How many of you like to watch the evening news? Debbie told me that the evening news is for old people. I look forward to the news. I get my ice cream and watch the NBC News every night. I really look forward to it. She says kids don’t watch the news that much anymore. I thought I would take an informal survey. If you are 30 or over and you make it a regular habit to watch the news on television, raise your hand. If you are 30 or under and make it a regular habit, raise your hand. Debbie was right. It is for old people. That is why they show all the Viagra commercials and reverse mortgages and Rolaids. I like watching the news but it gets silly at times. It is becoming almost like a reality show with all these celebrities. What about Charlie Sheen? Who thinks Charlie Sheen is silly? Then you have Donald Trump who apparently is going to run for president. How many think that is silly? Some think he is going to win. How many think that is silly? Then there is a big wedding this week. Prince William and Kate. I heard they are spending 30 million dollars just on the security for that wedding. Then local news and local sports guys say the Pirates are going to get above 500 this year. We have a local weatherman saying spring is in the air. How many think that is silly?
This time of year you get pastors like me who really say some silly things. We say that over 2,000 years ago this man named Jesus walked this earth. Did ministry around Palestine and Jerusalem and got himself in trouble with the religious elite so much so that he got crucified on a cross. Not only did he get crucified but he was buried and after three days he was raised from the dead and showed himself to over 500 people and continues to live in us today. How many think that is silly? That is okay. If you think it is silly that is okay because you wouldn’t be the first person to think it is silly. In fact, people have doubted all the way back to that first century, including the disciples. They initially did not believe. You heard the story of the tomb. That is why I had Kristin read the story to begin because you know the story about the empty tomb. What happened about a week later is Jesus decided to show himself to the disciples. You had the disciples that were confused and afraid of being caught by the Jews. They didn’t know what was going on. They just heard that the tomb was empty. They hid out in this room and Jesus shows up and shows them the nail holes in his hands. He shows them the hole in his side and the disciples believed. But there was one guy who had missed the meeting for whatever reason. His name was Thomas. Thomas encountered one of the disciples and he said we have seen the Lord. He said I am not going to believe it until I see it. In fact, I am not going to believe it until I am able to put my fingers into the nail holes. I am going to put my hand into his side. I wanted to read that section really quickly. It comes from John 20:24. It says “Now Thomas, called Didymus, one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord!’ But he said to them, ‘Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.’ A week later his disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you!’ Then he said to Thomas, ‘Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.’ Thomas said to him, ‘My Lord and my God!’ Then Jesus told him, ‘Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.’”
The disciples had the advantage that they were able to see Jesus. They were blessed because they were able to see the risen Christ. Jesus seems to imply that it is not the disciples who are blessed but it is the people who have not seen yet continue to believe. John 20:29 says “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Which basically would include every Christian that has lived since that first century, including people here today. They believe even though they have not yet seen. The question of the skeptic would be why. Why believe in such nonsense? If a non-Christian were to approach a Christian and say why do you believe in the resurrection, they might not be able to give an answer. They might say it is in the Bible and it is a faith thing and that is why I believe it. Unfortunately, there are people that would say that is not good enough. That is not good enough for me. I need some real tangible proof to know that Jesus rose from the grave before I put my faith in him. Before I join this thing called Christianity. Unfortunately, you can’t prove it. You can’t prove the resurrection any more than you can prove that Jesus even existed. For that matter, you can’t prove that any of the people from that first century existed. You can’t prove that Pilate existed. You can’t prove that Herod existed. You can’t prove that the secular people during that period existed. Socrates and Plato. We have a good indication because we have records and manuscripts, but we can’t prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt. For that matter, we can’t even prove that somebody who lived 50 or more years ago existed. We can’t prove that Elvis existed. Other than I saw a guy who looked like him at Kuhn’s last week and started singing songs in the checkout line. It scared me to death.
All kidding aside, we can’t prove it. It is a faith thing. But we can make a pretty good case for it given the fact that all those disciples became martyred for their faith. They became either crucified or sawed in two or tortured. Died for their faith. You say a lot of people die for the faith all the time. These guys were in a different position. They were in the position to know if the resurrection was true or not. They were in a position to know whether or not the resurrection was a lie. If they really believed it was a lie and they had not seen Jesus, why would they die for their faith? No one dies for a lie. We can make a decent case out of that. But really, once again, it boils down to it is a faith thing. But it is not faith without reason. Like many things in the Christian doctrine, it is faith coupled with reason. It is not an objective reasoning. It is a subject form of reasoning that is based on the experience of the believer. In other words, if you were to go to a Christian and say why do you believe, the Christian is not going to give you a list of all the objective proof that Jesus rose physically from the grave. You can’t do it. It is not like a lab experiment. You can’t prove it that way. It wasn’t designed to be proved that way. It would hope that any Christian, if he or she was asked, would be able to give at least four good reasons that point to the reality of the resurrection because of how their life has been changed.
The first thing, if somebody says why do you believe in the resurrection, the Christian should say because we know we have been set free. Freedom is an important thing in America. We value our freedom. We like the idea that we can work where we want. We can drive where we want. We can go where we want. We can speak what we want. We can write what we want. We can vote for who we want. We value that freedom. The funny thing is that as much as Americans value freedom, a lot of them walk around with chains on. Not physical chains but mental chains. Emotional chains. Spiritual chains. Chains that are caused by shame and guilt related to past words, past choices, past behavior that have affected themselves, affected the people they love in their lives, and ultimately has hindered a relationship with God. Christians have a word for those things and they call it sin. Sin is not a popular word, but I am not ready to throw it out because I think it is still a good word. It really describes what is going on. Contrary to popular belief, sin is not a violation of a rule. It is not like a parking ticket. It is a violation of a relationship with God. The original meaning of sin comes from an archery term that means you missed the mark. In other words, you are shooting this arrow and trying to hit the bulls-eye. If you miss anything but the bulls-eye, you have sinned. The idea when you think of sin, you can think of the arrow as being your desire and your will. You can think of the bulls-eye as being God’s will. We take back that arrow and shoot it and the idea is to hit the bulls-eye. Some people end up going left or right. That is what you call sin. We are missing the mark of a relationship with God. We are missing the mark of God’s will in our lives. He knows what is best for us. All the while, when we sin, we are saying that is nice God. I like your commands. I like your things. You have given me a conscience to know the difference between right and wrong, yet I think I will go this way or that way. God is sitting up there saying how is that working out for you? All those behaviors you did, you are really feeling quite free now aren’t you. How is that working out for you? Most people don’t feel free. They think they are free but they are not. They are in a form of mental bondage over this guilt and shame. The Christian on the other hand says I am free. You are free. Why are we free? We tie that freedom all the way back to the resurrection. Specifically, we tie it back to the resurrection and the crucifixion. Because before Easter Sunday was Good Friday. Good Friday is the place where God chose to remove our chains. He chose to remove our sin. He chose to remove our pain. He chose to lift that heavy burden off of us and allow us to be free. You say why would he do such a thing? I just don’t get it. I don’t get it either, but the only answer is he did it because he loves us. Just like we give our kids something whether they deserve it or not. We love them. We give them things. That is what is happening there. There is a scripture out of Romans 5:8 that says “But God demonstrates his own love for us; while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” He paid the penalty on the cross for our sin. It is a mystery. God is saying don’t think about it too much. Just live in the freedom that comes with it. Just receive that forgiveness and walk in that freedom and don’t look back because you are always free. If the Son set you free, you are free indeed. Why do we believe in the resurrection? Because we have been set free.
The second reason we believe in the reality of the resurrection has to do with this idea of significance and identity. We get our sense of significance and identity from the resurrection. If anything people want in life, they want to feel like they have value and they want to feel a sense of worth and I am important. How do we do that? We do it by doing things. We do it by servicing the community. We do it by getting an education. Getting our masters. Getting our doctorate. Getting our high school education. We get it by hobbies and sports and all sorts of things. When we do those things, we get pats on the back and people make us feel good about ourselves. It is getting harder and harder to get those pats on the back. Most people aren’t thinking about you. They are thinking about themselves. We are only as good as our last success. We do these things to get our sense of significance. All the time it is coming up short. If we try to get our sense of worth by things that becomes part of our identity. So much so when somebody says who are you? Our answer is I am a doctor or I am a lawyer or I am a student. Who are you? I play golf. I play sports. I am a good student. Who are you? They can’t answer that question. What is the big deal? The problem is that what happens when you can’t do those things any more. What happens because of physical or mental disabilities or age or somebody decides they are going to outsource your job and you are left without a job you had for 30 years and that is where you got your self-worth. That is where you got your identity. What happens is that significance goes away. You feel like you are not valued. That is why retired people don’t know what to do with themselves. Their whole identity was caught up in a job. You take that job away and all of a sudden the identity is gone with it and the sense of significance. The Christian, on the other hand, says it doesn’t matter what I do. It doesn’t matter my physical capabilities or mental capabilities. All that matters is that I have been born again. In other words, a Christian ties their sense of significance and identity back again to the resurrection. It is a little more complicated to follow but the idea is that when you become a Christian what you are doing is aligning yourself with Jesus as closely as you can. You are aligning yourself with everything. You are aligning yourself with the death meaning Christ died for your sins so you better die to him too. Then you are aligning yourself with the burial. Going down in the water with Jesus. You are going down in the grave. You are going to stay down there as long as you have until that old man is dead and eventually you are going to get back up. Just as Jesus rose, you are going to rise up from the grave too. You are going to rise but you are not just going to come out of a tomb as a dead man walking. You are going to come out like a brand new baby. You are going to be born again like a brand new baby out of the womb. Not just any baby. You are going to be a child of God. We find that promise in John 1:12 when he says there were some people that didn’t want to receive him and John says “Yet to all who receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God – children not born of natural descent, human decision, or a husband’s will, but born of God.” God took the initiative to make you born again. When you become born as a child of God, you have all the rights of the Son of God. You have the same rights of Jesus. You are called co-heirs with Jesus, which means you have all the riches and all the same inheritance that Jesus got. The same inheritance Jesus got he says I want to give to you when you become born again. That is value. That is worth. You can’t get enough jobs or enough successes on this earth to come anywhere near that. You still go out in the world and you still do your education and get your jobs but you don’t do it to go out and feel good about yourself. You feel good about yourself so you go do it. You do it with excellence. You do it because you know who your father is and you know who your brother is. You want to glorify them. That is why you do it. While you are doing that, you go out there with a sense of identity. You know who you are and that gives you the ability to withstand someone who tries to pull you away from your identity. When somebody tries to entrap you in some sort of a sin or behavior you just say that is not me. I have a new identity as a child of God. That is my old self and to engage in that sort of activity would be so inconsistent with my new self it just wouldn’t feel right. I am a new creation. I have been born again. I am a child of God. I am supposed to live in that. Why do we believe in the resurrection? It gives us a sense of significance. It gives us a sense of worth. It gives us a sense of identity, which also results in the power for living.
We have been given a power to live. Everybody wants power. We say it is just guys like Donald Trump and all those guys. Obama wants power. The guy down at the DMV that makes your life hard, he wants power. The surly clerk wants power. They have the power to make you go in a different line. Everybody likes power because power is control. It gives them the control over their environment. The Christian says I don’t need that power because I have the power that came with me as part of my birthright. I get that power. Paul was upset because the Ephesian people who were experiencing persecution and pain and torture were leaving the church because they were getting scared. He said it is time now to draw deep on that power you have within you. He says I just wish you would see it. I just wish you would open your eyes and understand it. He writes in Ephesians 1:18 “I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe.” In Christianity they connect that power back to the resurrection. There has never been a greater power than the resurrection. There has never been a greater demonstration of power than God lifting his son out of the grave. We are not talking about a near-death experience. We are talking about a man who was crucified. The worst torture that was known to man at that time. Excruciating pain. In fact, the word excruciating means ‘out of the cross’. When you say excruciating, you are talking about the pain that Christ felt on the cross. If you want to watch an Easter movie, Passion of the Christ, you are going to experience that pain and it will make you cry. That is what he is talking about. We had a man, Jesus, who didn’t just die. He was dead for three days in a tomb. Yet God somehow brought that dead man back to life and raised him up and seated him next to his right hand. The thing that is cool about it is it says that same power is available to each one of us. He goes on to say “That power is like the working of his mighty strength which he exerted in Christ when he raised him from the dead.” He is saying you have that power within but you just don’t tap into it. You have the spirit of God living inside of you.
You say, Chuck, I haven’t seen that power. I don’t see many powerful people out there. You just have to look around. It is very subtle how that resurrection power moves through life. I can give you a few examples. That power is manifested when you get that afternoon call after that checkup at the doctor. He says I have some bad news. It is cancer again. The cancer has returned. You say okay. Take control. I know what I believe. I know the truth. The question I have to ask myself is do I believe what I know enough to draw deep on that power and get me through another day and not panic and freak out like the rest of the world does when they get the news of cancer. It is manifested when you are in a group setting with kids or adults or whatever. You are someplace with people you know you shouldn’t be with and somebody tries to pass you something or encourage some sort of inappropriate behavior. It is the power that you draw from because you know about the resurrection power, you know you have the ability to say no when everybody else is saying yes. You have the power within you to do that. It is manifested when you lose your job, your finances are going bad, your marriage is going bad, you have a bad relationship with your kids, but somehow you dig deep into that well of strength and you draw it up and you say I just have to get through today. I know God will give me strength for another day. That is when I talk about the power. That is the resurrection power that gives evidence of the reality of the resurrection in your life.
Finally, we believe in the resurrection because it gives us the assurance of eternal life. As much as people complain about this old world, I think most of us like it here. Don’t most of you want to stick around for a while? There is an old country song that says “Everybody likes to go to heave but nobody wants to die.” It is true. We all want to go to heaven but nobody wants to die. I don’t think anybody is running out the door to get there. In the same sense, we know we are all dying and we have this old man called death hovering around us. I don’t care if you are 10 years old, 17 years old, or 70 years old. You are walking through life and you always have this thing called death. We see it all around us. Especially if we watch the news, we hear every other word is someone was killed or somebody died or a celebrity died or this or that. We hear about it. All we have to do is look around here and we see people are getting old. That is why some of you people don’t want to get on Facebook. You aren’t afraid of technology. You are afraid of somebody seeing that you have changed over the last 30 years. I have seen some of those people from high school and I say life was not too kind to that one. I am going to make a million dollars and start a Facebook page only I am going to call it OldFace. It is just for old people that want to go on there. We are all aging. It is like it just happened all of a sudden. I was watching the news last week. Does anybody remember the show Happy Days? It was on in the 70s and it was a show that was about the 50s and now that show is a long time ago. They had this cast of characters on. Most of them are dead but there were like four of them on there and apparently they are suing CBS because they didn’t get all the royalties. I was watching them and I wasn’t so interested in the story but I was interested in seeing how old they looked all of a sudden. All these guys looked really old and it kind of depressed me. I was just watching that show yesterday. I said something to Debbie like those guys are old. She said I got news for you; that is because you are old. I realized she is right. That is why I watch the evening news. One day I was 18 years old looking in the mirror and the next day I am looking in the mirror and I am 55 years old and I have hair growing out my ears. I look in the mirror and I say that is dad. What happened to little Charlie the 18-year-old partier. He is gone and now he is a 55-year-old man with hair growing in places it shouldn’t be. All kidding aside, nobody gets out of this earth alive. We are all heading on home. Heading down towards that grave. We have been to the funerals. When we see that person go down in that grave all the while knowing we are going there too someday. Someday it is going to be old Chuck standing over you or you standing over Chuck. We are all heading to the grave. The Christian says so what. I don’t want to go there, but it will be fine because I know that because Jesus lived, I am going to live. In other words, I am going to tie my belief in the resurrection to the fact that Jesus was resurrected. Jesus is all about life. We come to celebrate Easter and Easter is just a celebration of life. That is why we have flowers and Easter eggs. It is a celebration of life. Jesus was all about life.
By his rising from the grave, he was demonstrating some things. He was demonstrating that he had victory over death. The scripture that talks about where is your sting. Where is your sting death? You have no sting. Jesus pulled that sting right now. It hurts a little bit but the sting is going to be removed from you. Secondly, he demonstrated that he had the authority to grant resurrection life to anybody who wants it. To anybody who chooses to believe. You might know the story about Lazarus. Martha and Mary were upset because their brother Lazarus had died. They went to Jesus and they say is my brother going to be resurrected. At this point, Jesus gives the most profound words I think in the Bible. He says “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live even though he dies. Whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” Whoa. For you smart people out there that read a lot, find me some words as profound as that. Find me any words that speak of the hope like those words. If you can find it then bring it in here, and I would say start a church. Because these are the best words I can find and this is all I want to preach unless somebody brings me something better. “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” In other words, I got the basics covered. I have it covered on this earth and I got it covered afterwards. As long as all eternity. That is good news. That is great news.
Why does the Christian believe in the resurrection? We should be able to answer it. You Christians should be able to answer it. Because I have been set free from my sins; past, present, and future. And all the pain and yuck and muck and all the other stuff that goes with it. Which means I don’t have to condemn myself anymore. I don’t have to condemn myself for the past sins. I don’t even have to condemn myself for my present sins. We are not supposed to go on sinning, but when we do screw up, which we will, we just take it before God. Confess to the Lord you are sorry and he is going to purify you of that thing. You don’t condemn yourself. You pray. You confess. You move on. You walk on. That is freeing. I believe in the resurrection because it gives a sense of significance and a sense of value and a sense of worth and a sense identity. I believe in the resurrection because of the power for living that it gives us. We believe in the resurrection because Christ said he is the resurrection and the life and whoever believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. That is why we believe in it. There are people here today who say that is good Chuck, but that is all you have. I am like Thomas. I need to be able to put my hands around some things. I need to be convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt before I go and accept this thing called Christianity and go messing my life up and make me go to church. I need to know for certain. What do you have to give me? I say I gave you all I got. I can give you some cookies and invite you back for Christmas and take a second shot at some of you but that is all I have to give. I imagine there are some of you saying I kind of believe that. I don’t know if I believe it totally but I want it. I have been living my life like a caged animal all pent up with all these emotions and guilt for things that I did to people that aren’t even around anymore. People that might even be dead and I am carrying around this pain and heartache. I have to know that freedom. Or people who are trying to seek significance from the things in the world. I have been chasing all these rainbows and I spend years and years getting these things and then nobody acknowledges them. Or I can’t do those things anymore and I don’t feel good about myself. I don’t have any sense of identity. So I like this idea of the resurrection. Then there are some people that say I don’t have any power in my life. Every time I get a phone call, whether it is from my kids or the doctor or the car mechanic, I panic. I freak. I don’t know what to do. I have no power, so I like the idea of having that power in my life. There are some people that say life is passing very quickly. I can’t believe how old everybody is getting. I have seen some of my friends pass away and I think it is time that I began to think about this idea of assurance of eternal life. There are people thinking if I believe in this resurrection stuff, does that make me a Christian? My answer is kind of. Because it is part of the package, the conversion formula I guess you would call it, to believe in the resurrection. But God was not so much interested in you believing in the resurrection as he was in believing in the one that was resurrected. Not only believing in him but making him Lord of your life. The conversion formula is spelled out here. It says “If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.” It is a heart issue but it is also a mouth issue. It starts with the heart. You believe in the resurrection in your heart but really it is more than that. You believe in the whole gospel story. You believe you are a sinner in need of a savior. You have been trying to do all these things all your life and it is just not working out. You have all this guilt and shame and you realize there is nothing I can do to get myself back on the right relationship with God apart from saving reality of Jesus Christ on the cross. So you receive that crucifixion. You accept the fact that there was a man that died for your sins 2,000 years ago. You also accept the fact that he did raise from the grave. The grave could not hold him down. The grave lifted him up. Just as he was lifted up, you too who believe will someday be lifted up. It doesn’t stop there. At some point, you have to confess with your mouth. There are a lot of people that believe in their heart but they never confess with their mouth, so nobody knows they are Christians. They never told anybody. If you really made a decision in your heart, and I am talking about a real decision, you are going to be excited. You are going to go out and you are going to tell somebody. You are going to tell your neighbor. You are going to tell your spouse. You are going to tell a friend. You are going to tell somebody because I have this in me, this change, and I have to share it with you. I have to share what Jesus did to me. Eventually, what you have to do, and this is the scary part, you have to get in front of the church and confess your belief in front of the confessing community. The church is the confessing community; the ones who collectively confess Christ is Lord. That is how it goes. You open your heart up. You receive the message of Jesus Christ. You receive the whole message. You open it up. First you confess to God. You confess it to a neighbor or friend and then you come before the church and confess it to the church. That is all I have for now.
Debbie is going to play a song that speaks to what is going on here. She is going to lead us into a quiet prayer. If you would like to take the time to confess Christ as Lord, she is going to lead you into that. In closing, my job is just to lay it out there. I can’t make anybody become a Christian. I don’t want to make you become a Christian. I would like you to become a member of the church but I am not here to get church members. I am here to get Christ members. Body of Christ. When you receive Christ, don’t think it is a transaction between you and Chuck. It is a transaction between you and God. It is only you that can decide whether you want to continue to be a child of the world or whether you want to be a child of God. You have to decide whether you want to be a person who lives in your own tomb or you want to step out of the tomb, come awake, and live for God now and for all eternity. Let us pray.
