Ezekiel Part 42

Kongsvinger Lutheran Church

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Ezekiel Part 43

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Okay, we are going to pray and then we're gonna get started. Lord Jesus, as we open up your word, we ask that your

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Holy Spirit to help us to rightly understand what you have revealed so that we may believe correctly, that we would not hold fast to lies and deceit, and that through the power of the

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Holy Spirit in the word, that we would bear fruit in keeping with repentance and do your will, we ask in Jesus' name, amen.

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All right, so there was a question, all right? So you'll note in 2 Peter, I read out a portion of 2

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Peter, the talent of my sermon, and here's the question. Question about the sermon.

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2 Peter 3 .12 says, looking for and hastening unto the coming of the day of the

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Lord. That's the King James Version here. If we are the ones that are looking forward to, looking forward, is

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God also saying that we can hasten the day of the Lord? Somehow, even though he has his sovereign day of return, can you explain what hastening means in this context?

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Thanks. And so that was Google Pixel 7 that asked that question. Apparently, a piece of technology.

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We have AI now asking questions of us. So the answer to the question is,

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I think it's a bad translation, and I'm not the only one who thinks that. So here's the passage in the

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ESV. Hang on a second here, I need to get my cursor over there. Let's see here.

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There, there we go. Since all of these things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the day of God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the heavenly bodies will melt away as they burn?

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So let me show it to you here. So here's our word in Greek, and the word is, let's pull this up, is spudo.

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Spudo is your word. Now, let me give you a little bit of a note here. Whenever you are doing biblical word studies, and you look up something in a concordance, or you look up something in a lexicon, here's your issue, is that when you have a word that has multiple definitions, you have to audition the different definitions to see if it fits the context.

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My standard example is the word up. If you were to look up the word up, notice

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I used look up. If you were to use the word, if you were to look up the word up in the Merriam -Webster's

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Dictionary, there's like 36 different definitions, 36, okay?

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So up can mean in an upward direction, up can mean turn up the volume, like an increase in intensity, or it can mean to evacuate your stomach of all the contents of your lunch, to throw up, right?

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But the thing is is that context is going to dictate which definition is used in that context.

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So let's take a look at the definition of spudo and see which one fits the context, because the question is can we hasten the day of the

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Lord? I mean, I barely can remember what

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I ate for breakfast yesterday. How on earth am I supposed to hasten the day of the Lord? So let's take a look at and see what the possible definitions are, okay?

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So one of the definitions is to be in a hurry, to hurry or to hasten. That's one possible definition.

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So if I were to say, all right, let's see here, waiting for and being in a hurry for the coming of the day of the

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Lord, waiting for and hastening the coming of the Lord. I would say neither of those definitions exactly fit the context, so I'm gonna check the next one and see if I can audition it.

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Audition number two, to cause something to happen or come into being by exercising special effort, to hasten.

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That doesn't seem to fit, although that's the translation used by the ESV. Here's our third definition, to be very interested in discharging an obligation, to be zealous or to exert oneself to be industrious.

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What if we were to translate it then using this as waiting for and being eager for the day of the

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Lord? I think that's a better translation. And then if you have

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Logos, which again is a tool that I use, you'll note that here are potential different definitions and we have different sources that we can look to, to exalt, to be glad, to hasten, to hurry, to urge and to wait.

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So this word has a lot of potential definitions and how to use it. Then if you were to look at like maybe a good commentary.

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So good commentary is Lenski's commentary written by an old ALC guy back before the

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ELCA merger. He was a faithful pastor in the ALC. And here's what he says regarding this word.

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So he also uses two participles, expecting and being eager for the parousia.

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Now note, he's already translating spudo as being eager for. So he's kind of tipped his hand as to how he would do that.

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And here's what he says. One may expect and yet not be eager regarding what he expects. So for instance, if mom says, when dad comes home,

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I'm gonna give you a spanking. I will be expecting that, but I'm not gonna be eager for it, okay?

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So just saying, okay, I'm still in therapy, but that's a whole other thing, okay?

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So also eagerness is to fill the hearts. We do not labor the sense by taking spudo in the sense of hasten, speed up the coming of the day of the

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Lord so that it will come sooner than it would otherwise. We question whether the holy conduct of Christians can hasten the day of judgment, whether this is the teaching of the

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Bible. The decline of faith and the coldness of love would have more of a tendency to hurry the day along, okay?

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So I would note that he's gonna argue that you'll note that God acts sooner in judgment as the world gets worse and worse.

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And we don't hasten the coming judgment of God by getting holier and holier. That seems to slow things down, at least that's the tendency in scripture.

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So this verb is widely used in the sense of to be eager, okay, and he references the

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Liddell and Scott lexicon for that matter, which fits perfectly here as an intensifying synonym of expecting.

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Expecting, being eager for the day of God. That's, I think, the right translation, and I would note good commentators are in agreement here.

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And so, again, when you look at a definition in a lexicon, audition the different definitions to see which one fits the context.

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And then if something doesn't seem to fit the context of scripture itself, there's nowhere in scripture that says that we can somehow cause the day of the

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Lord to come faster. There's no biblical text that says that at all, so there's no reason to believe that we can somehow hasten the coming of Christ, okay?

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So instead, go with the definition that says we're eager for his coming, eager for the day of God.

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All right, great question, by the way. Let me scroll down here, okay.

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All right, Pat Kungsvinger, pastor's screen is black, thank you, you took care of it?

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Okay, good, I don't have to deal with technology, good. All right, we are in Ecclesiastes, not

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Ecclesiastes, Ezekiel. I go into my brain and pull the wrong word out. I hate when I do that.

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We are at one of the most abused passages in all of scripture, the valley of the dry bones, them bones, them bones, them dry bones, right?

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Hear the word of the Lord. If you know the tune, you know the tune, right? So here's the issue.

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This is one of those prophecies that God gives the meaning to it, right?

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So let me give you an example of an abused text that you may have heard abused, and that's

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Matthew 13. Hang on a second here, I need to go here, as scroll on down to the book of Matthew, Matthew chapter 13, and so here's a highly abused text.

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Jesus tells his first parable in the gospel of Matthew chapter 13. A sower went out to sow, and as he sowed, some seed fell along the path, and the birds came and devoured them.

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Other seeds fell on the rocky ground where they did not have much soil. Immediately they sprang up, since they had no depth of soil, but when the sun rose, they were scorched, and since they had no root, they withered away.

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Other seeds fell among the thorns, and the thorns grew up and choked them. Other seeds fell on good soil and produced grain, some a hundredfold, some 60, some 30.

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He who has ears to hear, let him hear. That tells us we're dealing with corn, but, sorry.

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Yeah, we happen to have some today. All right, so all that being said here, I have heard and I've reviewed awful sermons on this text where people then insert their own meanings as to what the soils mean and what the seed means and stuff like this.

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I have heard sermons where they say the seed is talking about money, okay, and getting back a hundredfold in money, and you sit there and you go, how do you figure?

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And I would note that this is an exegetical malpractice suit just waiting to be filed.

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And the reason I say that is because in this same chapter, Jesus tells us exactly what the parable means.

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Every time this shows up in the lectionary as the gospel text, I sit there and go, well, I don't have to do much work here.

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Jesus already tells me what this thing means, right? So the idea is you go with Jesus's understanding.

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So here the parable of the sower. Jesus gives what it means.

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When anyone hears the word of the kingdom and does not understand it, the evil one comes and snatches away what has been sown in his heart.

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This is what was sown along the path. Oh, so the seed is the word of God, right?

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Okay, as for what was sown on the rocky ground, this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy, yet he has no root in himself.

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He endures for a while, but when tribulation or persecution arises on account of the word, he immediately falls away.

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As for what was sown among the thorns, this is the one who hears the word, but the cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word and it proves unfruitful.

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As for what was sown on the good soil, this is the one who hears the word, understands it. He indeed bears fruit and yields in one case a hundredfold and another 60 and another 30.

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Oh, we're not talking about money at all here, are we? No, we're not. So you'll note that this is quite simple.

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This is not rocket surgery when it comes to understanding the parable of the sowers because Jesus explains it to you.

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Furthermore, in explaining the meaning of the parable, Jesus is teaching his disciples how to rightly understand the other parables, and you'll note that they ask him again for the meaning of another parable, and then he asks them, after telling them another parable, do they understand?

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They understood it. So if you want a crash course on understanding parables, read

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Matthew 13. Now, in Ezekiel, we're given an imagery, a prophetic imagery, a vision that Ezekiel is caused to see by God, and God then will tell us exactly what the vision means, okay?

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So let's read the vision before we get to God's explanation. So the hand of the

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Lord, Yahweh, was upon me, and he brought me out in the spirit of Yahweh and set me down in the middle of the valley.

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It was full of bones, and he led me around among them, and behold, there were many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry.

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So they've been there for some time, right? You'll note that fresh corpses have skin and stuff, and semi -fresh corpses without skin still have marrow in the bones and things like this, and that eventually dries out, okay?

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So he said to me, son of man, can these bones live? Poor Ezekiel.

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And Ezekiel says, oh, Lord Yahweh, you know. You'll note, he defers to God on this.

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I'm, maybe, but he doesn't want to seem presumptuous. So then he said to me,

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I want you to prophesy over these bones, and say to them, oh, my bones, hear the word of the

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Lord. Thus says the Lord Yahweh to these bones. Behold, I will, future tense, cause breath to enter you, and you shall live.

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I will lay sinews upon you, and will cause flesh to come upon you, and cover you with skin, and put breath in you, and you shall live, and you shall know that I am

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Yahweh. So you get a note. Another thing that God is going to do, and you will know that I am

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Yahweh. So I prophesied as I was commanded, and as I prophesied, there was a sound.

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And behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone, and I looked, and behold, there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them, but there was no breath in them.

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Isn't this exactly the same imagery of what God did to Adam in the Garden of Eden?

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He created his body, and there he was, this lifeless body, right? And then

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God said to me, prophesy to the breath. And here is where we're going to have to note here.

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The Hebrew here is ruach, ruach. Now if you're familiar with Hebrew at all, ruach can also mean spirit.

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So you note the ESV has chosen, we're gonna prophesy to the breath, okay?

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But ruach also means spirit. Spirit and breath are used kind of interchangeably throughout the

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Old and the New Testament. Pneuma is your Greek word, but here we've got, prophesy to the ruach, to the breath or to the spirit.

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Prop, prop, that's a good question. It actually, it would have pneuma.

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It absolutely would have, that's your equivalent straight out, okay? So then he said to me, prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath, spirit, ruach, thus says the

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Lord Yahweh, come from the four winds, O spirit. I think that's a better translation than breath.

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And breathe on these slain so that they may live. See this, if you translate ruach here as spirit, now you've got the third person of the

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Trinity involved, and him breathing on them the same way God breathed into the nostrils of Adam.

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And this is kind of a picture of what, again, the imagery, second Eden, if you would, right?

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Yes, yeah, you know, two extra points for you, and for Gryffindor for saying that.

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That was well said. So if you didn't hear, he said that, prophesy to the four winds, that's an allusion to the four

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Gospels. And same in the book of Genesis when it talks about the headwaters coming out of Eden and then breaking off into four rivers.

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That's an allusion, a type and shadow of the four Gospels themselves. That's how the church has understood this. Yes, Anna, yes.

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So the question is, is this a type and shadow of Christ's second coming? Absolutely this is. And I'll show you our cross -reference in the

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New Testament. So you'll note, the imagery is, obviously, this great army, but now we have a re -Edening, if you would.

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And it's not just one body, it's the body of a whole bunch of people. Bodies everywhere.

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And so the Spirit then comes and breathes on them so that they might live. There was no breath in, and he says, prophesy to the

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Spirit, prophesy, son of man, and say to the Spirit, thus says the Lord Yahweh, come from the four winds, O Spirit, and breathe on these slain so that they may live.

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So I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and they stood on their feet, an exceedingly great army.

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Now, bad sermons stop here. And there's a reason. Because false teachers like to fill your heads with nonsensical things.

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They will tell you what you want to hear. So here's how the twisting usually goes along.

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So we read up to this point, and we don't let God explain what we just read. And so now we sit, somebody sits there and goes, see,

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God wants to take your dead dreams, and he wants to breathe new life into your dead dreams.

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Did you want to be an entrepreneur and be a millionaire? Well, God wants to breathe new life into that vision for you so that you can become a millionaire.

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And everyone goes, really, wow. Here, let me write a check for 1 ,000 bucks for that one.

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It's just nonsense, absolute nonsense. This is a type and shadow of the second coming of Christ in the day of the resurrection.

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How do I know? Because I can read, okay? Which sounds insulting, but I know you can read too.

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Just keep reading. Verse 11, so then he, the Lord Yahweh, said to me, son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.

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Behold, they say, our bones are dried up, our hope is lost. We are indeed cut off.

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Therefore prophesy and say to them, thus says the Lord Yahweh, behold, I will open your graves and I will raise you from your graves.

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Oh, my people, I will bring you into the land of Israel and you shall know that I am

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Yahweh when I open your graves and raise you from your graves, oh, my people, and I will put my spirit within you and you shall live and I will place you in your own land and then you shall know that I am

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Yahweh. I have spoken and I will do it, declares Yahweh. Was God speaking figuratively when he explained the meaning of the vision?

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No, which kind of leads to this question. How on earth did the

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Sadducees deny the resurrection? No, typical scribal scofferness, is that a word?

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You'll note that many people who call themselves academics, who think that they're smart regarding the

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Bible and stuff like that, they set about to correct people who believe in the miraculous, who believe the words of the

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Lord. And so they'll say something like this. Well, he's talking about raising people from the dead.

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That can't really happen. And so this has to be figurative of something else, right? But it's not.

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So let's take a look at some cross -references, shall we? Now, whole house of Israel talk, right?

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Whole house of Israel sitting there going, well, you know, I'm a Gentile. I know, so am

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I. Romans chapter nine, we'll start here, okay? Paul says,

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I am speaking the truth in Christ. I'm not lying. My conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart, for I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.

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They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises.

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To them belong the patriarchs, and from their race, I'm going to challenge that.

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Yeah, that's not a good translation. And from them, it would probably be better. From them, you know, race is a bad word here.

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So the Greek word here, and I'll explain why this is, is just the relative pronoun who, which, or what.

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From whom, according to the flesh, is the Christ. So the ESV translates it as race.

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Now, I'm gonna go off on a tiny rant here, okay? The Bible does not teach that there are races of men.

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That is a modern invention, and we can pinpoint when that became a thing, okay?

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That became a thing in the 1900s by a French dude, okay?

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He wrote a book that became very popular and was like a Bible used by the Nazis. And that was the first person to postulate that there are different races of humanity.

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There isn't, there is only one race, okay? So when God talks about the differences in human beings, he does not point to skin color at all.

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He points to your ethnic fathers. Do you see what

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I'm saying here, okay? So I think that this is a dangerous translation because it reinforces the myth that there are different races.

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The Semites, the Jews, are not a different race. They are human beings like the rest of us.

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They are descendants of Abraham, genetically. They are descendants of Shem, one of the sons of Noah.

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But they are not a different race. So I'm really keen, tuned into this.

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So when you hear people talking today like the new neo -Nazis and the white supremacists, they legitimately argue that God made different races of men.

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This is a part of his creation, and they are sacrosanct. You cannot marry somebody from a different race.

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There's only one race. There's the human race, period, full stop, okay?

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So how much melanin they have in their skin, that just doesn't matter.

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It just doesn't matter at all. So to them belong the patriarchs, and from whom, then according to the flesh, is the

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Christ, who is God over all, blessed forever, amen. But it's not as though the word of God has failed, for not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.

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And here we go, okay? Not all who are descended from Israel belong to Israel.

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And not all are children of Abraham because they are his offspring, but through Isaac shall your offspring be named.

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So in scripture, always the people of note who are the true offspring of Abraham are not the genetic descendants of Abraham.

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They are the ones who, like Isaac, are sons of promise. Isaac was the son of the promise.

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We are sons of promise through the promise of the forgiveness of our sins in Christ, right? So this means it's not the children of the flesh who are the children of God.

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It's the children of the promise who are counted as offspring, okay? So mazal tov, you are all

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Israeli, you know, yeah? Ani Israelit, so you women would say ani

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Israelit, I am an Israeli, and you men would say ani Israeli, I am an

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Israeli, you know, it and e are, that's your masculine and feminine, and there is no zeh, meh, and the, you know, bleh when it comes to pronouns in the

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Hebrew language. I'm just saying, so. All of that being said, we

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Gentiles are grafted in, but let's take a look at the next part, then. First Corinthians chapter 15. This is one of the clearest texts in Scripture that point to the resurrection of the dead.

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So here's what it says, starting at verse 12. If Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead?

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And this is Paul writing to Christians at the Church of Corinth, which was a really messed up church, okay?

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Okay, so you had people attending church saying, there is no resurrection of the dead, and I would note, that would be a very easy conclusion to come to, since they didn't have morticians back in the day.

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So if you were caring for your mother, and your mother died, guess who prepared her for burial?

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You did, and since families were pretty large back then, there was no birth control, death was a frequent visitor, and children getting out of childhood and surviving to adulthood, that was a sketchy proposition, too.

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So families were very familiar with death. It visited their homes regularly.

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That being the case, when you've handled, been around corpses, you know that corpses don't do anything at all.

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And so to think, listen, death is a final thing, there is no resurrection, understandable position, dead wrong,

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Christ is risen. So Paul says, if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even

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Christ has been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain.

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You guys remember, you ever seen the movie Young Frankenstein? Oh my goodness, that is such a funny movie.

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Okay, in the beginning portion of it, when you meet Dr. Frankenstein for the first time, he's giving a lecture, okay, he's giving a lecture and talking, and what ends up happening is, is that he ends up stabbing himself with a scalpel when somebody asks him about his grandfather,

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Dr. Frankenstein, and he says, my grandfather's work was doo -doo, and he stabs himself in the knee with a scalpel, and he pulls his hand up and stick it up, and he tries to kind of, it was hilarious.

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Think of it this way, if Christ has not been raised from the dead, then Christianity is doo -doo. That's a good way to think about it, okay?

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Years ago, when I was doing research on the emergent church movement, I sat,

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I asked to do this. Why did I ask to do this? I asked Nadia Bowles -Weber of the

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ELCA to have coffee with me because I needed to fact check some of my conclusions to make sure that I was understanding the emergent church movement correctly.

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So she agreed, I had traveled to Denver to go to a Higher Things conference, and so I had coffee with Nadia Bowles -Weber in one of these artsy leftist coffee shops, okay?

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And the art was just ridiculous, but anyway. So there we are, we're sitting there, and I'm asking her questions, and she's validating that my research conclusions were right, and she says, you know,

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I have a question for you, Chris. I said, okay, what's your question? And she goes, so if they found the bones of Jesus Christ and can prove it, would you still be a

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Christian? I said, no, absolutely not. Well, why not?

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Because it says, number one, he rose bodily from the grave, but Paul says, if Christ isn't risen, then

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Christianity is doo -doo, you know? And that was my paraphrase at the time.

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And it turns out that she had been invited by Brian McLaren, Brian McLaren, who is a very high -degree

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Freemason, okay, to attend a meeting put on by him, and in that meeting, he basically argued that the

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Freemasons had found the bones of Christ and that Jesus hasn't really risen from the grave, and it shook her, it shook her, and so she was struggling, and she goes, well,

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I think I would remain a Christian, and in my mind, I went, well, you aren't even one anyway, you know, but she said, and she says,

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I would just think that we got it wrong, that the word bodily means something other than what we think it means.

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Typical postmodern, totally postmodern, and that's the game that skeptics and scoffers and unbelievers play.

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So one time, I actually, I had a conversation with Brian McLaren about a few things.

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Brian McLaren, who is like one of the kingpins of the emergent church movement, and just a wicked fellow, absolutely wicked, he had written a book, and the name of the book was

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Everything Must Change. And it was the book that preceded the book that followed, the book that followed was called

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A New Kind of Christianity, so he invented his own new kind of Christianity, that was the book that came after.

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But in the book Everything Must Change, he absolutely hated, and still does, hates the idea that Jesus died as our substitute on the cross.

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And this idea that God would sacrifice his son on the cross, he calls it cosmic child abuse.

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Okay, this is his thinking, it's just child abuse, right? But scripture says Christ laid down his life willingly.

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And so this idea of Jesus's vicarious penal substitutionary death offends him beyond belief, and so he came up with his own interpretation of why

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Jesus was on the cross. And in his interpretation, in the book Everything Must Change he argues that the reason why

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Jesus was nailed to the cross was that he willingly laid down his life in order to show his disciples how evil imperialism is.

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And so he let the wolves of Rome tear him apart so that his disciples would never think that having an empire is a good thing.

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And so I was at a conference, and I said to Brian, after one of his lectures,

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I said, Brian, you know, I have a question, I just read your book Everything Must Change, and I said, you know, and I saw how you're redefining

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Jesus's death on the cross. I said, what do you do with Isaiah 53? He was pierced for our transgressions.

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He was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement that brought us peace was upon him. I mean, without skipping a beat,

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Brian McLaren goes, well, it all depends on what the word for means. You know, if you think about Bill Clinton, right?

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It all depends on what is, is, right?

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Oh, man. So there's no way around it. If Christ is proclaimed as being raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection?

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If there is no resurrection of the dead, not even Christ has been raised. And by the way, the

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Apostle Paul is an eyewitness of the resurrection of Christ. Who did he have a little conversation with on the road to Damascus?

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With Jesus. He's an eyewitness of the resurrection of Christ. He's met the risen Jesus. How did

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Paul die? He was martyred. Nero cut his head off, had his head cut off.

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Peter is an eyewitness of the resurrection. How did Peter die? He was crucified upside down.

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It took him three days to die. None of the disciples ever, and I mean ever, denied the resurrection of Christ.

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They never said that we participated in the cover -up to make it look like Jesus rose from the dead.

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In fact, let me show you, let me find this article real quick here. I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna go to Google. Google.

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And I want, okay. Okay. Chuck Colson, Easter Watergate.

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No, no, no, this is actually, this is a great point. Let me see if I can find this here.

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Let's see if this is the right one. Because finding the right one is a little challenging. I think this is it. Give me a second.

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Watergate and the resurrection. Okay, now, I was really young when Watergate happened, so I don't really remember the details.

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I just remember kind of the fallout as I was growing older. People calling Richard Nixon tricky dick and things like this.

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And so there was a lot going on regarding this. So when we talk about the resurrection, let me see if I can make this bigger.

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I can't. So let's go this direction. Let's try that. All right, so Chuck Colson was instrumental in the

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Watergate scandal and in the ensuing coverup of it. And he became a

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Christian after he went to federal prison for his participation in the Watergate scandal. And that's, so here he's going to talk about something.

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Now, can we trust the eyewitness accounts of Jesus's resurrection? So here's what

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Chuck Colson wrote years ago. I want to wish you and your families and your friends a holy, blessed

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Easter. We celebrate because we as Christians know that our Lord is risen from the dead. And in his resurrection is our hope of everlasting life with God.

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Indeed, as Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, the historical fact of Christ's resurrection is the only basis of our hope.

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Without the resurrection, our faith is futile. It is doo -doo. This is why critics of Christianity often try to explain away the empty tomb.

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They claim that the disciples lied, that they stole

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Jesus's body themselves and conspired together to pretend that he had risen.

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The apostles then managed somehow to recruit more than 500 other people to lie for them as well, and to say they saw

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Jesus after he rose from the dead. But just how plausible is this theory?

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To answer that question, fast forward nearly 2 ,000 years to an event I happen to know a lot about,

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Watergate. You see, before all the facts about Watergate were known to the public in March of 1973, it was becoming clear to Nixon's closest aides that someone had tried to cover up the

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Watergate break -in. There were no more than a dozen of us.

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Could we maintain a cover -up to save the president? Consider that we were political zealots.

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We enjoyed enormous political power and prestige. With all that at stake, you'd expect us to be capable of maintaining a lie to protect the president, but we couldn't do it.

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The first to crack was John Dean. First, he told the president everything, and then just two weeks later, he went to the prosecutors and offered to testify against the president.

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His reason, as he candidly admits in his memoirs, was to save his own skin.

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After that, everyone started scrambling to protect himself. What we know today as the great

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Watergate cover -up lasted only three weeks. Some of the most powerful politicians in the world, and we couldn't keep a lie for more than three weeks.

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So back to the question of the historicity of Christ's resurrection. Can anyone believe that for 50 years, that Jesus' disciples were willing to be ostracized, beaten, persecuted, and all but one of them suffer a martyr's death without ever renouncing their conviction that they had seen

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Jesus bodily resurrected? Does anyone really think the disciples could have maintained a lie all that time under that kind of pressure?

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No, someone would have cracked, just as we did so easily in Watergate.

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Someone would have acted as John Dean and did and turned state's evidence. There would have been some kind of smoking gun or a deathbed confession.

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So why didn't they crack? Because they had come face to face with the living

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God. They could not deny what they had seen. The fact is that people will give their lives for what they believe is true, but they will never give their lives for what they know is a lie.

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The Watergate cover -up proves that 12 powerful men in modern America couldn't keep a lie, and that 12 powerless men 2 ,000 years ago couldn't have been telling anything but the truth.

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Again, may you and yours have a blessed Easter. Firm in your faith that the

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Lord is risen. He is risen indeed. Hallelujah. Great perspective, right?

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So Paul, an eyewitness of the resurrection himself, who's martyred for his Christian faith, never denies

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Christ's resurrection. Neither does Peter, neither any of Jesus' disciples, and the only explanation that makes any sense is the reason why they didn't deny it is because they were truly eyewitnesses of Christ's resurrection.

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So if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is in vain and your faith is doo -doo.

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We are even found to be misrepresenting God because we have testified about God that he raised

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Christ, whom he did not raise, if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then not even

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Christ has been raised, and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins, and then those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.

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If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people to be most pitied.

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Now, a little bit of a note here. In apologetic circles, this stands out because Christianity is the only religion on earth that can be proven false.

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You've heard me talk about the Mormons before and how they claim, if you wanna know if the Book of Mormon's true, you ask

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God to give you a burning in your bosom and he gives you a feeling, and that's the proof that it's true.

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You can't disprove the Book of Mormon to anybody who's trusting in a feeling or an experience.

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Okay, objective evidence doesn't stand, but here, Christianity basically says this. Find the bones of Christ and Christianity is done.

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The end. It's over. If Christ has not been raised, then this whole thing is just a myth, and I got better things to do on a

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Sunday than be here telling you about Jesus, right? I might have to keep working on my golf game or something.

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But all that being said, you'll know, you can disprove Christianity. All you gotta do is find the bones of Christ.

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That's it. It's that simple. Good luck, right? You won't find them because they ain't there.

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So Paul continues. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.

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For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead.

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Note, Jesus is the second Adam, or the new Adam. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.

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But each in his own order. Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ.

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Then comes the end when he delivers the kingdom to God, the Father, after destroying every rule and every authority and power.

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For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. And the last enemy to be destroyed is death.

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For God has put all things in subjection under his feet. But when it says all things are put in subjection, it is plain that he is expected, he is expected who put all things in subjection under him.

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When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also be subjected to him who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may be all in all.

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Otherwise, what do people mean by being baptized on behalf of the dead if the dead are not raised at all?

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Why are people baptized on their behalf? Why are we in danger every hour?

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I protest, brothers, by my pride in you which I have in Christ Jesus our

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Lord. I die every day. What do I gain if, humanly speaking, I fought with beasts at Ephesus if the dead are not raised?

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Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die. That's right, this is the ancient world's version of YOLO.

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If Christ hasn't been raised from the dead, YOLO, you only live once. Go get your bucket list filled up, right?

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So do not be deceived. Bad company ruins good morals. Wake up from your drunken stupor, as is right, and do not go on sinning, for some have no knowledge of God.

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I say this to your shame. But someone will ask, well, how are the dead raised?

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That's a pretty good question. Okay, I've done enough funerals here, seen enough corpses that, yeah, this is a legit question.

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So with what kind of body do they come? You foolish person. What you sow does not come to life unless it dies.

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What you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.

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But God gives it a body as he has chosen and to each kind of seed its own body.

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For not all flesh is the same. There is one kind for humans, another for animals, another for birds, and another for fish.

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If you don't believe me, go to your butcher store and try the different meats. There are heavenly bodies, there are earthly bodies.

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But the glory of the heavenly is of one kind, the glory of the earthly is of another. There is the glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars.

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For star differs from star in glory. So it is with the resurrection of the dead.

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What is sown is perishable. What is raised is imperishable.

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Good way to think about it, okay, is that when we bury our dead, we put them into coffins, and the coffins then are, just think of them as seeds.

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We got a bunch of seeds sitting out in the Kongsvinger Cemetery, and someday Christ is gonna cause those seeds to grow.

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And what comes out of those graves is going to be way different than what went in, right?

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It is sown in dishonor. It is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness.

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It is raised in power. It is sown a natural body. It is raised a spiritual body.

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And boy, that doesn't mean that we don't have flesh and blood, we do. It's just, it's described as a spiritual body, and if you wanna know what that looks like, look at the resurrected

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Christ, right? If there is a natural body, and there is, there is also a spiritual body.

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Thus, it is written, the first man, Adam, became a living being. The last Adam became a life -giving spirit, that's

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Christ. But it is not the spiritual that is first, it is the natural, and then the spiritual.

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The first man was from the earth, a man of dust. The second man is from heaven.

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As was the man of dust, so also are those who are of the dust. And as is the man of heaven, so also are those who are of heaven.

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Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.

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I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the perishable.

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Behold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet.

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For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed.

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For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality.

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When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory.

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O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.

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But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the

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Lord, knowing that in the Lord, your labor is not in vain. Note then, the resurrection makes it clear, no matter how mundane your work is and how meaningless it might seem, your labor in the

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Lord is not in vain because you're gonna get raised from the dead and Christ's gonna reward it all. And that's as far as we can go today because I have to head off to Emmanuel.