Is It Really True---The Resurrection

Is It Really True?

April 4, 2010 Easter Proverbs 3:5-9 John 20:1-30

We are in the third and final message in our series, “Is it really true”. Has anybody here ever believed something was really really true, only later did to discover what you believed was actually not true? Who knows the feeling of falling in love and having a crush on someone and thinking wow, that person is the most wonderful person to have ever lived and is just right for you? But then reality came in and you now don’t want anything to do with that person. You don’t even understand how you could have been so dumb to fall in love in the first place.

Have you ever believed you were going to mop another team all over the floor or the field, but at the end of the game, they had more points than you did? Have you ever believed you know you got a good grade on a test, only to be disappointed when you saw your actual grade on paper. Believing something is true, doesn’t make it true.

There are some things that we can be wrong about, that don’t have a lot of consequences when we find out the truth, but there are other things that have major consequences for our lives if what we believe is false. If you believe you can make the light before it turns red and you don’t, and a tractor trailer is coming full steam ahead, you’re in serious trouble.

If you believe you don’t need to get that pain checked out because you don’t like going to the doctor, but that pain is telling you something is wrong and in reality cancer is spreading through your body, your false belief can cost you some valuable time in getting treatment.

If you believe you can trust an individual that you may or may not know, and your belief is wrong, you can be swindled out of money, betrayed in a relationship, or even murdered. It really is important to know the truth in advance. The price of not knowing may be a lot more than you want to pay,

If you are not a Christian today, is what you believe about God really true? Is it true that you are good enough to go to heaven without Jesus Christ? Is it true that God grades us an a curve in that no one is perfect, but as long as we can think of five people that we know we are better than they are, then we know we are going to make it into heaven? Is it true that God does not care what we do, so long as we say that we love God and try to do the right thing most of the time?

Is it true there really is not a God and we have made God up just to get people’s money and to try to control them? Is it true that there is a heaven, but there is no hell? Is it true that it does not matter what you believe as long as you are true to what it is you believe in? Is it true that once you die, that’s it and everything is just a black nothingness?

My friend if any of these statements are true, then Jesus Christ is a liar, and we may as well all go home and try to get in as much fun as we can because one thing is true and that is, every last one of us is going to die. When we die, we will know immediately the consequences of our beliefs, be they right or wrong.

The moment we die we will know there is an after life, there is a God, and there is a judgment. We will also know that there is a heaven and there is a hell, and that we will be spending time in one of the other. How can I be so sure of this? Because we have the testimony of a person who died and came back to life again and told us what to expect.

Some 2000 years ago, God loved this world enough to take on the form of a human being in order to help us live life with our sins forgiven and our trust placed in Him. God took on a human body in the form of Jesus Christ. When Jesus became an adult he preached that God loves everyone, and that in loving God back, our lives would be changed. The first step in loving God is asking God’s forgiveness for living without God and disobeying his commandments. That’s called repentance.

Jesus called for people to repent, and that made a lot of people angry. Some did not want to stop the wrong things they were doing. Some felt they were good enough as they were and they did not need Jesus in their lives. Jesus told them, “I am the Way, the truth, and the Life, no one can come to God except through me.” Some people got so angry at Jesus they wanted to kill him. They said, “who do you think you are? How can we even know what you said is true”?