Resurrections Few and Far

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Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the apostle

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Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'"

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In short, if you like smooth, watered -down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you.

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By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her king.

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Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Welcome to No Compromise Radio. My name is Mike Abendroth, and today we're gonna continue our series discussing resurrections.

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Now, of course, the liberals aren't going to like this. I don't think too many liberals listen to NOCO Radio, but maybe some do.

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Jesus was resurrected in your heart. I'd like to know if I took a camera, a video camera, an iPhone for that matter, placed it on a little tripod in the tomb where Jesus was buried, what would

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I see? Would I just see kind of the body that just stays there and never gets up?

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The body that gets put in the ground eventually? Would I see just decay?

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What would I see? Well, the liberals will use verbiage that's similar to the New Testament, and they'll say, well, he was just raised in my heart.

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It's just a resurrection of my heart. Well, that seems odd.

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I don't think anybody would read the New Testament and say, oh yeah, that's what happened. Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the resurrection of Jesus.

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Well, as I was studying the resurrection of Christ, I was looking at other resurrections because we have crazy word of faith charismatics telling us that people are raised from the dead all over the world.

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But when you look at history in the Bible, you don't see that many resurrections. I believe you'll see two in the

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Old Testament, two in Acts, and you're gonna see five accounts in the

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Gospels. I don't mean, I'm counting Matthew's version and Mark's version, and that's two different ones, but historical accounts, five different times.

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There are people, our people's raised from the dead. Today we're in the third one, Lazarus.

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And so, we Christians realize that Jesus gives life to whomever he will, and he has power over death.

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And as he's on his way to the cross, he heals first the widow's son at Nain, Luke 7, then he heals

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Jairus' daughter, Luke 8. And we're starting to get the idea that in fact, yes, along with walking on water, stilling the storms, feeding people, all kinds of healings, casting out demons, this man.

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Who is this? He is the Son of God. He's the Son of Man. He's the eternal Son who cloaks Himself with humanity, and He's born in Bethlehem, and He has

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Mary for a real mother, and He has Joseph as a legal father, and He is actively obeying the

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Father, and He is by serving others and doing all kinds of other things. Well, we come to John chapter 11, and as great as the resurrection of the widow's son at Nain would be, as great as it would be if you had a 12 -year -old daughter who was sick and you had her raised from the dead like Jairus did, this is the greater resurrection.

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Now, we don't know the timing of the widow's son and Jairus' daughter, how long they had been dead, but it hadn't been really that long for Jairus' daughter, for sure, because he goes to find

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Jesus when she's still alive, and he comes back and finds out that she's dead. John shows a greater miracle describing

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Jesus with Lazarus, because this man Lazarus has been dead several days.

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We're going to find out how many days in just a moment. And this is a very climactic sign.

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This is a dramatic sign. This is, as ESV Study Bible says, the ultimate sign. Lots of miracles in the

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New Testament. We have miracles in John, for what reason? To show you that He is

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God, that He is the I Am. Water can get turned into wine, healing, multiplying loaves and fishes, walking on water, blind people see.

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But now, four days in the grave, rigor mortis, bacteria, composition.

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You can go to YouTube and find out some of these gory details of what happens to a body the second the heart stops.

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Yikes. Now, a certain man was ill, Lazarus. This is John 11, 1 of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister,

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Martha. It was Mary who anointed the Lord with ointment and wiped his feet with her hair, whose brother

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Lazarus was ill. Now what we're doing here, last week and this week, we're just going through resurrection accounts in the

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New Testament Gospels. This is the third one. I want you to see they're not very often.

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And when they're around, they're spectacular. And you ought to be glad that Jesus can raise the dead, because you're going to die one day.

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Right? Right. So the sister sent to him, saying, Lord, he whom you love is ill.

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But when Jesus heard it, he said, this illness does not lead to death, for it is the glory of God, is for the glory of God, so that the

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Son of God may be glorified through it. Now, Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus.

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So when he heard that Lazarus was ill, he rushed over. He ran. No, the text says he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

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Stayed two days longer. That's how much he loved them. Yes, he loved them so much, he wants them to see the awesome, utter, spectacular, miraculous power that he has over death.

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Then after this, he said to his disciples, let us go to Judea again. The disciples said to him,

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Rabbi, the Jews were just now seeking to stone you, and are you going there again? Jesus answered, are there not twelve hours in a day?

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If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble, because he sees the light of this world. But if anyone walks in the night, he stumbles, because the light is not in him.

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After saying these things, he said to them, our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I will go awake in him. Remember Torah, and he slept with his fathers, and he slept with his fathers.

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Kings, and he slept with his fathers. Death, he's dead.

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The disciples said to him, Lord, if he's fallen asleep, he'll recover. See, they didn't get the metaphor. Now Jesus had spoken of his death, but they thought he meant taking rest and sleep.

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Then Jesus told them plainly, Lazarus has died, and for your sake I am glad that I was not there so that you may believe, but let us go to him.

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So Thomas called the twins, said to his fellow disciples, let us also go there that we may die with him. Now when

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Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had been in the tomb four days. He's not going to be waking up.

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Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off. Many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary, switch the names there, the text does, to console them concerning their brother.

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So when Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house. Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you had been there, my brother would not have died.

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But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you. Jesus said to her, your brother will rise again.

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Martha said to him, I know that he'll rise again in the resurrection on the last day. But Jesus said to her, here's the focus.

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Yes, I cause resurrections. I do resurrections.

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I am the resurrection. I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.

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She said, Jesus said to her, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live.

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And everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. I ask you, as Jesus asked her, do you believe this?

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Do you believe unto me? Do you believe with saving faith, not just knowledge and assent, but knowledge, assent and trust? She said, yes,

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Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world. She had said this.

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She went and called her sister, Mary, saying in private, the teacher is here and is calling for you. And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him.

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Now Jesus had not yet come to the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met him.

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When the Jews who were with her in the house consoling her saw Mary rise quickly and go out, they followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to weep there.

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Now when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet saying, Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.

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Jesus saw her weeping and the Jews who had come with her also weeping. He was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled.

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The wages of sin and suffering and death. He said, where have you laid him?

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They said to him, Lord, come and see. Jesus wept. So the

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Jews said, see how he loved him? Some of them said, could not he who opened the eyes of the blind also have kept this man from dying?

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Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave and a stone lay against it.

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Jesus said, take away the stone. Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, Lord, by this time there will be an odor for he's been dead four days.

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Jesus said, did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God? So they took away the stone.

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Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you have heard me. I knew that you always hear me, but I said this on account of the people standing around that they may believe that you sent me.

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When he had said these things, he cried out with a loud voice, Lazarus, come out. The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, his face wrapped with a cloth.

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Jesus said to them, unbind him and let him go. Don't you want more than that?

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I have to give you a true confession. I want a little bit more. I want not just, well, you know, a bunch of people believed.

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I want, Lazarus, heaven for real. Tell me what you saw.

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Are you bugged to be back here? Mike Ebendroth, No Compromise Radio.

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We're going through the gospel resurrection accounts. Two reactions.

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One, few and far between, a bunch of kooky people saying they can raise people from the dead. I'll see you at Children's Hospital, liars.

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And two, I'm glad Jesus has power over death. He has power over death.

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Now we come to passage four. So we've seen so far, remember, in review, the widow's son at Nain, Jairus' daughter,

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Lazarus. We're not counting the two in the Old Testament, we're not counting the two in Acts. And now we come to Matthew 27.

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This is kind of the wildest one. This is like no -co radio on steroids, speaking of which,

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I'll take some monster drink right now. I think this is faux monster though. Some packet of stuff.

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So you don't buy a can, you buy a packet and dump it in.

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Hopefully there's not a lot of chemicals. I think this is a chemical, this one. Actually, it's in my

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Harvest House cup. Since I'm an author now, I get a Harvest House cup, you know, Kay Arthur and I are both authors.

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Actually now, I am a head of Kay Arthur and Liz George on the

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Harvest House, not numbers of volumes sold, but alphabetically, and they also have here,

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Orca coatings made in China mug. www .donotbesurprise

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.com So the thing is my friend Aaron, who sent me this one, I do not be surprised .com.

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I have it sitting here as well. There's some caffeine residue at the bottom, but I don't know.

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I think it's like made for espresso compared to Harvest House. This is like a gallon jug.

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I have a question for you. What's Zondervan sending me? I'll tell you what day one sending me. Those are the different publishers that I have.

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Day one sent me just recently a $12 royalty check for six months. So if you bought one of my older books, thank you.

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I cashed it. You bet I cashed it. And then I have to, I have to report that as income.

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So I think I owe $2 out of the 12. So it was a $10 payday for those newer books, older books, and doesn't get any better too because I have to split the royalties with the agent,

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Byron and Clint for the bump book. Passage four,

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Resurrection, Matthew 27. This is wild, really, really wild.

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Let's give you a little context here. From the sixth hour, noon, there was darkness over all the land until the ninth hour, 3 p .m.

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At the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

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So Jesus is on the cross. It's a good Friday. And at noon, it becomes dark.

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You can do your studies, if you'd like, on Passover and full moons, this can't be any kind of eclipse. So what is the sign?

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What's going on here? Well, when you study the Old Testament, it's dark, you're going to see judgment, divine judgment.

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That's a regular motif in the Old Testament, divine judgment, and that's exactly what's happening here.

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See, we can't see judgment, you know, people want to complain about the

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Mel Gibson movie about Jesus. What was that called again? Not The Last Temptation of Christ, but what was the

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Jesus movie called? I know, I'm asking you questions because I really don't know the answer. I've forgotten already. Last Temptation of Christ isn't it.

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Noah, that's not it. Son of God, Son of Man, that's not it.

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I don't know, whatever it is, Icon Productions. Now, some didn't like all the blood and it's because of the whole

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Via Dolorosa and it's got the weird Mary thing in there and, you know, the weird Satan creature face.

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Although that particular Satan didn't look like one of our presidents, like the Son of God deal.

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That's a different story. Or maybe, no, the Bible series, sorry. I stand corrected.

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What is the name of that movie? Jesus. Passion, Passion of the

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Christ. Thank you, I appreciate that. All our phone lines just went off the hook. No phone lines here.

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Donation lines. We have the donation lines.

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No, we don't. I think we actually did put a donation button someplace on NoCo. People ask and email and they don't know what to do, so I think it's probably under FAQ.

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Not sure, not sure. So anyway, there's a sign. And so with Passion of the

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Christ, you cannot show, and there's a bunch of dopey things in that show, but what you can't show is, and I don't blame

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Gibson for this, because how do you do it? You can't show propitiation.

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You can't show abstract, although real, concepts of sin bearing with a camera.

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This is an invisible deal in the sense that the father turning his back on the son as the son bears the sins of the elect.

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How do you show that? You can't. But it's interesting, we get a little hermeneutical helper.

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I had a lot of that when I was a kid growing up. Hermeneutical helpers and the hermeneutical helper of understanding, well, if 30 ,000 other

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Jews were crucified, what makes this Jew's crucifixion so special, so wonderful, so unique?

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And so it gets dark at noon, from noon to three, divine judgment.

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It's three in the afternoon. And Jesus says at three, God, why have you forsaken me?

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Darkness, curse, Josephus actually says that the

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Passover lambs were beginning to be slain at three o 'clock in the afternoon.

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Some of the bystanders hearing it, that is Matthew chapter 27, verse 47, this man's calling

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Elijah. Remember, Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani. And one of them at once ran and took a sponge, filled it with sour wine and put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink.

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But the other said, wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to save him. Jesus cried out again with a loud voice and yielded up his spirit.

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Can you imagine? This is the Jesus we're not going to have to be concerned about anymore.

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Pharisees, scribes, hypocrites, Sadducees, lawyers, they're all happy. It's finished.

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And it says that he yielded up his spirit. Who does that? Can you yield up your own spirit?

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You have the authority to die when you want to die. It means to dismiss or to release.

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S. Lewis Johnson said, no evangelist, this is most striking,

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Johnson said, no evangelist, no one of the gospel writers says that Jesus died.

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Why? Because that, as Lewis says, might be showing that Jesus was a prisoner of circumstances.

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He had to do something he didn't want to do. No, he's the conqueror of death and he releases his spirit.

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Authoritative control, ESV study Bible says. The exact time they're starting to kill all the lambs in the temple courts.

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And behold, we get another hermeneutical helper, curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom.

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This is a thick divider, curtain, you can't go into the holy place and if you do, you're dead.

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Once a year, high priest gets to go. Now everybody gets to go, it's ripped open from the top down.

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God's the one who ripped it in two. Get another hermeneutical helper and the earth shook and the rocks were split.

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Lots of times earthquakes, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a signal.

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Here's the signal, God's around. Now there's earthquakes there. There's earthquakes here.

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That's not always, it means, oh, God was here, but the timing shows and helps us realize this is true.

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This is, this is a God ordained event. At that very moment, the earth shook, the rocks were split.

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What happens when the rocks are split at the death of Jesus? Here is another hermeneutical helper.

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And here's our third account of resurrections in the gospels. The widow, excuse me, fourth account, the widow at Nain, Jairus' daughter,

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Lazarus. And now there's a bunch, the reverberations, the repercussions of the death of Christ.

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Verse 52, are you sure this is in the Bible? Yes, I'm sure. The tombs were opened and many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep, they're believers, not

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Christians yet, because it's before the resurrection, but redeemed, regenerated. They were raised, coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they went into the holy city,

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Jerusalem, and appeared to many. Okay, now wait. You mean to tell me that Jesus dies, temple's curtain is ripped, there's an earthquake, earthquake so big that the tombs, you know, the stones that are rolled in front of the rocks, right there, it'd be like a cave and you'd have a little round stone that would roll in front of the tomb, cave.

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You need to go to Israel with us and you can find out what I mean without me trying to explain it here on my fourth show today at Tired on Friday, Good Friday.

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What do you do if you're a liberal on Good Friday and Easter? I guess you redefine the terms. Now, the power, the significance of the death of Christ is so amazing that people are resurrected.

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I don't think these are old saints like Moses. They wouldn't recognize who Moses was, but if you had a dead relative that died two days earlier and then you buried him and he got up, talk to you,

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Jesus is alive. He, his body may be in the grave, but he's alive.

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You'd be impressed, except notice what the text says, coming out of the tombs after his resurrection, they stayed in the tombs.

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Well, after all, coming up on Sabbath and now they're staying in the tombs during Sabbath day.

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Well, yeah, I don't think it has anything to do with Sabbath, but they're there. I don't know, I guess maybe talking to each other, would you like to know what they're talking about?

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What's heaven's like? Well, they don't really want to be back on earth, but to serve the father, they'll be glad to do it.

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But after his resurrection, they went into the holy city. So they stayed in the tombs, in the graves, in the grave area rather, then they walk in.

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It's amazing. Stay in the cemetery, stay around the tombs, and now go in after the resurrection.

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Jesus is alive. And we'll give you a little hint. We know he's alive. We're alive.

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You just buried us. You just buried us. One man said,

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Leon Morris, it is the death of Jesus, which triggers the resurrection of the saints. That is amazing.

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The widow's son at Nain, Jairus' daughter, Lazarus, and then a bunch of people that died around the time that Jesus was crucified.

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Weeks before, months before, something like that, maybe a year before. And they're alive, they hang out in the cemetery, and then they go into the city after the resurrection of Jesus.

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I believe it. It's fascinating to me. It's wonderful. It's almost beyond belief, but I believe it.

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You believe it? Well, I believe without much of a stretch of imagination. You might want to deny it, but you're going to die one day, and then what?

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So let's just talk plainly. You'll stand before God, and then there's a judgment. It's appointed for man once to die, and then judgment.

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You will die once, physically, and then there's going to be a judgment, and then what? And your only hope of heaven is believing in these accounts which yield to us who

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Jesus is. He raised people from the dead, and he's going to raise himself from the dead.

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That's our next show. He's going to raise himself from the dead. Of course, the

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Father raised him to vindicate his work. Of course, the Spirit raised him, triune God, but Jesus raises himself from the dead.

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You're going to live forever. You need a Savior and Lord, and his name is Jesus Christ.

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No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Abendroth is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston.

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Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible -teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life -transforming power of God's Word through verse -by -verse exposition of the sacred text.

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Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at 6. We're right on Route 110 in West Boylston.

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You can check us out online at bbcchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.

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The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.