Reassurance of Resurrection Luke 24:13-27

It's been a little different morning with the 10 o 'clock fellowship. We don't do that every week. Some probably wish we did, and it's got its benefits, but there's a little work involved with that.

But what a blessed day. Well, welcome to Faith Bible Church. And he has risen.

Indeed, he has. And isn't that a beautiful mural? That's the Russian church that meets here in the afternoon.

They put that up this week, and it's pretty striking. It's quite an image to reflect on, especially today.

What a great time of fellowship this morning, and enjoying one another. God is good and gracious, and he's blessed this church abundantly, and we thank him for that.

And there's a lot of emotions on this day, you know, when we celebrate the resurrection of our

Lord and Savior. It can be an emotional time, it's a time of reflection, a time of just considering the depth and the magnitude of what we believe.

Because without Jesus' resurrection, we'd have no hope. If he hadn't risen, that would have been a long journey of misery for us, if he hadn't risen.

But he did. He has risen, and we thank him for that. I want to share on the bulletin, and I had a copy, here we go.

On the announcements prayer meeting tonight, there won't be a prayer meeting tonight, so just take note of that.

Normally, it's every week at 6 o 'clock, and the Women's Bible Study is

April 15th. I think that's kind of it, by way of announcements.

I wanted to share a verse here from Isaiah 53, and you can just listen in, it's two verses, five and six.

But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities.

The chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed.

All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned, every one, to his own way.

And the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all. And if we really stop to think of what that means, and the depth of my sins,

I put him on the cross. My sins were nailed with him to the cross.

That's intense, and only the God of the universe could give us that in a gift, in his son, his very own son, to do that for me.

And I thank the Lord that he did it for me, and that I can be with him eternally, and to live life on this earth with purpose and meaning, and having joy even in times of trial, because we know

God is overall, and he is sovereign, and he has a plan for each one of us.

And it's exciting to wait to see what God is going to do in our lives, in the life of this church even.

So, anyway, as we, let's go to the Lord in prayer, and then we'll have

David come up and lead us in song. Our dear heavenly Father, we are so blessed to be here this morning, when we can think upon and dwell upon and pray upon,

Lord, the gift that you've given us in your son, Jesus Christ. What a mighty and glorious thing it is to think that we can be with the creator of the universe for the rest of our lives.

Father, may we this morning honor you with our words, with our thoughts, and our prayers,

Father, as we lift our voices in song, may we meditate upon the words, and just have a greater understanding of what a wonderful, loving, caring, and righteous

God that we serve. So, God, be with those today that aren't able to be here,

Father, that are way out of town with family and friends, and Lord, just bless them.

Those that are sick and ill and infirmed, Lord, may they have a moment of time to think upon you,

Father, that you would support them, even in the quietness of the place that they're at, Lord. You are present with each one of them, and we know that, and so we commit them to you,

Father. So, God, bless this day, we pray, and may we just rejoice and be glad that our

Lord and Savior is risen, and it is in his name we pray. Amen. Happy Easter, happy resurrection of Jesus Christ, our

Lord, our God. And let's stand, and we sing to our Lord, our

Heavenly Father, this morning. Thank you, and please be seated.

Our church's reading for this morning is 1 Corinthians, Chapter 15, Verses 1 through 8.

1 Corinthians, Chapter 15, Verses 1 through 8. Remember, brethren,

I declare unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also ye have received, and wherein ye stand, by which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what

I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain. For I declare unto you, first of all, that which

I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the day according to the

Scriptures, and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the Twelve, and after that he was seen of about five hundred brethren of Runtz, of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep.

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 of due time.

And the Lord has blessed me to read this word. Good morning.

He is risen. I will be preaching from Luke, Chapter 24,

Verses 13 through 27. I know we have been going through the gospel according to Luke, and we were only at Chapter 6, but we're jumping ahead because we need to commemorate

Resurrection Sunday. So we are finding out the ending of the book much in advance.

So sorry to spoil it for you all. Luke, Chapter 24,

Verses 13 through 27. Now behold, two of them were traveling that same day to a village called

Emmaus, which was seven miles from Jerusalem, and they talked together of all these things which had happened.

So it was, while they conversed and reasoned, that Jesus himself drew near and went with them.

But their eyes were restrained, so that they did not know him. And he said to them,

What kind of conversation is this that you have with one another as you walk and are sad?

Then the one whose name was Cleopas answered and said to him, Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem?

And have you not known the things which happened there in these days? And he said to them,

What things? So they said to him, The things concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death and crucified him.

But we were hoping that it was he who was going to redeem Israel. Indeed, besides all this, today is the third day since these things happened.

Yes, and certain women of our company who arrived at the tomb early astonished us.

When they did not find his body, they came saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who said he was alive.

And certain of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.

And he said to them, O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken, ought not the

Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into his glory in beginning at Moses and all the prophets he expounded to them in all the scriptures, the things concerning himself.

This is the word of the Lord. Let us pray. Father, we are thankful that we get to celebrate the risen

Lord Jesus Christ. He is physically risen. Death and sin are defeated once and for all because he is risen.

Father, we pray that we would celebrate and delight in this fact, not just today, but every day of our lives, because that he is the only hope that we have of being free from sin and death once and for all.

Father, we pray that your spirit would work in our hearts to clearly understand your scripture and to live it because we believe in it.

Help us to see Christ today in Jesus name. Amen. It's important for us when we are talking about Christ's resurrection that we see both the crucifixion and resurrection in the same picture.

Although they happen on different days, they need to be grouped as one event.

We cannot talk about the resurrection without talking about the crucifixion.

We cannot talk about rising from the dead without talking about how he died and why he died.

So on Friday, the Good Friday, we all hopefully read the account of the passion narrative.

And in all of these passion narratives from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, what's highlighted here is the fact that Jesus was guilt free.

He was innocent. It's not even that he was innocent in our eyes, the believers eyes.

It's that he was even innocent in the eyes of the rulers who were putting him to death. It's important because Jesus did not die for his own sin.

Jesus did not die because of his own guilt. He died for the sin and guilt of others.

And here are some ironies that you would have caught when reading

Luke's account. In Luke 23, 35, when the rulers mocked him, said, he saved others, let him save himself.

If he is the Christ, the chosen of God. The irony here is that by staying on the cross and not saving himself, he was saving others once more.

Even from a greater enemy than any illnesses or demon possession, but sin itself.

And the soldiers mock him just two verses later. If you're the king of the Jews, save yourself. The irony here is that it was precisely because Jesus is the promised

Davidic king wearing the crown of thorns, and he's exalted physically in which his glory is seen for the whole world to see.

By staying on the cross, he was ruling from above. And this morning we see more irony as Luke shows us

Jesus appearing to two disciples who are in doubt.

They're in doubt of the risen Lord. And ironically, he is talking to them for the whole seven miles.

And this is important because what Luke is showing us, in addition to the witnesses of the empty tomb and the angelic announcement, right, of the risen

Christ, Luke is showing us that Christ actually appeared to his followers and interacted with his followers.

What Luke wants to highlight here is that the resurrection really happened.

And this is really important for us this morning because if the resurrection didn't happen, we are some of the most hopeless people.

Every year, every morning, we all experience the effects of sin.

We experience some sort of decay. We have to squint when reading books or phone even because our eyes are getting dimmer.

Waking up in the morning takes more effort, getting out of bed even more so, and every year there's fewer hair on your head.

And for us, we've seen the effects of sin even among our church family as many of us have gone to the hospital for various illnesses that came unexpectedly.

And some of us have not been able to join in physical worship because they're not able to.

They're not able to get up from the bed. They're not able to walk on their own.

But for those, for all of us really, there's hope.

The resurrection gives us hope. First and foremost, the resurrection gives us hope that the decay, the decaying touch of death and sin is not the final story, that there is a great reversal coming.

Not only that, your temptation to sin, every time you sin, you tell yourself, why did

I do that again? Why did I reveal against God? But there is a day that's coming in which there won't be any desire for you to sin when you're standing in front of the presence of the risen

Christ. The resurrection teaches us that sin and death have been dealt with once and for all.

And this morning, it is crucial to realize that the resurrection really happened.

So the main point of this text is, what does God provide for us to believe in Jesus' resurrection?

What does God provide for us to believe in Jesus' resurrection? First, despite multiple testimonies of Jesus' resurrection, some still doubted the resurrection.

Despite multiple testimonies of Jesus' resurrection, some still doubted the resurrection. This is really important because oftentimes people claim that there is no evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

It is far from the truth. The New Testament is one of the most well -attested ancient documents in the world.

There are over 5 ,000 copies of the New Testament manuscripts written in Greek, all of which agree 99 .9

% of the time. And not only that, these documents, many of them are written, found, copied from the 2nd century, so less than even 100 years after Jesus' death and resurrection.

Compared to this, Biography of Julius Caesar, the oldest copy we have, is from the

Middle Ages. Yet we have no trouble believing in the life of Julius Caesar.

And this morning, we see the evidence of Jesus' resurrection in the eyewitness testimonies.

And not only that these eyewitness testimonies happen, that they actually spread to these two disciples who were not among the 11 apostles left.

So the eyewitness testimonies spread even by the third day, people who followed

Jesus found out about this. This was not some conjured up story. Now we go to the text.

After the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, Luke focuses on two rather unknown disciples walking away from Jerusalem, processing what just had happened.

Now behold, two of them were traveling the same day to a village called Emmaus, which was seven miles from Jerusalem.

And they talked together of all these things which had happened. Now it is unclear to this day still where Emmaus is, that little town.

Other than the fact that it's seven miles away from Jerusalem, it's an obscure village.

And this really shows Luke's careful attention to every historical detail.

He collected all sorts of detail in order to compile and show people that this is an historical account which can be believed.

In another sense, if Luke were actually making up a religion, right, he's making up a fake religion for people to follow, choosing a relatively unknown town like Emmaus would have been counterproductive.

Why choose Emmaus unless it really happened to be that town in which these two disciples were going to?

Now verse 15 introduces a dramatic irony. So it was, while they converse and reason, that Jesus himself drew near and went with them.

As these two men are having a heated discussion about what happened to Jesus in the last couple of days,

Luke tells us Jesus himself approaches them. This really shows us even the resurrected

Christ has no problem approaching his followers.

Even the resurrected Christ in his heart desires to appear before his followers, desires to interact with his followers.

The resurrection did not make him more distant. He drew near just as he has been drawing near all throughout the gospel of Luke.

Now Luke tells us Jesus himself approaches them and the drama begins as the main focus, the main topic of their discussion actually enters the discussion himself.

Yet they do not even know who he is. Right? Verse 16, but their eyes were restrained so that they did not know him.

Here, the passive verse were restrained. Passive verb in the context, if it allows for it, we call it a divine passive.

The one who does the restraining when the subject is unclear is God. The one who restrained them from seeing that it's

Christ, the resurrected Christ, is God. And this is a rather mysterious aspect of the resurrected

Christ. It also occurs in John 20 with Mary standing by the tomb thinking that Jesus, the risen

Christ, is the gardener. This is not because that Jesus looked different after the resurrection as if he's a totally new person.

But rather God in his sovereign purpose stopped these followers from recognizing

Christ temporarily. Right? This is not a permanent thing. Temporarily. Mary would know that it's

Jesus when Jesus calls her Mary. And these disciples, although we didn't read the text, will know that it's

Jesus when he breaks the bread with them. Now, in verse 17,

Jesus asks what the deep discussion is all about, to which Cleopas, one of the two disciples answers.

Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem? And have you not known the things which happened there in these days?

This is important because during the time of crucifixion and resurrection, it was the week of the

Passover, the Feast of Unleavened Bread. So a lot of Jews would travel to Jerusalem to celebrate that.

So that's why they're using the language stranger. Well, you must not be from here, but man, if you were there in Jerusalem, you would have known what happened.

Right? Another phrase would be, have you been living under a rock?

Right? You don't know. Do you really not know what happened? To which

Jesus asks, what things? Now, from verses 19 through 24,

Cleopas explains to Jesus what happened to Jesus. Verse 19 identifies

Jesus as the things concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet, mighty in deed and word before God and all the people.

Now, this title, a prophet, mighty in deed and word, is very significant.

This is more than just any other prophet. Right? This is more than just another Isaiah or another

Jeremiah, another Micah. Right? It is actually used, this phrase is used to describe

Moses in Acts 7, verse 22. And Moses was learned in all the wisdom of the

Egyptians and was mighty in words and deeds. And for many of us who went through the

Exodus series, we know that in the Old Testament, Moses was the prophet par excellence.

Right? Unlike the iPhones that come out later and later, they're better and faster and take better pictures.

Moses was the best prophet. He was the best prophet of the Old Testament.

He set the standard. Right? All the prophets that came after Moses, no matter how far along the historical timeline, they all pointed back to Moses because Moses was the standard of God's prophet.

God spoke to him face to face, not in visions, not in dreams. God got

Moses back whenever they rebelled against him. In one sense,

Moses was the Stradivarius of the prophets. All the ones who came after only hoped to emulate him.

However, in Deuteronomy 18, 15, Moses himself reveals that God will one day raise up a prophet like him.

You know what? There is going to be a prophet and it's going to be like Moses. The Lord your

God will raise up for a prophet like me from your midst, from your brethren.

Him you shall hear. You shall listen to him. You shall follow him.

Moses predicted the coming of Christ, the ultimate prophet of God, thousands of years earlier.

And thus, Cleopas believed that Jesus was that second Moses from witnessing his mighty deed and word.

They believe that Jesus was some eschatological prophet, the prophet of the last days, who would, just as Moses did, deliver

God's people from their enemies. They thought

Jesus was the fulfillment of Deuteronomy 18. Now, verses 20 to 21 show why

Cleopas and his buddy were actually downcast. Their hope in this prophet publicly perished and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to be condemned to death and crucified him.

But we were hoping that it was he who was going to redeem Israel.

Indeed, besides all this, today is the third day since these things happened. Despite the marvelous miracles and powerful preaching, the religious elites and political leaders of their own people crucified

Jesus. And the crucifixion, remember, in the

Roman time was a public execution, not for to not not really to put someone to death in the quickest, most efficient way possible.

But it was an utter humiliation publicly done for hours at a time.

It was to show you go against the Roman authority. This will be done to you.

And this is why. This is why these two disciples were downcast, and this was specifically the thing that they were talking about.

It was a public execution of humiliation. And it seemed that this stranger on the road was the only one in whole

Jerusalem who was unaware of this. Now, their hope in this prophet, again, was that he would redeem

Israel. The word for redemption happens one time before, and this was all the way in the beginning.

And this was Zacharias prophecy regarding Jesus in Luke one sixty eight, that the hope of redemption would come through the child

Jesus. They hope that Jesus would deliver Israel out of Rome and lead

Israel into a new era of glory, a time in which the

Israel has really not experienced before. The closest they got were around David and Solomon's time where they weren't paying tributes to an empire that's bigger than them.

And they expected that Jesus was the one he was doing the miracles. He was preaching

God's word really powerfully. This must be the second Moses. A new exodus was coming and they thought it was through Jesus.

And ironically. It was actually precisely through the public crucifixion.

Jesus, the greater Moses, delivered his people from the greatest enemy sin.

It wasn't that their vision was too high. It's that their vision was not great enough.

They settled for a lesser enemy, Rome. And they settled for a lesser deliverance, a political deliverance.

Now, in verses twenty two to twenty four, Cleopas shares two testimonies that they've heard regarding Jesus body first.

Yes. And certain women of our company who arrived at the tomb early astonished us.

When they did not find his body, they came saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who had said he was alive.

In a beautiful sense, the book of Luke. Bookends the testimonies.

By women, testimonies by angels and testimonies by men.

Right. Luke chapter one through two had women's testimony, Mary and Elizabeth had angelic testimony to the shepherds and also

Zechariah testifying of Jesus birth, the coming redemption through Christ.

And even the resurrection Luke compiles women's testimonies, angel's testimonies and men's testimonies.

Now, in response to these women's testimonies, other disciples attempt to confirm this wild claim.

How can a dead man who's been crucified by the Roman Empire be alive? So verse 24 and certain of those who were with us went to the tomb and founded just as the women had said, but him they did not see.

These two verses are a short summary of the first 12 verses of chapter 24.

Now the women visited Jesus tomb to embalm him after the Sabbath day.

And early in the morning they were greeted with greeted by angels who proclaimed that Jesus is not in the tomb because he's living.

And he actually foretold this three times. And this resulted in Peter and John, which we found find out in the gospel of John, that it's

Peter and John who ran there and they found the tomb empty. And we see here that Cleopas and his friend are not convinced by these testimonies because they did not see the risen

Christ for themselves. Of course, the irony here is that the final piece of evidence that's not, that's preventing them from seeing, believing in the resurrection that they were longing for was speaking to them for the whole seven miles.

And here we see two disciples, despite the evidence presented to them, cannot believe in Christ's resurrection.

They want to believe on their own terms. They're not satisfied with what is given.

And note the mounting evidence that's piled up all on the same day, right?

This is not, Oh yeah, this happened three years ago. No, it's all happening on the same day.

The third day, the Sunday, the women saw the tomb empty.

And the angels told them he's not there. He's risen. And for us this morning, the women's testimony is a, is extra powerful.

And this is because in, in ancient times, uh, women were not in the right status to actually testify in court.

They, they would rather believe in slaves than women. Now in all four of the gospel accounts,

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the first witnesses of the resurrection, which is the most important event in Christianity are women.

And again, this is looking at the other point of view. What if Christianity were all made up? If Christianity were a made up belief, it would make no sense to choose women as the first witnesses of the most important event in Christian history.

Unless that's what happened. Unless they're actually recording what's true.

That's a powerful evidence for us, even more powerful to us than them.

Now, when Peter and John heard the news from the women, they went to check it out and they confirmed that the tomb was empty.

Now the giant rock removed from the entrance would have been humongous and heavy and women would not have been able to remove that.

And second, the soldiers who were supposedly guarding the tomb had no incentive to remove the stone themselves, lest they be killed for avoiding their duty of guarding the tomb.

There was no reason why the tomb was rolled, the tombstone was rolled away and the body was empty.

No one could have done it. And that satisfied Peter and John. And despite all of this, these two disciples are disheartened.

They can't believe Jesus unless Jesus meets them on their own terms.

And this is not a noble thing at all. And you might have experienced this talking to unbelievers.

I'm not going to believe in Jesus unless he shows up right in front of me. And even then,

I might not believe it. I might think I ate something wrong for lunch. I've had someone tell me this.

When I asked, what would it take for you to believe that Jesus died for your sin and rose from the dead?

And he said those words. Again, we want to believe

Jesus in our own terms, despite the evidence. It really shows that unbelief is not a logical choice when the evidence is so mounting.

Now the question is, how does Jesus respond to this unbelief? Because Jesus actually holds the key to show them that they can actually believe because that was the final puzzle that was missing.

But they didn't see him. The women didn't see him. The disciples didn't see him.

Jesus rebukes their unbelief of God's testimony of his resurrection. Jesus rebukes their unbelief of God's testimony of his resurrection.

Now immediately, Jesus rebukes these two disciples. Oh foolish ones and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken.

Foolishness in the Bible, as we have seen it over and over again in the Old Testament, in the

Psalms, it's not about ignorance. Foolishness is not about ignorance, nor is it about lack of intelligence.

Foolishness rather points to moral deficiency. It's a spiritual condition.

In this case, it's lacking faith. Hence, Jesus uses another title to describe them.

Slow of heart to believe. Their heart, the seed of emotion, will, and intention, and desire, is that they don't want to believe.

They're resisting to believe. Now what are they resisting to believe?

It is significant to note that the content of unbelief wasn't, right?

You unfaithful men, why don't you believe what these women saw and these men confirmed?

Right? Jesus didn't say that. They confirmed the body was missing, the tomb was open.

Who could have done it? Not the Roman soldiers. Jesus didn't say that.

Jesus wasn't rebuking these two disciples for not believing that evidence. It also wasn't, you unholy creatures, how could you doubt the testimony of the holy angels?

Do you not know that they're messengers from God? Jesus didn't say that.

No, Jesus' rebuke is centered around not believing in what the prophets have said.

Ultimately, what God has testified regarding Jesus through the prophets of the past.

The supreme evidence of Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection lies in Scripture.

Jesus' go -to proof for His resurrection is not the eyewitness testimonies, although God graciously gives them to us.

Jesus' go -to proof for His resurrection is not even His own appearance.

Although He could have revealed who He is at any moment, just show them your hands.

And that's all they wanted in verse 24. The crux of their doubt came from not, no one actually seeing the body.

But Him, they did not see. No, Jesus doesn't meet their standard.

Jesus gives them something better. Jesus' go -to proof for His resurrection is

God's own testimony regarding Himself in the Old Testament. Verse 26, ought not the

Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory? It's foretold in the

Old Testament. Oftentimes we forget that the Old Testament is the evidence for the crucifixion and the resurrection.

We do not count it often as a historical document, even though it is.

In fact, it is God's testimony written down. The source is

God. It's better than any eyewitness testimonies.

If someone came here this morning and claimed that Jesus showed up right in front of them and told them a certain thing that goes against the

Bible, we better go with God's testimony about Jesus.

Now, Jesus' expectation of belief in His resurrection is not based upon the current availability of evidence, but rather one's trust in God's past promises.

Are you willing to believe in the resurrection because God had said so?

Not because some of your friends said so. Not because of a close relative said so.

But because God said so. And this is not to say that the eyewitness accounts do not matter.

They ended up in Scripture. Luke compiled it and collected it. And it is for our edification to help us to believe in the risen

Christ. What Jesus is saying is that God's testimony of the resurrection revealed centuries before Christ's resurrection is more than sufficient for His disciples to believe.

It's more than enough for them. God has provided for His disciples enough evidence to believe in the legitimacy of Christ's death and resurrection.

Hence, in verse 27, Jesus attentively opens the Scripture to them. And beginning at Moses and all the prophets,

He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. Beginning at Moses means the

Law, the first five books of the Old Testament that Moses wrote, right? Genesis, Deuteronomy.

The prophets are actually an expansive group. It's not just starting from Isaiah and on to Malachi.

But rather the Jews considered the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings as prophetic books because there are prophets in which

God speaks through them in these books. So, to say beginning with Moses to the prophets is ultimately the whole

Scripture of the Old Testament, right? Not only that, in Acts 2, 29 -31, even

King David is called the prophet, right? And he's the author of a great number of Psalms.

So, what Jesus is saying, the whole Old Testament ultimately points to Jesus.

And if you miss this, you can't believe it. And that's why

Jesus unpacked it for them. I don't know about you, that is some special privileged lecture that you can't get in any seminary or books that you can buy.

Now, just to be brief, there are two different types of prophecies that you will find in the

Old Testament that point to Jesus. The first one are the direct prophecies regarding Jesus the

Messiah. They are directly talking about the coming messianic king along the

David's line, right? Or Adam's offspring, Eve's offspring to crush the serpent's head, right?

That's directly talking about Jesus. And then there are typological prophecies which are patterns in the

Old Testament that occur and Jesus intensifies and fulfills it.

And I'll give you an example of one, one each. So, a well -known example of a direct prophecy comes from Isaiah 53 which

Harold read this morning. Isaiah 53 shows the suffering servant.

There is one man who is rejected by his own people. And not only that, he is suffering.

He is going through an excruciating pain. And Isaiah 53 verse 5 actually shows us the manner and the purpose of the suffering that heavily resembles the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

But he was pierced for our offenses. He was crushed for our wrongdoings.

The punishment for our well -being was laid upon him and by his wounds we are healed.

Just as the suffering servant was prophesied to be pierced and crushed for our sin, sins of his people,

Jesus was pierced on the cross and bore our punishment so that we may be healed through his suffering.

This is kind of like a prototypical substitutionary atonement. Jesus takes your place of punishment that you deserve.

He's pierced for it. The suffering servant does. And then you're healed on his behalf.

Isaiah 53 is so clear that in modern synagogues they avoid it. Modern synagogues do not read

Isaiah 53. They want to avoid Jesus. Now, just as the suffering servant, right, that's the direct prophecy.

For those of us who know of what happened to Jesus, when you read Isaiah 53, you can directly connect the dots.

And this suffering servant can't be anyone else. Some people argue that's Israel.

Because Israel is often called the servant of God. And in the context of Isaiah, Jacob is called

God's servant. But there's one problem. Israel never died for anyone's sin.

Israel never suffered for anyone's sin except its own sin. So when did this happen?

Now, an example of a typological prophecy is

Christ being the ultimate sacrifice. This is typological because it's not a literal thing in which we would say

Christ is a calf or a goat, right? When we say

Christ is the Passover lamb, it's not like he's genetically a sheep all of a sudden.

It's that he takes on the pattern that's seen in the Old Testament and he intensifies it and ultimately fulfills it.

So in the Old Testament, Israel had to sacrifice bulls, lambs, goats, and various birds to maintain their relationship with their

God, the Lord. Now, there was a sacrifice for a specific type of sin. Was it intentional?

Could it be recompensed? Could you make it up? Could you not? There are different sacrifices for those.

And there was a sacrifice to say thank you to God. There was a sacrifice to say to have peace with God, to say

I love you to God, right? So in one sense, there was a sacrifice for each one.

If you wanted to say sorry to God, thank you to God, I love you to God. There was a sacrifice for each one, different ones, different manners, different animals.

Some things were burnt up. Some weren't. Very, very intricate. Now, in Christ, all of these sacrifices find their ultimate fulfillment.

The author of Hebrews argues that the blood of calves and goats offer external cleansing.

But how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal spirit offered himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living

God? Yeah, blood of calves and goats, that provided external cleansing, external purification.

But consider Christ's sacrifice, His precious blood. That cleanses you inside and out, right?

So this is not to say that all of a sudden on the cross, Jesus was counted as a calf or a goat or a sheep.

It's that He fulfills the sacrificial system in the

Old Testament so that Christ's one sacrifice on the cross accomplishes all the sacrifices in the

Old Testament combined and much more. And in Christ, you can say, sorry, thank you,

I love you, without slaying a single animal. Because it's been done for you.

That's the typological fulfillment of Christ. And that happens with the

Passover lamb. That happens with the one and only son, Isaac. That happens with the Davidic king, right?

So on. If you would like to talk more about different typologies found in the

Bible, confirmed by the New Testament authors, right? We can't just make one up on the spot just because we want to.

We got to see, is there a line there confirming? We can talk more about it after the service.

Now, this passage is really important for us this morning.

Because, in fact, none of us have seen the risen Christ physically. However, even the resurrected

Christ, when he offers his proof of the resurrection, it's not his physical body at first.

The first evidence that he goes to, the first line of defense, is

God's very word that he has spoken through his prophets.

It's scripture. Even before Jesus reveals himself to his very disciples and the apostles,

Jesus' main argument for the resurrection is scripture. Jesus' best defense for the resurrection is that God said so.

For the Bible tells me so. And this morning, we stand in the same position.

When you're faced with the event of the resurrection of Jesus, are we willing to believe the evidence that Jesus offers?

That he viewed as sufficient? That if you had rejected what

God said, you would be foolish and slow of heart to believe? That's the question for us this morning.

God used over 40 authors in the period of 1 ,500 years to lead up to this event, pointing to Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection to redeem, finally redeem, the rebellious world that fell way in the beginning of Genesis 3.

And through various prophets, and he has detailed the manner of death, the purpose of his death, the result of his death, and the resurrection hundreds of years before Jesus entered the world as a baby.

And the themes and patterns that are established in the whole of Old Testament that culminate and find their fulfillment in Christ.

Are we willing to believe that?

It's hard enough to read a book, a modern book these days, without finding some inconsistency by the author.

It's impossible to find inconsistencies in the Bible with 40 different human authors over the span of 1 ,500 years of different cultures and different nations involved and three different languages.

And the question this morning is, since God has provided us with sufficient, more than sufficient amount of evidence for the resurrection, how many more do we need?

Are we willing to trust God's providence to believe in Christ's resurrection this morning?

Let us pray. Father, we are thankful that you are

God and you have provided us with enough evidence to believe in your

Son's resurrection. Thank you that because he is risen, that sin has no power over us.

Because he is risen, that sin has an expiration date in our lives. Because he is risen, that death is only the beginning of new life.

Father, help us to delight in Christ, especially this morning.

Give us opportunities to share the wonderful news of the risen