March 27, 2016 The Risen Lord by Pastor Josh Sheldon

Zechariah 13 and the Promise of Cleansing and the Shepherd Struck

Chapter 13, beginning at verse 1, which is stopping on page 642, if you're using your view Bible. And after that, we'll read Luke 23, beginning at verse 44, and then continuing to 24. Chapter 24, verse 12.

Zechariah, chapter 13, beginning at verse 1. And when you arrive there, please stand if you're able, in honor of the reading of God's Word. Zechariah 13, beginning at verse 1. This is the word of the Lord.

In that day, a fountain shall be opened for the house of David, and for the inhabitants of Jerusalem, for sin and for uncleanness. It shall be in that day, says the Lord of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, and they shall no longer be remembered.

I will also cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to depart from the land. It shall come to pass that if anyone still prophesies, that his father and mother who begot him will say to him, you shall not live because you have spoken lies in the name of the Lord.

And his father and mother who begot him shall thrust him through when he prophesies. And it shall be in that day that every prophet will be ashamed of his visions when he prophesies. They will not wear a robe of coarse hair to deceive.

But he will say, I am no prophet. I am a farmer, for a man taught me to eat cattle from my youth. And one will say to him, what are these wounds between your arms? And he will answer, those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.

Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man who is my companion, says the Lord of hosts. Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered. Then I will turn my hand against the little ones.

And it shall come to pass in all the land, says the Lord, that two-thirds of it shall be cut off and die, but one-third shall be left in it. I will bring the one-third through the fire. I will refine them as silver is refined.

And I will test them as gold is tested. They will call on my name, and I will answer them. I will say, this is my people. And each one will say, the Lord is my God. And now read chapter 23, beginning in verse 44, which is found on page 712, if you're using our cue bibles.

The Death and Burial of Jesus in Luke 23

Now it was about the sixth hour, and there was darkness over all the earth until the ninth hour. Then the sun was darkened, and the veil of the temple was torn in two. And when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, he said, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.

Having said this, he breathed his last. So when the centurion saw what had happened, he glorified God, saying, Certainly this was a righteous man. And the whole crowd came together to that sight, seeing what had been done, beat their breasts, and returned.

But all his acquaintances and the women who followed him from Galilee stood at a distance, watching these things. Now he told there was a man named Joseph, a council member, a good and just man. He had not consented to their decision and aid.

He was from Arimathea, a city of the Jews, who himself was also waiting for the kingdom of God. This man went to Pilate and asked for the body of Jesus. Then he took it down, wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a tomb that was hewn out of the rock, where no one had ever lain before.

That was the day of preparation, and the Sabbath, dear dear. And the women who had come with him from Galilee followed after, and they observed the tomb and saw how his body was laid. Then they returned and prepared spices and fragrant oils, and they rested on the Sabbath, according to the commandment.

Now on the first day of the week, very early in the morning, they and certain other women with them came to the tomb, bringing the spices which they had prepared. But they found the stone rolled away from the tomb.

Then they went in and did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. And it happened, as they were greatly perplexed about this, that behold, two men stood by them in shiny garments. Then, as they were afraid and bowed their faces down to the earth, they said to them, Why do you seek the living among the dead?

He is not here, but is risen. Remember how he spoke to you when he was still in Galilee, saying, The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and on the third day rise again.

And they remembered his words. Then they returned from the tomb and told all these things to the eleven, and to all the rest. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles.

And their words seemed to them like idle tales, and they did not believe them. But Peter arose, ran to the tomb, and stooping down, he saw the cloths laying by themselves, and he departed, marveling to himself at what had happened.

Dear Heavenly Father, we just thank you and praise you for your incredible mercy and kindness. And on this Easter Sunday, we thank you especially for the incredible rescue mission that you sent your Son, your beloved Son, who knew no sin, who has impuritized and deemed the whole people like yourself.

You sent him to live thirty-plus years among sinful men, and to die an atoning death, treating him as though he committed every sin that had ever been committed, making him sin on our behalf, Father.

You purchased our salvation, and because it was not possible for death to hold him, he arose, signifying that the sacrifice was acceptable, that he had succeeded in living among sinful men and not sinning, and had succeeded in perfectly obeying your law, even unto death.

And we just want to thank you and praise you for this incredible truth. It's too wonderful for us. It's high above our ability to comprehend, but we just ask by your Holy Spirit that you pour your Spirit out upon us today, upon Josh, upon all that are here, Father, that we may, our hearts may wonder at this, the way Peter marveled at this, and we pray that you'll send forth your Word today into our hearts with power.

Show us the glory of your Son, of yourself, and of your Spirit, and help us to marvel at your thought, not just today, but the entire year ahead. Father, may we marvel at your greatness, your goodness.

May we see your beauty more clearly, and be transformed by it. We just ask these things for your mercy's sake, and your glory's sake. In Jesus' name, amen.

Amen. Thank you, Steve. Please be seated. Well, this morning's message will be based upon a text immediately following what was just read to you, so let me continue another 14 verses beyond where Steve just now stopped off.

The Emmaus Road and the Disciples' Confusion

Now behold, two of them were traveling that same day, two of them meaning two disciples, to a village called Emmaus, which was seven miles from Jerusalem. And they talked together of all these things which had happened.

So it was, while they conversed and reasoned, that Jesus himself drew near and went with them. But their eyes were restrained, so that they did not know him. And he said to them, What kind of conversation is this that you have with one another, as you walk, and are sad?

Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered and said to him, Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem? And have you not known the things which have happened there in these days? And he said to them, What things?

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

But we were hoping that it was he who was going to redeem Israel. Indeed, besides all this, today is the third day since these things happened. Yes, and certain women of our company, who arrived at the tomb early, astonished us.

When they did not find his body, they came saying that they had seen a vision of angels who said he was alive. And certain of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see.

Then he, being Jesus, he said to them, O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken, ought not the Christ who has suffered these things and to enter into his glory?

And beginning at Moses and the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself. May God bless his word. May God bless us as we hear his word. Well, these disciples, these two on the Emmaus road, these disciples are mystified by what has happened, what they saw themselves and what they heard from credible sources.

And they're flummoxed. They're sad. They don't know what to make of it all. They've been caught up in the excitement, this fervor over Jesus. They must have been with the crowd shouting out Hosanna just a few days before this, throwing their palm branches in front of them as he came in riding on a colt into Jerusalem.

And we can imagine, we can well sympathize with the excitement, just the sheer wonder of all that they had seen, all that they had heard. I mean, here's Jesus. He had healed the lame. And by his touch, blind eyes were given sight, lame legs were restored.

At his word, demons fled and scribes and Pharisees and lawyers and the scholars of the day were all confounded by him. Tax collectors and sinners found in him a willing companion who not only kept company with them, with sinners rejected by the rest, but refused to participate in their iniquity.

There was an integrity about him that was immediately attractive, had nothing to do with tolerance, but with a love that refused both compromise and elitism. This is Jesus. We can imagine the excitement, the pitch that it would be raised to, and then the depth that would fall when it all seems to come apart to these disciples, these two.

And they must have represented many more who had been so enthusiastic about this Jesus and all they thought he represented. And we all know how it is when we get so excited, so much anticipating something, and it doesn't turn out the way we had hoped.

And it's not just a normal crash of disappointment. We fall to a depth that seems to equal the excitement that we had as we anticipated something. Think of how much more this would be if Jesus Christ is the point of anticipation.

And then, through what we know to be misunderstanding, but at the time, as they thought, it was all proven to be wrong. They had set their hope. They had gotten excited about the wrong thing. It didn't seem to be working out at all.

Just imagine how deeply they would crash. These are the two that Jesus finds on the road. Now, of course, we mean Jesus, the resurrected Lord. He is out of the tomb. This is how he came to be on the Emmaus Road, walking along with them.

Well, John the Baptist had these disciples thinking, and rightly thinking, that he, that Jesus was the long-promised, the long-anticipated Messiah, the Christ, the ultimate son of David, who would vanquish their enemies and establish God's reign on earth.

Israel would return to a glory they hadn't known since David and Solomon. When Jesus says to these two, ought not the Christ to have suffered these things? He might have referred them to all the times he told the disciples what was going to happen to him.

He was clear about this. Not only his betrayal, not only his execution by crucifixion, but the purpose of it all. You read in the Gospels, so many times he said, for he shall save his people from his sins.

The Son of Man came to redeem that which was lost. The Son of Man will be betrayed into the hands of sinful men, and they will crucify him. But on the third day, he will rise again. He had said this so many times.

And there he was, the risen, the glorified Son of God, right before them, walking down the road with them. The tomb had been reported empty by the women and confirmed by Peter and John to actually be, in fact, empty.

And still they could not, they did not believe what their eyes at that moment conveyed to them, that they were talking with Jesus Christ. Our topic this morning is, of course, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Resurrection as the Power and Hope of the Christian Life

No Sunday goes by but we remember that we serve a risen and a living Savior. I say again, no Sunday goes by except we remember that our Savior lives, that he rose from the dead, that we have in this life, here and now, been resurrected by the faith he has given us, by the remaking of our spirit, which is but a down payment, an earnest, as we say, on the resurrection, the salvation to come.

We do serve a living Savior. And we remember that here, whenever we gather. And every first Sunday, the members of this church take the Lord's Supper, instituted by Jesus, to specifically remember just this, his death for our sins, his burial in accordance with the scriptures, and praise God, his resurrection from the dead, and praise God, his soon to come return.

No moment passes in the Christian's life but that the power of the resurrection is our sustenance, our hope, our strong fortress that overcomes everything that the world might bring to us. The Apostle Paul says in Ephesians 1, 19 and 20, that it is the exceeding greatness of God's power toward us who believe, according to the working of his mighty power, which he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead.

How do we get by in this life? By the power of God. What is that power of God? It's the power of God that he worked in Christ when he resurrected him, when he raised up Christ from the grave. Without this resurrection, we have no hope.

Without the resurrection, we have no salvation. Except for the resurrection, all the promises of God fall flat as the wild imaginings of man. How much more important can I make it out to be? Without the resurrection, as Paul said, we are of all men most to be pitied.

We've believed a lie. We've invested our lives in a falsehood. We're wasting our time here Sunday mornings, except that we like each other and we enjoy the food. But it has no ultimate purpose, except for the resurrection.

Except for the resurrection. But Christ has been raised from the dead. Christ has been raised from the dead by the power of God. It's a historical fact, better documented and attested than any other ancient event of any significance at all.

His tomb was guarded by professional soldiers, the best in the world. And the penalty that they faced for any dereliction was death. To say that they fell asleep, I don't mean to sound sarcastic, and I'm not being sarcastic, but it's laughable.

You're telling me the SEAL team, what is that, the elite SEAL team? SEALs are elite, right? And there's a team six or something like that amongst them to tell me that they fell asleep during a watch? It's impossible, it makes no sense.

The whole myth that they dozed off and the body was stolen is implausible. These fishermen, tax collectors, these non-military men, if we can just put it into one category, they stole past this elite delta force, heavily armed to the teeth, moved the stone, dragged the body out, folded the grave clothes, and waltzed past the men who live stood good for the security of that tomb.

And that's beyond incredulity. Go to these two disciples walking with the Lord who came out of that grave. They're on their way to Emmaus, and they had all these conflicting thoughts. When they asked Jesus if he was the only one who didn't know what had happened, Jesus might well have said, well, no, I'm the only one who does know what happened.

Saying, are you the only one who's a stranger to these things? No, I'm the only one who isn't. I'm the only one who's familiar with the facts. Let me get you squared away here. Let me show you the truth.

Let me get your thoughts and your spirits centered where they must be to understand these things. I want to take a quick review of this. Straight from Cleopas' answer, just from what I read to you a moment ago.

First, it was concerning Jesus of Nazareth. That's what they said. These things concerning Jesus of Nazareth. And in a very real sense, everything concerns Jesus of Nazareth. This disciple is more specific.

He means the events inaugurated beginning about three and a half years before. So we have the whole Jesus event from the time he came out of the wilderness having resisted the temptations that Satan placed upon him.

I think when Cleopas says these things, he means all these things. That three and a half year period. And second, Cleopas, he gets it right. He calls him a prophet. Capital P is correct. A prophet. We might say the prophet, but he doesn't understand that yet.

So we'll go with what he said. A prophet. Mighty in deed and word before God and all the people. He might have only heard of Jesus' deeds, but it seems most likely that he didn't just hear them, he's speaking about what he saw.

And this is important to us. I mentioned earlier how well documented the record of Jesus' life is in the Gospels. Well, three of them, Matthew, Mark, and John, are first-hand accounts of all that happened.

Mark probably dictated by Peter to John Mark. The fourth one, Luke, is based on careful and detailed interviews with eyewitnesses. No other ancient documents go to such trouble in carefully recording the events that they purport.

Names, times, places, all are given with complete specificity. The dependence on women is unashamedly set forth as a reinforcement to their credibility in a society that completely discounted the testimony of women.

The Gospels set it forth as one of their strengths. They don't blanch as stating their own weaknesses, these authors. Their obtuseness, even their cowardice. There's no hint of mythology or bigger-than-life heroics, at least not on their part.

On Jesus' part, yes, but not on theirs. And Peter doesn't thump his chest and say, see how I put down these people who challenged me during the trial. He says, no, I collapsed before a simple maiden and ran off weeping.

One man left the arrest event so quickly and in such terror he left his clothes behind. This is not the stuff of mythology. Not the stuff of just a legend. Cleopas is one talking with Jesus here. He might well have been a witness to much of Jesus' life.

So when he speaks of Jesus having been mighty indeed, he's telling Jesus what he himself had seen of Jesus. But he still doesn't recognize him. Third, as I said, he calls him a prophet. He could not have known as we do that Jesus brought an end to the prophets, at least in terms of their highest goal, which was to reveal his coming.

To paraphrase Paul, if one is hoping for the Messiah and for that purpose studies what the prophets had to say about him, once he comes, that hope is no longer hope. It's reality. You don't hope for what you have.

Once he came, the anticipation of all the prophets was fulfilled. Cleopas could only have had a glimmer of this when he called him a prophet. But by calling him that, by calling him a prophet, by affirming that his deeds were done before God, thus confirming that he was a true prophet of the living God, he's acknowledging that his words were true words from heaven.

Fourth thing we see just in that simple statement from Cleopas is that the Lord had been crucified. He had, indeed, been crucified. He'd been betrayed by a friend, been turned over to the chief priests, condemned to death, crucified.

I mean, that agonizing, humiliating mode of execution reserved for the worst criminals or anyone who Rome wanted to use as an example and a warning of how severe they could be in their execution of justice.

There are few things that so confirm man's cruelness and his depravity than the perfection that Rome achieved in the crucifixion. You can read about it yourself. The internet has any number of good articles that will describe in gruesome medical detail just how awful it had to have been and how expert the Romans were in prolonging the agony.

And I'll give no detail here. You can look it up for yourself. It was meant to humiliate. It was meant to extend the worst suffering that they could invent for as long as they could extend it. I will say no more.

This is what Jesus had anticipated from the beginning. The cross was the way by which he would accomplish that for which he was sent, which is what? Your salvation. My salvation, the salvation of sinners.

He will save his people from their sins. Philippians 2 explains it like this. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross.

He came as a man so that as a man he might redeem man. On the cross, helplessly pinned to that rugged wood, he himself, this is what Peter says, he himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness by whose stripes you were healed.

It was penned, of course, by Peter, one of Jesus' first disciples. It was fulfilled, it fulfilled what Isaiah, the prophet, had only longed for when he wrote virtually the same thing. So the Lord had been crucified.

Cleopas, the friend he was walking with, the disciples, they all saw this. They could all testify to it. Cleopas says something else to Jesus about all these things. This is fifth. They didn't know where Jesus was.

We don't know where he is. All we know is that that tomb is empty. He doesn't say anything about the guard or any of these things that we read about in Matthew. We only know he's gone. They had heard the story from the women.

They must have heard from Peter and John. It's all been confirmed. The tomb empty because the stones rolled away and the Lord himself is missing. The women added to all this, of course, they being the first ones there, what the angel had said, that the Lord wasn't in his grave because he was alive.

They're saying the Lord is risen. And all they can say about this, we heard this thing. It's astonishing. He doesn't say it's true. He says it astonished us. They said he's alive. The angels told the women.

The women told us that this Jesus is alive and that's why he's not there. We could stop and peer in on this and ask Cleopas, but do you believe it? He's just astonished. Don't you believe it? And people today might say, it's a really nice story.

It makes me feel good. But do you believe it? Well, you seem to believe it, but do you believe it? Like Jesus in Matthew 16, when he turned and he said, who do men say I am? Some say you're Elijah. Some say you're this.

Some say you're that. The other, you're a holy man. You're a good man. You're a prophet. But who do you say I am? Cleopas. You've had all this testimony of the Lord Jesus Christ being risen from the grave.

People you've known. People who you must have walked with and seen his miracles and his healings. Heard many of his words. He was a disciple of Jesus Christ. You've heard all these things and now some of these very ones who you've known for all these years, your companions with Jesus, have told you that they heard he's risen.

And we have all the evidence to support it. The folded grave clothes, the empty tomb, the testimony of the women with the angels told them. Well, that's astonishing, but do you believe it? You call yourself Christian.

Without the resurrection there is no Christianity. Without faith and belief and all your hope and your trust and everything that God tells you to anticipate, if you really truly do anticipate these things, sum it all up and just say the return of the Lord Jesus Christ, his rule now as he sits at the Father's right hand, all these things, it's because of the resurrection.

Do you believe the resurrection? Not just a story. Not just a well-documented event. Not just a fact better attested than so many other things from that time period. Everything else in that time period, really.

The question for you, do you believe it? Repentance for sin demanded of the whole world. As the first entry into the kingdom is to repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. But brethren, if the Lord is not resurrected, you repent in vain.

Because the Lord is not resurrected, God the Father is not satisfied with his atoning death. If the Lord is not resurrected, then he didn't finish his work. And when he said it is finished, he was wrong.

And perhaps he's gonna come again for salvation, which goes against everything the scripture says. Brethren, the Lord has been raised. And therefore, repentance is of value. Last thing I want to say about Cleopas, because of all his misunderstandings, his hope was gone.

I think he must have spoken for a lot of disciples. Their hope was gone. They had thought Jesus was the long-awaited king of Israel, the Messiah. That's dashed. Gone. No hope now. They had thought he was about to redeem Israel from all her troubles, which was mainly Rome.

Dashed. Gone. No hope. You see, they had all the facts right, but the way they tried to reconcile it all only confused them. They left their deliberations sad. The greatest news in the history of mankind.

They're sad. The most marvelous event except maybe creation itself. And they're sad about it. They had all their facts right, but the way they put it together just left them confused. Their redemption had once for all been accomplished.

How could they be sad about that? Jesus puts his finger right on the problem. He says, O foolish ones and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken. Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and enter into his glory?

It was because of what the prophets had said that they thought Jesus was the Messiah. And this is the same reason they thought he would redeem Israel. You see they did believe the prophets. The key word in Jesus' response to them is all.

To believe in all that the prophets have said. Not just picking and choosing. Not just looking at your circumstance and saying, well this is what I would like today, so this must be what Jesus is going to give me.

I see my needs this way, and therefore as Jesus is a loving savior, God is love by the way, that this is what I'm going to have. No, these myopic views just don't work. It's believing in all that God has said.

And they didn't believe all of it. They didn't understand all of it. They seem to have gotten a lot of it, probably more than I would have if I were in their shoes. But they were sad because they make a mistake that many of us make.

They looked at things all wrong. They looked first at their circumstances and then tried to force fit that into the scriptures. And it's better, it's safer, it's godly, it's right to go quite the other way around.

If they had believed all that the prophets had said, they never would have raised Rome up so high in their thoughts. They would have known how the prophetic word was fulfilled in Jesus. They might have been more concerned that God would send a servant who would bear their griefs and sorrows than they were about Rome.

More concerned about sin than any earthly ruler. If they believed in all that the prophets had said. While Jesus was on the cross, the rulers sneered at him. They said, he saved others, let him save himself if he is the Christ, the chosen of God.

In Matthew's Gospel he is challenged, now come down from the cross and we will believe you. Come down? Come down? Come down? Legions of angels could have been called to prevent this entire thing. But Jesus would not.

He rather said, your will be done. Speaking to God, his father. Come down? I mean, if he had asked the father to send the angels to pull the nails out and help him down, would he have been ignored? No, he wouldn't have.

Come down? They say, come down? Would that have made the Emmaus Road disciples happy? If Christ had come down off the cross, popped the nails out somehow, had the angels attend to his wounds right there, and then at that moment, presented himself to the Roman executioners, the Pharisees, the Sanhedrin members who were there.

Well then, they might have been rejoicing. Then they might have said, did you see what he did? He canceled his own crucifixion. Wouldn't that be neat? That would have made those who say he didn't actually die quite happy.

There's some who say he swooned. If he had come down, that would have helped them out in that theory. How you account for all the confirmations that he did die is completely another matter. I'm always anxious to hear those who say he swooned explain away the Roman soldiers, the experts at death who said he had died, the experts, the men who had done crucifixions before, Rome, who ruled the world with this military might, men who knew what it was to say someone else is dead didn't even bother to break his legs because they saw what?

He died. He was, in fact, dead. Come down? They told him, come down from the cross and we'll believe you. Come down? I mean, Muslims might enjoy that idea. They call it blasphemy to say that God's prophet and that's all they will allow him, Jesus is God's prophet.

They call it blasphemy to say he was crucified. They teach that Simon, the one who helped carry the cross or even Judas was nailed to the tree, not Jesus. So they say, come down? They would say he never went up.

And they accuse us of blasphemy because we say the Son of God was crucified and they say the Son of God was no more than a prophet. Come down? Off the cross? Deny the witnesses from his enemies and friends from disinterested onlookers to Roman soldiers that he was, in fact, dead.

So they said, come down and we'll believe you. Come down and we'll follow you. Come on, Jesus of Nazareth, if you really are what all these people what you yourself have said you are, just come down. That would have been a neat trick but it could have been no more than that because what he did was so much more.

And what happened on the cross? On the cross, sin met its match. Just as I read to you from Zechariah when it was Jesus who overrules Satan says, I have removed the iniquity. I will make these filthy clothes clean.

But what about all their sin? Well, you're right. They did all these things but I have declared otherwise. How can Jesus Christ say that? Because on the cross he took in himself all God's wrath and our sin.

When he said it was finished, that's what he meant. That God's wrath had been entirely poured out on him. Come down? No, not until all was accomplished. Not until he could cry out once and for all and only he could ever cry out it is finished.

And indeed, brethren, it was. So how do we know this work was finished? This glorious work which so confused these Emmaus road disciples? How are we sure that the cross answered all our sin? That if we should repent of our sin and by faith flee to the cross of Jesus Christ and there find forgiveness for our sin and true life and true joy and true hope how are we sure that the cross is the right place to be?

Very simple. By the resurrection. God raised up his son from the dead. He didn't revive him in the coolness of the tomb as some would posit. He went in a corpse. And scripture says but God raised him up having loosed the pangs of death because it was not possible that he should be held by it.

So says Peter at his first sermon at the Pentecost. What does all this mean? We can go on for a very long time about the meaning of the resurrection and not a moment of all that time would be wasted but we haven't time.

So I want to close with just one verse about the resurrection. About the efficacy of repentance. Why all the angels stop before God for that moment and rejoice in the presence of God the Father when a single sinner repents?

Why is all that worthwhile? What does it mean if you this morning should repent of your sin and flee to Jesus Christ plead with God this moment to give you faith to believe and trusting his word to give you by his spirit that exact faith that you could believe the sort of things I'm telling you this morning.

Why do we stand on that? Why is it efficacious as we like to say? Just one verse. Romans 4 encapsulates it like this. He, meaning Jesus, he was delivered up because of our offenses. This is the cross.

He was delivered to the cross because of our sin. He bore our sin on the cross. He was delivered up because of our offenses and raised because of our justification. We are justified by faith. Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God.

How do we know that? How do we know that we've been justified because of the faith that God has given us because God raised Jesus from the dead? I could go on and on with different questions people have where the answer is really this one thing.

The resurrection answers your question. The resurrection answers our life. The resurrection answers our sin. The resurrection answers our hope. The resurrection answers everything. God raised him up. Why?

Because the cross was complete and sufficient. It's God's testimony to you and to me that what Christ did was done. That God the Father was satisfied. That all the centuries of sin, including yours and mine, in that time at that place were poured out on him and God held nothing back against his son who became sin for us.

And so when Jesus Christ knew that all that fury had been expiated, he could say it is finished. And we know this not because it's a happy thought, not because it makes me feel good. We know this because God raised him from the dead.

Now that's a happy thought and that does make me feel good but the purpose of it is so I know my sin is answered. So I know in fact I've been justified by faith because God raised him up. Absent the resurrection none of this is true.

Without the resurrection the cross is only an ugly death forced on an innocent man. Without the resurrection we who believe are most to be pitied because we've given ourselves over to a lie. People believe all sorts of things.

Modern flat earthers believe that we can actually change the climate for better or for worse. Muslims believe that someone else went to the cross. Some people believe you can reason with a terrorist. Some that Jesus wasn't resurrected because he only fainted after all those hours on the cross.

Some of you believe that all this is a fable. It's a myth. Just a legend. You take this position having never really read the records we have or compared them to other works of the same period. You have an awful lot of evidence to ignore if you think that.