Jesus Rose Again!

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Well, this morning we’re going to be in Acts chapter 13. Acts chapter 13. One of the healthiest things that we can do if we want to grow as people is to sit down from time to time and examine ourselves.

And what I mean by that is to take a look at the things that we do and see if they line up with what we believe, to even take a look at the things that we believe and see if we’re being consistent, see if they line up with the evidence. This is something I do from time to time. I know growing up I thought, well, the pastor is supposed to have all the answers and have this all figured out.

I’m here to tell you I’m still growing and learning, and I still sit down and look at things that I believe, especially comparing them to the Bible. And over the years, I found some of the things that I strongly believed were rooted more in tradition than they were in the Bible. And in some cases contradicted what the Bible taught.

And in that case, you’ve got to throw them out. I look at this with my parenting. And I sit down all the time and look at, okay, is what I’m doing effective?

Is this helping? My job is not just to get through the day. My job is to help them grow up into decent human beings.

is what I’m doing working in that direction. And I evaluate what I’m doing and evaluate my strategies. I do this with my political views all the time.

As somebody who’s politically active, I sit down and say, okay, I believe this, and yet I’m advocating for that. Do these match up? And if they don’t, something’s wrong.

And maybe I just think too much. I haven’t been accused of that very often in life, but maybe I think too much. But I have found over time it’s been healthy to sit down and say, What are the facts?

What’s the evidence? Am I being consistent in what I believe? Does this match up?

Does everything mesh together? And I’ll admit to you, there are things I still don’t know. There are answers I still don’t have and answers I’m still looking for.

But it’s been a way to, you know what, it’s helped me grow as a believer. It’s helped me grow as a person to do that. And one of the times that I had to do that was as a teenager, as a young adult, going out of high school and into college, you know, we should at some point sit down and question the things we believe.

I’m not saying we have to be obnoxious about it, but we sit down and question the things we believe and say, do I believe these things because they’re true? Do I believe these things because there’s any evidence? Or do I believe these things because this is what mom and dad taught me?

And I was raised in a Christian home. I was raised by godly parents who took me to church. My dad taught Sunday school.

I was in his class. I learned from them. But at some point I had to decide, okay, not that I distrust my parents, but do I believe the Christian faith because they taught it to me, or do I believe it because there’s a reason?

And I started looking at evidence, and in college I was challenged by professors who were very much anti the things I had been taught. And there were a lot of questions that they asked me, a lot of questions they posed, and a lot of challenges they raised about Christianity that I didn’t have an answer for, and still may not have an answer for that they wouldn’t argue with. But as I sat down to try to say, okay, this is what I believe, but is it true?

What I kept coming back to was the story of the resurrection. Okay, I had been taught the story of the resurrection as a child, and it was just one of the Bible stories that we learned as we’d go through the Bible, as we’d go through the curriculum. Okay, today we’re doing the resurrection, next week we’ll move on to Paul.

It was just one of those sort of things. but I came to realize as I examined my faith that the resurrection really is at the center of it and I preached this message before here and elsewhere you know in 1 Corinthians 15 which you don’t have to turn there this morning but Paul says if Christ be not raised your faith is vain in other words Christianity is meaningless if Jesus didn’t rise from the dead and I started to realize that this really is where everything is based. Everything hinges on this.

And if the resurrection story is true, then Christianity is true. So if we could demonstrate that Jesus was a real historical figure who claimed to be the Messiah, who died, who was buried, and who rose again. If you can demonstrate those things, then Christianity is true.

Not just true in the sense that I believe it, that’s my truth, but true in a historical, literal sense. And as I began to study it, and I outlined last year, for those of you who were here in the spring last year, I outlined some of those evidences and some of those facts. I’m not going to go back through all of them this morning because it took me, what, four weeks last time?

I don’t have four weeks this morning. And y’all don’t want me to take four weeks this morning. But I looked at some of the evidence, and what I found was there were not only Christians, But there were secular Roman writers, there were Jewish writers, there were Assyrian writers, there were Greek writers who never bought into the whole Jesus as the Messiah thing, who still wrote within his lifetime that this guy really lived, he really existed, he caused quite a ruckus in Jerusalem and got killed for it.

And yet I saw a quote this week from a supposed New Testament scholar at a college that said nobody wrote about Jesus within a hundred years of his lifetime. and I thought, I said there’s no record, and I thought, I read it! You are a New Testament scholar!

I’m just a halfway educated boy from Oklahoma, and I have read these things. How have you not? But there are historians who wrote about him in his time, saying he was a real person.

He lived, he died, he claimed to be the Messiah. They didn’t believe it, but they said he claimed it. And we know he was killed.

We know he was buried in a borrowed tomb. And some people have said today, well, he didn’t really die. He swooned on the cross.

Okay, if you believe that he went through the torment that he did, hung up on that cross for six hours, and was bled to the point of his body going into shock and exhaustion, and he was just thrown in a tomb somewhere, and in the dark and the wet of the tomb for three days, he regained enough strength to roll away a huge Roman boulder and congratulations, you have more faith than I do. Okay? I see no evidence for that.

Or they’ll say, his body was just thrown to the dogs. Okay. Or it was just thrown in a garbage pit.

Okay. Well, in three days, when he, I doubt the dogs ate everything in three days, why didn’t the Jewish and Roman authorities go get the bones and put a stop to the Jesus myth? Okay?

Or it was a mistake, they went to the wrong tomb. Easy enough to fix that. Go to the right tomb, get out the body, and tell his followers to shut up.

Well, the disciples hid the body. Okay. I might give up a lot for something that is a lie that I believe to be true, because I wasn’t there.

But if these guys were the ones who made up the lie, they’re not getting killed in the gruesome ways they did. Ten of the disciples, ten of the twelve, died horrible deaths rather than recant that they had seen Jesus risen again from the dead. These were the guys who walked with him for three years, knew him better than anybody else, and would have known him.

And they said, we saw him dead, we saw him buried, and we saw him alive again. And they were told, we’re going to saw you in half if you don’t back out of that story. Okay, if I lied, I’m backing out of that story.

I don’t want to get sawed in half, all right? Y’all with me on that? We’re going to cut your head off.

We’re going to crucify you upside down. We’re going to do all these things. And they all said, no, I’m not.

I’m not going back on the story because it’s true. And all of these things work together. To paint what was for me a very clear historical picture.

That Jesus Christ was a real person who died on the cross, claiming to be the Messiah, claiming to be the one that God had promised through thousands of years of prophecy, that he died on the cross, he was buried, that tomb was empty three days later, and the people who knew him best saw him alive. Now a friend of mine that I used to pastor in Arkansas said something years ago that has always stuck with me, that there is enough evidence for Christianity. God has provided just enough evidence for those of us who are inclined to believe for us to believe it.

And he’s provided just little enough evidence for the skeptic if he really doesn’t want to believe it, to believe it. But what I found as I studied and I read everything I could and I reasoned these things out and examined what I really believed, I found that it took more faith to believe that Jesus didn’t rise from the dead than to believe he did. I’m pretty skeptical about a lot of things, but there was enough evidence there to convince me.

I already believed it, but I went into it with an open mind saying, is this true? And I believe it is. And in the passage we’re going to look at this morning, the Apostle Paul goes to a group of people and he invites them.

He doesn’t say just believe it because I said so. Christianity’s gotten a bad reputation over the last few centuries of being this authoritarian religion that you have to believe because we say so. You don’t have to believe anything because I say so.

If I tell you good morning, you’re more than welcome to say what’s so good about it. You’re welcome to disbelieve whatever I say. I’m telling you, believe it because the evidence is there.

And so he invites them to consider the claims of Jesus Christ. And he goes to this group of people from a Jewish background and says, hey, why don’t you look at the things that you know to be true, the things that God said about the Messiah, Why don’t you look at some of these things and look at the story of Jesus Christ and see if they might just match up. So he goes to this group of people in a town that we know as Pisidian Antioch. It’s not the Antioch where they were first called Christians in Syria, but it’s in what’s now Turkey.

And he went there and he talks to the people. And we’re going to start looking in verse 26 of Acts 13. And he says, Men and brethren, children of the stock of Abraham, and whosoever among you feareth God, to you is the word of this salvation sent.

So he’s talking to a group of people who were either of Jewish background or they believed in the God of Israel. And at this point, historically, most of the people, let me make sure I say this clearly, most of the people who had come to Christ at this point were from a Jewish background. But most people of a Jewish background did not believe that Jesus was the Messiah.

and so he looks at them and he says he’s talking to this group of people who would have been familiar with the Old Testament would have been familiar with the evidence about the Messiah what the prophecies were and he says I’m here to tell you that it’s to you that this word of salvation has been sent in other words God has come to you with the message of salvation that he sent in Jesus Christ and he says in verse 27 for they that dwell at Jerusalem and their rulers because they knew him not nor yet the voices of the prophets which are read every Sabbath day they have fulfilled them in condemning him. He said the people that were ruling in Jerusalem they didn’t recognize who was in front of them. They didn’t recognize the one that they read about in the prophets every Sabbath day.

So every Saturday when they came together in the synagogues to read or in the temple to read a portion of the Old Testament to read what the prophets had said and every time they read this about the Messiah it was pointing to Jesus Christ but they didn’t understand who he really was. They didn’t understand that this was the Messiah they were dealing with. So they killed him.

And in so doing, they confirmed some of the prophecies. Because the prophets said that the Messiah would be killed. And by condemning him, they fulfilled those prophecies.

Verse 28 says, And though they found no cause of death in him, yet desired they Pilate that he should be slain. They found no real reason why they should kill Jesus. As a matter of fact, when it came time for the trial, which in their trial they broke so many of their own laws about how these trials were to be conducted.

But in their own trial they couldn’t even come up with somebody who had anything negative to say about Jesus, who had any claim of any crime that he had committed, so they paid people to lie. And he said they came in and they hated him so much that even though there was no reason for it, they desired to put him to death. And they asked the Roman government to do it.

Verse 29 says, and when they had fulfilled all that was written of him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a sepulchre. And there are numerous prophecies in the Old Testament, not only about Jesus being the Messiah, but about how the Messiah would be killed. And we don’t have time to go through all of them now, but there were specific prophecies, one that we’ll look at in a few minutes in Isaiah 53, one in Psalm 22 that’s so specific that pointed out that none of his bones would be broken during this process of crucifixion.

so there were unusual things that took place in this crucifixion story excuse me and all of them tied into the Old Testament and the prophecies and so he says when they had fulfilled all these things they didn’t even realize that they were fulfilling Old Testament prophecy about the Messiah when they had fulfilled all that was written of it all these details that the Bible said would happen when they did things just that way they took him down from the tree now don’t be confused here I thought he died on a cross crosses are made of wood. Wood comes from trees. That took me a while as a child when we’d sing about Calvary’s tree and I thought, wait, he was hung on a cross.

I don’t know if you’ve ever had a problem figuring that out, but it took me longer than it should have. Anyway, that’s poetic language, meaning the cross. When they took him down from the tree and laid him in a sepulcher, they laid him in the tomb that was borrowed from Joseph of Arimathea.

Verse 30 says, but God raised him from the dead. Some of the best thoughts in Scripture hinge on the words God. Everything will look its darkest. It’ll look like there’s no hope.

It’ll look like evil is prevailing. It’ll look like we’re dying in our own depravity. And then the Bible says, but God.

God changes everything. It says, but God, after they killed him, they buried him, they tormented him, they did all of this, but God raised him from the dead. And not only that, but it says in verse Verse 31, and he was seen many days of them which came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are his witnesses unto the people.

He was seen for many days. Folks, they didn’t just see Jesus through a fog across a field a long ways away and catch a glimpse of him once. Jesus walked with them for 40 days from the time that he rose from the dead to the time that he ascended to the right hand of the Father.

They were with him for 40 days. And they saw him numerous times, which we’ll talk about in a minute. But it also, these weren’t strangers.

That, oh, I saw somebody that looked like you, but I wasn’t sure. I didn’t. It says these were the people who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem.

These were the people who knew him best. And I know it’s talking specifically here about they were the ones that traveled with him from Galilee to Jerusalem. But that phrase, came up with him. really paints a vivid picture to me.

There are lots of people that I have known for a long time. And in ministry, you get to know lots of people as you move around. But I think back to those kids that I grew up with on 5th Street and Moore.

And that I’m still friends with today. We don’t see each other all the time, but I’m still friends with them. I know that if I needed them, that I could call them in the middle of the night and they’d help me out and I’d do the same for them.

They’re the people that I came up with. These are the people who had been by Jesus’ side from the very beginning. Maybe not from the time he was a child, but from the very beginning of his ministry.

They were there from the earliest days. These are the people that he came up with. These weren’t just people who said, Oh, I’ve seen Jesus around Jerusalem some, and I think I saw him alive.

These were the people who would have known, Yeah, that’s him. I’ve walked with him all these years. I know him.

That’s him. He died, and he’s alive again. And it says, who are his witnesses unto the people?

Again, Paul here is not just saying, take my word for it, although Jesus did show himself to Paul. But he’s saying, these are the witnesses. And some of these witnesses had been scattered all over the known world.

Some of them were probably even to this area of Turkey. He’s saying, there are people that you can go find and ask, and they will tell you exactly what they’ve seen. And we declare unto you, verse 32.

We declare unto you the glad tidings, how that the promise which was made unto the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us, their children. He says, I’m bringing you good news. Because of this story, because of what happened, and keep in mind, he’s not talking about ancient history here.

The Apostle Paul, who started out as Saul of Tarsus, the guy who hated Christians and murdered them, was converted to Christ probably within two or three years of the resurrection, if that long. And then he sets out on his missionary journeys. We are talking, this is within a span of probably less than 15 years after the crucifixion.

This is not ancient history. This is us telling our children what we saw on September 11th. What we watched that day on the television.

What we felt, what people’s reactions were. what life was really like the day before and what life was really like the day after. He’s saying there are people still here who can tell you what they’ve seen and what they’ve heard.

And because of that event, not just story, but because of that event, he said, I bring you good news. How the promises that God made to the fathers, in other words, how God went and fulfilled all of these promises that he spent thousands of years making to our ancestors. as the Jewish nation.

How God spent thousands of years making these promises, and now in our day, we’ve seen them fulfilled. In that he hath raised up Jesus again, as it is also written in the second psalm, Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. He said, so we have seen the fulfillment of what God promised those before us.

And he appeals to scripture. He quotes King David. When David prophesied about the Messiah, Saying, God said, you are my son, this day I have begotten you.

He’s calling them back to examine the scriptures, the evidence in the Old Testament that they would have been familiar with. He’s calling them back to examine that and say, you need to see whether this event lines up with what you know about the Messiah, about the prophecies. And if it does, you can come to no other conclusion than that Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise.

Verse 34, and it’s concerning that he raised him up from the dead. Now no more return to corruption. He said on this wise, I will give you the sure mercies of David.

Now this is talking about God raising Jesus up from the dead and fulfilling promises that were made to David. In verse 35, wherefore he saith in another psalm, thou shalt not suffer thine holy one to see corruption. Now this was quoted by Peter at the day of Pentecost as well.

They recognized that this in Psalm 16 was a prophecy. that God the Father would see Jesus killed and see him dead and in the grave, but he wouldn’t allow him to stay there. Verse 36 says, For David, after he had served his own generation by the will of God, fell on sleep and was laid unto his fathers and saw corruption.

He says, even David, when God’s plans were finished for him, he died. And he went into the grave and he stayed there. David’s body is just bones and maybe dust now.

but he whom God raised again saw no corruption. He said even David died and is gone but the Holy One that David talked about did not stay in the grave. He switches gears in verse 38 and says Be it known unto you therefore men and brethren that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins.

This one that David talked about this one that the prophets talked about that we’ve seen the fulfillment of down in Jerusalem He says, because of this man, because of what he’s done, we preach to you the forgiveness of sins. And by him all that believe are justified from all things which he could not be justified by the law of Moses. I want to go back through this and give you just a few thoughts before we finish this morning about what he’s talking about.

I’ve already kind of gone through and explained the passage, but I want to give you some more thoughts. If you’re following along in the notes in your bulletin, first of all, he wants them to understand that Jesus was the promised Messiah and an innocent man. He wasn’t somebody who got killed because he had done wrong.

He was sinless. And he was the promised Messiah of God. Now the reason why that’s important is anybody can get themselves killed and claim that they’re doing it as some kind of mission from God.

People in the Middle East all the time, well, now increasingly in the West, go into places all the time with devices strapped to themselves and blow themselves to kingdom come, claiming they’re on some kind of mission from God. Anybody can do that. But they don’t all come with a background of thousands and thousands of years of prophets talking about them and explaining it in great detail.

So if you can look at the Old Testament prophecies and realize that Jesus is the Messiah that God promised, you can’t ignore his claims. You can’t ignore what he came to do. And he talks about that in verses 26 and 27. He reminds them that all of this was spoken about by the prophets.

And he almost pleads with them to go back and research the prophets that they had read the scriptures that they had known from the time that they were children. Go back and read those things and study those things and see for yourself that it’s talking about Jesus Christ. And folks, we can do that today. We can go back into the Old Testament and see Jesus on practically every page.

And I’ve told you in recent weeks as we’ve been going through this study on basic Christian doctrines, that He’s all throughout the Old Testament. He’s there in prophecies. He’s there where God says this is going to happen and gives detail.

Excuse me. He’s there in pictures where God set up the entire sacrificial system as a picture of what was to come in Jesus Christ. God didn’t care anything about the blood of bulls and goats. That was to prepare people through pictures for the idea that the innocent come and shed their blood for the sins of the guilty.

All of that was a picture of Jesus Christ. And then there were the promises. Things like where in Genesis chapter 3, God tells the serpent, which was Satan, the seed of the woman, which is Jesus, will crush your head and you’ll bruise his heel. in other words you’ll snap at him and you’ll think you’ve hurt him but it’s just a little flesh wound he’s going to crush your head and you’re done for that’s exactly what happened at the cross Satan thought he had Jesus thought it was over ended up it was just a little flesh wound when you’re the son of God but your party’s over because Jesus overcame the problem of sin so all throughout the Old Testament he’s there in prophecies and pictures and promises and if we read that and realize that God’s been talking about somebody for 4,000 years in detail.

We can’t ignore that person when they come along and challenge us to believe. Second of all, we know that Jesus was crucified and buried. The resurrection story, the empty tomb, means nothing if Jesus wasn’t crucified and buried.

If he didn’t get killed, of course the tomb’s still empty. He never went into it. If he wasn’t buried, then of course the tomb’s empty.

Because it never wasn’t empty. But he says here that Jesus was crucified and buried. And this is not doctrine.

This is just my personal belief from studying it. But I believe Paul was there in Jerusalem and saw a lot of this happen. But not only that, he points to the people who were there.

That we know for a fact were there. And says they can tell you he was crucified. He was dead when they took him down.

And they went into that tomb. He was buried. And he talks about that in verses 28 and 29.

Describing how the people had no real cause to put him to death, but they did it anyway. And then they laid him in a tomb. A tomb that they could take you to and show you.

That’s where it was, and it was empty. And by the way, this would be a good point to point out. In the gospel accounts, the Jews and Romans never tried to say, oh, it was a case of mistaken identity.

They admitted the tomb was empty, and they tried to fabricate a story where the disciples stole the body, which I’ve already told you I don’t have enough faith to believe. But he was crucified and he was buried. And then again we look at verse 30, and it reminds us that God raised him from the dead and the tomb was empty.

What was dead, the one who was dead, was now alive again. And the tomb that had been occupied for three days was now empty. folks that changed everything it changed everything if you want to see a little glimpse of how much it changed think to what you know if you’re familiar with the story of Jesus’ crucifixion think to what you know about Peter’s night that he experienced while Jesus was on trial he was afraid of a little girl he was afraid of a maid she kept coming out and saying you’re one of them aren’t you no I’m not you’re one of them aren’t you no I’m not you’re one of them bleep I am not.

He got so overcome, he cursed at her. And he was terrified. They all went into hiding.

They were scared to death that anybody would identify them with Jesus. And then what happened after Jesus, after they claimed he rose from the dead? Suddenly Peter’s out there getting arrested and saying I don’t care.

We’re going to preach in Jesus’ name. We’re going to preach the resurrection. I don’t care what you do to me.

Well, that’s a big change. People don’t change like that overnight unless there’s something something cataclysmic that happens in their lives. And I think the resurrection of somebody you saw executed in the cross qualifies.

It changed everything. And as I’ve said, his resurrection was foretold by the prophets. In verses 32 through 37, we’re not going to go back through them again.

But he talks about some of these prophets. He talks about David, who even though he was a king, was also a prophet as well. Spoke on God’s behalf.

And in Psalm chapter 16, he talks about the crucifixion and resurrection. And in your notes, I’ve given you the scriptures where you can go and look it up and study it for yourself. He’s talking about the crucifixion and the resurrection.

He foretold it. These are just a few examples. Isaiah chapter 53.

He goes into a lengthy, detailed explanation of the crucifixion from verses 7 through 12. He was oppressed and was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth. Jesus wouldn’t respond when they asked him questions at trial. He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is done, so he opened not his mouth.

He was taken from prison and from judgment, and who shall declare his generation? For he was cut off out of the land of the living. He was killed.

He was cut off from the land of the living. For the transgression of my people, he was stricken. So he was, this Messiah that Isaiah is talking about, was killed for the people’s sins.

That’s exactly what Jesus said in Luke 19. 10, that I’ve come to seek and to save that which was lost. He made it clear that he was dying for the people, for their sins. He made his grave with the wicked and with the rich in death.

He was buried in a rich man’s tomb, Joseph of Arimathea. Because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth. They could not come up with anything they could legitimately charge him for.

Yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him. He hath put him to grief. When thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed.

He shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand. It talks about him being crushed and bruised as an offering for God’s justice, for the sins of the people, and yet God restoring him and God prolonging his days.

he shall see the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied so we go from the suffering to God restoring everything again at the end by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many and what Jesus did is the justification for all of us for he shall bear their iniquities he bore our sins on the cross therefore will I divide him a portion with the great and he shall divide the spoil with the strong because he poured out his soul unto death and he was numbered with the transgressors and he bare the sin of many and made intercession with the transgressors and while he hung on the cross he prayed for the people who were crucifying him and said, Father forgive them for they know not what they do. There’s another example in the book of Hosea in Hosea chapter 6 where it says, Come and let us return unto the Lord for he hath torn and he will heal us.

Jesus was torn on the cross and yet he was healed in resurrection. He hath smitten and he will bind us up. Same thing.

After two days will he revive us. In the third day he will raise us up and we shall live in his sight. And that was taken by early Christians to be a prophecy again of Jesus’ resurrection hundreds of years before it happened.

So it was there. It was foretold by the prophets. It was confirmed by the eyewitnesses.

We’re almost finished. But in verse 31 it talks about how he was seen by many people. Paul says, don’t take my word for it.

There are people you can go and ask. And the Bible lists a great number of them. Just to go through the list real quickly.

There was Mary Magdalene. Then he appeared to a group of women, which was probably Mary Magdalene, the other Mar