Was Jesus Truly Raised From the Dead?

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Oh, so much to say. So I'm going to read from the bulletin, the notes,

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I think it's important to emphasize. I wrote, today we celebrate the event that marked the calendar of the world in a way that will never be forgotten, the resurrection of the

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Son of God. Religious leaders have come and gone, the impressive and qualified teachers throughout all the ages have entered history, wowed their audiences, and then disappeared into the mists of time only to be thought of perhaps in rare and limited moments.

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History is large, its scope incomprehensible. To be remembered at all is quite a feat.

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Jesus disabled history's forgetfulness. How did one man with no army, no internet, no

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Twitter, no Facebook, no personal publishing company, no printing press, and virtually no money intrude upon the memory of humanity in such an irresistible and unshakable way?

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It's because he did the one thing that nobody has ever been able to do and in themselves never will. Jesus conquered death, death our great enemy.

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It signaled the new creation. It alerted the enemy of our souls to the assurance of his demise.

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That's why we're here today. That's what we talk about today when we talk about the resurrection of the

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Son of God. You see, this isn't a question according to the scriptures that we can lay aside as something that I don't need to make a decision on.

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I have good news for you and bad news. The fact that you're in this room today, the

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Bible says that God does whatever he pleases. He does according to his will in the host of heaven and among the inhabitants of the earth.

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Nobody can stay his hand and say, what have you done? The Bible teaches that God is the ultimate, that he is fully sovereign.

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He's a God of love, a God of grace and compassion and understanding, that his ways are all higher than our ways, that we can't even begin to comprehend with our three -pound brains as little ants in this universe.

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We can't begin to comprehend this God. The Bible says that he is so sovereign that you and I think that we are planning our way, that we decided maybe today to come to church.

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Why? Because it's Resurrection Sunday. It's Easter. I have to come to church. We all dressed a little nice today. What did you guys think, right?

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This is me dressing up, right? God's even sovereign over this, guys. We think we're planning our way.

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I'll come to church today. This is the good and the bad news either way. It wasn't you who made the ultimate decision that you'd be sitting in this seat today.

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Now, this isn't a game a preacher is playing with you. This is the truth of Scripture. You can accept it or not.

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We have the objective revelation of God that says that God does whatever he pleases, that he directs your paths.

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And so this moment is either a moment of grace and love from God upon unworthy and unsuspecting people, or it's a moment, another moment of testimony to the fact that we are so rebellious in ourselves and so don't want

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God that even when he draws us into a place where his love and mercy is proclaimed, we turn away from him and we reject his message.

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You see, that's where we're at when you think about the resurrection of the Son of God. Jesus won't let us.

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He just will not let us relegate him to the place of good teacher, moral man, or just one of the prophets.

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Jesus says some hard things, John chapter 80, he says, unless you believe, ego eimi. He quotes the

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Old Testament, the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures. It's the part you already all know.

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I mean, there's been movies made about it, cartoons even, the Prince of Egypt, like we know these, the story of the burning bush and when he says, who shall

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I say sent me and then God gives Moses his name, he says, ahia, I am, that I am,

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I am is God's name. They knew God, I am, God was, God is, God will always be,

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God is, I am. He's not like the false gods of men, men who become gods or created gods.

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He's not like the world's pagan deities. He's the I am, the eternal one, the one that is from everlasting into everlasting.

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He's the sovereign one. And Jesus says with his claims, unless you believe, ego eimi,

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I am, you will die in your sins. And the Jews knew well what he was saying in John chapter 8 because he says, before Abraham was, ego eimi,

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I am, and they picked up stones to kill him. They knew what he was saying, they're Jewish, they know God's name and they picked up stones to kill him.

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Jesus says later, I and the Father are one, they pick up stones to kill him again in John 10.

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And he says to them, many good works have I shown you from the Father, for which of these do you stone me? And they said, for your good works we don't stone you, but for blasphemy, that you being a man make yourself

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God, they knew what he was saying. And you have to think about Jesus' perspective, he says to people, the greatest commandment is shema

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Yisrael, Yahweh Eloheinu Yahweh Echad, hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the

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Lord is one, Jesus affirms the testimony of the Bible, there is only one eternal

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God. And yet of course, Jesus calls himself

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God, Jesus takes the prerogatives of God, Jesus receives worship, and Jesus takes the identity, the titles, the worship, the prerogative of God, and he tells people that if you have him, you have life, if you don't have him, you don't have life, but the wrath of God abides in you.

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You see, Jesus comes and he says that he answers our greatest problem. What are our greatest problems?

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The Bible says our greatest problems are sin and death. It's been our story from the very beginning.

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This seems like such a simple message, right? I mean, you come to church on Easter and you hear the story of Jesus, and for some of us, we're jaded to it.

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I have to confess that. It's something you have to war against as a creature, right? Becoming jaded to transcendent and majestic and beautiful truths, just becoming jaded to it.

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Like, yeah, I'm saved, I'm forgiven, God's washed away all my sins. Like it's nothing, like it's just no big deal that the creator of the entire cosmos who is holy and just in all of his ways, who will always do right, who is the sovereign, the one that I have offended at almost every moment of my life, that he condescended, took on flesh in the person of Christ and chased down this rebel, and he took upon himself the punishment that was due to me, that he took the wrath of God in my place, and that he died and gave his life up, and then he conquered that death, raised from the dead, and then he gives me the gift of eternal life at no cost, living water that he just pours into my mouth, hands that are emptying with nothing to bring, with nothing but shame and brokenness and unrighteousness.

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This God comes in to my life and he forgives me of all my sins.

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I confess we get jaded to those things. We hear about sin and death and the cross, and if you've been under the hearing of the gospel, raised in church, or been in church for a while, you get jaded to those truths.

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But Jesus says, this is your fundamental enemy, sin and death. Sin separates us from God and death is the consequence.

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For all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, the wages of sin is death.

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Of course, we know from Scripture there are two ways to look at that. One, the wages of sin, the consequence, what

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I earned from my rebellion against my Creator who created me for delight and fellowship and worship in him, to enjoy him forever, the wage that I earn is death, that spiritual death first and foremost.

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I'm dead. We're dead. We're spiritually alienated from God, but not merely sick, not just distant, not just not doing well with God.

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Like we don't have a tift going with God. No, we have a war with God.

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The Bible says that we are hostile, dead in our sins and trespasses, helpless, sinners, ungodly, wicked.

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These are the words that the Bible uses to describe you and I. The relationship is not good and that death that we have is spiritual death, and of course we know the consequence of a world at war with God is also physical death.

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So what are our great enemies? We know. Think about what you've seen in the news just in the last month.

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It's almost like I thought, well, I'll probably give some examples today because that would probably be helpful if I gave some solid examples, but I don't have to give examples.

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You know. You know how awful this world is and how broken it is. You know that when you turn the news on or you're scrolling through your feed in the morning and you wake up to that awful news story and you hear about that couple that hurt their child or you hear about the school shooting or you hear about the politician who was found doing something immoral and stealing money or when you hear about a bad father or a bad mother or you hear about a rape or a molestation or you hear about all the things that you hear about in this world, you know that our world is broken.

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You know the reaction of every human being. It's amazing. We were at the temple. Oh, was it this week?

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It was the week before last and I ran into a guy who was a

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Latter -day Saint for his whole life and he started investigating things and he realized that it was not true that Joseph was lying, that the church was false, that it preached a false message.

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Now, unfortunately, what happened with him has happened to so many people today. It's so heartbreaking is they realize that and then they just sort of abandon all truth.

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Maybe there is no truth. Maybe there is. Maybe God didn't speak. Maybe He hasn't spoken. How do

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I know I can trust Jesus if I can't trust this man? And this man went off into agnosticism, atheism, and I began to talk to him and kind of challenge where he's at.

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He's not in Christ. Now, he will not come to Christ and began to challenge him. It was amazing because he's saying there's no

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God and we evolved from the goo and, you know, we're just ultimately in a purposeless universe.

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But what was amazing is that even this man who says that, okay, all this was false, false religion and I agree with it, yes, it was, and so I'm going to abandon all of that.

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Maybe there's no such thing as ultimate truth. That's what he said. And maybe there really isn't any reason to believe that we can do science in this world because, yeah, we don't know.

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It's all time and chance acting on matter. And yet there are no objectives in this world. There's no right and wrong.

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There's no evil. And as we began to talk, he started telling me about all the things that were wrong with me and with the world and all the evil in the world.

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And I said, oh, wait, so there is evil in the world. And he says, but yes, but no, but yes, but no, because you see, that's the crazy thing that happens to us as image bearers of God.

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We don't want God, but we can't help seeing the world the way that God does. We all feel the same way, the same hurt and pain and brokenness when we see sin and crime all around us.

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We know what sin is and we know what death is. I see a lot of adults in this room today, and so I know that in a room this size, you're well aware of and acquainted with our great enemy, which is death.

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It's coming for us all. It's on its way to all of us. It might be sooner than later.

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We like to pretend that it's not. We like to hide death from ourselves, and this particular generation, we hide death really well from ourselves.

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It's amazing, actually, if you go to some of these old Christian nations in the

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West, for example, Ireland, you really can't drive around Ireland without seeing cemeteries everywhere.

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And some people that are, say, American tourists over in Ireland, people are visiting, they may not like that or be comfortable, like, that's kind of eerie.

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Like, there's graveyards everywhere. And one thing that's really interesting, too, and this happens a lot, too, in the

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South in the United States, is the graveyards are at the churches.

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You know what I'm saying? You ever seen that? You ever go to the, you go to, like, Kentucky and you see, like, the churches and they just got graves from, like, the last, you know, four generations.

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It's like, you know, let's go to church and hang out with all the dead people. It's like... So, I think, you know, we don't like that as Americans, so we want to sanitize it.

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So, I think in our culture, we're like, I don't want to go to church and think about a bunch of dead bodies hanging out around me.

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And so, what do we do? We sanitize it. We put the cemeteries in a nice, cozy place that none of us have to look at, right?

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Let's keep them away from us so we don't have to watch it, see it, see the procession.

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We don't want to have that in our view. We want to distract ourselves as much from death as we possibly can.

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But death, it comes for all of us, individually and in our lives with our loved ones.

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And Jesus answers the ultimate problem that we have, sin and death.

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And what Paul is describing here in 1 Corinthians 15 is that Jesus, we saw

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Him. We were eyewitnesses to Jesus, to His resurrection. And it's powerful because he summarizes in a time where hostile witnesses could have been brought forth to challenge

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His testimony, He summarizes the substance of the message of the gospel,

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Jesus' whole reason for coming to seek and save that which was lost, to deal with our problem of sin and alienation from God, rebellion.

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And it's amazing because in 1 Corinthians 15, notice what He says to people who are denying that a resurrection could even happen.

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He's saying to them, if Christ isn't raised from the dead, then you're still in your sins.

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If there's no resurrection from the dead, if Jesus didn't rise physically from the dead, if that body that was mutilated and pierced through and hung on that tree and then buried in a grave, if He didn't rise physically, really, actually from the dead,

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He says then we are most to be pitied. He says, and we are found to be liars because we're claiming that God raised

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Jesus from the dead when in fact He didn't and we're still in our sins. But I want to point out to you what

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He says here. He says, I delivered to you, verse 3, as of first importance what

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I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures.

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Note that wording, in accordance with the Scriptures. This is not a novelty.

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This isn't something coming into history and surprising us with something that we never thought was going to happen.

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He says, in accordance with the Scriptures, this was God's plan, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day in accordance with the

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Scriptures. Again, no novelty here. No shocking private revelation.

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By the way, just a side note, I don't want to go on a tangent, but it's an interesting side note to make, that all the religious cults and man -made religions in the world that come about, always come about on the same basis, private, secret revelation, right?

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A guy goes off into the woods and someone appears to him, but it's this private revelation, not witnessed by everybody, private revelation.

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It's secret knowledge that I have that I'm in control of. I'm the authority. That happens time and time again, but what

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Paul says here is that the message of Jesus is something that was broadcast throughout the world.

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It's something that everybody can reach for and grab hold of. It was something that touched the dirt in the world and the air that we breathe.

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It was something that touched people who were failures spiritually, not wise and not strong.

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It's one thing the Bible does that other man -made religious texts don't do. It tells the truth about your heroes.

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All of our heroes in the Bible, all screw -ups, completely. They are boneheads, liars, thieves, murderers, adulterers.

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Who are they? Heroes, right? That's what the Bible does. It tells the truth. Think about it for a second.

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He's telling this in a time, again, when hostile witnesses could have been brought forth to challenge the message of the early apostles.

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Look at the first person that he mentions. He was raised from the dead in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, or Kephas, Peter.

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What's Peter famous for? Denying Jesus three times when

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Jesus needed him most. He appeared to Cephas, like it's under his breath, and he appeared to Cephas, right?

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To Cephas. Then to the twelve. Who were they? Just the ones that ran away from him, like they were terrified, like they didn't know him.

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Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.

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You know what that's saying? Here's the apostle Paul, a persecutor of the church, who hates Christians, who sees

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Jesus alive from the dead. He turns his whole life over to Jesus. This is him in the first century calling the world to the mat, ultimately.

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He says this. Jesus appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve, and then he appeared to more than 500 eyewitnesses at one time.

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He says, most of whom are still alive. What's he saying? You don't believe me? Go ask them.

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You don't believe Cephas, the twelve? You don't believe me? Go ask the people who saw him alive at one time.

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Then he appeared to James. Why mention James? Well, I think a lot of reasons, but James is interesting because James was

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Jesus' half -brother. And you know about the account in Jesus' life where Jesus is ministering, right?

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And they're like, Jesus, your mother and your brother and your brothers and sisters are outside. And Jesus says, who are my mother and brothers and sisters?

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Those who do the will of God. But at one point, his family is kind of weirded out for some reason by all of the chaos that was surrounding

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Jesus. And they're kind of like asking Jesus, like, come home, Jesus. This is getting kind of crazy, right?

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That's just, I mean, you've got to give James some grace. As I've often said, James has a brother who's going around telling everybody he's

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God. And they're like, hey, James, isn't that your brother?

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Telling everyone he's the savior of the whole world and he's God in the flesh? You know, so James, you know, obviously had a hard time in this.

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But not after the resurrection, James gave up his life, was thrown off the peak of the temple and beat with clubs for his faith in his brother as God and savior.

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But he says he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared to me.

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This is the apostle Paul reaching into actual history saying, Jesus is alive from the dead.

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And if he's not alive, this is a sham, it's false, it's a lie, don't believe it.

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Here's what you need to understand about the message of Jesus. Jesus claimed to be

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God in the flesh, the savior of the world, coming to seek and save that which was lost. The physician who wasn't coming for people who were well, but for people who were sick.

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And the message of the Bible is that truth matters. Jesus says that he is the way, he's the truth.

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And the Bible says in its own terms, if it's not true, reject him.

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If Jesus isn't alive from the dead, then we are most to be pitied, we are liars, it's a fraud.

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This is coming from the mouths of those who first sent this message off into the world.

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They're saying if he's not really alive from the dead, if he didn't come out of that grave, in glorious splendor, if I didn't touch him, then don't believe me,

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I'm a liar. But that wasn't their testimony, they said, no, he's alive from the dead, you don't believe me, go ask him, go ask her, go ask the 500, go ask this guy over here.

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He touched him. Remember him, he walked on the road with him, he ate fish with him, he got to hug him.

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They would just point to the eyewitnesses in that day. That's the message of the New Testament, and Jesus, of course, gives us this glimpse of God's heart towards death and sin, our great enemy.

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I want you to go to that text here, John chapter 11, I want you to see, if you haven't seen it before,

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I think it's spectacular, but I want you to see how Jesus confronts death. Remember that the

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Bible teaches there's only one God, and yet it calls the Father God, it calls the Son God, it calls the

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Holy Spirit God, and yet it never confuses the persons, it never says that Jesus is the Father, or that the

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Father is the Holy Spirit, it teaches that there are three distinct persons, co -equal, co -eternal, one

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God by nature, the three persons sharing the one nature of God, and yet this moment here is

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Jesus, who is God, eternally God, who always existed with the Father, He's walking among us,

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John 11. And what's amazing is that, and this is, I just so wish

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I could have witnessed this. I mean, we'll get to taste it, yes, as Christians, we'll get to taste and see, obviously, for all eternity with God, but I just can't even imagine what this would have been like, because we have the benefit of hindsight, and 2 ,000 years of the church and exploring the

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Scriptures and knowing about Jesus, these guys are just walking with Jesus for three and a half years. Three and a half years, right?

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I mean, like out of nowhere, Jesus appears, and He calls them, sovereignly calls them, Peter, come here, James, John, Thomas, come here, like, and they're following Jesus, and they just get to see it all taking place, like, oh my goodness, they were blind, and now they see, right?

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And oh my goodness, this girl, she was dead, really dead, for days, and Jesus raised her from the dead.

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He said, you guys aren't gonna believe what we just saw, this little girl, she was dead, and Jesus just said, little girl, arise, and she, in front of her parents, she came to life, and then, well, then what happened, what happened?

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Jesus said, give her something to eat, like, she was hungry, like, just weird things like that, all this, they get to taste and see this, but now you have this moment where all this glorious stuff is happening, where God is walking among us as a man, a real man, not half

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God, half man, not some sort of glowing man, a real man with pimples and stomach aches, and maybe who caught the flu, and who could bleed, and who got hungry, like a real man, and then, now they have this moment where Lazarus dies, somebody that Jesus loved, like, in this fallen world, like, it's almost like they're probably, like, just sort of, like, walking on clouds at times, like,

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I'm hanging out with the guy who's gonna, literally, save the world, Jew and Gentile, all the tribes, people's tongues, nations, languages, they're coming, and it's through this guy, and he's got, like, this almost magical powers, right?

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He's raising people, all this stuff, and then, like, all of a sudden, reality sets in, we're still in a fallen world, there's still sickness, sin, disease, and death, it's still all around us, because Lazarus is dead.

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I want you to see it, John chapter 11, how does Jesus respond to sin and death? Verse 17,

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Lazarus is dead, now, Jesus purposefully waits to go to Lazarus, on purpose, he waits until he's really, really dead.

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Now, you should know this, too, it's not in the text, but knowing what they believed in this day, there were superstitions in this day that believed that your spirit sort of hung around for, like, a couple days.

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So, like, when somebody died, like, their spirit was sort of hanging out, and maybe, maybe that spirit could come back, or you can communicate with it, but the spirit sort of hung around for a couple of days, and Jesus purposefully waits until the day where they believed that it was too late, now the spirit's just gone.

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So, verse 17, now, when Jesus came, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.

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Bethany was near Jerusalem, about two miles off, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them concerning their brother.

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It's real, this is, like, this is, this is the stuff of life, right? This is people grieving at a funeral, and so when

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Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, but Mary remained seated in the house.

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Martha said to Jesus, Lord, if you'd been here, my brother would not have died.

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Now, stop, you gotta stop for a second. It's so easy for us to get all mellow -headed when we read the

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Bible, and forget the fact that these are real people with dirt and tears on their face. Now, here's a woman who's hurting.

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You know, the absolute stunning power and defeat of death.

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It's just such a sick feeling. It's such a helpless, hopeless feeling for unbelievers.

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For believers, there's hope, but you know that shock. It hurts so bad, and so she says, you gotta hear the words of a grieving person at a funeral.

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If he had been here, my brother would not have died, but even now, I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.

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Jesus said to her, your brother will rise again. Now, Martha's knows her theology now, so she knows about what the

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Bible says about the end of history, and the final resurrection, and so Martha said to him, I know that he'll rise again in the resurrection on the last day.

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I know there's gonna be a last day. I know there's gonna be a final judgment. I know my brother's gonna rise again on the last day.

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That's what she's saying. Jesus said to her, breaks right through it all. He says, I am the resurrection and the life.

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Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.

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Do you believe this? She said to him, yes Lord, I believe that you are the

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Christ, the Son of God, who is coming into the world. Now stop for a second. That's so unreal.

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The claims of Jesus, you can't put these in the mouth of somebody who's just a mere man.

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It's such unbelievable arrogance, haughtiness, craziness.

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Jesus says this, whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live. So Jesus is saying, everyone who trusts in me, everybody who trusts in me, if he dies, he's gonna live.

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I have an answer to that ultimate problem, and then this beautiful one right here, and everyone who lives and believes in me, you'll never die.

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Christians, you're never gonna die. You shed this for a moment, you close your eyes, and that's why

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I have to say this. When I said hopeless, that's how the Bible describes unbelievers, without God and without hope in this world.

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Do you notice the difference between a Christian funeral and an unbeliever's funeral? It's stark.

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It is stark. And I had never honestly wanted to be asked to do the funeral for someone who wasn't a believer.

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And years ago, I was asked to do the funeral for someone that I had just seen. He was a patient at the hospital

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I was working at. He was not a believer. I sat with this young man. I gave him the gospel. I told him, you need to turn to Christ.

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He can free you and give you eternal life. You need to turn from your life of sin and brokenness and shame.

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What is this addiction doing for you? And we had conversations. He was a sweet boy, and apparently he really liked me, but he never turned to Christ.

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His mom called me after I had just seen him, and she said they found his dead body in the garage. He got out of the hospital, and he shot up some heroin.

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He had a hot dose, and so he died. And she said, would you please do his funeral? I wanted to say no.

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I wanted to say no. I'm just a man. I'm not perfect. I'm not super strong with things like that.

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You guys, many of you know me. I can get quite emotional, and I didn't know if it'd be good for them if I did the funeral.

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It'd be kind of bad for them. I might not be able to... I might not be able to handle it.

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But she said, he spoke so highly of you, Pastor Jeff. He just really loved you, and I would just be so grateful if you did the funeral.

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I said, oh, I'll do it. I'll do the funeral. Yes. And so I go to this funeral, and it's packed out.

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I mean, I'm telling you, this place was shoulder... He was a popular kid. 19 years old, 20 years old,

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I guess. And it's shoulder -to -shoulder in this room. I mean, it's like stuffy in there. There are so many people, and I can barely get through to the front to actually talk to everybody.

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And all I remember is, I walked in this place, and I'm telling you, it was just this thick feeling hopelessness.

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I mean, you could hold it. It was so thick. This place full of people who didn't know

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God. Some believers were there, but you saw people, their faces just dull, absolutely dull, with hopelessness, fear, worry, anxiousness, tears, wailing.

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And I remember that I go up to the front, and his body, I mean,

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I can almost touch his body from where I was standing. And I look up at everybody in this, at this funeral, and just,

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I could not, I could not, I can't even describe to you the looks in their eyes of absolute, utter despair and hopelessness.

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They had nothing. And I remember that I was asking God for days before this funeral, what am

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I gonna say, God? What am I gonna do? I can't lie about this young man and give stories about precious moments, dolls, and fat babies on harps on clouds, and you know, and all's well and good.

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I can't lie. I don't know the condition of his soul. I don't know what happened to this young man before he died. I know nothing.

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And all I do know is that he did not turn to Christ when I saw him, and so all

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I have now is a room full of people without hope, and I just gave him the gospel. I told him what

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Christ does for sinners, and how he gives life. And I remember that I walked away from that experience, and I thought to myself, thank you,

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God. Thank you, God. Because now I have experienced death for those who don't know

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Jesus. And I'll tell you what, I've been to the funerals of believers who have died, and yeah, it hurts.

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Of course it hurts. But man, is it full of hope. Is it full of just joy and gladness, knowing this, whoever lives and believes in me shall not die.

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So Jesus says, do you believe this? She said to him, yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God, who's coming to the world.

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Here's how God handles death in a fallen world. When she said this, he went and called her sister

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Mary in private. She called her sister Mary, saying in private, the teacher is here and is calling for you.

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And when she heard it, she rose quickly and went to him. Now Jesus had not yet come into the village, but was still in the place where Martha had met with 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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A lot of pain in this moment. Now, when Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet, saying to him,

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Lord, if you'd been here, my brother would not have died. Isn't it amazing that they know who

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Jesus is to such a degree that they actually are saying to him, it's up to you. You're the one who's in charge of this.

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Wow, that's profound. Nobody has ever said that to me in a hospital room, ever, as a pastor.

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Right? Show up to the hospital room and someone says, Pastor Jeff, if you'd gotten here earlier, he wouldn't be so sick.

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She wouldn't be so sick. No one's ever said that to me, because everybody knows the difference between all of us and Jesus, and they knew it then well.

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If you'd been here, Jesus, he wouldn't have died. You've got all the power to change all this.

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When 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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And he said, Where have you laid him? They said to him, Lord, come and see.

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And here's that moment. Don't miss it. Jesus wept.

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So how intimately connected is Jesus to our story, to our sin, and our brokenness, and our shame?

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Because watch, you hear a preacher saying, here's our problem, sin, and God is holy, and our shame, and our guilt, and we're helpless, and we're ungodly.

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And you might think for a moment, oh that's an encouraging message. Thanks for that. Appreciate that, right? Like you almost think it's like just this hyper -judgmental sort of like debasing thing, but here's the truth.

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Jesus said all that, and how does he still feel about broken, sinful, hostile rebels?

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It says that when he enters their experience, he is greatly troubled. He's moved in his spirit, and he begins to weep.

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Now here's what's crazy. Watch. He wept here. Not just cried.

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He wept. There is sort of a wailing, and a howling, and a brokenness here.

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Jesus is doing that kind of cry where you have to catch your breath. That's how much God is deeply moved over our brokenness.

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When he sees us hurting, and the brokenness, and the sin, and the death, and the consequences. He knew he was going to raise

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Lazarus from the dead. He knew it, and he's still hurting. Why?

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Because he so loves us with such an everlasting, deep, full love that even when he knows that he's going to accomplish this amazing thing, he weeps for us.

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And then this is where it just gets amazing. So the Jews said, see how he loved him.

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But some of them said, could not he who opened the eyes of the blind man also kept this man from dying?

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There's the skeptics, the scoffers, the ones that, oh yeah, he should have been able to fix that. Right, Jesus? Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb.

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It was a cave, and a stone lay against it. Jesus said, take away the stone. This is the, this, watch.

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I keep doing this, like, to try to remind us. This is like, this is real world stuff.

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This isn't just this spiritual gobbledygook. This is like dirt, and tears, and stink, and hurt, and wailing.

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This is funeral. This is the stuff of life. Because this is what the text says. Jesus says, take away the stone.

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And Martha, the sister of the dead man, said to him, Lord, by this time there'll be an odor for he's been dead four days.

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That's the, this is the, this is real. This is sweat, and blood, and stink, and death.

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And Jesus said to her, did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?

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So they took away the stone, and Jesus lifted up his eyes and said, Father, I thank you that you've heard me.

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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, listen,

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Lazarus, come out. The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth.

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Jesus said to them, unbind him and let him go. Now watch, this is crazy. So it's

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John 11, right? But then John also tells you in his same eyewitness account about Jesus' resurrection.

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Do you notice that there's emphasis in John's gospel to the fact that the linens that Jesus was wrapped in were lying there neatly on, in the tomb?

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I think it's a powerful contrast that John is giving on purpose. When Jesus says,

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Lazarus, come forth. Lazarus can only obey. He's dead, right?

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Like you can, you can go into a morgue, and you can yell all day, get up, get up.

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You can start shouting, like calling my name. You can plead and cry and scream, and you can beg, and nothing.

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But watch, when the dead hear the voice of the Son of God, he's the one that called the cosmos into action.

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He's the one at the beginning that said, let there be light, and there was light. He's the one that said, let there be, and then there was.

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He's the one that formed people out of the dust of the ground, and then this guy who dies, all he can do is obey the voice of God.

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He says, Lazarus, come forth, and he comes hopping out of that tomb, still wrapped in his grave clothes, and then the church has to come around to help and unwrap him.

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But in Jesus' resurrection, he rose. He says to the Jews, destroy this temple, and in three days

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I will raise it up. He rose again from the dead through his power.

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The Father raised him from the dead through the Spirit's power, and then it says in John's account that in the tomb, he emphasizes it, there laid the linens.

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Nothing could hold Jesus back. Nothing could bind him. Nothing could stop him.

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He rose in glorious resurrection power. There's a difference, listen, there's a difference between Lazarus' resurrection here and Jesus' resurrection then.

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Lazarus rose here as a gift, but he died again. Sorry, that's kind of crazy, right?

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Like, I gotta do it twice? Right? Like, it's great I was raised from the dead, but man, like twice?

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Died four days, raised, then dead, and then someday again. But the difference between Lazarus' resurrection and Jesus, not only in who it was and where the power came from, how it all took place, but that Jesus' resurrection was a glorified, resurrected body similar to ours.

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And I want to just point you to this powerful thing about what

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Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15. Notice he points to the eyewitnesses, and you notice that all the early accounts of the resurrection, do you notice that they all match

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God's standards of how we are to take in a claim? Quickly, real fast, we're going to end on this.

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According to God's law, and we should get back to it, how many witnesses to something do we need before we take it as true?

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Two to three eyewitnesses, two to three independent lines of witness and testimony. Do you notice that in New Testament stories, when you have the accounts of what took place at the tomb and who shows up at the tomb, you notice there are multiple witnesses?

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And did you notice also that the first people to witness the resurrected Christ, the first ones were women.

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See? Christianity is all about feminism, like a healthy feminism, right?

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Not what we see today, it's not really about feminism, about women, but it's amazing because in this time, if you're trying to sell a story, if you're trying to produce a myth, if you're making something up, you don't put women as the first witnesses to your story.

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You don't do it. Why do the apostles do that? They have women there first.

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Why? Because that's how it happens. And then when they show up and they're like,

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Jesus is alive from the dead, Peter and John go running to the tomb. Why? Because they don't think dead people rise.

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They saw Jesus raising people from the dead, but this was Jesus who was dead. Can he really raise himself?

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They thought their movement was over. Watch. Proof, I think, and this is, I know, I confess,

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I'll confess this. I know that this is somewhat speculation, but I think it's holy speculation.

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I think it's good speculation. I'll share this with you. I think that Peter, in his story, he denies

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Jesus, and then he sees Jesus murdered and brutalized, really dead, put into that tomb.

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I think Peter so thought that this whole thing was over that he went back to his old job.

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Because remember when Jesus first comes to Peter and he calls him, and then he renames him? What was

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Peter doing when Jesus called him? What was he doing? Fishing. He's a fisherman. And what did Jesus say to him? Follow me and I'll make you what?

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Fishers of men. And then you have after the resurrection of Jesus, when Jesus appears to Peter on the beach, what had

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Peter gone back to? Fishing. He went back to his old job. He so thought the movement was over, he was such a skeptic in a sense, that he thought it was over and he went back to work again.

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And then what's he doing when he sees Jesus? He jumps in that water, comes running back to Jesus, and then

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Jesus restores him. He says, Peter, do you love me? You know that I love you. Yes, I love you. Feed my lambs.

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Do you love me? You know that I love you. Feed my lambs. He says, do you love me? He says, Lord, you know everything.

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Feed my lambs. But isn't it powerful that the testimony of the early apostles concerning the resurrection of Jesus was based upon real eyewitness testimony?

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I'll give you this last thing to chew on. In Acts chapter 17, the apostle Paul, he preaches at the

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Areopagus to people who were the intellectuals, to the strong -minded, people who like to think, who were scientific.

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We're unfair to ancient history and the people in history. Very unfair. Why? Because we treat them like they were gullible people who just believed in myths.

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They just sucked it down. They just believed it. Proof that they were not like that is, well, read

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Aristotle, read Socrates, read Plato. These guys were not dummies.

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They were sharp. They were thinkers. They liked logic. They liked science and evidence.

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They did not just drink things down. Proof is when Lazarus was raised from the dead, you'll never believe it.

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Read it later. It says that some people believed and some doubted.

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What? How? He was stinking, rotting dead in a tomb and you saw him come out?

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And some people are like, it's a trick. Criss Angel did it better.

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Criss Angel did it better. Like people were just, they had some, right? There's some trick.

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This was planned. Someone set this up, right? Someone, there's a charlatan here.

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Something's going on. And another example is Acts 17. When Paul is at the place of intellectual debate and dialogue, he says, verse 30 of chapter 17,

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Acts 17, 30, the times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed.

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And of this he has given assurance to all. Watch. Here it is. How does the

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God of the universe call everyone everywhere to repent and believe in Jesus?

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He does it by providing assurance. What does God think that assurance is?

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Here it is. By raising him from the dead.

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Paul says God's assurance to the world that Jesus is going to judge everybody.

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That he's appointed a day in which he will judge the world in sin and righteousness. God's proof to the world is this.

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He raised Jesus from the dead. There's your proof. He's alive. And he calls people everywhere to repent, to believe in this gospel.

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He's alive. Now watch. Here it is. You think all these guys were suckers. First century, deluded, non -scientific thinking people like us, right?

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They just believe people rise from the dead just all the time. Just happens. Look at their response.

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Now when they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked.

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Paul says Jesus is alive from the dead. That's God's assurance that he's going to judge this world.

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So you better repent and believe in a hurry. And all of these scientifically -minded thinking people go, resurrection.

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He raised the guy from the dead. You really believe that someone died and rose again?

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What else do you believe? A donkey talked? The sea split in half.

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It's hilarious. You're a fool. They mocked him. The first century, watch.

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The message of the gospel didn't get legs on it because of a bunch of dumb, bronze -aged, scruffy goat nerf herders or whatever.

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These weren't just a bunch of dummies just spreading this message.

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They did not believe it. Even Jesus' disciples didn't believe it. They didn't believe it. Peter didn't believe it.

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John, James didn't understand this message. And even when they saw him alive from the dead, they go to Thomas and they're like,

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Thomas, he's alive. Thomas goes, what? Oh yeah, great. Let's go.

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Let's believe that this guy just rose again from the dead. After I saw his organs falling out of his back.

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After I saw him suffocating on that tree. After I saw him bleeding to death. Yeah, he's alive.

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And then Jesus just appears into the room. What's he say to him? He says, handle me and see.

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A spirit, a ghost, does not have flesh and bones as you see me have. And then what's Thomas' response?

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Doubting Thomas when he sees and touches Jesus physically. He's really alive. He got his assurance.

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And he says, my Lord and my

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God. My Lord and my

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God. And he worships Jesus. See, here's the question on this resurrection

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Sunday. God says his assurance to the world in calling everyone everywhere to repent, to turn from your sin, to trust in Christ, to throw yourself on him, to trust in him for eternal life.

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God's assurance to the world is that Jesus is alive, that he rose again from the dead. And we have to have an answer, a deep and meaningful answer that's not just acquiescence to facts, right?

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Like, okay, one God, right? Three persons. Jesus is God, man.

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He lived righteously. He died for sinners. He rose again. Got it. Okay, I acquiesced to all that.

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I acknowledge it's all true. Do you know who else believes all that? Every bit of it. 100 % like completely the devil and all his angels.

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Complete acquiescence to all those facts. They believe it. They know it's true. They don't doubt it.

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They know it. Not intimately, but they know it.

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You can't just hang on to the fact that you can check the theological boxes in the right way, cross the

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T's and dot the I's. The question is, who do men say that I am? People give their answers.

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Then Jesus says this, who do you say that I am? That has to be the challenging question impressed upon you right now.

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And it can't be just because, well, I'm in church, and this is what a preacher's supposed to do. A pastor's supposed to give me the challenging, hard questions.

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I kind of expected this. We'd have hard theological things thrown at me, but I'm ready to receive it and then parry it in just the right way.

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I'm ready to ignore it in the proper way. I'm not ready to think hard about those things to receive those thoughts and begin to entertain them.

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I'm not ready to do that. You really have to ask your question, do you know him? Intimately.

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Have you heard the message of the gospel, the message of this risen Savior, and have you responded in the way that he calls men and women and children everywhere to respond?

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He says this, truly, truly, I say to you, he who hears my voice and believes him who sent me has eternal life and does not come into judgment but is passed out of death into life.

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Our greatest problem is sin and death. Our only hope is Jesus, his life, his death, his resurrection.

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The call of the gospel, the good news is, watch, ready? You get God, you get

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Christ, you get life, you get him. Heaven isn't heaven without Jesus.

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Heaven is not heaven without Jesus. Do you know that the goal of the gospel, the beauty of the gospel, is that you get him?

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If you don't want him, then heaven would be hell to you. Do you want

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Christ? And not because, watch, you don't want to go to hell. That is like bottom level elementary, like maybe start that discussion.

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Yes, but watch, it's not enough to have Christ, to follow Christ, because you don't want hell one day or punishment one day.

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You see, the reality, the beauty of it all is that, watch, it's not just about escaping hell.

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For those of us who know Jesus in this room, you know that it is not about escaping hell anymore, is it?

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It's about Christ. You get him. You see, that's the gospel.

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God is the gospel. You get him. And the call of the gospel is to turn away from your sin, your unrighteousness, all of your righteousnesses.

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Come to God naked. Come to God with nothing and throw yourself on Christ, our only hope, our