you begin to ask questions about faith, um we ask good questions, and the easier the questions are, our parents can answer them, or maybe people in the church can answer them.
SPEAKER_02: But you know, the more curious we become, we start to ask harder and harder questions.
SPEAKER_02: And somewhere along the line, you know, don't you sometimes have a maybe a figure in Christian authority say, just stop asking questions, just believe.
SPEAKER_02: Well, listen, that's that's what that's what human parents do, that's what human authority figures do, but God doesn't do that to us.
SPEAKER_02: It is okay, maybe maybe you've never heard this before.
SPEAKER_02: It is okay for you to come and bring your questions to the Father.
SPEAKER_02: And that's the invitation that comes right here from the angel.
SPEAKER_02: The angel says, Come, come and see the place where he lay.
SPEAKER_02: And so um, one of the facts that we have established here, I'm gonna walk us through just some some logical approach to what happened at the tomb of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: The first fact that I want to establish is that Jesus really died.
SPEAKER_02: Um, that Jesus really died, and that his body was placed into the tomb.
SPEAKER_02: We know that from Matthew chapter 27 last week, that the Marys here, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, they actually saw Joseph of Arimathea put Jesus' body into the tomb.
SPEAKER_02: And yet, on this day, the tomb is empty.
SPEAKER_02: What happened?
SPEAKER_02: Matthew 28, verse 2 says this, and behold, there was a great earthquake.
SPEAKER_02: For an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on and sat on it.
SPEAKER_02: Now, let me just acknowledge something from the very beginning here.
SPEAKER_02: This is not an account of the resurrection.
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is already risen from the dead when this happened.
SPEAKER_02: This account doesn't actually tell us that Jesus says pops out of the tomb and says, Hey everybody.
SPEAKER_02: No, Jesus is already raised from the dead.
SPEAKER_02: Um Matthew shows us that at the death of Jesus there was an earthquake.
SPEAKER_02: At the resurrection of Jesus, now the earth shakes again.
SPEAKER_02: And this angel, as as this angel comes and removes the stone from the tomb, the purpose of the removing of the stone was not so that Jesus could get out of the tomb.
SPEAKER_02: John's gospel tells us that you know, when Peter and John would go into the tomb, that they'd actually find neatly folded grave clothes.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is already gone.
SPEAKER_02: The angel rose the stone away, not so that Jesus can get out, but so that the disciples, people like you and me, that we can get in.
SPEAKER_02: So that we can come and see the place where Jesus lay.
SPEAKER_02: Matthew 28, 5, but the angel said to the women, Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Here it is, who was crucified.
SPEAKER_02: So what does the evidence of the empty tomb say so far?
SPEAKER_02: First, it's that Jesus really died, and that the tomb was really empty when the stone was rolled away.
SPEAKER_02: We've come and we've seen that.
SPEAKER_02: Let's go to number two.
SPEAKER_02: See, follow the evidence.
SPEAKER_02: He is not here, Matthew 28, 6, for he has risen as he said, come see the place where he lay.
SPEAKER_02: The angel doesn't say here that Jesus lives on in our memories and will always be before you.
SPEAKER_02: No, the angel says that he has risen.
SPEAKER_02: And Matthew keeps putting these different pieces of evidence in front of us.
SPEAKER_02: What I want to do really quick again, telling you about that experience I had back in 2016.
SPEAKER_02: There are really five different facts that are detailed in these gospel accounts that help build my confidence that Jesus truly rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_02: And because he rose from the dead that everything changed.
SPEAKER_02: I want to walk through those facts really quick.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, number one, the tomb was really empty.
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
SPEAKER_02: The tomb was the first piece of evidence is that the tomb was empty.
SPEAKER_02: Um it's not just the Mary Magdalene and the other Mary who say that.
SPEAKER_02: It's not just the angel who says that.
SPEAKER_02: The guards later in the story also say that, right?
SPEAKER_02: Everybody in this story agrees that the tomb was empty.
SPEAKER_02: All right, that's fact number one.
SPEAKER_02: Fact number two, the disciples believe that Jesus appeared to them having having risen from the dead.
SPEAKER_02: The disciples believe that the resurrected Jesus appeared to them.
SPEAKER_02: All right, why does that matter?
SPEAKER_02: Well, it matters because, you know, one of the questions, go back to our intro.
SPEAKER_02: If you're a business owner, your business has been robbed, and you go there and you have two different accounts and you're trying to figure out what happened, what would you do?
SPEAKER_02: What's one of the first questions you would ask?
SPEAKER_02: Or if you didn't have a security system, you would say, Did anybody see it happen?
SPEAKER_02: Isn't that what we'd ask?
SPEAKER_02: Were there any eyewitnesses?
SPEAKER_02: And we have all over the gospels in multiple different books, we have eyewitness accounts of the resurrection of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Matthew 28, verse 9.
SPEAKER_02: Behold, Jesus met them and said, Greetings! And they came up and they took hold of his feet and worshiped him.
SPEAKER_02: Did you see that detail?
SPEAKER_02: They took hold of his feet, they actually touched him that Jesus had risen bodily from the dead.
SPEAKER_02: You can't touch a ghost or an apparition or a vision.
SPEAKER_02: You can't touch, you can't touch a hallucination.
SPEAKER_02: But here they touched and took hold of his feet.
SPEAKER_02: And did you see that next detail?
SPEAKER_02: And they worshiped him.
SPEAKER_02: You know, if you think about it, sometimes we can read this in the 21st century kind of Western mindset that we have and say, oh, those ancient primitive people, of course, they're going to see Jesus like this and worship him.
SPEAKER_02: But if we understand the beliefs of first century Jews, like these women and like the disciples, we would understand that first century Jews are the last people on the planet who would worship a man as if he was God.
SPEAKER_02: Unless they had overwhelming evidence.
SPEAKER_02: And so what we see here is not only did they take hold of his feet, but they worshiped him.
SPEAKER_02: So the disciples believed that Jesus appeared to them risen from the dead, and the Apostle Paul, later in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, would actually list out some of these people who saw Jesus who rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_02: You know, think about this.
SPEAKER_02: If you're applying for a job, you would put down some references, right?
SPEAKER_02: They're like, hey, if you want to know that the things on this resume aren't just, you know, created by Claude and they're actually true, you can call these people and they can testify to the truth of this.
SPEAKER_02: And sometimes we put down those references and we're like, oh, they don't call them.
SPEAKER_02: You know, sometimes we think, well, we do want them.
SPEAKER_02: Well, well, Paul, he actually puts down his reference list for people who saw the resurrected Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: 1 Corinthians 15, verses 3 through 7.
SPEAKER_02: Listen to this.
SPEAKER_02: For I delivered to you as of first importance, he's writing to a group of Christians, what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures.
SPEAKER_02: We've talked about that.
SPEAKER_02: That he was buried, we've talked about that, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and verse 5, that he appeared, and now here's the reference list, to Cephas, that's Simon Peter, then to the twelve, the other apostles, then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom who are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.
SPEAKER_02: And then verse seven, then he appeared to James and then to all the apostles.
SPEAKER_02: So the the simple facts that we have so far is one that Jesus died, two, that the tomb was empty, three, that there were so many eyewitnesses who testified that they had seen the risen Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: All right.
SPEAKER_02: Next piece of evidence.
SPEAKER_02: It's it's it's one thing to claim that you saw something, it's something else to have your life forever changed by it.
SPEAKER_02: Every one of these eyewitnesses, their lives were changed by seeing the resurrected Christ.
SPEAKER_02: By the way, if I kind of want to, if if you really believe that Jesus is risen from the dead, it changes everything.
SPEAKER_02: Everything about these disciples' lives were changed.
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, think about it.
SPEAKER_02: The all all the different gospels, but we've been walking through Matthew.
SPEAKER_02: The Gospel of Matthew portrays these disciples as scared, that they're hiding in an upper room that we're going to see, hiding from the Roman and Jewish authorities, that they're kind of cowards, that when their Lord was taken, they all scattered, remember?
SPEAKER_02: They weren't very bold.
SPEAKER_02: They were uneducated fishermen, most of them.
SPEAKER_02: And yet something about their lives radically changes.
SPEAKER_02: As we continue to read through the New Testament, we come to Acts chapter 2, 50 days after the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, these same disciples are preaching in the very city where this happened in Jerusalem that Jesus rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_02: 50 days later.
SPEAKER_02: And they're not scared anymore.
SPEAKER_02: They're bold.
SPEAKER_02: They're proclaiming him for all the world to hear.
SPEAKER_02: And they, even when they're pulled in front of the same group of men who crucified Jesus, and when they're asked to give an account for why they're preaching this message, they continue to preach and proclaim boldly.
SPEAKER_02: Their lives are changed.
SPEAKER_02: How do you account for such a radical change of the disciples' lives without the risen Savior appearing to them?
SPEAKER_02: Well, I mean, you could say, well, these disciples, they'd followed Jesus for a number of years.
SPEAKER_02: They'd based their life on his teaching.
SPEAKER_02: They've they had everything to lose if he wasn't who he said he was.
SPEAKER_02: He had said that he was going to die and raise again.
SPEAKER_02: So maybe they just all got together and they agreed that they were going to continue to preach this message, even though it didn't happen.
SPEAKER_02: Let's just say that.
SPEAKER_02: I I find that very difficult to to grant, but let me just grant you that.
SPEAKER_02: Here's a fourth piece of evidence that.
SPEAKER_02: The Apostle Paul just showed us in 1 Corinthians 15, and it's simply that he himself was a Christian.
SPEAKER_02: Now, what do we know about the Apostle Paul?
SPEAKER_02: The book of Acts gives us a lot of the details of his life that Paul started as a man named Saul of Tarsus, who was a persecutor of the church, who we have we have records of his writing.
SPEAKER_02: So he himself would say that he would go from house to house and city to city, pulling out Christians and putting them to death because of their faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: And yet, on a trip on the Damascus Road, Saul, the persecutor, encountered the risen Savior, Jesus, and it completely changed his life forever.
SPEAKER_02: How would you account for that apart from the resurrection of Jesus?
SPEAKER_02: How do you account for somebody who is the greatest enemy of Christianity becoming its greatest evangelist, proponent, missionary who would end up dying to support the belief in the resurrected Savior?
SPEAKER_02: How do you account for the life of the Apostle Paul if Jesus didn't rise from the dead?
SPEAKER_02: Here's the fifth reason.
SPEAKER_02: I think this is one of my I've shared this with some of you before.
SPEAKER_02: It's one of my favorite.
SPEAKER_02: Did you see in verse 7, 1 Corinthians 15, verse 7?
SPEAKER_02: Then he appeared to James.
SPEAKER_02: Okay, who was James?
SPEAKER_02: James is actually the half-brother of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: Um I've done this before, right?
SPEAKER_02: Um, how many of you have a brother?
SPEAKER_02: Can you just throw up your hands?
SPEAKER_02: How many have a brother?
SPEAKER_02: Okay, keep your hands up.
SPEAKER_02: What would your brother have to do to convince you that he was the son of God?
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: Um, I have a brother.
SPEAKER_02: There's absolutely nothing that he could do to convince me that he was the son of God.
SPEAKER_02: And I'm just not a slam on my brother either, Chris.
SPEAKER_02: If you're listening, you know, respect, okay?
SPEAKER_02: Um and yet, James, the half-brother of Jesus, came to not just believe that Jesus was the son of God, he became the leader of the church in Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_02: How do you explain the change in James's life?
SPEAKER_02: So the reason I'm giving you these five different things, again, I went through this journey of asking myself this question is the resurrection true?
SPEAKER_02: And when I think about how how in the world would I explain all these things apart from the resurrection, I know that people who are dead don't suddenly become alive.
SPEAKER_02: But I do know that Jesus said he was the Son of God, that he said that he would rise again.
SPEAKER_02: And then we have all this evidence that points us to the fact that his disciples saw him, they saw the risen Savior.
SPEAKER_02: So this invitation for us, listen, we'll go back to this.
SPEAKER_02: You may have heard most of your life that you just have to have faith, you just have to believe.
SPEAKER_02: But at the center of the Christian claim, the center is the evidence of the resurrection of the Son of God.
SPEAKER_02: And listen, it is something that if you if you come to examine it and you come to believe in it, you come to rest on it, it will change everything about you.
SPEAKER_02: And so we come and we see the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, the evidence of the empty tomb.
SPEAKER_02: And then number three, it makes a change in us.
SPEAKER_02: The angel says, Don't just come and see.
SPEAKER_02: The angel tells the women then go.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, change your direction.
SPEAKER_02: Come, see, go.
SPEAKER_02: Change your direction.
SPEAKER_02: That's what go means, right?
SPEAKER_02: Um, seeing the empty tomb, seeing the truth of the resurrection of the Son of God changes us.
SPEAKER_02: And let me say it this way: if believing in the resurrection of Jesus doesn't change you, you're not doing it right.
SPEAKER_02: Like you're not actually believing that Jesus rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_02: Um, think about this way.
SPEAKER_02: Um, you know, if you're driving through Charleston, maybe you know Charleston really well, and you've got your GPS up, and it all of a sudden you look on it and it says, Hey, go this different way.
SPEAKER_02: Like, I'm not going that way.
SPEAKER_02: That's not the way that you go.
SPEAKER_02: Like, we go this way.
SPEAKER_02: And um your wife looks at you and says, You should follow the GPS.
SPEAKER_02: It's right more than you are.
SPEAKER_02: And you're like, no, I'm not gonna do that.
SPEAKER_02: You go the way that you know to go, and all of a sudden, what do you hit?
SPEAKER_02: You hit Charleston's oldest tradition, traffic.
SPEAKER_02: You know, you can know the right way to go, you can receive the right directions, but you can still choose to go your own way.
SPEAKER_02: Here's the thing: seeing the evidence of the empty tomb and believing that Jesus rose from the dead, it is good.
SPEAKER_02: It's necessary, but it's not enough.
SPEAKER_02: It demands that you do something in response.
SPEAKER_02: You follow?
SPEAKER_02: It demands that you change your direction.
SPEAKER_02: That's what happens in the text.
SPEAKER_02: Look at Matthew 28, verse 7.
SPEAKER_02: Then go quickly, right?
SPEAKER_02: There's the command, go, go quickly, and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead.
SPEAKER_02: And behold, he is going before you to Galilee.
SPEAKER_02: There you will see him.
SPEAKER_02: See, I have told you.
SPEAKER_02: The women came to the tomb, they saw the evidence, and then they had to move.
SPEAKER_02: Verse 8 tells us, I love this detail, by the way, they left with fear and great joy.
SPEAKER_02: It's not such an honest description.
SPEAKER_02: There's joy because they're seeing the resurrected Jesus, and yet there's still fear.
SPEAKER_02: In other words, their fear didn't disappear all at once.
SPEAKER_02: But even within their fear was this joy.
SPEAKER_02: You know, some of us think that we will obey Jesus the day that we are no longer afraid.
SPEAKER_02: A lot of times that might be something that you you have the sense that God is leading you to do.
SPEAKER_02: You know it's right, you know it's from God, you know you should do it, and yet there's still the presence of fear.
SPEAKER_02: I love the honesty here.
SPEAKER_02: It wasn't that God removed all their fear.
SPEAKER_02: These women had to have the courage to do what God was calling them to do.
SPEAKER_02: And so they begin that, they go, and then we look what happens.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus meets them on the road.
SPEAKER_02: Now, don't miss this sequence, right?
SPEAKER_02: They're told to go, they have fear, they obey, and then they get greater revelation, if you will.
SPEAKER_02: They they meet Jesus.
SPEAKER_02: They receive enough truth, in other words, to obey.
SPEAKER_02: And then as they obey, they encounter even more truth.
SPEAKER_02: Um, I I think that's I think that can be true of us today.
SPEAKER_02: Oftentimes, God will give us enough truth to obey.
SPEAKER_02: And we will a lot of times we're like, okay, well, that this is wonderful, but if you'll just show me the whole picture, don't just show me A and B, but show me C, D, E, F, and G, and then I'll obey.
SPEAKER_02: That's not the way that God works.
SPEAKER_02: He often puts something in front of us and he gives us enough truth, enough information for us to obey, and he calls us to take a step of faith that takes courage to obey him.
SPEAKER_02: Then look at verse 10.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus says something really that's um when he meets uh the these women, he says something astonishing.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus said to them, Do not be afraid.
SPEAKER_02: See, he speaks to the fear.
SPEAKER_02: And then here are these words again.
SPEAKER_02: Go and tell what what two words come next?
SPEAKER_02: Go and tell church, you say it, my brothers.
SPEAKER_02: Not, hey, go and tell those disciples, go and tell those cowards, go and tell those ones who deserted me when I needed them the most.
SPEAKER_02: And there they'll see me.
SPEAKER_02: Um stands out to me about the risen Jesus is um his humility.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, do you any of you do you have a friend who anytime they win anything, they just like you know, get so excited about it, they like throw it in your face.
SPEAKER_02: You know, you're playing board games and they just act like they won the Super Bowl.
SPEAKER_02: Like they're just not humble in victory.
SPEAKER_02: Do you know what I'm talking about?
SPEAKER_02: Some of you, you don't have to elbow the person you're sitting beside, but maybe, you know.
SPEAKER_02: You ever know somebody like that?
SPEAKER_02: Well, what's so remarkable is that Jesus has just, you know, he has just accomplished the most significant task, the most significant work in all of human history.
SPEAKER_02: He has reconciled man back to God.
SPEAKER_02: He has defeated and paid for sin.
SPEAKER_02: He has defeated death.
SPEAKER_02: He has overcome Satan.
SPEAKER_02: He has inaugurated new creation in the world.
SPEAKER_02: And yet, when he appears to the Marys, he's just so humble.
SPEAKER_02: He doesn't even like brag about it.
SPEAKER_02: I I just marvel at the humility of Jesus in his resurrection.
SPEAKER_02: Uh, his first words are greetings.
SPEAKER_02: It's like, hey, hey, y'all, here I am.
SPEAKER_02: And then the the first, his first instinct after he greets the the the Mary's here is he's extending compassion to those who have failed him.
SPEAKER_02: You know, one of the one of the things that the resurrection should change for you and me is in the resurrection, we should see the compassion of Jesus for us.
SPEAKER_02: That even when we fail him, and we do, even when we don't obey the way that we know we need to obey, even when we forsake the right and good things that he's put in front of us to do, he comes back and he says, Go and tell my brothers.
SPEAKER_02: Church, that's the gospel.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus was crucified for sinners and he rose in victory.
SPEAKER_02: And the first thing that he seeks out sets out to do here is to restore failures into relationship with himself.
SPEAKER_02: Is that good news?
SPEAKER_02: Um, some of you, you know, you um maybe you come to church regularly, maybe you come to church every now and then, but you just feel like a failure.
SPEAKER_02: You feel like I know the things I ought to do.
SPEAKER_02: I just struggle over and over again with doing them.
SPEAKER_02: I have these goals I always fall short of.
SPEAKER_02: I have the person I want to be and never can seem to measure up.
SPEAKER_02: The good news of the gospel is that Jesus comes to restore failures.
SPEAKER_02: Romans 10, verse 9 says this if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart.
SPEAKER_02: All right, what how would you finish that sentence?
SPEAKER_02: Right?
SPEAKER_02: He's the Apostle Paul is writing to a group of people telling them how to have a relationship with God.
SPEAKER_02: If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that, I think we would say that he died on the cross for your sins.
SPEAKER_02: That's not what it says.
SPEAKER_02: That if you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.
SPEAKER_02: The the call to action for us, what it means for us to go, to change our direction, is to go to Jesus for salvation.
SPEAKER_02: We no longer depend on ourselves.
SPEAKER_02: We no longer depend on our own record, our own actions, but our faith is in him.
SPEAKER_02: If you believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, that the resurrection of Jesus is true.
SPEAKER_02: What's that promise, church?
SPEAKER_02: Read it with me.
SPEAKER_02: You will be saved.
SPEAKER_02: That's what I want to land on here.
SPEAKER_02: This last point, number four.
SPEAKER_02: We said come the outline so far has been to come, come to the empty tomb to see, see the evidence for yourself and believe to go to change your direction.
SPEAKER_02: And now, number four, to tell, to carry the true story.
SPEAKER_02: All right, the angel says it go quickly and tell.
SPEAKER_02: Jesus later, he says the same thing essentially, go and tell.
SPEAKER_02: Now I know that like telling, opening our mouths to like share something can be intimidating.
SPEAKER_02: You know, we we we get uh intimidated sometimes when we call somebody, call a friend, and all of a sudden it goes to voicemail.
SPEAKER_02: Maybe we're expecting to get them, and the voicemail goes in.
SPEAKER_02: It's like we were completely unprepared for it.
SPEAKER_02: It's like, hey, this is Jonathan.
SPEAKER_02: You probably knew that because of the uh, you know, you probably saw that on your phone already, but um, I just wanted to call you, um, which you probably knew too.
SPEAKER_02: Like sometimes telling can be intimidating for us.
SPEAKER_02: But one of the things that we see about the empty tomb is it is it moves us from being fascinated to moving to sharing what we're seeing.
SPEAKER_02: We're not just we move from fascination, in other words, to proclamation.
SPEAKER_02: There's a guy named Skip Heitzick who says it that way.
SPEAKER_02: Where we we don't just marvel that the tomb is empty and that Jesus has risen from the dead, but we then go and we tell a story about it.
SPEAKER_02: Did you see how this whole account is set up?
SPEAKER_02: There's one event, the empty tomb, but there's two different stories.
SPEAKER_02: The women in the story go and tell the story of the risen Savior.
SPEAKER_02: The soldiers, they go and they tell, they tell a story of what actually happened, but then their story begins to change.
SPEAKER_02: The soldiers, as they go, walk away and they decide because the religious leaders tell them to basically say that the disciples stole the body and while they were asleep, which is doesn't make any sense because how would you know that the disciple stole the body if you were asleep?
SPEAKER_02: But that's the story that they circulate.
SPEAKER_02: And the soldiers get this, they get to walk away as if the resurrection of the Son of God made no difference in their lives because of the story that they believed and then they told.
SPEAKER_02: I I I wonder, just Christians in the room, if we do the same thing.
SPEAKER_02: Um, maybe we know one story is true, but we tell a different story with our lives.
SPEAKER_02: If people were to judge us, not not by the words that we say, but by the actions that we do, would they say that you live like Jesus Christ rose from the dead?
SPEAKER_02: Parents, do you, you know, think about this.
SPEAKER_02: Um listened to a sermon by a guy named Paul David Tripp this week.
SPEAKER_02: He's a counselor, and so as a counselor, he sees lots of people who bring lots of different issues to him, things that they're struggling with.
SPEAKER_02: And he he said in this particular sermon that I was listening to that Christians in particular suffer from what he calls resurrection amnesia.
SPEAKER_02: We forget that Jesus rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_02: And he he sees that as like the upstream problem, and there's all these downstream symptoms.
SPEAKER_02: So, for example, we'll say the the parent who's worried about their child being a prodigal.
SPEAKER_02: You know, the question is, did Jesus rise from the dead?
SPEAKER_02: Did Jesus go and pursue disciples who ran away from him?
SPEAKER_02: Well, if Jesus is the risen Savior, don't we have hope in this situation?
SPEAKER_02: Won't that change the way that we think about it?
SPEAKER_02: Won't it change our level of worry and anxiety?
SPEAKER_02: You know, there's there's there's something else that's maybe you have this question, well, okay, Jesus, he lived, he died, he rose again.
SPEAKER_02: What is he doing now?
SPEAKER_02: Have you ever thought about that?
SPEAKER_02: What is Jesus doing now?
SPEAKER_02: We know he ascended to the Father.
SPEAKER_02: The book of Hebrews tells us that he's seated right now at the right hand of the Father.
SPEAKER_02: And get this.
SPEAKER_02: That he lives to make intercession for us.
SPEAKER_02: I want you to think about that.
SPEAKER_02: Of all the things that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, could be doing, the Bible tells us that he lives to make intercession for us.
SPEAKER_02: You know what he's doing now?
SPEAKER_02: He's interceding for you.
SPEAKER_02: Because he lives, he lives to make intercession.
SPEAKER_02: Which means that you can never truly say or believe it's all up to me.
SPEAKER_02: I am all by myself.
SPEAKER_02: Listen, that little moment of just kind of confession here.
SPEAKER_02: Um, I found myself actually talking to my wife about different circumstances and to some friends.
SPEAKER_02: And underneath, kind of the angst and the stress that I carry is this sense that it's all up to me.
SPEAKER_02: If I don't do it, no one else.
SPEAKER_02: You know what that is?
SPEAKER_02: That's resurrection amnesia.
SPEAKER_02: What about you?
SPEAKER_02: Where in your life have you forgotten that the tomb is empty?
SPEAKER_02: That your Savior lives.
SPEAKER_02: Where have you forgotten that he lives to make intercession for you?
SPEAKER_02: You want to know something just so amazing?
SPEAKER_02: This is not having anything to do with the sermon.
SPEAKER_02: You want to know something so amazing about prayer?
SPEAKER_02: Is that when we pray, remember the veil was torn last week?
SPEAKER_02: We have access to the Father.
SPEAKER_02: When we pray, Romans 8 tells us that the Holy Spirit intercedes with us often with groans that are too deep for words, which means when we pray and we don't know what to say, the Holy Spirit, third person of the Trinity, is interceding for us.
SPEAKER_02: And Jesus Christ, who's our great high priest, who's seated at the right hand of the Father, also intercedes for us.
SPEAKER_02: So we're praying, and even when we don't know what to pray, the Holy Spirit is interceding for us.
SPEAKER_02: And then our prayers are coming to Jesus Christ, who's seated at the right hand of the Father, who knows what it is like to be us.
SPEAKER_02: He's encountered every temptation that we've encountered.
SPEAKER_01: He knows the death that we've sinned to experience on the cross.
SPEAKER_01: And he comes in, he prays to the Father on our behalf.
unknown: I feel like we can be people who our lives are defined by this.
unknown: The king is coming.
SPEAKER_01: He is already kingdom in any way that we could say, but that's our cross.
SPEAKER_01: Our night.
SPEAKER_01: I pray right now that you can draw yourself to it from 2% and 30% of faith.
unknown: Everything would change.