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Church in the evening is uh getting to hang out with my family in the morning and uh just uh spend some time in my neighborhood, hang out with neighbors, and then come on Sunday evening and um hang out with uh some people that I really enjoy being around and um just this this family of believers that are here and and uh those that are on this journey trying to follow Jesus. And uh and so I'm just really grateful for the opportunity to be here tonight. If this is your first time here, we welcome you especially. Um thanks for coming and celebrating Easter with us, the greatest day on the Christian calendar. We celebrate the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. And uh and so I'm gonna get to talk about that tonight. And uh, it's hard to contain all of the energy and uh the passion uh that I have in my heart when I think about a risen Jesus. And I've been in the church all my life, and there have been times when I wasn't as passionate about it. Uh, there have been times when I've ebbed and flowed and gone up and down and all around, but I am today more convinced than ever that Jesus is alive and then he is at work. And if you are here as someone who is just seeking to learn more about this person, Jesus, um you're in a safe place to ask questions, and you're in a safe place to have doubts because we are a place where um we don't have it all together. And uh Harley said well ago, we're a family of Jesus followers pointing people to life in him, because there is no life in us that we can offer to you, but there is life in Jesus. There is no life that I can offer you in a church organization, but I can offer you life in Jesus. There's no child there's no life that comes through just going through religious ritual and activity, but there is life in the person and work of Jesus Christ. And so wherever you are in your faith journey, whether you believe tonight that he is who he says he was and did what he said he did and what the scripture teaches us, or whether you don't believe that at all, um, it's okay. Because God's big enough to handle our doubts, our fears, our worries, our struggles, and he knows that we're all on this journey, we're all in this process, okay? And so um tonight, if you um are new, like I said, welcome, but I want to kind of give you a little bit of context for where we've been. Um this little group of believers here, um, and those who are joining with us, we moved here last May uh from Round Rock. Most of us did, the majority of us, some of us moved. Uh, one family from Houston, uh, a family that lives in Kyle joined up with us, and and basically we just came uh to this area of Austin with the hope that we could tell people about who the person of Jesus is and and point them to life in him, like I just described to you well ago. And so um, it's been a fun journey uh of watching this little small group of believers. We've met in homes for a while, and then in January, late January, we started meeting in this room. Um we really haven't put the word out a lot, we've not done a lot of marketing. It's just been purely like us just trying to do life and uh to live in the city of Austin and to serve people and to demonstrate in tangible ways that Jesus Christ changes everything. He changes our marriages, he changes our parenting, he changes our job and how we approach that, he changes our value system, he flips it all on its head, and he says there's something that's greater than all these things in the temporary, in the here and now. And so um it's just been a cool journey, and uh so we are excited that you've joined us tonight to be a part of that. Part of what we've been doing since we started meeting in this space is um going through the book of Acts. And I don't know if you've ever read the book of Acts before, um, but the book of Acts is a story, uh, it's really primarily a narrative that Luke, one of the early believers, wrote to describe the birth of the early church and to tell us what it was like whenever Jesus was dead, he was buried, he was resurrected, and he gave instructions to his followers, and then he left them to go back to be with his father in heaven, and what happened in those early days following Jesus' um ascension, as we call it, okay? And so it's these incredible stories of what God was doing on the earth right after Jesus left, and he's describing for us not just the acts of the apostles, who would have been those who were the followers of Jesus, but he's also describing the acts of the Holy Spirit, who is a person of God, that one of the three persons we believe in the Trinity of God. I won't try to get our brains all around that tonight, but he describes what the Holy Spirit was doing among people during those early days of the church. So if you have a Bible, I'm gonna encourage you to read it. We don't put the words up on the screen, and primarily that's because we want people to see the text for themselves. There's some Bibles that are in front of you in these chairs. They're like a little brown Bible with a cross on it. If you don't own a Bible, then it is your free gift from us. We'd love for you to take that with you because we believe that the word of God is living and it's active and that it will change your life. In fact, um if you want to know more about how to read the Bible, or if you want to know more about how to get into the Bible for yourself, you can come talk to me, or you can come talk to one of uh Harley or one of the leaders that were up here. We'd love to share that with you. But know this like what you need more than you need to hear me talk at you or talk to you tonight, is you need an encounter with God. And we believe that when you get into his word, you get to encounter him, to encounter his very words. So we're gonna be in Acts chapter 17. Um, I have no idea what page that is in the Brown Bible, if you're not very familiar with the Bible, um, but it's in the New Testament, in my Bible, um, it's uh page 1022, which won't help you at all, okay? Um but we're what's that? 718 718, there you go, 718. So if you don't know the Bible well, there you go. 718, you can go to Acts chapter 17, okay? Um, one of the coolest things that I get to do because of the call that God has put on my life to tell others about Him and to actually support my family doing that is I get to travel around the world and I get to see different parts of the globe, um, different people groups, uh, hear different languages spoken, see different value systems lived out, and specifically get to watch people worship in different ways. Now, I don't know how many of you have gotten to travel much around the world. I'm sure some of you have traveled much more than I have, but I've spent some time in Asia and Central Asia and then and in Mexico, and just as you go into those places, you get to see these different flavors, if you will, of how people worship God or what they see is God or what they perceive to be God. And so they they have these religions that um are a man-made way of trying to attain something that's transcendent, to uh have an understanding and to have a purpose and a meaning that's bigger than just the temporary. Are you with me? And so all over the world you find these religions. And it's fascinating to talk to people from different religions. I've had the opportunity to sit down with Buddhists and and Hindus, and I've had the opportunity to sit down with people who are Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, and and I've hit I've sat with different faiths from around the world, as well as just different even uh denominations or different um different faiths that are in our own country. And I love those dialogues because I get to learn a lot about how people uh come to God. But let me just make this clarifier for us tonight as we get ready to jump in Acts 17. When you look at religion, um a baseline definition of kind of how religion works, how it functions, is that it says to us, as a religious person, that we have to act a certain way. We have to adopt a set of certain uh values and behaviors in order to attain a certain status. Okay? And let me explain what I mean. So I have to adhere to a set of rules, if you will, and if I will do that, oh man, that rain sounds awesome. I'm gonna get distracted by that a few times, but that's okay. But if I will adhere and I will I will um implement those behaviors in my life, then I will attain this goal. And for different religions, it might be different goals, right? Um for some, it may be heaven, that there's an afterlife, that I'm gonna get to live forever with some being or with people. Uh for some, it may be to literally get to the point where I am no longer affected by the pain and the suffering of this world. You know, that I can just disconnect myself from all the realities of this world, okay? But whatever it is, that's there's this, there's this sense of performing, okay? There's this idea of I've got to do these things in order to measure up, in order to attain some sort of certain status. Let me let me tell you tonight why what we are doing as Christ's followers, why what we are doing in this room is not just another religion. Though there may be some similarities, though our morality and our moral code, the way we live our lives, there may be some things within us that are similar to religions around the world. Let me explain to you that what we trust in as believers in Jesus Christ is not a religious system. It's actually a gospel, it's a message, it's a good news. And here's the good news that we could never be good enough. We could never do all the things that the law, even of the Old Testament, tells us to do in perfection on our own. But there is one who has, and his name is Jesus Christ. And Jesus Christ, in his perfection, fulfilling the law, never breaking it one time, suffered a painful death on our behalf because we could not do it. He substituted himself for us, took on our suffering, our shame, he took on our sin, our rebellion. And because of that, we have the status of child of being a child of God, of being adopted into his family, of being made right, of being reconciled to God, of being justified, being made right before a holy God where we could not be on our own. Are you with me? And so what's awesome is listen, I think most people come into settings like this and they feel like, oh man, if I could only be a better person, or I'm done trying to be a good person, I quit. Because when your whole religious structure is built around performance, you're either going to be one of the most arrogant people on the planet, nobody wants to be around you, or you're gonna be a person who just wants to crawl in a hole and die because your shame and guilt just overwhelms you. Are you with me? You ever been there? I've been in both of those camps. There's been moments where I wear my righteousness like a badge, like I've done all these good things. Look at me, everybody. And there's other moments I'm like, I'm the terrible, I'm the most horrible person on the planet, I'm no good at all. Neither one of those are true when we put our faith and trust in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Because He is sufficient. Acts 17. I'm gonna move quickly through this chapter tonight, and then we're gonna come back to this issue of resurrection because, as I said, I see people all over the world, I see religions in different places of the world, and one of the most amazing things that we get to proclaim, that I get to proclaim, it's my job. I mean, listen to this. I get paid to talk about Jesus. How cool is that? Some of you're like, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. That's okay. For me, it's cool, okay? I'll just keep believing my delusion if you don't believe me, okay? But seriously, I get to proclaim that Jesus Christ came out of the grave. He is alive. Acts 17. I'm gonna start in verse 16. I'm gonna read a little bit and we're gonna talk a little bit. It says this while Paul was waiting for them in Athens, his spirit was troubled within him when he saw that the city was full of idols. So he reasoned, everybody say the word reasoned, reasoned, in the synagogue with the Jews and with those who worship God, and in the marketplace every day with those who happened to be there. Then also some of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers argued with him, and some said, What is this pseudo-intellectual trying to say? Others replied, He seems to be a preacher of foreign deities, because he was telling the good news that Jesus about Jesus and the resurrection. They took him and they brought him to the Aurapagus, and they said, May we learn about this new teaching you're speaking of? For what you say sounds strange to us, and we want to know what these ideas mean. Now all the Athenians and all the foreigners residing there spent their time on nothing else but telling or hearing something new. In these first some few verses that I just read to you in the section, Paul, who's one of the greatest missionaries of all time, he originally was in opposition to the church. In fact, he actually killed Christians, but God meets him and he turns his life around. He begins to actually tell everyone that he knows about Jesus. He is on a missionary journey to tell people about Christ. And he's in Athens. Okay, this is Athens in Greece, right? He's there in Athens and he's looking around as he's there, waiting on two of his friends to show up so they continue their journey, and he sees all these idols. He sees all these stones, uh statues, and marble and gold and all these metals that have been fashioned into these idols. Now, anybody who knows anything about history knows that Greece was full of idols, full of worship to these idols. And so Paul looks around and it says there that it says he was troubled, but that's actually not strong enough because the actual word in the Greek language would be that he was infuriated. It ticked him off seriously when he looked around and saw all these idols in the city. And he's thinking to himself, why are these people worshiping these statues? And so he says to himself, I'm going to go and talk to them. And he begins to reason with them. And he went first to the synagogue, which is where all the Jews would have been. The Jews would go to the synagogue to worship because they didn't uh live in Jerusalem where there was a temple, so they went to a synagogue, which was just their church building there. Okay? He's there and he's reasoning with them. He's talking to them about Jesus and he's talking to them about the gospel. We know that because it, of course, says here in a second. But I want you to notice something that as he is talking to them, there's two primary groups, there's the Greeks and the Jews. And I'm going to come back to that in just a minute, but there's the Greeks and the Jews. There's, it says there's the Epicureans and the Stoics, uh, who were both very intellectual people. They had their own schools of thought about how life worked and how religion worked. And then there's the Jews. The Jewish people, of course, um, when you read the Old Testament, you read about the history of the Jews. Where did where the Jews differ from Christians, of course, is that once we come to the New Testament, they get off the train. They don't follow that Jesus is the Son of God. Uh, they don't follow that Jesus was the promised Messiah and the over 300 prophecies from the Old Testament that those were fulfilled in Jesus, okay? You tracking with me? Okay, so that's what's going on. There's the Jews and there's the Greeks, and they're listening. But I want you to notice what happens. Some of them confront Paul. Some of them say they start to argue with him and they confront him about what he's saying. Some become critical. They even call him a pseudo-intellectual. Um, in fact, that word there means to be a seed picker. Um that Paul is not really all that bright. He's just acting like he's smarter than he really is. That's kind of, they're just picking on him, okay? So they're saying, so some are confronting him, some are critical of him, and others are just simply confused by him, going, Who is this guy? And what is he talking about? Who's this Jesus? And what about the resurrection? That's just crazy talk. And the last group, though, is a group of people who were curious. It says they took him and they brought him to the Aurapagus and they said, May we learn about this new teaching that you're speaking. And the Arapagus, uh, which is also called Mars Hill, is a place where it's one of the oldest and most famous courts in Athens where the jurisdiction of in moral and religious and civil matters would take place. Okay? So it's this big place where they have all these conversations and they make judgments about what's right and what's wrong and all these things. And so they bring Paul there and they say, Tell us about this Jesus you're talking about. So Paul stands up and he starts telling them. And so the next section is his message. And the first thing that he says in verse 22, if you're following along still with me in the text, then Paul stood in the middle of the Auropagus and he said, Men of Athens, I see that you are extremely religious in every respect. Now, notice this if you're gonna talk to someone who believes something different about you, Paul shows us a great way to start. What does he do? He compliments them. Now, anybody who knows anything about negotiating or trying to sell something, like if you're gonna talk to somebody who believes the opposite of you, um, you you you do the compliment sandwich, right? Anybody heard of the compliment sandwich? You start with something nice, then you tell them the hard thing, and then you come back and you tell them a nice thing so that they end on a nice note. So Paul starts out and he says, Listen, you guys are religious. I mean, you guys are knocking it out of the park when it comes to worship. I look everywhere, I see all these gods. I mean, you're extremely religious in every respect. And I'm sure these people, because they love that, they're like, Yes, we are. We are so stinking religious. We are awesome. We worship all these gods. This is amazing. But then notice what he says. He starts to turn. He says, For as I was passing through and observing the objects of worship, I even found an altar on which was inscribed to an unknown God. So here's the thing they worshiped all of these gods, but they were afraid that they might miss one and he might get ticked off. So they just actually created one and put to an unknown God, just in case he happened to get ticked off while they were in the midst of worshiping these other gods. That's how religious these people were. Are you with me? And so it's an interesting tell of what was going on in Athens at the time. But then notice how Paul begins to say, with that unknown God, idol, he uses this as an inroad, a bridge, if you will, to start talking about Jesus. He says, Therefore, what you worship in ignorance, oh, that hurt a little bit, right? Just call him ignorant, but that's okay. But he says, That what therefore what you worship in ignorance, this I proclaim to you, the God who made the world and everything in it, he is the Lord of heaven and earth, and does not live in shrines made by human hands. Neither is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives everyone life and breath and all things. And from one man he has made every nationality to live over the whole earth, and he has determined appointed times and the boundaries of where they live. He did this so that they might seek God, and perhaps they might reach out and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. For in him we live and we move and we exist, as even some of your own poets have said, for we also are his offspring. He's quoting their poets because again he's using their culture, he's using their language to speak to them about Jesus. He's contextualizing. He is not far from us, from each one of us. For in him we live and move and exist. I jump back. Yet even as some of your own poets have said, for we also are his offspring. Being God's offspring, then, we shouldn't think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone and imagined fashioned by the human art and imagination. Therefore, overlooked, having overlooked the times of ignorance, God now commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has set a day when he is going to judge the world in righteousness by the man he has appointed, and he has provided proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead. I want to just break down Paul's sermon very quickly with you. I want you to catch this. If you want a description of the God that we just sang about, if you want to know who this God is that we worship, that we are talking about tonight, that we are saying he is the creator, he is all of the things that we need. Here's the description that Paul gives us. It's a phenomenal description. First, he says he is the creator, right? The God who made the world and everything in it. Then he says he is the Lord of heaven and earth, that he transcends our earthliness. He is not a human being. He is higher than all that we do. In Scripture, it says in Isaiah that his ways are higher than our ways, his thoughts are higher than our thoughts. Paul's saying he is transcendent. Not only that, but he is uncontainable. He can't be contained in a shrine. He's like, you can build those temples all day long, but I'm so much bigger than a temple. I'm so much bigger than a building. You can't put me in a box, is what he's saying. Neither is he served by human hands. He doesn't need us. Some people think that God needs us. He's on an ego trip and he needs us to worship him, to feel better about himself. Listen, God doesn't need me, he doesn't need you, he doesn't need our worship. He wants it, he desires it because he knows that when we worship him, we will be most joyful and fulfilled. But he knows he doesn't need it because he's not insecure. He doesn't need us to serve him. Sometimes I think people live as if he does. Not only that, but he himself gives life to everyone. He's the sustainer. He's not only the creator of life, but he sustains life. He gives your life and your breath. You may not know that tonight. Everybody just take a deep breath. Try that again. That breath, that's a gift of God. You may not know that tonight. You may like, nah, Nick, I don't know what you're smoking, but that's not that's not God. Listen, I'm telling you, He is the giver of every life. He is the giver of every breath, every heartbeat He has given us. He's not only a sustainer, but it says from one man, He made us, He made every nationality to live over the whole earth, and He has determined their appointed times and the boundaries of where they live. He is sovereign. He points where people live their lives. He is sovereign over all that. Not only that, but it says this in verse 27 here's why he did it. He did this so that they might seek God and perhaps they might reach out and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. Listen, he is a great. God, he wants you to find him. He wants you to reach out to him. He wants you to know him. He wants you to worship him because he knows again that if you will find him, if you will worship him, you will be more fulfilled than you ever will be in worshiping everything else that we worship. And did you know that just like the Athenians, just like those people who were in this place in Greece, we are all worshipers in this room tonight. We worship, some of us worship cars, some of us worship clothes, some of us worship being right, some of us worship intellectualism, some of us worship our status quo with our friends. Whatever it might be, we worship things because we were designed to worship, but we are never going to be fulfilled until we worship the one true living God who we were made for and meant for. Okay? But he is gracious. And he's not far off. Sometimes you feel like God is so far away. Listen, the Bible teaches us that God is near. He's near. And some of us are going, no, he's not near. Where is he? He doesn't hear me when I pray, he doesn't know I'm here. He doesn't even care. Listen, the Bible says he is near. And if we will call upon him, the condition that he says that we come to him and find out that he's near is humility. He just says, simply come to him, humbly asking, not demanding, not in arrogance, but in humility, because he says God gives grace to the humble, but he resists, he stiff arms the proud. But he's near. Not only that, for in him we live and we move and we exist. He is sufficient. He's sufficient for everything that we need. He's sufficient. He's all that we need to live this life. Being God's offspring, then we shouldn't think that the divine nature is like gold or silver or stone. Listen, God is uncreated. We don't create him. He created us. And Paul is telling them that. Now, the interesting thing is to this point, I think all the Athenians that were there at the Arapagus are like, yeah, yeah, we can go with you. That's good. Wow, this is a cool God. We really like this God. He's an amazing God. Man, this description is phenomenal. This is fascinating. Yeah, we need to definitely take that to the unknown God off of there and put your God's name on there. This is awesome. But then Paul doesn't leave it alone. You have to have a complete view of God. Not just a view of all the great things that He's done, but you have to understand that not only is He a gracious and merciful God who's given us life and breath, but we need to understand tonight. And this is the part about God that we wrestle with. Because it says, therefore, having overlooked the times of ignorance, there again his mercy. God now commands all people everywhere to repent. What does that mean to repent? It means to change your beliefs. You're believing this about God, and so you're not obeying him because you don't believe he's in charge, you don't believe he's the king, and he's saying, No, you need to change your beliefs and you need in line with who God is, and you need to change your beliefs to understand he is the king, he is the Lord, he is the author of life, he is the sustainer of life. He's all these things that Paul just said. He was and is. Because he has set a day. Catch this, guys, because he has set a day when he is going to judge the world in righteousness by the man that he has appointed. He's going to judge the world. And I want you to see this linchpin of the entire sermon that Paul preaches, this message that Paul gives, he comes to the very end and he says he has provided proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead. And that's when the Athenians go, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Say, what? Are you crazy? Now let me explain to you something that's so important. Because many people struggle, and in fact, um, even this weekend uh at my Easter egg hunt in my neighborhood. Anybody go to an Easter egg hunt in your area, in your neighborhood? Um, I was the only one. Okay. Um so with the Easter egg hunt, it was awesome. And uh and I have five kids, so that's why I was at the Easter egg hunt. They're all under 10. Um, they drug me down there. But here's the thing as I was interacting even with with people in my neighborhood at the Easter egg hunt, like people struggle to believe that the Bible is true, and they struggle to believe that God is is who the Bible says he is, and they believe they they struggle to believe. And if that's you tonight, listen, um, it's okay. God's big enough to handle your doubts. He's big enough for all that. In fact, I I encourage you to pursue those doubts and to look into those doubts because I think it's in those doubts that I found my faith. It's in those fears that God wasn't who he said he was, that I found who Christ really was, and he proved himself to me in a genuine and in a life-transforming way. But here's the thing is if we believe that Jesus Christ came out of the grave on Easter 2,000 years ago, then every other belief and every other thing that the Bible teaches us and the authority of Scripture and every other thing, listen, that's really secondary, isn't it? Like I can get to those things because if Jesus came out of the grave, like anything's possible. If a miracle of that magnitude happens, then we can say with confidence that anything is possible. And here's what we have to know tonight. And here's what I believe tonight. Christ did come out of the grave. And because he came out of the grave, I can have confidence in everything that he has said in his word to be true. Now, you're like, that's great for you to say, Nick. But what about this, and what about that, and what about this, and what about that? Well, when we started the message tonight and we read the first part of Acts, notice what Paul was doing because Paul knew not everybody was going to believe this message. So what did he do? He reasoned. And sometimes Christians, they get this like badge, uh, kind of this description of check your brains at the door. You know, we're just this ooey-gooey faith where you just get emotionally worked up, but there's nothing intellectual about who we are and what we're about. Listen, Christians, we need to engage our minds as we come to God. I do not believe ultimately that coming to faith in Christ is an intellectual decision. But I do believe that we need to engage our minds in understanding the Bible and understanding who God is so we can make a good decision about that, but also so that we can we can wrestle through some of those fears and some of the questions that people are gonna ask you if you believe in a God, if you believe in Jesus. They're gonna ask you those questions. And there's some of you I've talked to and you've had those moments. You've had those moments and you're like, I don't know what to say. Hey, welcome to the club on some of those things, right? Some of those things we're not gonna figure out in full. But I do believe that there is evidence that we can take to the bank tonight and believe that the resurrection was a literal, real event in history that Christ came out of the grave. So I want to do just for a second what Paul did with these Athenians. He reasoned with them. I want to give you three reasons. And if you've got something to write this on, I encourage you to write them down. But here's three reasons why we can be confident the resurrection happened. And here's my hope. If you're a believer, like you've believed in Christ and you've experienced him in your life, maybe this will just give you some sort of uh data, some information that you can utilize when people ask hard questions to you. Maybe we just build your faith tonight. And if you're an unbeliever, all I simply ask for you to do is to open your mind to at least listen and to hear the evidence. Okay? That's all I ask. You make your decision because I'm not here to make anybody make a decision for anything. That's not my job. I'm not the Holy Spirit, I'm not God. But I would ask you to consider the evidence that's in front of us. Just as Paul reasoned with them, I want to reason with you tonight. The first piece of evidence that I would give you to say that Jesus was resurrected from the grave, just like the Bible says he was, is from 1 Corinthians 15, 1 through 8. If you have your Bible, you can turn over there, but you don't have to. I just want you to hear this. It says this in verses 1 through 8 of chapter 15. Now, brothers, I want to clarify you the for you the gospel I proclaimed to you. You received it and have taken your stand on it. You are also saved by it if you hold to the message I proclaimed to you, unless you believed for no purpose. For I passed on to you what is most important that I also received. Now, this is Paul talking about what he received from the apostles. That would be the ones who were with Jesus. He received this gospel, okay? This message. And here's what the message was 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, catch this, to Cephas, then to the twelve, then to five hundred brothers at one time. Most of them are still alive, but some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, and then to all the apostles, and last of all, as one abnormally born, he also appeared to me. My first suggestion or my first reason that you can put your trust into the resurrected Jesus is because of the witnesses that were there to see a resurrected Jesus. And you're like, well, that's great. This is in the Bible. Listen, let me just talk you through this. He showed himself to his friends, Peter and the twelve. He showed himself to strangers, the 500. He showed himself to family, uh, James, who was his half-brother, and to Mary, his mother, and to Jude. He shows himself to all of them after, as this is after he's come out of the grave, and he shows himself even to his enemies, which would have been Paul, who be first Saul and then became Paul, okay? He shows himself to them as a testimony over 40 days, is what it says in Acts 1. I'm telling you that tonight because here's the thing. If you honestly think about history, when Paul writes this in the text, and when he preaches this, and when Peter stands up and preaches about a resurrected Jesus, let me ask you a question. Do you think that one of these 500 witnesses, one of these people, would have stood up and said, uh, no, it didn't happen. You can't bank on that. We know it didn't happen. You think it says that they were still alive. He even said specific names. And so tonight I'm telling you that because of the witnesses that were there, that Saul resurrected Jesus, that that is evidence that we can take to the bank to say we can believe in a resurrection. The second thing I want you to consider, though, is this that the first converts that comprised the early church were made up of two primary groups of people, the Greeks and the Jews. Now, again, without getting too far down the trail, I want you to understand basically where these two groups of people came from. I mentioned the Greeks at the first that they did not believe in resurrection at all. In fact, they believed that the body was bad, material was bad, and that the soul was good, and that the last thing you would want to do is have your soul reunited with your ugly, gross, and sinful and bad body. That would be the last thing they would want. In fact, they would say resurrection is pointless. It's dumb, it's not needed. And what I'm saying to you tonight is that for Greeks to put their trust in Christ is a miracle. Um, not only that, but the Jews didn't believe in a resurrection of individuals, and specifically the resurrection they believed in was a resurrection that would end all the pain and the suffering of the world. And so they believed that Jesus coming out of the grave, being resurrected in that time and everything still being just like it always was was completely against their belief system. They would have balked at that in every way. And yet, who is the church built on? It was built on Jews and Greeks who didn't even believe in a resurrection. The converts were Jews and Greeks. Let me make it a little bit more plain for you. It would be like somebody who's a Democrat in our city who is completely focused on what the Democratic Party thinks about politics and life and all that they do. It would be like them becoming a Republican overnight. And for us in Austin, we know that that's not going to happen. Okay? It would be like them making that kind of drastic change. And yet they abandoned what they had been taught all their life, that they had reasoned, these were intelligent people. They gave it all up to follow a resurrected Savior, Jesus Christ. And not just a few of them, but this thing explodes on the scene. The church growth is explosive in the book of Acts, isn't it? It's amazing if you if you don't know the book of Acts, just read it. Uh the first sermon they preached is 3,000 saved, and then 5,000 saved. And so there's like 8,000 in the first few chapters. And those people were Jews. Most of them. And what I'm telling you tonight is you can have faith in the resurrection because people don't start following a religion that's based on a leader that died who claimed he was God and claimed he was going to be resurrected, but didn't do it. It was explosive growth in the church among these true groups of people. The third thing I would say to you that you can have confidence in tonight is that there was an empty tomb. I've told you there were witnesses. But here's the thing the movement of Christianity would have died instantly if someone had found the body. Somebody could have just brought the body out and said, hey, he's dead. Done deal. Game over. Listen, there were many, many people who were claiming to be the Messiah during that day. There were many people who were getting followings and crowds, and every one of their movements died when their leader died because they were dead. There was no one else to teach and lead their movement. They're gone. They're not here today. But Christianity survives. Why? Because the leader claimed to be Christ, claimed to be the Messiah, claimed to be God, died, was buried, was resurrected, and today we're still worshiping him as a resurrected savior. And here's a bonus one. I said three, but I'm going to give you a bonus one. Listen, Blaise Pascal, a great thinker, he once said this. I believe those witnesses that get their throats cut. I believe those witnesses that get their throats cut. Let me ask you a question. How many of you would die for something that wasn't true? And yet, every one of the apostles who abandoned and deserted Christ at his crucifixion, they gave up their life for the claims of following Jesus. Of following a resurrected Jesus. Are you with me? Like we Christians, we have more reasons than we think we do sometimes. And yes, it is a faith walk. But we also have some historical evidence, and you would have to literally give up the way that we understand history to ignore all of the claims of Christ and his death, burial, and resurrection. In fact, the burden of proof is not on us tonight, as much as it is on those trying to disprove the resurrection. And in fact, if you are in that boat and you want to disprove the resurrection, I encourage you, by all means, go try to do it. I have no problem saying go do it. Because I think what you will find in your journey is there is historical evidence that speaks to a resurrected Savior, Jesus Christ. There is an empty tomb. There is an empty grave. When Mary went to the grave and she looked inside, he wasn't there. It says there were grave clothes, and that over to the side what had been on his head was folded up, and that's it. He wasn't there. The father of Judaism, Abraham, he was buried in Hebron. Sin and death defeated him. The father of Buddhism, Buddha, he is buried in India. Sin and death defeated him. The father of Islam, Muhammad, he is buried in Medina. Sin and death defeated him. But the father of Christianity, the Son of God Jesus Christ, his tomb is empty. And Jesus defeated sin and death. Are you with me? And so I don't know where you are tonight. But we can be confident in our resurrected Savior, Jesus Christ. Not because I said so, but because he's not far off. He's near. And even in this moment, he is beckoning you to reach out to him. He is calling you mercifully, graciously, I'm here. I'm here. I'm here. If the resurrection didn't happen, we need to shut down this church and we need to go home because we're wasting our time. I'm wasting yours. I'm a lunatic up here on the stage, ranting and raving about nothing. But if the resurrection happens, then everything changes. Everything is transformed and made new. And here's the thing Paul wrote in Romans 10 9. He said that if we confess with our mouth that Jesus is Lord and that God raised him from the dead, we can be saved. It's that simple. It's not complicated. So don't, I encourage you, don't overcomplicate what God has made so simple. If you believe that he is the Savior and that he came out of the grave, I just encourage you, I challenge you, I ask you, put your trust in him. I plead with you, put your trust in him. Because the text, as Paul said, there's a day coming when he will come not as a little baby in a manger, like Harley talked about. He's going to come back as a righteous judge. And when he comes back as a righteous judge, he is going to judge rightly every person, and those who are not under his blood, under his protection, will spend eternity separated from him. And I don't want that for anyone. My job tonight is to proclaim to you a resurrected Jesus and to ask you to consider his claims. Your job is to decide where you're going to stand as you go through the rest of your life. Where you're going to land. And if you have questions, hey, I said it on the front end. This is a safe place to ask those questions. And I encourage you to come find me at the end or let's chat. Let's have coffee. Let's talk about it. I've been there. I've struggled with my doubts. I want to pray for us tonight as we close out, and Harley and the guys are going to come and we're going to sing and worship some more. But I just want to simply ask you if you're comfortable, you don't have to do this, but if you're comfortable with it, just close your eyes and don't look around for just a second, just to kind of block things out from being distracted. And ask yourself the question have I put my trust in Jesus? Do I believe in him? Have I put my trust in Jesus? Not a religious system that helps me be a better person, but in a Savior who makes me clean before a holy righteous God. Not a faith that requires me to perform so that God likes me. But if I put my faith in a substitutionary atonement that comes in Jesus Christ, that he literally took the wrath we deserved upon himself, that he took the shame and the guilt and the suffering that we deserve because of our sin and our rebellion to him upon himself. Listen, if you believe that he is who he says he was and he did what the Bible teaches that he did, then tonight I just ask you to put your faith and trust in him, and he will meet you in that. If you're humble enough to admit that you need him and ask him, He will he will come, he will meet you, he will save you.