Sermon: Did Jesus Really Rise From the Dead?

Big day. Amen? If you would open your Bibles to Matthew 28. Matthew chapter 28. The last chapter of the gospel according to Matthew. We are actually in a study right now of the gospel according to Matthew, verse by verse.

But here is the fulfillment of the promises right before our eyes. Matthew chapter 28. I'll read the text and we're going to pray together. Here now is the word of the living and true God. Matthew 28 1.

Now after the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary came to look at the grave. And behold, a severe earthquake had occurred, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled away the stone and sat upon it.

And his appearance was what was like lightning, and his clothing as white as snow. The guards shook for fear of him and became like dead men. The angel said to the woman, Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified.

He is not here, for he is risen, just as he said.

Come,.

See the place where he was lying. Go quickly and tell his disciples that he has been, he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him. Behold, I have told you.

And they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to report it to his disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and greeted them. And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshipped him.

Then Jesus said to them, Do not be afraid. Go and take word to my brethren to leave for Galilee, and there they will see me. Now while they were on the way, some of the guard came into the city and reported to the chief priests all that had happened.

And when they had assembled with the elders and consulted together, they gave a large sum of money to the soldiers and said, You are to say his disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.

And if this should come to the governor's ears, we will win him over and keep you out of trouble. And they took the money and did as they had been instructed. And this story was widely spread among the Jews as is to this day.

But the eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated. When they saw him, they worshipped him, but some were doubtful. And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth.

Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you. And lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we worship you right now. You are our God and Savior. You are our great God and Savior. You are the one that was promised. We confess you as Lord. We confess you as our Savior.

We confess you as Messiah. And Lord, we trust in you and we believe with all of our hearts that you have been raised from the dead. Lord Jesus, you are the sum of all of our hopes, everything we have ever needed.

God, you are the fulfillment. Jesus, you are the one that we worship. We exalt you. We lift up your name. And Lord Jesus, we recognize that, Lord, this very moment before your eyes, this moment is a moment that you have carried along, that we are the fulfillment of your covenant promises, God.

That, Lord, you have been faithful to Abraham, faithful to David, faithful to all your promises. And Lord, we give you praise. Thank you, God, so much for your word. It's a gift. Thank you, Lord, that you have walked with us, carried us along, and you have, Lord, given us life, the gift of eternal life.

We praise your name. Bless this time that we spend together in your word, God. I pray that you would lift up, Lord, the name of Jesus, that it would come from our lips, that you would put your gospel on our lips.

And Lord, make our feet move fast. Give us strength, Lord, to fulfill your great commission. It's in your name we pray. Amen. So, Matthew chapter 28 is a big moment in the entire book, because the entire book begins with a promise of the work of Jesus Christ, that he is, in fact, the promised Messiah.

The genealogy fits. All of the time fits. The promise of when Jesus was coming, what he was going to do in history. Here he comes, God walking among us. As you read Matthew, you're not reading the story of just simply a prophet.

You're not simply reading the story of a good teacher or a good philosopher. Jesus is unparalleled in history, and you must grasp that. This significant day, this important day, by the way, every Sunday is supposed to be, he is risen.

Every Sunday, the first day of the week, Jesus conquered death. He fulfilled all the promises that God had made about Mashiach, the Messiah. But this unique day, we celebrate in this time when God became a man, fulfilling all the promises, walking among us, totally again unparalleled in history.

When you think about the gods of the pagan religions, they knew, as they spread these stories, oftentimes these were just that, stories, mythologies. It was more of a cultural thing. We see that in many religions today.

It's more of a cultural thing. We do this thing. We go to this place. We worship with these people before this book. They recognized, though, in many of these pagan religions, that these were just that, stories.

And it's unparalleled what you see in the Bible. Before you in Matthew is God, the only God, the eternal God, the one that is from all eternity into all eternity, that God, Psalm 90 verse 2, taking on flesh, walking among us.

It's so unique, though. Philippians chapter 2, Jesus, who is in the very form of God, does not consider equality with God a thing to be grasped or held on to, but he empties himself. He humbled himself, and he's obedient even unto death.

Jesus is God and man, fully God and fully man, walking among us, touching his people. And it was so actually confusing to many of them. They couldn't grasp the whole story. As a matter of fact, we're gonna see in a minute, even on the road to Emmaus, these disciples are confused with Jesus standing right next to them.

He had been crucified, as was promised. He was raised as he promised, as the Scriptures foretold, and yet they still couldn't see it. Because there was something, I believe personally, about Jesus that was so humble, that was so human and so broken, that you just couldn't grasp the whole story.

They knew he was God. They worshipped him as God. They heard him say in John chapter 8, unless you believe ego eimi, that I am, you will die in your sins. They heard him saying to the Jews in John chapter 8, before Abraham was ego eimi, I am.

And they picked up stones to kill him. Why? Because it was blasphemy what he was claiming. It's not that Jesus didn't tell him he was God. He told him he was God all the time. John chapter 10, I and the Father are one.

They pick up stones again to kill him. He says, many good works have I shown you from the Father. For which of these do you stone me? And they said, for that good works we stone thee not, but for blasphemy, in that you being a man, make yourself God.

There's something about Jesus, though, that was so humble and unparalleled in history. Here's God as a man walking among us, ministering to his people, serving his own people. Jesus actually washing his disciples' feet.

God, the creator of the cosmos, the one who was sustaining all things, now humble enough to bow before the feet of his own disciples and to do something in that culture that was considered so low, to wash their feet.

That's the God that you learn about in Matthew. And it was so confusing to them because it was so unparalleled. God as a man, humble, hungry, broken, probably sick with the flu. He probably had a stomach bug at some point in his life, like Pastor Luke.

I'm wondering if it was the same for Jesus, if he was like, stay back because I'm not feeling well. There's so many things about Jesus that you have to think about. When you put it together, you're like, I wonder what it was like to have God ministering to me, walking among his people, people crowding around Jesus, so fixated on being a part of his life and getting to actually touch him, that at one point, they ripped the roof off a house to lower people down just to be a part of his life, to get into his inner circle.

One woman is so sick for so many years, she had heard these stories. If I could just touch the hem of his garment, if I could just touch the edge of his garment, I know I'll be healed because the tradition was the mashiach would be so powerful that you could touch the hem of his garment and be healed.

And she just wants to have a piece of Jesus. He's so humble. He's so broken. Their ministry is at a point where they have all these followers, right? And you think it's a grand success, but they don't have any money to feed the followers.

And so as God and man, Jesus actually multiplies fish and loaves to feed the multitudes. Why? Because they don't have enough money in their ministry accounts. A lot of it was being stolen from Judas. So there's betrayal and there's brokenness and there's poverty.

A guy wants to follow Jesus in his ministry. He says, I want to follow you. And Jesus says, foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests, but the son of man has nowhere to lay his head. As I've said many times before, it's a very erudite, beautiful way of saying, I'm homeless.

Are you sure you want to follow me? This is the story unparalleled. Again, the pagan stories and myths, you have mommy gods and daddy gods and baby gods, and those gods fight those other gods. There's whole stories of gods making wars with one another, gods that are sinful and capricious, gods that fly off the handle, that can't be trusted, that are unjust.

And yet the God of the Bible, the only God who is holy, who is just, who is merciful, who is love, who is so different and so other than us, that he actually says, what will you compare me to? What will you make me like?

What will you put next to me and say that I'm like that? The answer is nothing. There's nothing we can compare you to. There's nobody we can compare you to, and it's that God that humbled himself and stepped into history to do what?

To simply be served? He said the opposite. He said the Son of Man did not come to be served. He says what? To give his life as a ransom, to give himself away to people, to pay the debt that they owed to God for their sin.

It's unparalleled. Another reason it's unparalleled is you look in history at religious leaders. You look at the famous ones. You look at Buddha. You look at Confucius. You look at Zoroaster. You look at Joseph Smith.

You look at Charles Taze Russell, Judge Rutherford, Mary Baker Eady. You go down the line at all the famous people. Muhammad. What happened? What do they all have in common? They all died, and they stayed that way.

And Jesus shows himself as distinct and glorious and mighty and unparalleled in that when he died, he conquered that death. And the glorious thing about Jesus is that this doesn't take place in some place of secret knowledge.

Take for a moment, we just did it last week, the story of Joseph Smith. His major point in his revelation is a private revelation. It's something that cannot be observed or touched or seen or tasted or smelled.

It's not something that was part of anybody else's experience. It was a private story about a private experience with private knowledge in Joseph Smith. Where are the plates? Well, they're taken up to heaven.

Who saw them? Well, really nobody, even the eyewitnesses denied seeing the golden plates. It's secret knowledge. And yet the story in the gospels is that God touched the earth. He walked among us. You can go to the places today that Jesus touched.

We were recently in Nashville for the NRB conference. We had to go there because we have a TV show as part of our ministry on their network. It was really, I don't know if I'm just a nerd or what, but nobody else was near this thing, and I was hovering the whole time.

They had the Greens who own Hobby Lobby. They have the largest private collection of biblical artifacts and manuscripts in the world, and they're actually building a Bible museum in Washington, D .C. that is spectacular.

They had a whole thing there. You could walk in. The lights were dimmed to this special place because all the artifacts, you could see the manuscripts and all the…. It was amazing. I was like drooling over this stuff.

But one thing they had at this conference was, way away from that Bible museum stuff, is they had this single stone, this single stone from a synagogue during the time of Jesus. So it was in a synagogue during the time of Jesus from that actual generation when he was ministering.

And this was from a synagogue that Jesus would have probably visited. I mean, he had to have visited this. This is part of where he went. And it's a stone from this synagogue that existed then. And I'm standing next to this thing, and I'm putting my hands on this thing, and I'm touching a stone from part of a building that Jesus was probably in and teaching in and ministering in.

And it was so spectacular. I mean, Jesus was around this rock. Now, if I was of another brand of religion, I probably would have built a shrine around it and started bowing before it. But as a Christian, I just get to enjoy it and say, you know, Jesus would have probably been standing next to this thing.

That's the faith that we have. It's not private knowledge. It's not secret knowledge. It's knowledge that is booming across the world, a testimony about a God who loves the rebels so much that he will not let them go.

He will not let them stray and run off and hate him forever. He pursues them, and he loves them. And even despite their brokenness, in the middle of his pursuit of them, he keeps being faithful, though we're unfaithful.

It's in history, and I want to show you just a testimony briefly of what that looked like in the first century for the eyewitnesses. So if you would, go to your Bibles, too. You're in Matthew now. Go to the right to 1 Corinthians chapter 15.

I want to show you the sorts of things that were being said in the first century, not long after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus. This is really big. This is important. These are the kinds of things that were happening in the first century.

The apostle Paul who wrote this to the church in Corinth was hostile to the Christian faith. You've got to grasp that for a moment. This is a guy who, technically speaking, you would say is a murderer, right?

A while back, we had a really vicious, militant, hostile atheist on our radio program. It was actually on Redemption Radio. Some of you guys might remember the episode, two episodes we did with B. Strong.

Remember that one? Yeah? Oh, someone said, yeah. Brett Strong. And Brett Strong is a really kind of militant, vile in many ways, atheist. He's hostile to the faith, and we did our very best to love that man and to share Christ with him.

But we had him on, and one of the things he said about the apostle Paul, this is like his argument against Christianity. None of them were good arguments, but here was one of them. He says, Christians essentially are crazy because they follow a man who wrote most in the New Testament who's a murderer.

I mean, he says, think about it for a second. This is a guy, Brett Strong says, who's going into houses, and he's grabbing people's wives, and he's dragging them out into the streets like a pig, like an animal.

And he says, and that's the guy. He's psychotic. He's crazy. He's evil. And that's the guy that Christians are listening to. And I want to say, first and foremost, yeah. That's nuts. A guy who's killing Christians, trying to destroy the church.

He's trying to throw Christians into jail. That's the apostle Paul. As a matter of fact, that resonates with me when you say, that's crazy. I want to say, that's the kind of God that we worship. He takes people that are vile, broken, rebels, hostile, and he switches them.

He turns them into something new. And Saul turns into Paul. His eyes are opened. He sees Jesus, and he changes. This is a guy who's trained in the highest school of Jewish thought. He's trained under Gamaliel.

It's like the Harvard or Yale education of his day. He's going after Christians. He says in Galatians, listen, he says that he was so zealous that he tried to destroy the church. That's who wrote this.

So when we talk about the resurrection of Jesus in history, we're talking about all these things that take place around this story. Like a very hostile man who is not open-minded to the story of Jesus, he's actually attacking the Christian church.

And when he's changed, he's changed violently. He's changed in a moment. He's on his high horse. He's knocked off of it. He's on his way to destroy the church, and Jesus reshapes this man's life. And he writes most in the New Testament.

That's the kind of thing God does to people. That's why people are sitting in this room right now. We're all a bunch of rebels against the king, and he grabs a hold of us, and he changes us. But Paul wrote this in the first century.

First Corinthians 15, verse 1,. Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast to the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain.

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received. Pause. Really important thing. You can't really get necessarily by jumping into the Bible and not understanding the background. But when the apostle Paul says this phrase, for I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, listen, that is a very first century way of talking about a tradition that was passed around.

It was a saying. It was like a creed. It was a creed of the early Christians not long after the resurrection. So get this. What you're about to hear from Paul was something that early Christians were saying as a creed.

And here's what he says, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. And that He appeared to, and the person there is Peter, then to the twelve.

After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom have remained until now, but some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles. And last of all, as to one untimely born, He appeared to me also, for I am the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.

It's amazing when you see people who are critics of the Bible and hostile to the Bible. If they would only read the Bible, they would recognize there are the answers in the text to what you're actually saying.

You're crazy. You're a madman. Paul's like, yeah, for real. Like I'm not even worthy to be in this position. I recognize that. He says that Jesus appeared to me, and this is the amazing thing about the testimony of Christians in history.

We are not saying that this is private knowledge. We are not saying this is mythology. We're not saying this is just a good story. We're not saying we want you to be part of our club. We really like this click.

We're saying that God is who He says He is, and we're saying that Jesus is that promised Messiah, and that He's walked among us. Watch. In the first century, the apostle Paul writes in a time where, listen, hostile witnesses could have been brought forth to rebut the apostle Paul.

What does he say in a time where hostile witnesses can come forward and say, no, I know where the body is? That's not true. I know that's not true. In the first century, it was so bold they weren't saying, well, it feels good to me.

Well, I prayed about it, and I have a burning in my bosom. They weren't saying that. What's the apostle Paul say in the first century? He says Jesus came. He appeared. He appeared to him and to him, and he says this, and at one point he appeared to 500 eyewitnesses, and he says this, if you don't believe me, go ask them.

Jesus is alive, and He appears to people who are disbelieving, not there. They're not even trusting, not even close. James, Jesus' half-brother, He does not follow Jesus in His earthly ministry. Something was wrong.

You've got to have some grace for James. If your brother's walking around town telling everybody he's God, you've got to give him some grace. Can you imagine people in your neighborhood saying, hey, isn't your brother going around saying he's, I am like Jehovah God?

But James, watch, something happened to him. When Jesus rose from the dead, that did it. His life was transformed, and James ended up writing a book of the Bible and dying for his faith in his brother as his God and as his Savior, and I love this.

That's the kind of thing I'm looking for in the life of Jesus. I want to know the people who are closest to Jesus that can say whether or not He was worthy to take away their sins, and James, Jesus' brother who grew up with Him, says He's worthy to take my sins.

He's my Savior and my God, and I'll die for Him. Think about it. James is written about in Josephus. That's not in your Bibles. Josephus records the account of James. James was martyred for his faith in his brother as Savior, as Messiah, as God.

James was thrown off the temple. He hit the ground. His legs broke, and then he was beaten to death with clubs for his testimony in his brother as God and Savior, and the apostle Paul says here, look, we saw Him.

That's why I believe in Him. According to the Scriptures, He's come and died and been raised, and I saw Him. I saw Him, and I'm changed forever because of it. You got to see one more. I want you to see it in the text.

Go to 1 Peter 1. This is Peter. Many people are, I'm sure, in the first century suspicious of Peter. He doesn't have a very good track record. He's the guy who has a problem of stick-your-foot-in-your-mouth-itis.

Some of us know about that, right? And he's the one that is recorded now in Scripture for good as the one who denied his Lord and Master when Jesus needed him the most. But in 2 Peter 1, if you go to verse 16, this is Peter in the first century after the resurrection and ascension of Jesus.

Here's what he says, "'For we did not,' verse 16, "'we did not follow cleverly devised tales when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of His majesty.'".

And the text there literally in the Greek is, we eyeballed Him. We eyeballed Him. We didn't follow cleverly devised tales. And Peter's saying, it's not a story. This is not some story. It's not mythology.

It's not a fable. It's not just something that makes you feel good. He says, look, we didn't follow cleverly devised tales. We eyeballed Him. We set our eyes actually on Him. And Peter ends up dying for his faith.

All the apostles that were ordained by Jesus to be apostles, all of them died martyrs deaths save one. John was the only one that didn't die a martyr's death, although Nero tried to kill him by boiling him in a pot of oil, church history tells us.

But Peter died for his faith in Jesus. He eyeballed Him. He knew what it meant to follow Jesus. Something happened in his life after the resurrection. Before the resurrection, Peter is a guy who's like most of us.

He's getting it wrong often. He has weak knees. He can't trust enough. He sinks when Jesus is walking on the water. He doesn't keep his eyes off the water. You know, he looks down and he sinks down into the water.

He denies Jesus. He's like most of us. He's like most of us. But something happened in his eyeballing Jesus after Jesus was alive from the dead. Jesus comes to Peter after his resurrection. Peter can't wait to see Jesus.

Dives in the water, swims to Jesus, and Jesus just reconciles him. He says, do you love me? And Peter's like, yes, I love you. He says three times, do you love me? Yes. The third time he says, do you love me?

And Peter says, Lord, you know everything. And Peter is told, feed my sheep. Something switched in his life. Something, a switch was flipped and he turned into a whole new person after the resurrection.

But you got to understand something, that phrase, according to the Scriptures, according to the Scriptures, that's the sum of it. I want you to see what that means right here in Luke 24. Move back to Luke chapter 24.

This is after the resurrection of Jesus. This is what we're going to talk about briefly today, to celebrate today. Luke chapter 24, verse 13. This is after the resurrection. Jesus is now alive and he's appearing to people.

And in verse 13, it says, and behold, two of them were going that very day to a village named Emmaus, which was about seven miles from Jerusalem. And they were talking with each other about all these things which had taken place.

While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself approached and began traveling with them. I love that. I do. I love it. Now, these guys are having a conversation far away from Jerusalem, and Jesus appears and he's just walking with them, but their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.

And he said to them, what are these words that you're exchanging with one another as you are walking? And they stood still looking sad. Death has already been defeated and these guys can't get it. One of them named Cleopas answered and said to him, are you the only one visiting Jerusalem and unaware of these things, of the things which have happened here in these days?

And he said to them, what things? And they said to him, the things about Jesus of Nazarene, who was a prophet, mighty indeed and word in the sight of God and all the people, and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to the sentence of death and crucified him.

But we were hoping that it was he who was going to redeem Israel. Indeed, besides all this, it is the third day since these things have happened, but also some women among us amazed us when they were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body.

They came saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just exactly as the women also had said, but him they did not see.

And here we go. And he said to them, oh foolish men and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken. Was it not necessary for the Christ to suffer these things and to enter into his glory?

Then beginning with Moses and with all the prophets, he explained to them the things concerning himself and all the scriptures. That is the most amazing Bible study in the history of the world. Jesus alive now from the dead, crucified and now alive, walking with people who are now completely broken.

And what do they say? All of our circumstances speak to us that God is an absolute failure now. Everything we had hoped in is shattered. We thought he was the one that was going to redeem Israel. We thought all of our hopes were summed up in him.

We thought he was the one, but he's dead. He's not alive anymore. We're lost and they're sad. And that's oftentimes what each and every one of us do in all of our circumstances in our lives. We have a financial collapse.

We don't get the job that we wanted. Something's going on in our family. We get moved somewhere we didn't want to go. Our life seems like it's in disarray, right? And all the while it's in disarray, here's Jesus walking with us, directing our paths, fulfilling everything he said he was going to do in our lives, shielding us, loving us, pursuing us, standing right next to us.

And here we sit somber, sad, sulky in the very presence of our Messiah. And Jesus now takes them through the most spectacular Bible study in the history of the world. It beats Spurgeon. It beats MacArthur.

It beats Paul Washer. Paul Washer, right? It beats James White. It beats everybody. Best sermon in history. Jesus walking them through Moses and all the prophets. Doing what? The same thing Paul said as part of his confession.

That Jesus died according to the scriptures. That he was raised according to the scriptures. And when Jesus condemns people for not believing, where does he anchor it? He says, you don't believe all that God had promised in his scriptures.

You see, that's the thing. I don't get it. I don't understand it. It's crazy. With a new heart you have to say it's confusing. I don't understand it. When Lazarus is dead for days, and Jesus says, Lazarus come forth, it actually says when he came out of that tomb, some believed, some didn't.

Are you guys nuts? He's so dead he smells, and there's people that are standing there going, I don't know. It's some kind of David Blaine stuff going on here, right? Seriously. They're like, it's some kind of magic trick, right?

It's an illusion. Where's the mirrors? It's a setup, right? It even says in Matthew 28, the very text I read at the very beginning of the sermon, it's the ascension of Jesus. I recently saw, what's that recent movie, that Christian film?

What is it? The Soldier. What is it? Risen. There you go. Even in that film, it's amazing. Even in that film, they've got the scene where the guy's there. He turns around. It's like the sun's behind him.

It's like the halo, right? It's just so over-spiritualized and exaggerate things, right? It's like the ascension of Jesus. It's all like glory and glowing, and people are like floating. It's like, that's what it always depicts it that way, right?

And the crazy thing is in the text of Matthew 28, it says that as Jesus is there, alive from the dead, he's going to ascend into heaven. People are there, and it says some doubted. That's the honesty in the text of the Bible.

The Bible isn't sitting just whitewash it all. Some people were there, and they believed, and some people doubted. They doubted Jesus as he's right in front of them, alive from the dead, ascending to be seated on his throne, and some doubted.

And doubted what? They were slow to believe all that the prophets had spoken. This is God's story in history, and ultimately, it's about his glory. You got to get this real fast. I'm going to say this as we touch a few verses just to celebrate for a second.

God understands something. I was talking to a guy this week, and I was just trying to talk to him about salvation and the glory of God. It's amazing how some people see the story of Jesus and the scriptures and salvation.

When we don't understand the scriptures right, we think it's about us. We think it's about our salvation. We think the story's about me, and think about my stuff, and what God does for me. You got to understand something.

The whole life of Jesus, everything from cradle to grave to sky, everything was so that God would get the glory. It was so that God can show that he keeps his promises. All that the prophets had spoken, that's what the story's about.

It's about the glory of Jesus Christ being made famous in all of the earth, that when salvation comes, it's not about you, it's not about me, it's about Jesus receiving glory. The whole story about Jesus is laid down long before he ever touched the earth in his earthly ministry.

The entire scriptures of the Old Testament tell a story landing on this one. It's all about him. It's all about him. When your Bible opens up, it's about Jesus. Genesis chapter 1, God creates. Jesus is there creating everything alongside the Father, the Holy Spirit, one God, eternal, three persons, this tri-unity, this God is creating, the Spirit of God is there, the Father is there, the Son is there, perfect unity, God creating all things, speaking it into existence.

He creates everything, the creeping things, the animals, the oceans, the stars, everything. He expands this universe that we cannot even begin to understand. He just, with a breath, let it be, and it is.

And then we rebel against our Creator. In Genesis chapter 3, God says, when he confronts our first parents, he says that it's the woman's seed, Genesis 3 .15, that will crush the head of the serpents, but be wounded on his heel in the process.

You might say, that's really cryptic and sort of mystical in a way. What does all that mean? Well, the woman's seed is a very unusual way of speaking about anybody's kid in that day. You would talk about somebody's seed as the father's seed, but it's the woman's seed.

The virgin birth is right there in Genesis 3. The woman's seed, singular seed, is going to crush the head of the serpent, deliver the death blow to Satan and his work, but be wounded on the heel, a temporary wound.

And then God does something. God kills the first animals. He kills the first animals, and he covers Adam and Eve's nakedness and shame in the skins of these animals, the innocent covering the guilty, first picture of Jesus in the Old Testament.

So when Jesus, I believe with all my heart, unless I'm missing something, when Jesus began with Moses, I think he began right there. I think he began right there. And the Old Testament tells you everything about Jesus the Messiah in vivid detail long before he comes.

The Old Testament's not about Moses. It's not about David. It's not about Joshua. The Old Testament's about Jesus. Moses is a picture of a lawgiver. Jesus is the perfect lawgiver. David is a king, and he's a failure.

Jesus is a perfect king. Everything you see, all your stories, it's all leading up to Jesus. It's all about him. It's all about our salvation in him. It's all about his glory. And so I've done something, and many of you guys know this.

When I ask the question, from the Old Testament scriptures, is Jesus Mashiach, is he Messiah? I say most definitely. M-O-S-T. There you go. Okay. There. Here. M-O-S-T. Most definitely. And as you're walking through the Old Testament, I think you can show that Jesus is the Messiah in a number of different ways, and I've done it through an acrostic, most definitely.

And the first one, M, is Messianic prophecies fulfilled. Messianic prophecies fulfilled. The O in the acrostic is the original life of Jesus. The S is the symbols fulfilled, and the T is the transformation of the lives of the apostles and the world, most definitely.