I personally love the Palm Sunday, Easter Sunday narratives that are recorded in scripture. I really like the Palm Sunday, Easter music. And thank you, Debbie, for practicing that. Thank you, Dan, for listening to it about 100 times. He is risen. Oh, come on. He is risen indeed. That's your answer. Okay. He is risen. Boy, now we sound like a New Testament church. That's what the New Testament believers used to say to each other as they greeted one another on that celebrated Sunday. And really that was all kind of new to them because they were former Jews who always had their worship day on Saturday. So they had to work on Sunday and then they met Sunday night in this church service. And that was their, by the way, that was their joy repeatedly. And every Sunday that they went to church, It was Sunday because it was Resurrection Sunday that was being celebrated. Okay, I want to look at the text that we just read together. Some of you might have a parallel Bible or parallel gospel. Many of them are free, especially if you have Apple products. But anyway, it's free and it's kind of fun. It is for somebody like me and you look at the different Gospels and there's four columns and so there's one column of Matthew, another column Mark, Luke, John, and they keep it all in chronological order. So you can look at the same event in all four of the Gospels just right across the column from each other. And it's really, it's very helpful to me. And I think it's very interesting. And this text that we just looked at, if we were to look at it in the parallel columns of the gospel, so just as Sunday dawn occurred, what happened? Christ arose at the same time there was a earthquake. Now, that happened at the same time. The supernatural overpowered the natural. And I don't know what it sounded like, but very, very, very sobering thing to be in an earthquake. Some of you have been in one or close to one. And so Christ arose, and I think that's the reason for the earthquake. The stone wasn't just pushed away, the word that was used has the implication that it was thrown away. The angel, okay? Then the angels appeared, and again, at different times during this narrative, one of them is sitting on the stone, sometimes they're standing, they're doing some talking. The Roman soldiers, in the midst of all this, and this was happening very quickly, and just imagine you're kind of asleep, you know, I mean, you're not asleep, Roman soldiers weren't supposed to, that's why they had four hour shifts, But here, nothing's happening, and then all of a sudden, the 3,000 pound stone goes sailing by, right? Kind of a wake up call. They saw the angels, they fell down, and then they ran. The women, and there's four women that came. There's two Marys, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Jesus, Joanna, and Salome. They arrive at the tomb with the sweet embalming spices. And this is not what you embalmed with, this is what you covered the embalmed body with. And the angel told them, you know, hey, come look and see he is gone. Now go tell the disciples and especially Peter. And they went, except for what woman stayed around? Mary Magdalene. She was slower leaving. She was probably under some of the deepest distress. because she was also at the crucifixion. And so she had seen all the brutality that Christ experienced there on the cross. In fact, Christ was so disfigured, he wasn't quickly recognizable as human. Now, she comes back and the body's gone. Okay? So here's Mary Magdalene and now she's still there, she's going to do what she's told and she's met by who she thinks is the gardener and it was Christ himself. And she's weeping. She's distraught. She's got all this buzzing going on in her thinking. What is going on? And Jesus speaks her name. She recognizes the voice. And then she also leaves, as the other women did. And by the way, before the other women got to tell the disciples, Jesus appeared to them. So the first appearances of Christ after the resurrection were to these four women. Now, we don't think much of that today, but it was very significant at the time of Christ. And he tells these other women to rejoice, don't be afraid. They worship him and then they go and tell the other disciples about the resurrection and that he would meet them in Galilee. There are 15 very specific events of Christ's appearance after his resurrection so there's quite a bit of data biblically as well as extra biblically. I want to give you a couple thoughts that the resurrection is a critical component of real Christianity. Every once in a while, you hear someone say, well, it really wasn't that important. Oh yes, it was. There is no Christianity without the resurrection of Christ. In fact, you can look back at some of the apologetics that have been written about the Bible and much of it confronts the liberals who are saying it doesn't matter. It does matter. The New Testament teaches that the resurrection was the one thing that declared Jesus to be the Son of God. Jesus could not be the Son of God if he died and stayed dead. Romans 1.4, the very first word says declared. This has the idea of he demonstrated to be the son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness, that's the Holy Spirit, by the resurrection of the dead. So Christ here, he demonstrated who he was with this power of the resurrection. The followers of Christ lived and died for the resurrection cause. I've already kind of preempted this, but the fact that church services met on Sunday, ah, it wasn't natural for the Jews or anybody else, But they took that day, by the way, with instruction from God, and made that their day of meeting. Some of you may have noticed if you get calendars from another country, and especially in some pagan countries, what's the first day of the week on these calendars now? Monday. Isn't that interesting? The pagans don't honor the resurrection of Christ. And this is coming to America. Some of this stuff has already crept in. And so it starts with Monday, it ends on Saturday and Sunday. That's how the weeks are going now. Well, because of their disbelief of the resurrection. So for again, historically, New Testament, as well as we who are following it, every Sunday is Resurrection Sunday. It's a major event. Then we have some other ordinances of the church. So for example, what's one of the ordinances of the church? Baptism. What's another one? Lord's Supper. That's the only two ordinances, by the way. And so both of them commemorate the resurrection from the dead. So you just think about it, why are we meeting on Sunday if he didn't get risen from the dead? And why do we have the Lord's Supper? And then why do we perpetuate the lie with the baptism and the Lord's Supper? It doesn't make any sense. It also would destroy many prophecies of the Old Testament. The Messianic prophecies reference the fact that the Messiah would rise from the dead. And then you have Christ himself talking about his own resurrection. So the Bible's untrustworthy if he did not rise from the dead. Christianity doesn't make any sense. Why are we having Lord's Supper or baptism? Nothing works without the resurrection of the dead. Besides, 4,000 years of history is being denied. Okay, there's no Christianity without it. Second thing, the resurrection resulted in a life change. The disciples gave up everything on the resurrection event. And Paul writes about it repeatedly. 1 Corinthians 15 is probably the go-to passage. And he says, if Christ be not risen, then our preaching is vain, and your faith is also vain. So the New Testament people, Christ, Christ himself, Paul and Peter and the rest of the gospels and much of the New Testament church kept repeating, hey, he rose from the dead and that should impact our life. It's not just something to make your brain swell. How did this happen? They chose allegiance to Christ and volunteered everything else. That's pretty significant. We could ask Nicodemus or we could ask Joseph of Arimathea who were almost the first ones on the scene. They ask Pilate for the body of Christ so they could bury it. The Roman centurion had nothing to gain by his comments. He pronounced Jesus dead. He also pronounced Jesus as the son of God. Now some translations weaken that and they put that a son of God. Bad translation. Nicodemus and Joseph buried this battered dead man, their Messiah, who arose from the tomb, where did they bury him? In Joseph's tomb, a solid rock tomb. By the way, at his own expense. Some of you may have been there to this tomb. I'll say more about it in a minute. But this tomb had like, I don't know how to describe it except as several bathtubs that were carved out of this solid rock. Very expensive process. And so this family tomb would have this little bathtub, not little bathtub, but these tubs for every member of the family. Beautiful place to go look and you're kind of looking around, wow, somebody did a really nice job here, except for the one tub that has a little extension that has been carved out of quite quickly. Now why would somebody do that? Didn't they take the measurements, you know? Well, Jesus was probably that much taller than Joseph of Arimathea. And so that he might fit into that prime sepulcher. It goes on, and this is another text I hope you'll be able to look at again and just let it light up in you. It says in 1 Corinthians 15, 15, the next verse, yea, and we are found false witnesses of God because we have testified of God that he raised up Christ. So he said, hey, that makes me a liar. I'm telling you that Christ rose from the dead. If he didn't do it, I'm lying to you. If so be that the dead rise not, for if the dead rise not." In other words, if God does not do resurrections, then is not Christ raised. Okay? If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain and yet you are in your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep in Christ are perished. We have no hope. Those who have died before us have no hope and we're liars. Very significant here of Paul's giving this instruction and hope to the church at Corinth. And he says at the end, we are of all men most miserable. Okay, resurrection. Without a resurrection, we are most miserable. Our faith is vain and we are hopeless in our sins. Now I wanna make a comment about that. There is hope we all have no matter what the sin. Think about some of your sins, okay? I'm thinking about Anita's sins right now. Long list. Hey, you know what? There's hope. And hope is not something wishy-washy floating around on a cloud somewhere. Hope is a guarantee that you see that there's going to be a future result. And the future result is we get forgiveness from all of our sin through a Christ who not only died for it, but rose again in proof of it. He is, let me say it this way. He is greater than death. And death is the result of sin. He's greater than sin, which results in death. It's just enough to make your mind buzz a little bit when we start thinking about the power of Christ, not only in the crucifixion, but his resurrection. Now these grave claws, or clothes, sometimes we say clothes, it really, it was just a long cloth. It was like we typically see a mummy. And so once the body is all cleansed, and just imagine the process of cleaning Christ's body after all the brutality that it went through. So they cleaned his body, Joseph, okay, Arimathea, his thing. And so they did it. Nicodemus, they were in together and they're working on this. They then, after they've cleaned the body, then they take one arm with this gooey substance. It's about, it's kind of like a combination between drywall mud and Vaseline. It's very sticky. It dries pretty quickly. And so they rub the body and the claws in this, Vaseline and it's like a roll and they roll an arm put it down. They roll the other arm put it down Then they started the feet and they just it's a continual roll with this sticky substance Wrapping Christ all around the head leaving the face open And this over a matter of a couple days it hardens and so the napkin is over the face and Now you notice when the women and eventually the disciples went into the tomb to look, there was no body in this mummy. You can't get out of that mummy. Right? I mean, even if you were alive, you might tear it up a little bit, but you're really stuck into this. There was no body in the mummy and the napkin was folded. and set aside so you could look in and see there's nobody in there. Matthew Henry, you know, 400 years ago, he wrote, he said, who would do something, who would steal a body like that? I mean, you might want to take the body and the mummy together out, right? But obviously, that wasn't done because the mummy was still there. And even if you could, but you couldn't, but even if you could take the body, who would want to transport a naked body? And then who would want to take the time to fold up a napkin? I mean, it just doesn't make any sense. So Christ was resurrected out of this cocoon without destroying it. And as those women, and as the men, and as others saw it, their lives would never be the same. And then, group by group, they started meeting the resurrected Savior. My third point is that the resurrection of Christ is the most provable event of antiquity. The facts, the eyewitness, are all beyond doubt. even the liberals agree that the abundance of the handwritten manuscripts, that's what manuscripts are, handwritten, okay, on papyri are beyond question that they are convincing evidence to the life and death of the resurrection of Christ. Now that makes us like, oh, Because there is a statement in this for us. If this is such a powerful event, with such evidence, with such doctrine, with such prophecy, then we ought to pay attention to it. There are more than 10,000 New Testament manuscripts. More, more than 10. These are all, all these handwritten copies are in agreement. And these scribes, they were like dictating machines. And they were able to look at a text, and they wrote it, and they all had justified margins. Write a letter with justified margins. They did. For 1400 years, they copied the text. And so they'd have a master text here and they would be copying and it's quite a process, I won't go into it, but if it was unreadable by candlelight, the master copy, they burned it. Or if the copy got damaged in some way, whether it was water damage or fire damage or whatever happened to it, it was destroyed. Now we kind of say, you know, that's some pretty heavy evidence here. It is far more evidence, like millions times more evidence than some of the teachers that we have heard, you've heard them in school, I've heard them in school, some of the bloggers and whatnot. They're a joke. They do not have the data nor the history behind some of their crazy statements. So the manuscript evidence is huge. And then women. Women would never be used as an eyewitness, not in Jewish culture, not in Roman culture. And yet they were the very first one not only to hear, but to see the resurrected Savior. Even the disciples did not quickly believe the women. How could it be? And the disciples, you know, had a lot of stuff spinning around. First, they recognized the hatred of the Pharisees and the religious leaders and how they were planning on killing Jesus. Then there was the betrayal of one of their own. Judas betrayed him. And then there was these mock trials. And they got kind of close to some of that. And then the Romans scourged and beat and mocked their savior. Then there was the crucifixion. Then there was the burial and now the body's gone. Can you imagine the whole series of events? And these people lived in a pretty brutal culture. This particular generation knew what crucifixion was. They had seen it before. Some of the roads going into some of the major cities had had people crucified along the road before. Most of us would get pretty wheezy to see some of this. The crucifixion was as painful of a death as the Romans knew. There's much written about it historically. And to them, a cross was not all nice and pretty. I like the cross. We've seen pictures of crosses. Sometimes people wear them around their neck or we have them around the house or whatever. It's a beautiful little cross. But the cross that Christ died on was bloody. It was just the opposite of beauty. It was brutal. Imagine the sounds that took place at that crucifixion. What kind of sounds? How about the cursing? How about the little chatter back and forth among the Romans as they were dividing up some of the garments Just to breathe, because there was nails in the hands and a nail through both feet, just to breathe, the person on the cross had to push up with their feet on the nail and pull down with their hands on the nail through their hands. And then what would happen to your nerves? And by the way, the spikes were put in such a place that it would cause major nerve pain. And then all this nerve endings being on fire, they couldn't get their lungs full of air because it hurt so badly. And some of you who have had nerve damage, you understand that. And so the piercings would be electrifying on fire. And then you notice at this particular time, sometimes people would be left on the crosses for days as they would have all the shallow breathing. But not this time because of the Jewish Passover. And so these men, all three of them, had to die rather quickly. So what do you do? Well, the Romans knew what to do. They would take these clubs and break their legs. That means they couldn't push up to breathe and they suffocated to death. And they came to Jesus to break his legs and he's already dead. His heart broke. That's why blood and water came out. Irony is that Pilate said, I find no fault in him. The centurion, truly, this was the son of God. And so this was the Friday of his death. And by the way, those who wrote about this, whether it be Paul or any of the other gospels, when they wrote about it, those who were alive, many of them were there at the crucifixion and resurrection. And the audience would have rioted if they said something that just wasn't true, but they were there and thousands of people saw it. Remember, this was when there were approximately 2 million pilgrims in Jerusalem during this particular Passover event. 1 Corinthians 15 says after that he was seen, this is after his resurrection, he was seen above 500 brethren at once. So it wasn't just a few disciples here, a few women here, a person here, a person there, it was sometimes larger, much larger group of people. It was also during this time that the four of Christ's stepbrothers became public followers of Christ. I think it's kind of interesting. They were kind of in the shadows watching all this go on. They knew their brother, their stepbrother had never sinned. Can you imagine having a brother that never sinned? How would you treat him? Twice as bad, right? And then now that he's, it's public and that he's the Messiah and that he was crucified and he rose again, they said, Oh, Hey, I got to tell you, I'm one of them too. I'm a follower. And we have a couple of books of the Bible from those stepbrothers. Those who rejected Christ did not agree with the, did not argue with the facts that were presented in the gospel. They would just make general statements, well I just don't agree or I just don't like it or whatever else, but they didn't argue with the facts because the facts were so evident and multiple. Another thought, just a quick one here, is the resurrection site was guarded by the Roman army, one of the most effective fighting forces of antiquity. Christ was buried in a tomb just down the hill from Golgotha, and if you've been there, up on the hill of Golgotha, the place of the skull, looking down on one side, you see a bus station. But if you look on the other side, you'll find a whole litany of tombs. And it's one of those tombs just down the hill where Christ was buried. Outside this city, away from any home. It was just kind of like you look at it and there's a hole or there's an entrance into this rock cavern and it is covered by this 3,000 pound, I don't know what you call it, a wheel, round thing and some of you have seen it or you've seen pictures of it and it's in a trough so it doesn't slip out. And so when it's open, it has been pushed up a little bit and wedged. And when you want to move it, you got to release the wedge and slowly let it come back in. Here's the Romans. They are told after Christ is buried, you got to get over there and watch this place because he is sad he's going to rise again. And so they sealed it, they put a Roman seal on this tomb and they sat there and guarded it. The guards were changed about every four hours and if they were caught sleeping they were killed. But why were the Romans guarding a tomb? Because the priests were afraid of a resurrection. The priest didn't have anything to do with Christ's resurrection or disappearance you might say, they might have said. When Christ arose the seal was broken, thank you angels, right? The stone was thrown up a hill, the Roman soldiers fell in a faint and then they ran. There was nothing that could have been worse for the Pharisees and all these religious leaders than for Jesus to be resurrected. One more thing. Resurrection event put all of hell in an uproar. Satan was now pronounced defeated and he would be at a certain future event. Satan's major forces would now, let me say it again, Satan's major power or major force would be that of influence. And you know what? We've all been tricked by his influence. Corruption never came to Christ's body. Death was defeated. Satan was consigned to hell. He is now as a desperado. Where's the closest state prison? From here. Connecticut. Okay, let's just say it's Connecticut. Let's say somebody's in Connecticut because of multiple murders He escapes and he's armed. We would call him a desperado. He has nothing to lose. Satan is a desperado. He knows what his sentence is. And he has this attitude, I have nothing to lose. I'm going to take as many as I can down with me. We have salvation because the crucified Savior rose from the dead. Does that register? I mean, do we think about this? He rose from the dead. He never sinned. He did all the miracles. He proved who he was. He died on a cross for us in our place as the music we just sang. And he rose from the dead to prove that that's who he was. Did we think about it yesterday? This morning? Did we think about it last week? Will we think about it next week? He is risen. He is risen for our forgiveness from all sin penalty. Yes, all of it. I sometimes say, let's say this is your life. Okay, and this is your birth, and this is your death. And most of us are here somewhere, right? He has died for all of our past sin penalty. But how about this? That too. He has died for the penalty of all of our sin penalty. How amazing is that? Do we think about that? He is risen for our forgiveness as our Savior. By the way, if you're here and not saved, why not? I mean, what would we be waiting on? Why are we not saved and trusting this resurrected Savior to cover the penalty of all of our sin? Why would we wait? Do you think we're gonna get better? Chuck, do you think we sin less every day or more every day? More, oh yeah, we are dragging all kinds of baggage with us more and more. And you know what? He saves us from the penalty of it all. That's why he rose, for our forgiveness. He also rose for our daily relationship with him. He calls us his children. Who is the Son of God? Who is that? What's Jesus? We are recognized by the father as adopted children, as his adopted children. We're part of the family. That's an awesome relationship. Someone said, if you really knew what I was like, you'd have nothing to do with me. Well, Jesus knows exactly what we're like. And he's saying, hey, I want to have a relationship with you. And he knows all about us. He also has risen for his return to earth. He's coming again. And you can't help but read some of the passages in the Bible and you're saying, hmm, it sure seems like I hear the knock at the door. It sure seems like he's coming again because of all the prophecies that are being fulfilled. And he has risen for us to live for him. Who are we living for? Somebody that's dead? No, somebody who is alive and we honor him as Lord. His dying in torment for us and for our sin is again proved by the resurrection. Do we even think about it? Sometimes, I'll just give you a passing thought here, but sometimes parents sacrifice so much for their children and their children don't understand it. Would you kind of agree with that? And so here's the mother. She doesn't buy herself new clothes. She puts that money towards her kids' clothes. She sacrifices some of her grocery money for the kids' entertainment. Not even necessary stuff. That's just how mothers are. That's how parents are. And children really don't understand until they become parents. Oh, I can't believe what my mom did for me. And they don't remember at all. But it kind of comes back like, wow, mom was taking me all over the place. Or, yeah, I was a pretty rotten kid and mom loved me anyway. Hey, Jesus died for us and he proved it by his resurrection. Shouldn't that impact us? If you're a real Christian, it will. You're not going to be perfect at it. But it's going to come back and say wow, what a gift, what love, what care, what hope. It should show, Paul said, that the life of Jesus will be manifest by us. In other words it should show. He also said in 1 Corinthians 15 that we should be steadfast, unmovable, always abounding. Steadfast is where we have firm convictions. Firm. Steadfast. Unmovable means we are consistent in spite of circumstances. We're not going to be up and down, you know, go with the flow, people pleasers. and we're going to be abounding. Where does abounding come from? It comes from our self-talk. It comes from our thinking and our meditation. It often comes very purposeful. It might be where we take notes in a journal or a diary. It might be because of their certain calendar connections that we have plugged in and said, you know what? Every Sunday, I'm just going to mark this as Resurrection Sunday. I want to think about this. I want it to show. How are we doing? Do we see Christ as our Savior? Do we see him as our Father? Do we see him as the coming King? Do we see him as our Lord? Purposefully. That's Easter Sunday. It should be every Sunday. Let's bow our heads for a moment. I want to sing the one stanza of the song Wounded for me. And that's what it was. He was wounded, he died, and he rose again. For me, it's very personal. How are we doing? Is he our savior? If you are here or you're watching this and you say, well, you know, I have some doubts about it. I'm not for sure. Well, then let somebody talk to you. Do you have that daily relationship? I mean, he knows it anyway. Do you accept his love for you? Do you see him as the coming king? Is he being honored some way? as Lord. We're not perfect at this. This is not a museum. This church is more like an emergency room. No one here has anything to show off. But boy, I tell you, we're all blessed. If we can help, call someone, see someone, make an appointment, talk to someone after church, whatever it takes, to find out more about the not only crucified Savior, but the resurrected one. Let's all stand please, I'm gonna pray. Heavenly Father, it's a very sobering thing to think of the crucifixion. It is just awing to think about the resurrection. and even our responsibility to you. Thank you for this church family. Thank you for what you have done. Thank you for the miracles among us. I pray that it will be a sweet thought today when we think about Resurrection Sunday. I pray that there will be this response within us of honoring you and what you've done for us. I pray that it will show. In Jesus name, amen. Let's sing that one stanza of. 301, if you'll get your handbook, look at the words. Tonight, by the way, the service will not be taped again. It won't be on YouTube. I want to talk very personally. And I want to talk with some detail. So if you're coming tonight, we do have service tonight. And if you're coming, I just want to share my heart with you and talk about ways we can just take another couple steps together.