Message Information
- Key Scriptures: 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, 14, KJV
- Series: Four Facts about the Resurrection (2016), no. 3
- Date: Sunday, March 27, 2016 (Morning)
- Venue: Trinity Baptist Church — Seminole, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
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The Living Savior We Celebrate
The whole reason we are here this morning is to celebrate the fact that, as Bro. Ken sang about, He is gone. Not in the sense that He no longer exists, but in the sense that He was dead, and when they went to the tomb that Sunday morning, He was gone. He wasn’t there. The body was not there because Jesus had risen again.
We’re here this morning to celebrate the fact that, out of all the religions of the world, we don’t follow the teachings of a dead philosopher. We follow after a living Savior who died for our sins, rose again, and now lives to make intercession for us with God the Father.
We’ve been talking for the last few weeks about the resurrection. I have done most of the talking, but we’ve been talking about the resurrection. And he’s right: I did get a little wound up last week. I always do when I talk about the resurrection. Every preacher, I think, has a pet message. This one is mine: the resurrection.
I have talked to you about the evidence for the resurrection. We have spent the last two weeks going over some of the historical, scientific, and medical evidence. We have looked back and asked, what did historians who were alive around Jesus’ own time say about it? What does science tell us we should expect from somebody undergoing crucifixion? And we have seen that all of those things line up with the crucifixion story.
We have asked what the eyewitnesses said at that time and what evidence we have. We have gone over those things and have established three facts already about the crucifixion and resurrection. The first was that Jesus’ existence and death are historically verifiable.
If you have not been here the last two weeks, you need to know that we are not here celebrating a fairy tale. This is not a holiday about cute bunnies. Jesus’ existence and death are historically verifiable. I can take you through ancient Greek, Roman, Assyrian, and Jewish sources—people who did not believe in Jesus Christ. I think the Gospel accounts are strong enough eyewitness accounts, but even beyond them, we can see people who were not Christians writing about the fact that Jesus lived, caused quite an uproar in Jerusalem, and was killed for it.
We can look back and see what historians say, and what history tells us about crucifixion and the method of torture He would have gone through, not only on the cross but before the cross. We see that it lines up exactly with what the Gospels tell us. We have looked at the medical evidence and seen that all the things a body would go through after scourging and after being hung on a cross for six hours fit the Gospel accounts. He would have been in shock from loss of blood. Everything medical science tells us to expect, we see. So we have established, at least in a satisfactory enough manner for me, that His life and His death are historically verifiable.
The second fact we looked at was that He was buried and that His tomb was empty three days later. The empty tomb does not matter at all if He wasn’t buried. No wonder the tomb was empty if nobody was ever in it. That is not miraculous if it is still empty three days later.
But we can look at history. We can look at the accounts. We can look at the fact that nobody had a reason to make any of this up. The men who would have supposedly made it up, the disciples, looked really bad in the story compared to the women and compared to Joseph of Arimathea. There is no reason to believe this was made up, and every reason to believe that it is true. Even the Jews and Romans did not deny that the tomb was empty. They tried to cover it up, but they did not deny it. So He was buried, and the tomb was empty three days later.
Then the third fact is that He was seen alive again by numerous eyewitnesses—upwards of 500 people. I don’t know why I first said dozens. That is a lot of dozens, isn’t it? Upwards of 500 people saw Him alive, and not one of them ever recanted their story, at least not that we have any evidence of. Most of these people went to their graves saying, in effect, “We won’t deny it.” They could be told, “We won’t torture you and kill you if you’ll admit that the whole Jesus thing is made up,” and still they would not deny it. “You know we’re going to kill you, right?” “Yes.” “You know it’s going to hurt, right?” Still, they would not deny it.
So I think we can make a strong case. Do I have video of it? Can I give you forensic evidence? Can we go through and prove it like they do on CSI? No, we cannot. But we have more evidence for these things than we have for any other event in ancient history. If there is not enough evidence to believe that Jesus existed, died, was buried, and rose again, then there is not enough evidence for Julius Caesar. There is not enough evidence for a lot of other events and people from ancient history.
The Fourth Fact of the Resurrection
This morning, after we have discussed all those things, I want to bring you to the fourth fact. I told you when I started this a couple of weeks ago that there were four facts about the resurrection that, as I began studying this out myself, really convinced me. I already believed in the resurrection. I was raised by Christian parents, raised in church, raised to believe the resurrection. But as I told you, I got to college and realized not everybody believed that, and not everybody was going to cut me slack if I did not know what I was talking about.
So I was forced to dig in and study and see why I believed these things. Were they as true as I had been led to believe? These are the things that convinced me. The fourth fact of the resurrection is that Jesus’ resurrection led to changes that cannot be otherwise explained. This morning, we are talking about the aftereffects. What happened after the resurrection that only the resurrection explains?
The other day, my wife and kids and I were on our way to the city, and we had a limited time frame. We had somewhere we had to be at a specific time, which is not usually the case, but this would be the one time we got stuck in traffic—and I mean bad traffic. I don’t know when the last time was that you were on I-35 between Moore and Norman, but it is bad even on a good day. We were headed into the city from Norman, trying to get somewhere, and I did not figure that in the evening there would be that much traffic. Then we came up and saw red lights: three lanes of red lights in front of us, and I was in the far left lane. Great.
We started thinking, there must be a wreck. Then we saw people trying to switch lanes and get over into a different lane, and we thought there must have been a wreck. We crawled forward. When you can see the detail of glass on the highway, you know you are moving slowly. We saw glass. We saw taillights. We saw this and that on the highway. There must have been a wreck.
Then we came up and saw the highway patrol with their lights on, making people move over. We saw a car that was missing its front half. It looked like everybody had gotten out of it, but the front, the engine area of the car, was falling off. There must have been a wreck. We crawled a little farther and saw another car missing its back half. There must have been a wreck.
Did we see the wreck happen? No. We missed the dramatic event of the wreck. But we could see the evidence of that car-on-car collision all around us. We could look at the effects and put everything together, and it spelled out, “There was a wreck between two cars.” Sometimes even if you do not see the dramatic event yourself, you can look back and say, “I see this evidence, I see this evidence, I see this evidence. These things can only be explained by this event.”
If you have not been with us for the last two weeks, you may be wondering, what is the point of all of this? Why talk about this? If you look at 1 Corinthians chapter 15, Paul explains why this is important. This is the very cornerstone of Christianity.
I have told the congregation the last two weeks that if the resurrection of Jesus Christ is not true, and is not true the way the Bible claims it, then you have me admitting that there is nothing to Christianity. You have me admitting that Christianity is pointless, and we should just board the doors up and go home. Or maybe go home and then board the doors up. It would be hard to get out if we boarded them up first. Go home, board the doors up, shut down, and go enjoy your Sunday, because there would be no point to any of this.
That is not just me saying that. That is the Apostle Paul saying that. He said in 1 Corinthians 15, starting in verse 1, “Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand.” He said, “I am going to remind you of the gospel you have already heard from me, that you have received, and that you stand in.”
He says, “By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.” He says, “I am going to remind you of what I have already taught you, what you already know, what you already believe, and the message that has saved you.”
Then he says in verse 3, “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received.” What I heard is what I told you. And the Apostle Paul said elsewhere that what he received, he received directly from the mouth of Jesus Christ. It wasn’t Peter. It wasn’t James. It wasn’t John. It wasn’t anybody else. It was Jesus Christ who told him these things.
He says, “How that Christ died for our sins.” Don’t ever miss that: for our sins. He died for me and for you. He did not get Himself killed simply because He was a revolutionary, or because the people did not like Him, or this or that. All of those things contributed, but the ultimate reason He died was for our sins. He was taking responsibility for my sins and your sins, the sins that would have condemned us before a just and holy God. He was taking responsibility for those sins and took the punishment for them.
So Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, just as the Scriptures had said for hundreds of years that He would. And He was buried. Paul notices the importance of the burial too. The empty tomb is not impressive if it was always empty. He was buried, and He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. The Scriptures foretold it, and Jesus with His own mouth foretold that He would rise again in three days.
After that, Paul goes on and says, “And that he was seen of Cephas,” that is Peter, “then of the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.” He says there were over 500 brethren who had seen Him, and most of them were still alive. A few had died, but most were still alive. Go ask them. The believers at Corinth were not there in Jerusalem. They were hundreds of miles away in Greece. So Paul is saying, “You do not believe me? Go ask the people who saw it with their own eyes.”
Then Paul says, “After that, he was seen of James; then of all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time.” He goes on and talks a little bit more about the resurrection, and then we pick it back up in verse 17. He says, “And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.” Let me say that again: “If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins.”
That is where I take it from that if the resurrection is not true, then Christianity is not true. If the resurrection is not true, it doesn’t matter what you’ve ever been taught in church. You’re not saved. There is no life after death for you. There is no hope in any of this. It is just empty, vain tears.
That is a pretty bleak outlook, to say that if the resurrection is not true, then there is no point to any of it. But folks, as firmly as I believe I am standing in front of you today, I believe that the resurrection is true because of the evidence. I believe it because of the evidence we have already discussed, but also because of the changes we have seen in the world after the resurrection that can only be explained by the resurrection.
As we finish talking about these facts of the resurrection, the final fact again is that His resurrection led to changes that cannot be explained any other way. You can look at these changes and say, “Maybe that happened for this reason,” or, “Maybe that happened for that reason.” But when you put them all together and look at all the revolutionary changes that took place starting in Jerusalem in the 30s A.D., and how the world was turned upside down from that point, there is no other conclusion that makes half as much sense as the resurrection.
The world as a whole was changed, and the world of those who saw this was changed. The lives of people who claimed to have seen the resurrection were changed from then on forever because of what they witnessed. When you put all of this together, there is no other conclusion that I can come to that makes half as much sense as the resurrection.
I told you last week about the idea that became popular in the 1800s and early 1900s, that Jesus just passed out on the cross, came to in the tomb, got better, and walked out. Once you start picking that apart, it takes more faith to believe that than it does just to believe that Jesus Christ died and rose again. When you start looking at other explanations for how these things happened, it takes more faith. I don’t have enough faith to believe these alternative theories.
Changed Disciples
The first change we see afterward is that the disciples were suddenly bold witnesses in the face of martyrdom. In Acts chapter 2, Peter stands up and preaches, and he is like a lion. He tears into the Jewish religious leaders. He tears into the political leaders. He tears into the nation of Israel and says, “You can mock us if you want, but the Son of God, the Messiah you have been looking for, was sent to you, and you took Him, and with your own dirty hands you put Him to death. You killed Him. But it does not matter that you killed Him, because God allowed it to happen, and God raised Him.”
Peter stood there and challenged the entire nation of Israel. Knowing what they had just done to Jesus, what would keep them from doing it to Peter? And you might think, “Well, that is an apostle. We would expect him to do that. That is his job.” But where was Peter just a couple of months before? He was hiding. He was hiding with the other disciples. They ran and hid.
If you are not familiar with the story, go back and read it. Turn to any of the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John—and look at the last couple of chapters. These men who were supposed to be Jesus’ closest followers ran and hid. Peter denied Him three times. “I don’t even know Him.” The last time, he cursed at whoever it was and said, “I don’t know Him.” Peter was scared to death. They had killed Jesus, and he thought they were coming for them too.
What takes somebody from acting so timid and so afraid of his own shadow and turns him into a giant of a man like Peter, who would stand up and stare down the entire nation of Israel for their sins? An eyewitness encounter with Jesus, who was dead and now is alive again, is a pretty good explanation.
I have heard it said that by about 25, you are pretty much who you are going to be in life. I don’t know if that is a good thing or a bad thing. God can change you if He wants to, but personality-wise, you are pretty much who you are going to be by 25. We do not see radical changes in people’s personalities overnight for no reason. There has to be a cause, and it is usually a pretty big one.
We look at the other apostles. We see Peter and John just a couple chapters after Acts 2. They are going into the temple to preach and to share Christ, and a man is at the gate. He is crippled and cannot walk, and he is asking for money. They tell him, “Silver and gold have I none; but such as I have give I thee: In the name of Jesus Christ… rise up and walk.” They tell this crippled man to get up and walk.
That would be insane if Jesus were dead, to say, “In the name of Jesus, get up and walk,” and expect him actually to do it. But he does it, and a crowd starts to form, as you can imagine. They have seen something miraculous, and they start to gather. The people ask what caused this to happen. The Pharisees start to question them. What caused this to happen? They talk about Jesus, and then the council comes and arrests them. When they are put on trial, they start talking about Jesus again.
These men became bold witnesses for Jesus Christ in the face of martyrdom, in the face of the threat, “We are going to kill you.” Of the 11 remaining apostles, 10 would die as martyrs, and John would live out his life under persecution. Yet it did not matter. You do not go from being that timid, especially as a group, to saying, “We do not care. We are going full force on this, and we do not care who it bothers,” unless something incredible has happened. And what happened is that they saw Jesus alive.
Changed Skeptics and Changed Worship
Second, we see that skeptics and non-believers were drastically converted. It was not only His followers who said, “Jesus is alive again.” There were skeptics and non-believers who, because they saw Jesus dead and buried and then saw Him alive again, said, “Wait a minute. Maybe He has been right all along.”
You realize Jesus had a brother named James who did not believe in Him during His earthly ministry. I only realized that in the last few years. He had a brother named James who did not accept His claims to be God and did not accept His claims to be the Messiah. But later we see in the Bible that James is not only a Christian, but one of the leaders in the church in Jerusalem.
So James goes from saying, “That is my brother, and he is not God,” to being one of the leaders of the organization proclaiming that He is God. I think any of us would look at our siblings and say, “There is no way.” But then, shortly afterward, James is one of the leaders proclaiming that Jesus is God. What happened between point A and point B? First Corinthians 15:7 tells us: “After that, he was seen of James.” His brother James saw Jesus alive again after He was dead.
Even in their day, they had skeptics. That is not new to 2016. Even in their day, they had skeptics and non-believers. Yet the resurrection was so convincing and so powerful that these people were drastically converted and began to follow Jesus Christ.
Saul of Tarsus, whom you may know as the Apostle Paul, hated Christians. He became famous by arresting Christians and putting them to death. Nice guy, huh? I have described him before as basically the Osama bin Laden of his day. “We are going to kill the infidel. We are going to get rid of them.” And he had the papers to do it. Yet he came around to be one of the greatest missionaries in the history of Christianity. Why? Because of the story in the book of Acts where he saw Jesus on the road to Damascus. He saw Jesus alive again, and his life was never the same.
Third, we see that once-observant Jews discontinued their animal sacrifices. What is the big deal about that? If you were convinced you had to do X, Y, and Z to get to heaven—if you were absolutely convinced, if you had been raised to believe that, if your family for thousands of years had done that, and if you believed you had to do X, Y, and Z to get to heaven—would you just stop for no reason? No. If I thought I had to kill a sheep or a goat to get into heaven, I would find a way to make that happen.
Yet all of a sudden, we see that these men who followed Jesus quit with the animal sacrifices. During His lifetime they were going into the temple and worshiping, but something happened. Peter and James, another James who is not Jesus’ brother, and John and the others stopped offering animal sacrifices. There is an entire book in the New Testament written by one of them. We do not know which one, but we can tell by the way it is written that the book of Hebrews was written by someone with apostolic authority. There is an entire book of the New Testament that talks about how sacrifices do not really do anything to earn God’s forgiveness.
That is a radical change. If you say, “What is the big deal?” think about it in terms of what they had been raised to believe would get them to heaven. They believed they needed to be descended from Abraham and undergo all these rituals and sacrifices, and suddenly their entire worldview shifted. They said, “No, we have been wrong,” or, “We have not seen the full picture.”
I don’t know about you, but it is hard enough for me to admit that I am wrong about anything. There is no taste worse to me in this world than the taste of the words, “I was wrong.” That is even about things that do not regard my eternal destination. It is hard enough to convince me I am wrong about little day-to-day stuff. But to change your mind about how you think you are getting to heaven, there has to be a good reason behind that.
They gave up the animal sacrifices because they did not need them anymore. A perfect sacrifice had been offered, and they had seen Him alive again, proving that the sacrifice was acceptable to God.
Along the same lines, these once-observant Jews no longer viewed the law as binding. The animal sacrifices were part of that, but think about the laws and everything they had to follow and all the boxes they had to check off. You have to do this. Your clothes have to be exactly like this. Your food has to be exactly like this. You can only travel so far on certain days. It would be exhausting. The only thing I can compare it to today is trying to wade through the federal tax code. We are all probably guilty of some violation without realizing it.
It was impossible to keep the Old Testament law. They thought that was how they were going to get to heaven, but they eventually came around to the teaching that the whole point of the Old Testament law was that they couldn’t. That is a radical shift in your ideas: to say, “I am going to follow this set of rules, and that is how I am going to get to heaven,” and then to come around and say, “The whole point of this set of rules is to show me that they cannot get me to heaven.” You do not change your mind about something like that for no reason.
Also, along with these other changes, once-observant Jews abandoned the Sabbath. Observant Jews worshiped, and still worship, on the Sabbath, starting Friday night at sundown through Saturday night at sundown. So most of it is Saturday. The Sabbath is not Sunday, by the way, in case you have called Sunday the Sabbath. The Bible calls Sunday the Lord’s Day, but it is not the Sabbath. Saturday is the Sabbath, but we do not observe the Sabbath anymore.
Why not? Because these early Christians decided, “We are going to meet together and worship together on Sundays. We are going to meet on the first day of the week instead of the seventh day of the week.” Wait a minute. Can we just change God’s rules? Can we just change what we have been taught for thousands of years? Again, they thought that something they had to do to get to heaven was worship on the Sabbath. That is one of the Ten Commandments for the Old Testament: “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy.” And all of a sudden, they set aside the Sabbath day as their central day of worship and start meeting on Sunday. Something dramatic had to happen for that to be the case. What happened on the first day of the week was that Jesus rose again from the dead.
Changed Beliefs About God and the Messiah
To take these last three and help you see what a big deal they really are, think about it this way. We are sitting in a Baptist church this morning. Sorry to shock you if you did not realize that. Many of us were raised Baptist. If you were not raised Baptist, that is okay. We love you anyway. But many of us, or at least a good portion of us, were raised Baptist.
There are different flavors and varieties of Baptists, but generally we believe a lot of the same things. For you to change some of those deeply held beliefs, what would it take? Think about some of the things that we as Baptists believe: salvation by grace through faith without works. The idea that you get to heaven because of what Jesus Christ did, not because of any good you do, and that trusting Him as your Savior is how we get to heaven. That is a basic principle of Baptist churches and Baptist teaching.
We believe that the Bible is the inspired and authoritative Word of God. I know some people in Baptist churches today say, “No, it doesn’t mean that,” but I am not talking about liberal Baptists. We believe the Bible is the Word of God, that it means what it says, and that it does not change.
We believe in baptism as a sign of obedience to Christ, as a picture of the death, burial, and resurrection, and as a way of identifying with Him and with His church. These are some of the basic things we believe. Not all of them, but some of the basic things we believe. What would it take to get you to change your mind about those?
I cannot think of anything. For me, it would pretty much take God showing up and saying, “Wait a minute. That book has been wrong.” And even then, how do I know you are really God? It has been so ingrained in me. For better or for worse, it has been so ingrained in me.
The Jews were even more serious about the religious education of their children. If you cannot think of anything that would change your mind, and I cannot think of anything that would change my mind, it would be even harder for the disciples. And yet all these things changed. Something pretty drastic happened to cause that.
The Jews’ understanding of God changed. These people were devout Jews. They were taught that there is one God, which we still believe today. But in their religion, they were made to recite every day the Shema from the Old Testament. In English it says, “Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one LORD.” They were made to recite that every day to be reminded: you do not follow the pagan gods of the countries around you. It is not that God is okay as long as we worship Him too. It is not that we can worship these other gods as long as He gets His share. No. God is one. There is one God, and He wants to be your only God and the only one you worship.
God is not interested in a fraction of your heart and a fraction of your worship. He wants all of it. For them to go from saying, “There is one God, period,” to saying, “There is one God, and He reveals Himself in three persons,” is a massive shift. There is God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. They are three eternally distinct persons in the Trinity, and yet they are one God. First of all, it is hard even for somebody raised in that way of thinking to wrap my mind around that. But for them to go from “one God, period,” to “one God in three persons” is a big shift. Something had to change their minds about that. Something had to show them that Jesus Christ was God.
If Jesus were still dead and in the tomb, there would be no reason for them to believe He is God. There would be no reason for us today to believe He is God if He were still dead. Folks, they saw His tomb empty, and they saw Him with their own eyes alive again.
Their understanding of the Messiah changed. For thousands of years, they had been looking for God to send someone who would be the Savior of the Jewish nation. But they were looking for a political Savior. At that point, they were looking for someone who would kick the Romans out, restore a perfect kingdom on earth, set them free, and do all these wonderful things.
That is part of the reason the people turned on Jesus. They were ready to usher Him in on Palm Sunday and make Him king. Yet a week later they were crucifying Him because they realized He was not the man who was going to kick the Romans out. They were looking for somebody who would be that political leader. Even His own disciples, up until the time of His crucifixion, still thought He was going to usher in that kind of kingdom.
Then suddenly something changed. They began teaching about a kingdom that is not of this world. They began teaching that He came as the Messiah as a sacrifice—a sacrifice to set God’s people free, not from the Romans, but from their sin. That is a radical change in their thinking about what they had been expecting for thousands of years. It changed in an instant because they saw the Messiah alive again.
A Death Remembered Because He Lives
Then the Christians adopted a commemoration of Jesus’ death. What do we do at the Lord’s Supper? We break the bread and read the passage where He says, “This is my body,” broken for you. Then we share the cup, and we read the passage where He talks about this being the New Testament in His blood, shed for you. We have a commemoration of His body being broken and His blood being shed, and of us consuming not the actual body and blood, but symbols and reminders of it.
That would be pretty morbid if we served a dead Savior, wouldn’t it? If you have a loved one who died in some tragic fashion, do you get together every year on the anniversary of their death to celebrate that method of death? Let’s say I had an uncle or a cousin or somebody I loved, and they died in a cattle stampede. Are we going to get together every year on the anniversary of their death and eat burgers and celebrate? We might do it as revenge against the cows, but would we? That would be morbid. That would be bizarre.
What is it that took this tragic event and made it something we could celebrate? The fact that He did not stay dead. I loved it this morning when I asked my son on the way out the door, while he was still sitting there eating breakfast, about Easter. He said something about it being Easter, and I asked, “What does Easter mean?” He said, “That Jesus is not dead anymore.”
That is the only thing that makes us able to celebrate the crucifixion the way we do: the fact that He did not stay dead. Now we can come together in celebration of His death, His burial, and His resurrection, and of what He accomplished for us on the cross.
As I have said all along, anybody could go and get himself killed. I do not mean that disrespectfully, but anybody could get himself killed. I could go to certain parts of this world and mouth off something and get myself killed, and it would not prove that I had the power to save anybody. Jesus taught these things, was killed, and then rose again from the dead to back up what He said. So now we come together and celebrate His death.
Finally, after the story of the resurrection, Christianity inexplicably exploded around the world. Now, just because a teaching grows does not make it true. Two of the fastest-growing religions in our country right now are Mormonism and Islam, and I do not believe that just because they are growing fast, that means they are true. As a matter of fact, I believe they are untrue, and it makes me nervous that they are growing so fast.
But when you look at a religion started by a conqueror, or somebody who makes grand promises to his followers about the here and now, it is easy to see why a religion would grow up around Muhammad and spread when they said, “You will go out and conquer the infidel.” It spread by the sword. It was a religion of power. It is easy to see why that would spread and grow.
It is not easy in human terms to explain why people would be dying to follow a poor carpenter from the backwoods of the Roman Empire, who got Himself executed in the most undignified way possible and whose own followers deserted Him in His darkest hour. There is no human explanation for why Christianity exploded all throughout the Roman world, or why it continues to change lives today, other than the fact that Jesus Christ is not just a dead carpenter. He is the living Son of God.
These people saw Him alive again, and it changed their lives and changed their world. Folks, I am willing to listen to the eyewitness testimony of people who were there more than I am willing to listen to the theories of people who are here 2,000 years later and did not see it either. I am willing to look at the testimony of people who saw it and whose lives were changed because of what they saw.
Their testimony, and all of the evidence, tells me that He died and that He is alive today. He is not alive walking this planet where we could see Him, but He was alive long enough for them to see Him. Then He ascended back to the Father with a promise that He would return for us.
The Savior Who Still Changes Lives
Just as Christianity exploded throughout the world and lives were changed and people’s eternity was changed, He can change your life today as well. The whole purpose for Him dying on the cross, as it says in 1 Corinthians 15, was that He died for our sin. You see, each of us has sinned against a holy God. Each of us has disobeyed God.
Sin simply means disobedience. God has given certain rules that we are to follow, and we either do things that are not in line with those rules, or we do not do things that are in line with those rules. God said, “Here are the rules,” and we have all disobeyed them.
If you have ever told somebody something that was not true, you have sinned against God. If you have ever taken something that was not yours, even picked up a pen at the bank that you were not supposed to take, it is a sin against God. Even a small one. We all sin against God every day. I am not telling you that to put you down. I am saying I am right there with you. We all sin against God.
Because God is holy, and because God is a righteous judge, He cannot just ignore sin. There is a penalty, and that penalty is that we are supposed to be separated from Him for all eternity. That is what we deserve. Unfortunately, the only place for us to be separated from Him for all eternity is hell.
That sounds really harsh. God created us to love Him, worship Him, and be with Him. God created hell for the devil and his angels. God did not create hell for us, but we chose to rebel against Him and be separate. So it is on us. God is a righteous judge, and He has to judge sin. He has to punish sin.
I have given the example before, but I will give it again. If I were to kill somebody in the parking lot on purpose, if I were to run somebody down with my car or shoot them, and I stood before a judge, and he said, “What do you have to say for yourself?” and I said, “Look at all the other people I did not kill,” I would not get extra credit for that. And if the judge looked at me and said, “Don’t do it again. Go home to your family,” we would want that judge voted out and run out of town on a rail.
By the same token, God is a holy and righteous judge, and our sin has to be dealt with. We can spend eternity separated from God in hell after death, or there is another way. He sent Jesus to live a perfect, sinless life, to teach in such a way that He would point us back to God, and then to take responsibility for our sins.
Jesus bore our sins on the cross. He shed His blood, and He paid for those sins when He shed His blood on the cross. He said, “It is finished.” It is paid in full. And then to prove it, He rose again three days later.
Now you have a living Savior who conquered death for Himself and conquered death for you. He promises eternal life. He promises forgiveness of your sins. He promises you a relationship with God the Father that you would not and could not otherwise have, simply because of what He accomplished on the cross.
How do you get there? Do you have to go to church, give money, do nice things for other people, and hope your good outweighs your bad? The whole reason He had to die is because we could not do enough to erase the wrong.
It is simply a matter of believing that we have sinned against God and need a Savior. It is believing that only Jesus could die for our sins. Only Jesus could pay for our sins. It is asking God to forgive us because of Christ.
If you have never trusted Him before as your Savior, I invite you this morning to trust Him. I invite you to believe in God’s promise and ask for God’s forgiveness. Do not look to your own effort. Do not look to the religions of this world. Look to a living Savior who promises forgiveness.