Matthew 28:1–10

0:00 Well, I'm sure you've noticed, as happens every year about this time, a proliferation of eggs and bunnies. They're everywhere. Everywhere you look, in Walmart, in Kroger, doesn't matter what store you go into, you're going to see eggs and bunnies. They're always going to be surrounded by flowers and grass. Why? Well, the world around you just says, well, it's kind of Easter time, and that means that we can sell more eggs and more bunnies of various shapes and materials than we're normally able to sell, and so we're going to give you all the eggs and bunnies that you can possibly handle. It's going to be like the Lord talking about the the doves in the Old Testament. You're going to have so much fill of eggs and bunnies that they're going to be coming out your nose. That's what I feel every year at this time, but why is that really? You ever stop to think about it? Easter is about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and yet the symbols of Easter inexplicably have become eggs and bunnies.

0:57 Why is that? Well, if you trace it down through history, what you find out is that eggs and bunnies, grass and flowers, pastel colors and all the rest are all in their own way symbols of new life. And that's something that resonates with all of us as human beings. We all are constantly on a quest for newness. Nobody likes the idea of getting old physically or getting old emotionally. Nobody likes the idea of having an old car or an old phone. We want new stuff.

1:29 And when we get new stuff, we often feel like a new person. The changing of the seasons causes us to feel new. When the weather changes from winter to spring or from the hot, you know, inferno of summer here in Kentucky to the fall. And you feel that first crisp breeze blow through, wafting the, you know, aroma of pumpkin spice across your nose. You feel like a new person. It's time to pull out the sweaters, because it's sweater season, and everything is new. But if you get right down to it, we know that most of that stuff is, it's just a metaphor, right?

2:03 There's really nothing new. Everything is actually just constantly getting older. Even pumpkin spice lattes get old after a while, by the time you make it to about Halloween. It's all just getting older, and yet we love these metaphors of new life. And there's really no such thing in this world and in this life that we live as newness. Not really, right? Or is there? Well, what I want to try to convince you of today is that new life, at least for Christians, is not just a metaphor.

2:40 For Christians, the idea of new life is real. And it comes from Jesus, the resurrected one. If you're new to Third Avenue, you should know that most of the time what we do here in our church services is step through books. So we'll pick a book of the Bible and we'll just make our way through it from start to finish. We've actually been in a series for the last six weeks or so on Nehemiah. But today, as pretty much the whole world around us is focused on symbols of new life, I want us to turn for a little bit to the source and reality of it all, the resurrection of Jesus.

3:11 And so we're going to turn to Matthew chapter 28, which is the story of the empty tomb. Take a Bible if you have one, turn over to Matthew chapter 28, that's where we're going to spend the entirety of our time this morning. If you want to use one of these red pew Bibles in front of you, you can find those scattered out throughout the room. If you turn over in those red pew Bibles to page 835, you're going to find there a big number 28, that's Matthew chapter 28. And we're going to be in the first 15 of what we call verses. So if you look down into those paragraphs, you'll see little numbers, those are verses.

3:44 And if you hear me say something like, look down at verse 6 or whatever, you can look inside chapter 28 down to verse 6. You'll be able to find it and follow along. Let's read what Matthew writes about the resurrection of Jesus. Matthew chapter 28, I'm going to start reading in verse 1. Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning in his clothing, white as snow.

4:17 And for fear of him, the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead. And behold, he is going before you to Galilee. There you will see him. See, I have told you. So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and ran to tell his disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and said, Greetings.

4:49 And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshipped him. Then Jesus said to them, Do not be afraid. Go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me. While they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers and said, Tell the people, his disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep. And if this comes to the governor's ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.

5:20 So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story has been spread among the Jews to this day. If you've been here for very long, you know that one of the things I like to do is give you a main idea for what we're going to be talking about for the morning. It's sort of what does the text say? What's the main idea that this text is trying to get across to us? And then how are we supposed to apply that in our lives? Well, the main idea for this morning's sermon actually comes from a historian, a guy back in the middle of the 20th century named Yaroslav Pelikan.

5:52 He was a historian at Yale University. And on his deathbed, one of his students asked him, Yaroslav, you're on your deathbed. You are at the threshold of death. What are your thoughts at this moment as you stare into the abyss? And through a raspy voice, Pelican said, If Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if he is not, nothing else matters.

6:24 I think that's true. And I think that's the question. I think that's the dilemma that Matthew pushes on us here at the beginning of Matthew chapter 28. What he wants you to understand as a reader of his book is that Jesus Christ is alive. And then he asks the question, all right, what are you going to do with that now? What are you going to do with that now? It's a good question because I think it's easy to sentimentalize Jesus.

6:57 It's easy to religify Jesus, to say he's a nice idea to celebrate a couple of times a year or a nice thing for your children to believe in, at least while they're young. But friend, you need to understand that when we talk about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, this is not just a story to Christians. This is not just a nice occasion for us to decorate some eggs and put on pastel colors when we go to church. It's the truth. And if that's the case, then it's got massive ramifications for your life, whether you've ever thought about those or not.

7:33 I mean, you do realize what the resurrection of Jesus means if it actually happened, right? You do realize what it means for you. You've got this guy from 2,000 years ago who walked around Jerusalem and Galilee and Judea and all the rest and made these crazy claims. He claimed to be the son of God. He claimed to be the king of the universe. He claimed to be the one who has authority, like no one else, either to condemn you to hell or to welcome you into his kingdom forever.

8:05 He claimed that. He was a guy who was rejected for those claims and ultimately crucified by the powers of the day for saying those very things. and yet after all was said and done whom God looked at laying in the tomb and said no the powers that be are wrong and everything that Jesus said about himself is true and he raised him from the dead he is the father said what he claims to be which means that if that really happened and if Jesus really did get up from the dead then you have to reckon with him you can't ignore him you can't just push him off to the side you can't escape him you can't patronize him and say well I think Jesus was a really good guy maybe even a really good teacher but all that other stuff is just bunk you can't do that with him you can't put him in the in the cute box along with the eggs and the bunnies you have to deal with him face to face and here's the thing once you do

9:08 once you do reckon with him and deal with him and throw your life on him and accept him for who he is, then you realize the world-transforming significance of what happened that Sunday morning. This guy really is the son of God. He really did defeat death and hell like no one in all of history. He really did get up from the dead, and he really is right now alive and able to forgive sins and rescue and wipe clean and save. It's true. Friends, the implications of that are absolutely enormous, and I want to talk with you today about three of those implications that I think, show up in this story in Matthew 28.

9:45 Here they are. Number one, darkness is shattered. Gloriously, darkness is shattered. Number two, Jesus is vindicated. Jesus is vindicated. And number three, we are confronted. Let's start looking at the story. Number one, darkness is shattered. I think as you start reading this text, that's the first thing that kind of comes shining through it. But the only way you see that, really, is by feeling just how thick and heavy the darkness and hopelessness would have been that fell over Jesus' disciples on the day when he died on the cross, on Friday.

10:19 And the story of the resurrection really begins back up in 2750. We read all this a little bit earlier on in the service when Jesus finally dies. He spent hours on the cross, six hours, we're told, in another place of Scripture. And he finally cries out, Father, into your hands I commit my spirit. and then he slumps unconscious on the cross and stops breathing. Now, maybe if you were a particularly hopeful person at that time, maybe there would have been some glimmer of hope in you as you watched him expire, as you watched his head sag, and he died. I mean, you'd seen some pretty extraordinary things from this man.

10:52 You'd seen some pretty extraordinary things on this day. An earthquake, the darkness, the curtain in the temple ripping, the tombs even in the city cracking open. Maybe there was some little bit of hope. But then you wait, and you stare at him, and you think maybe the angels are going to come, maybe something's going to happen here, and you wait, and you wait, and you wait, and nothing happens. His breath goes out, and he just dies, and then he just hangs there.

11:33 And slowly as the hours passed by, the questions would start to come in. Reality and practicalities would start to intrude on your mind. What do we do now? What do we do with the body of our king, this guy that we thought was our master? What do we do? What does Mary do? What do the disciples do? Do we just let the Romans take him and throw him in a public grave on the outside of the city along with the two thieves on either side of him? reality just kind of crushes in. And so in the text we read a little earlier, one man, Joseph of Arimathea, decides to sort of take the bull by the horns. He steps forward and give Jesus a tomb that he had had dug for himself. So they gather the body up and a group of women walk behind as the body's being carried to the tomb. It was their job to prepare the body. They were supposed to wrap the body in the clothes that it was going to be wrapped in to be placed in the tomb and, you know push the spices all around the body they were supposed to do that but they don't have time at this point the sabbath is is coming and you're not supposed to prepare a body on the sabbath and

12:37 so what they're going to do is just go to the tomb and do what little they're able to in the fading light of the day before the sabbath comes when the sun goes down and then their plan was to return once the sabbath was over to finish the job and so there they go off off to the tomb a little bit of a walk through the city and then out one of the northern gates of the city to this tomb that Joseph of Arimathea had dug out for himself but had now donated to Jesus. You ever seen anybody carry a dead body? You ever been in a place where someone has died maybe in a house and the EMT has to come and move that body off a couch or off a bed and into a tarp as they take the body out to the ambulance. You ever seen that? It's not a pretty sight.

13:25 Bodies are heavy, that's why they call them dead weight. They don't help you, they don't remain rigid as you're trying to carry them. They sort of slump and they fall and you're tempted all the time and trying not to drop it. That's what it would have been like as Joseph and his servants carried the body of Jesus with no wrappings yet from the cross to the tomb. These women trudging along behind a dead body with these men in front of them struggling to keep this corpse from falling out of their arms and onto the ground.

13:57 And what are they supposed to think at that point? You're the Christ? The son of the living God? Jesus said, you told us that you are the way and the truth and the life and yet you're dead. What about that? Saturday must have been the saddest day in history. There's nothing about Saturday. When I imagine it, it's a dark, rainy day.

14:30 Hope crushed. Icy fingers of despair curling around their hearts. The Bible tells us that the disciples ran off. Some of them were in John's house in the city. Others of them were out in Bethany at Mary and Martha's house. But they broke up and went to their places and they were hiding. Because they knew that one of the things the Romans always did when they took out a false Messiah was that they also took out the false Messiah's followers. They spent that day in fear and despair. I mean, they'd given their whole lives to this man, and yet now he was dead at the hand of the Romans.

15:03 Their great hope was that this Jesus was going to be the Christ, the Son of the living God, who was going to bring the kingdom of heaven to bear even against the Romans. But Romans crushed it like a bug. It must have been the saddest day in history. And then Sunday came. no better really not when they woke up they didn't know anything different it was just a it was just a sunday it was just a deep into the night apparently deep into the morning on the day after the sabbath so just like they had intended to the women get up before the sun comes up toward the dawn matthew says in verse one there and they they head out toward the tomb it's dark outside probably cold if you look up the temperature of jerusalem at this time of year early in the morning. It's in the 40s.

15:55 And off they go, out the northern gate of the city, again, going to rub spices into the dead skin of a corpse to try to keep it from deposing in under a week. They're going to honor him. Which in their minds was the last and greatest thing they could do at this point. They wanted to worship him. They wanted to fall at his feet and proclaim him king and yet all they can do is give him a proper burial. And then they get there and they're faced with something wholly unexpected. Look at what he says. Behold there was a great earthquake. This is probably a flashback. Two to four is a flashback. Behold there was a great earthquake for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow so for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men and then you snap back to the present but the angel now says to the women

16:56 don't be afraid for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified so the women the women arrive and they they see all of this that has happened much to their amazement the stone in front of the tomb which they themselves would never have been able to to roll away has been rolled away from the front of the tomb, and they naturally start to wonder what happened. What's going on here? Luke tells us that they actually look into the tomb, and they see that Jesus' body isn't there before they ever notice any angel sitting there. Apparently, this angel can be visible when he wants to be, and he's not visible at other times. Peter and John get there, and they don't see him, but then the women get there, and they do see him. Apparently, he can kind of flicker in and out of visibility. You can imagine the emotions as they see this scene. The stone is rolled away. The soldiers are gone. The seal is broken. They look into the tomb. There's no Jesus, right? And you can imagine the emotions. They're sad, but now that sadness at the loss of their Lord is compounded with bewilderment and fear and confusion. Where's the body gone? And grave robbing wasn't an uncommon

18:02 thing in the first century. Things were often buried with the dead that were valuable to them, and so people would often rob graves. And that's their first thought. Maybe the body's been stolen or maybe this is part of the Romans crushing this little messianic effort and they've taken the body. But then they see the angel and the angel speaks to them and shatters the darkness with what must be the greatest declaration that has ever come from the lips of a created being. Don't be afraid. I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here for he is risen.

18:36 Come see the place where he used to lay. It's incredible. I mean, Peter tells us that the angels long to look into the significance of salvation. So this angel, he probably doesn't even have a good sense of the full implications of what he's saying. I mean, he says in Luke, why do you seek the living among the dead? He's not here, but he's risen, which is a little bit funny because it's almost like the angel is going, wait, you're coming to find the source of all life in the universe. You're coming to find the Son of God in a graveyard?

19:09 What are you doing? This is not where the Son of God is. He just seems a little bit bewildered. This angel, by the way, has always just been fascinating to me. Now, I want you to look at some of the details of what he does here. Because you get a pretty good picture of this angel in a couple of different places in the Scriptures. But look what he does here in Matthew. So he shows up, first of all, in verse 2. And he terrifies the Roman soldiers half to death. Then he single-handedly rolls away this huge stone and then he sits on it.

19:43 He climbs up on the stone and he sits down on it. I mean, you can just kind of see in there, he's just like picking his teeth, like I never care in the world. And then in verse six, look what he does in verse six. He follows up this world-shattering declaration of he is risen with that little barb at the end of it, just like he told you he was gonna do. It's just got this nasty, I told you so, energy in it, doesn't it? And then look at verse 7.

20:16 I love how at the end of all, he's just made the most important declaration in the history of the world. So he says it in verse 7. There you will see him. And then he ends it with this, see, I've told you. It's almost like, okay, there you go. I did it. I did my job. I mean, this guy just has this sort of nonchalant, big whoop attitude through this whole thing, which has led me to believe that he is probably a teenager angel. Now, lest you think I'm making this up entirely, just notice that if you look at Mark, the women who see this guy describe him as a young man.

21:02 Case closed. Look, that's funny and all, but really, what's going on? I mean, why do you have this little attitude of this angel going on as if this is not a very big deal? I mean, just sitting on the, I mean, you would expect the angel who's declaring the resurrection of Jesus to be standing at attention next to the open tomb, right? This is where the king used to lay. He's up there picking his teeth. Why does he do that? Why does he end his speech to them, the greatest words that have ever been said, With, I told you so.

21:33 There, I've done what I came to do. Why does he do that? There's a definite sense of unbotheredness about this angel, isn't there? He's just unbothered. Which is, I think, wonderfully comforting. Because every other person involved in this story on Sunday morning is in total chaos. The priests are in chaos. the Romans are in chaos, the disciples are in chaos, hell itself is in chaos, but heaven has a calm command over the whole thing. He rolls the stone away and probably doesn't sit on it picking his teeth. He probably sits there as if it's a throne. He's usurped death's throne. He delivers his message to the women and says, there, I've done what I came to do. I was commanded to come and say these words and I have done it. He's just a little bit surprised that they're surprised that Jesus has risen from the dead. And why is he surprised that they're surprised? Because he's

22:34 totally unsurprised himself that the Son of God is alive. Totally unsurprised. This was not a new thought to him. What other ends could this whole thing have possibly had? Why wouldn't the Son of God be alive? How could he be anything other than alive? It's kind of wonderful, isn't it? It's such a contrast to our panic, isn't it? Something goes out of the ordinary. Something goes wrong.

23:05 Even a day like this where the routine is thrown off a little bit and we feel this rising sense of panic to start to worry that things are out of control. We run around like our hair is on fire trying to help make sure God's purpose has come to pass. But friend, you and I need to understand that in heaven there is total calm serenity, total confidence that God is going to carry out his purposes to the end. That is a good thing for us to remember when we start to feel frantic.

23:38 Well, in verse 8, you can see what happens. The sadness, the confusion, the fear, all of it gives way to joy and clarity and confidence. So they run off to tell the disciples. And then Matthew records there in verse 9 that for the first time they encounter Jesus himself, the risen Jesus from the dead, and look what he says. You almost just see Jesus beaming as he meets them on the road, and he says, greetings. You know, if you look at that word in the Greek, it can seem just, it actually functioned a lot of times just like, howdy, you know, what's up? And in fact, that's what it was. It was a common greeting for people to use all the time in the Greek world, but the word means more when you scratch underneath the surface. So in one way it can mean be well or in another way it can even mean may you rejoice. And it's hard to think that that word doesn't have that full meaning here on Jesus's lips. May you rejoice because I am here. And look at their

24:39 response. They fall to their faces and worship him. Why? Why do they worship him? Why are they so filled with joy and peace and excitement? Well, it's because all of a sudden the darkness of the past three days is shattered. It hasn't entirely dawned on them what the implications of this are, but the darkness is gone. And friends, the darkness that's been shattered, even if they don't quite understand it yet, is not just emotional darkness. It's not just sadness. It's spiritual darkness that's been shattered. The darkness and curse of sin and judgment, that's what's been broken.

25:15 See, for all of human history, death had, since the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve sinned, death had this iron grip on humanity. You remember Genesis 5, when we studied that a few months ago? That chapter in the Bible with this long genealogy, and each entry of it ends with, and he died, and he died. And it's just a hellish drumbeat from the grave as man after man after man dies and dies and dies and dies. But now, finally, that iron grip slips.

25:48 And there's one person who doesn't just escape death, like somebody slipping out the back way through the fire, but decisively defeats it. Because it has no lasting claim on him. That's why death couldn't hold Jesus. That's why it has no claim on him. Death is a penalty for sin. And when Jesus was hanging on the cross and death struck, Death exacted its fury against every splinter of sin and rebellion that fell on his shoulders. Yours, mine, everyone's who would ever believe in him.

26:19 It exacted its fury against every splinter of it. And when it was all burned up, death found that there was an infinity of righteousness left. And so Jesus rose from the dead. Look, friend, that darkness that got shattered on that day, that darkness is your greatest problem. It's not just a darkness of sadness. It's not just a darkness of feeling down and feeling depressed. It's a darkness of sin and the sword of judgment that hangs over you.

26:55 Your greatest need this morning is for that darkness to shatter in your life too. For the threat of sin and wrath and death, that your sin deserves to be dissipated and wiped out by the death of Jesus. I hope that happens for you. I hope that happens for you today, if it hasn't already. It is not a hard, it's the greatest paradox in the universe, because we're talking about the greatest things imaginable. And yet they are so easy to grasp.

27:28 So easy to grasp. There's no runes that you have to put together. There's no quest that you have to undertake. There's no nothing. It's just come to the king in faith and say, Jesus, I need you to save me because I know I can't save myself. And all the greatest gifts and blessings and treasures of eternity are yours. That's what it means that the darkness is shattered. Here's number two. Jesus is vindicated. So look in verse 6 at what the angel says there.

27:59 So the women are astonished by all of this, but the question is really, should they have been astonished by it? And that's part of the question there. That's why he's got this little, I told you so, Barb, of, you know, he's risen just as he said he would, right? What's he talking about there? Well, he's talking about predictions that Jesus made of his death and of his resurrection throughout the whole of his life. At least three times after Peter's confession, after the transfiguration, and just before coming to Jerusalem, Jesus told them that he was going to be handed over and crucified, and then three days later, he was going to rise again.

28:32 He even used the analogy of Jonah in the Old Testament and said, just like Jonah was in the belly of the whale three days, so the Son of Man is going to be in the belly of the earth three days, and then I'm going to come out. And they all just went, ha, ha, ha, ha, you know, now you won't. Friends, if we've seen anything, it is that from start to finish, Jesus is in perfect control of all of this. He was not just caught up in events or revolutionary fervor that got out of hand. He was not a victim of circumstance. He knew what he had come to do.

29:04 He said it in John chapter 10. I lay down my life. I do this so that I may take it up again. And then just in case you didn't get it the first time, he goes on and says, No one takes it from me. I lay it down of my own accord. I have authority to do that, and I have authority to take it up again. Crazy claims. And yet the resurrection was the vindication of all of them. But, you know, I think we've got to face the fact that the resurrection was only a vindication of Jesus.

29:41 It was only a proving of him to be right if it actually happened. It's only a vindication of him if it actually happened. So the great question of all of history becomes, okay, did it happen? I mean, the yes, no answer to that question is so profound. And you can understand why Christians say that this is the keystone of history. You can see why we make such a big deal of this. The resurrection and whether it happened in history is the hinge on which all Christianity turns.

30:13 It's the foundation on which everything rests. It's the keystone that holds the whole arch together. Whatever metaphor you want to use, the resurrection is at the center of it. which means, crucially, that when Christians say Jesus rose from the dead, we are making, listen to me carefully, we are making a historical claim, not a religious one. We're making a historical claim, not a religious one. Yeah, there are religious implications of it, but none of those, not one of them, is valid.

30:45 If Jesus did not really, truly, historically come back to life just as surely and really as George Washington was the first president of the United States. So when we say a little bit earlier in the service, he is risen, he is risen indeed. When we do all of that stuff, that's the level you need to put those declarations on. Not on the level of this is some nice religious liturgy. You need to know that we understand that to be true in the same way as when we say Julius Caesar existed. George Washington was the first president of the United States.

31:19 See, the early Christians weren't interested in creating a nice little religious story that would encourage people. They weren't into just creating a nice little picture to help people live better lives or even provide a metaphor somehow of hope blooming out of despair. All of that was beside the point. What they wanted the world to know, the implications and encouragements would come later, but what they wanted the world to know is this guy got up from the grave. He got up, he was dead, and now he's not. And they understood that if that's not true, then everything is worthless.

31:55 It's like Paul said in one of his letters. If Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and Christian, your faith is in vain. This never made sense to me. Never made sense to me. When some people who call themselves Christians insist on doing Christian stuff, and yet when you question them about the resurrection, they say, well, I don't know if it happened or not, and it doesn't really matter because my faith means too much to me. my answer is what faith you don't have anything to put your faith in just a corpse christianity doesn't work if jesus didn't get up bodily so that's the question do you think it happened or not that's the whole that's the whole universe right there folks do you think it happened or not and here's the fundamental truth about christians we do think it happened we do think it happen. In fact, we don't think there's anything else that could possibly explain what happened on that Sunday morning. Because something obviously happened, right? I mean, we went from

32:56 fearful, scared disciples hiding in these two homes, afraid of the Romans killing them, to like world-shattering evangelists going around saying, until the moment of their death, this guy really did get up from the grave. Something happened to those guys. And the question is, what? What happened? Well, I mean, it was either that Jesus really did get up from the grave or something else. People through history have tried to come up with what that something else might be.

33:31 I mean, you've got to say something, right? Sunday happened. The change in the disciples happened. The explosion of the Christian gospel around the world happened. So what launched it? It was either the resurrection of Jesus or something else. And you've got to fill in that blank. The one thing you can't do with any shred of intellectual honesty anyway is say that, well, nothing happened. No, something happened. So what was it? Well, through the centuries, people have tried to come up with all kinds of things. I mean, maybe people have said the women just went to the wrong tomb.

34:03 They just messed it up in the darkness and got everybody excited over a mistake. Okay, maybe, but if that's the case, then why, once this story of a resurrected Jesus started flying all over town, why didn't the authorities just produce a corpse from the right tomb? And they knew where it was. They had a Roman guard placed on it. It was sealed. Just pull out the body, for crying out loud, and put an end to it. They never did that. Okay, maybe Jesus didn't really die.

34:34 Some people have said he only almost died. There's even one person who theorizes that it was Jesus' plan all along to drug himself with some fortified wine. So that he would almost die on the cross and then they could clean him up and he could come out and pretend to be resurrected. And it was the spear in the side that messed up the plan. Well, yeah, that would do it, wouldn't it? But maybe the spear didn't kill him. Maybe he just almost died. But friends, that's absurd.

35:05 I mean, you start to think about it. You've got Jesus somehow managing to survive the crucifixion and the spear. He's wounded. He's crucified. He's spear-stabbed. Now he's been in a tomb for 48 hours, dehydrated and starving, and he stumbles into the presence of his disciples like that and convinces them that he is the conqueror of death. It's absurd. They would not go out and preach about him. They would take him to a doctor. Okay, well, maybe the disciples stole the body and then claimed that Jesus was raised from the dead.

35:40 Maybe this was the most successful hoax in the history of the world. But no, do you know what happened to these guys? Do you know what happened to them? I mean, what would they have been hoping for anyway? What they would have been hoping for was to become wealthy and to become powerful and to become the leaders of a worldwide church. That's what they wanted. Do you know what ended up happening to them? Every one of them was killed in the most gruesome ways imaginable. friends nobody dies for a hoax that you know is not true if you're just trying to pull one over on the world and get rich and powerful and all the rest of it you don't you don't hang on to that when the jig is up and the axe is about to fall or the nails are about to be piercing your wrists or they're about to drop you in the boiling oil or throw you off the top of the temple you don't keep just saying i tell you the man is alive no as soon as they pick you up you go hold up it's all fake it's all fake plan didn't work

36:40 and those other guys the other 11 the other 500 may hang on to the hoax I'm not going to do it you're not throwing me in that boiling oil you don't die for a hoax the only way you stick by the story under those circumstances is if you really believe it's true okay maybe the disciples were the victims of mass hallucination well no i mean given how many different groups of people reported seeing jesus given how many different times how many different places over how many different weeks this notion of a kind of sustained contagious mass hallucination is just vanishingly unlikely and besides the whole idea of mass hallucination is a little bit absurd in itself hallucinations are internal to the mind they are not contagious like a virus okay well maybe not that maybe it wasn't hallucination in the technical sense maybe they were just overwhelmed maybe they were just overwhelmed by hope maybe they had a dream maybe

37:42 they had a vision a mystical experience maybe they had even a profound heavenly feeling of forgiveness as they realized that Jesus went back to heaven. But maybe it wasn't this just grossly literal idea that Jesus actually got up from the grave. Maybe they came up with a metaphor for new life, a new feeling of wholeness before God. Well, no, that doesn't work either. The accounts of the resurrection from the eyewitnesses don't have the character of a metaphor. They have the character of eyewitness testimony to physical events that physically happened in history.

38:20 And it would take a great deal of you blurring your eyes as you read those stories to get past it. Put your fingers in the nail holes and your hand in the hole in my side is not a beautiful spiritual metaphor. It's disgusting, but it's real. Okay, well maybe they were just all victims of a really severe case of wishful thinking maybe they just wanted this so badly that they fooled themselves into believing it again no no i mean you read the accounts of the eyewitness testimonies these people were not primed and hoping to believe that jesus rose from the dead one of the main tensions of the whole story is that again and again and again they disbelieve the accounts of the resurrection before they believe them, and they even have to get rebuked by the resurrected Jesus for not believing. They were not primed to believe. They were not hoping and searching for

39:25 something to believe in. The whole thing just exploded into their consciousness, and you can feel it in the story. We don't know what to do with this, and Jesus has to teach them over 50 days how to deal with it. I mean, from there, that's several different theories, and from there you get gone into the even more absurd. Look, the bottom line is that something happened on that Sunday morning. There is simply no denying that. And now my question to you is, what was it? What was it that happened? What do you think happened? Frank, give it an answer. Don't just let it sit there like an orphaned child. Give it an answer. I think intellectual honesty just It demands that you answer that question.

40:11 What do you think happened? And then really think about it. Because I think once you start to really chase it down, once you start to ask the questions and lodge the objections and see how each separate explanation holds up, you're going to find that the only one that fits all the evidence, the only one that actually ends up making sense and not sounding absurd, is that Jesus really did truly bodily historically rise from the dead. and once you've got that then what else do you need what else do you need to say yeah I'm throwing my lot in with him the one guy who's ever conquered death yep I'm gonna listen to him and I'm throwing my life on him and that's the logic of the whole thing right I mean you know that this is how Jesus talks about his resurrection throughout throughout all of the gospels it has a certain logic to it And the logic is this, he says to his disciples absurd things like, I am the son of God.

41:15 And their question, sometimes spoken and sometimes not spoken, is how do we know? And he says, watch this. That's the logic of it. And the greatest of those moments is when he says, I am the son of God. And the way you're going to know that is that on the third day, after I'm crucified, I'm going to get up from the dead. Friend, what else do you need? I mean, maybe you got this kind of maybe slightly exciting thing going on in your soul today.

41:48 And you're like, wow, I really kind of do believe that Jesus got it from the dead. I've had this sort of nagging feeling about it for a time. But, man, thinking about it really hard today, I really believe Jesus got it from the dead. You know what the next step is? Listen to him. Believe what he says. Say, Jesus, you're the only guy that's ever gotten up from the dead, and it just so happens you claimed that you were the son of God. I think I'm going to believe that now. That's how simple it is to be a Christian. Believe that Jesus is who he says he is, and believe that he can do what he says he can do, which is save you from your sins.

42:24 Jesus is totally vindicated. And finally, number three, we are confronted. we are confronted, just like everybody who was involved in this story, when you come face to face with the claim that Jesus was resurrected from the dead, you're confronted with the necessity of making a decision. Now you can see this over and over again in the story. I mean, the women who showed up to the tomb first, they have to make a decision. I mean, they could have just walked away, you know, okay, you know, never mind.

42:56 We're not gonna get into that. Could have walked away, gone home, not given it a second thought, but they didn't. It took them a little bit of time, but they believed. Other Gospels show us how first the 11 apostles and then Peter himself are all confronted with the reality that Jesus is risen from the dead and a decision is demanded of them. And you get so many different reactions. The women believe almost immediately. The 11 reject it at first and then believe. Peter's got to go check it out for himself.

43:27 Thomas swears up and down. He's never going to believe unless he puts his fingers in the nail holes in the man's hands. And lo and behold, Jesus shows up and says, okay, go for it. That's important for a couple of reasons. The multiplicity of responses. It's important. For one, it proves that these people were not credulous suckers. They just weren't. And that's how some people who reject the resurrection try to explain the apostles' conviction that it happened.

44:00 They were just grasping at any shred of reason to start declaring that Jesus was risen. But it's not true. They weren't grasping at anything. They were trying to push away every shred of reason that they could get their hands on at first. And finally, it was just undeniable. Jesus is risen from the dead. I think it's also important because it shows us how recognition of who Jesus is dawns in the heart. It shows us a little bit of how faith is born. Now, is faith born in a moment? Yes. Does regeneration happen in a moment?

44:32 Yes. But to us, it can sometimes seem like struggling forward step by step in the dark. It can seem like this question in my mind, and I've got to get an answer to it, and now that question, and now that question. And finally, hope dawns like the sun, not like an explosion. So look, if you're here and you're not a Christian, we're not asking you to check your brain at the door. We're not asking you to believe in something ridiculous. That's not what the disciples did. It's not what anybody in this room who's a Christian did.

45:05 And it's not what we're asking you to do. What we're asking you to do is examine Jesus and come to the conclusion, like the disciples, like us, that he really is who he said he is. You're confronted today with a decision, whether you intended to be or not. You've heard these words. You're still here. You're still hearing them. And therefore, you've got a decision to make. Do you think this really happened? I want you to look at one more detail in it. In verses 11 through 15, these soldiers, they had a choice to make too.

45:41 I mean, think about it. These guys knew. They knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that something supernatural had happened. They knew it. They saw it. They saw the angel. They got knocked back on their faces. They were knocked back on their backs. They saw the stone get rolled away. They saw the light and the white garments, and they felt the earthquake underneath their feet. They knew that this was not a normal occurrence. Something supernatural happened. But what did they decide to do instead? Lie for money.

46:14 And it's just a preposterous story that they come up with anyway, right? Okay, okay, okay, here's what we're going to do. We're going to pay you a bunch of money and you're going to go around and you're going to tell everybody that you fell asleep on the job and the disciples came and stole his body away while you were asleep. It's just preposterous for a lot of reasons. Number one, to fall asleep on the job as a Roman soldier is a capital offense. You find yourself getting executed on a cross for that yourself. That's one thing. Second, Mr. Soldier, under cross-examination, if you all were asleep, how do you know it was the disciples stealing the body away? And if you were awake, why didn't you raise an alarm or something?

47:04 It's just a preposterous story. Why did they embrace that story? Why were they willing to put their own lives on the line for that story? Because they did not want to believe in Jesus. They didn't want to. And so they embraced an absurd story. And it so often comes down to that, doesn't it?

47:36 It so often comes down to that. When unbelief gets pressed and pressed and pressed until its back is against the wall, it just grabs onto an absurdity to protect itself. We don't want to believe. I don't want to have to admit that for 40, 50, 60 years I've been wrong to reject him. I don't want to admit that. And so I'm just going to grasp at straws to give myself a reason not to believe. Oh, they fell asleep.

48:08 Yeah, that explains it all. He wasn't all dead, just nearly dead. I'm going with that. And so piece by piece by piece, we gamble away our eternity to protect our pride. Friend, don't let your pride keep you from Jesus this morning. I know, I know that it has been decades that you have proudly been telling your family you are not going to believe in Jesus and it's an absurd story and it doesn't have enough evidence, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

48:44 I know that you've been doing that. But it doesn't matter. Do you honestly think, do you honestly think that if you were to come to Christ and say, yes, I'm a Christian, that your family who's been praying for you for decades is going to have a good cackle at your expense and say, I told you so? Now the angels might in heaven when you get there. But your family's not. Your friends are not. They're going to rejoice because you finally come to Jesus, friend, to lay down your pride.

49:17 Open your eyes. Jesus is risen. Trust in him and be saved. Friends, if Christ is risen, nothing else matters. And if he is not, nothing else matters. Let's pray. Our Lord, we thank you that you are the resurrected and reigning one.

49:48 And we thank you that even today, you hold out the promise of salvation and forgiveness of sins. You're the one who has all authority in heaven and on earth. You have the authority to condemn each and every one of us to hell or to bring us into your kingdom. And you offer mercy and compassion and grace and love and salvation. Oh God, we pray that you would protect this entire congregation, everyone who's gathered here today. Protect us from foolishness of walking away from you. Lord, we pray that your spirit would do the work of salvation even here today.

50:22 Lord, bring people to faith in Jesus. We ask this in his name. Amen.