Hey, and welcome to One and All Church.

We're so glad that you're jumping on here to watch this weekend's message.

We are starting a brand new series called Hope Beyond, which will lead us into our Easter services.

So I wanna encourage you to download our One and All app so you can see all of our sermon notes.

Let's jump in.

Turn in your Bibles, if you would, to 1 Corinthians 15, one of the most famous resurrection passages, probably the most famous in the Scripture.

And just recently, I returned from a trip to Australia, New Zealand, Fiji.

We were in the South Pacific doing ministry, and I met yet another young girl, quite impressed with her, incredibly intellectual, great questions.

But as we began to talk over a cup of coffee, it was very clear she was depressed, very anxious.

In fact, the longer we talked, I wondered if she was even suicidal.

And the more we talked, you could tell that she had a crisis of hope.

There's just, why should I feel good about my life?

And why should I feel good about the world?

And why should I feel good about future?

And I was trying to describe to her and try to answer some of those questions, but she kept pointing out something that was hard to argue with.

She said, look, look around, Pastor Jeff.

Nobody gets along in our world anymore.

There's fighting in politics, not only in America, but New Zealand, all around the world, fighting adults acting like little children.

There's fighting in our churches that hurt, but I couldn't disagree with it.

There's fighting in our schools, at home, in India, in Africa, in South America, everywhere, she said.

All the time, it's endless.

There are riots, there are protests, there's shame culture, cancel culture.

And she said, I'm just frustrated.

I hate all of this.

Now, because she's a deep thinker, she's always analyzing these things and trying to come to some kind of conclusion, and she was unable to do so.

And as I talk to her, I got to tell you, I'm reminded that if you and I think that all this vitriol, It's not affecting the next generation.

Man, we're out of touch with reality because it is.

There is a growing sense in our world among our youth of hopelessness.

The fact that nothing's ever going to get any better.

Nothing's going to change.

But in reality, even before COVID-19, because a lot of people blame this on COVID-19, but even before COVID-19, the Western world was in a crisis of hope.

This is the real pandemic.

If you know anything about history after the European Enlightenment at the turn of the last century, we were promised that human reason, ingenuity, science, all of that would free us from the superstitions or religions of the past and would inevitably bring us about a promising, a better future.

But then again, a couple of years into the last century, funny thing kind of happened on the way to living.

Two world wars, a pandemic, the Great Depression, and a nuclear-armed Cold War.

And then with the advancement of technology and science came more ways to annihilate each other.

And people are smart, they know this.

But then we went through a period of time, we arrived, say, around 1989, or at least the late 80s, and the Cold War ended.

And then the inevitability of human progress began to come to pass.

was revived.

We truly believed once again, even though we'd been burned before, that the lethal struggles between ideologies like fascism or communism or a Western-style democracy would finally come to an end because we were smarter, more educated, and we'd get along better with each other.

So the fears of warfare that could bring about this kind of worldwide destruction were diminished.

And it is true for a time because of international capitalism fueled by globalism, which is the reason why we're still here today.

As it goes into high gear, many economies seem to actually be doing better on the verge of thriving.

So in a way, in the early 90s, late 90s, hope seemed to have a revival.

In 2017, a man by the name of Yovo Noah Harari He wrote a bestseller called Homo Deus.

It's a brief history of tomorrow.

And basically he says that the reason human beings turned to God or gods in the past was because they felt they had no control over the world and needed some outside help.

But he says things are different now in 2017.

Listen to what he says.

Things are different because we now have control.

And I quote, he says, at the dawn of the third millennium, humanity wakes up to an amazing realization.

Most people rarely think about it, but in the last few decades we have managed to reign in famine, plague, and war.

Of course, these problems have not been completely solved, but they have been transformed from incomprehensible and uncontrollable forces of nature to manageable challenges.

We don't need to pray to any God or saint to rescue us from them.

We know quite well what needs to be done in order to prevent famine, plague, and war, and we usually succeed in doing it.

Now, if you're like me, by the way, homo Deus means humanity is God.

So it's not merely that we don't need God.

He's saying we are God.

Our hope is in ourselves.

And any sensible person reading this book will think, is this guy living in the same world that I'm living in?

Or is he from another planet?

In fact, My standard response now when I'm asked, do you believe there's intelligent life on other planets, is no, I don't believe there's intelligent life on other planets.

There's not intelligent life on this planet.

So why would I think there's intelligent life on other planets?

When you come out with works like this and you stick your head in the sand and don't realize that famine, war, all of these things are increasing, not decreasing.

And now here we are, just a few years later, from 2017 to 2000, where we are now, 23, 24.

Think about it.

Pessimism, we're told now, just a few years later, is at an all-time high.

All-time high in this century or in the last century.

Tribalism has produced conflicts like we've never seen before.

Selfishness is off the charts.

There's no anchor or common morality that holds society together anymore.

There's a profound loss of social trust concerning all the institutions that have held society together in the past.

You think about it.

Who will we trust when the next pandemic comes?

It won't be the WHO, and I'm not talking about the music group, the World Health Organization, because they, along with the government, big tech, and companies, spoke to us as if things were true that were not true.

They told us that vaccines would prevent the spread of COVID-19 and that the vaccinated could not catch it.

They were belligerent about this.

They said that masks would prevent the spread of COVID-19.

We were told that COVID-19 originated in the Chinese wet market.

And at the time, if you challenged any of these things, you were chastised, mocked, or even fired from your job.

Some people lost their jobs just because they pushed back.

And yet now, these are just three of the things that we know were untrue.

And now we have another real and present danger, and that is when the real pandemic comes, I don't think we're going to believe it, and we'll just carry on with life.

And because of our increasing mobility, we can no longer contain pandemics.

That's the staggering truth.

Because the globalization, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but with the globalization of our economy, it means that everything, including our food, travels.

So things can move from one place to another quite easily.

And then you have the threat of international terrorism, heightened by scientific advancement.

It seems never-ending.

So it's almost like we've escaped some of the terrors of the past only to create new and improved ones, ones that are far more deadly.

This is the reason, at least part of it, a major part of it, that there is a profound discontent, depression, drug abuse, despair, addiction, loneliness in some of the most advanced liberal societies.

Because we know the reality, we know the truth of what our world is and what it's like.

And it doesn't help that as progress comes, it doesn't help that as progress comes.

And as it has came, at least technologically speaking, that we lost the one thing that undergirds everything.

You know, I've mentioned before that on every American coin, you see the words, a pluribus unum, which means out of the many one.

Also, from the very get-go, our educational institutions were called universities, and the reason they were called universities is out of the many one.

You would study all these diverse topics, but it would point to one thing, and that is a creator God, the maker of the heavens and the earth.

But that's long gone.

We're more accurately should be called plural versities now because there is no one worldview.

There is no God.

It's just everything's disconnected.

And that kind of disconnection has disconnected us from reality.

And we've lost meaning, cohesion, and a different, deeper kind of happiness that transcends everything.

So...

Again, we've become unhinged from our creator's moorings through our own arrogance, from everything that gives us emotional stability, from everything that catalyzes unity and love and harmony.

We have been disconnected, while at the same time, we think that we are advancing in society.

Our soul knows differently, and we know that we're creating more advanced means to destroy ourselves.

So our young generation, they're very aware of that.

They're smart.

They're very clever.

They know that this is not good news.

Kyle Harper, a historian who has written on ancient pandemics, was interviewed and asked about how Christianity kept thriving and growing in the bleakness of difficult times.

Let me read the quote.

He says, for Christians, it was a positive program.

This life was always meant to be transitory and just part of a larger story.

What was important to the Christians was to orient one's life toward the larger story, the cosmic story, the story of eternity.

They did live in this world, experience pain, and love others, but the Christians of the time were called to see the story of this life as just one of the stories in which they lived.

The hidden map was the larger picture.

So what he's basically saying is the Christians, their emotions, their hope, their demeanor was not based on anything that was happening in the external world, but upon a truth, on a story, an ultimate story that all of history was moving toward.

And as a result, they were able to have peace that all history was moving toward Jesus and courage to know that this life is not the final say.

It goes back to that Greek word hope, which means profound certainty.

They knew that because of certain victory that would eventually come, we could face temporary losses in the here and now with great courage.

Most of you heard my father-in-law, stay with me now, we'll get to the text, but my father-in-law spoke a few weeks ago.

And I remember he used to say, and I'd hear him say this almost every Easter, from the world's perspective, everything is moving toward a hopeless end.

But Christians, they also believe that history is moving toward an end, but it's not a hopeless end.

Rather, it's an endless hope.

It goes back to that Greek word again, Elbedia, which means profound certainty.

And the reason the Christians have thrived in every generation during the midst of even pandemic or plagues is because their hope is not in this world.

It's in something that is far more stable.

Now...

We're entering a new series and I'm setting this up for us because we're going to go on an incredible journey that we probably should have done a long time ago.

Because the reality is, in the human condition, and I'm part of this as well, it's natural to wonder sometimes when you see things happening in our world.

It's natural to wonder, you know, did we miss this?

Are we wrong about this thing about the resurrection and about future kingdom and glory and life with God?

Is it possible that we've allowed our emotions to get the better of us and this is kind of pie in the sky?

Or maybe it's even psychosomatic.

We want to believe it so desperately that we arrange the evidence or whatever somebody tells us in the order that we need to be able to believe what we actually want to believe.

But folks, that's exactly what prompted my journey in my 20s.

And I want to tell you something right now.

I got something to say to you.

And this is so important in this series.

I feel like this is a series, again, that's been a long time coming.

Until the reality that I'm about to share with you registers with you, really registers, I mean, goes down deep in your soul, you will be miserable because you will try to live between two worlds.

The hope of this one and the hope of the one to come.

And that will never work.

And here's why.

The one that is temporary will appear at times to be eternal, and the one that is eternal will appear at times to be temporary.

So until you decide on which one is objectively true, until you start to drag your emotions toward objective truth, man, your heart and emotions are going to be well aware of the dichotomy in you, the tension, until it really makes its way, until this truth that we're about to cover makes its way really down deep into your soul and you're convinced, then you're going to live a life of fear and anxiety and worry and depression because you're going to live a life of fear and anxiety.

Your emotions, your feelings, your countenance, it's always linked to what you truly believe.

And you can't trick yourself.

Your heart, your soul, your spirit knows what you believe.

So today, as we enter this new series, the purpose of this whole series leading up to Easter and even after is to...

Present the objective truth of a hope that is absolutely certain.

Absolutely certain.

It's objective.

It's empirically verifiable.

It's not subjective based merely on feelings.

So I want to go to the text and show you that when the Apostle Paul, if the Apostle Paul would have addressed this young lady that I met in the South Pacific, I think he would have addressed her, first of all, from a cerebral point of view.

That's right.

Thinking.

And 1 Corinthians 15 would have been a good place to start, so I'll start there with you in verse 3.

Paul says, For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas and then to the twelve.

After that he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.

Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.

And last of all, he appeared to me also as to one abnormally born.

For I am the least of all the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God.

But by the grace of God, I am what I am.

And his grace to me was not without effect.

No, I worked harder than all of them.

Yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me.

Do you know what this passage tells us?

Let me remind you, this is a historical document.

We'll get into that later.

But do you know what this historical document, happening in real time, real space, tells us about...

the resurrection of Jesus, the hope of our lives.

It tells us that the resurrection of Jesus is historical, reasonable, and gracious.

And I want to cover those quickly and then make the application.

First of all, historical.

Why is Christianity suffering so much in the West?

And the answer is it's due to people like Dr. Lloyd Gehring, who wrote a book called Religion in the New World, who incidentally came from the South Pacific.

And even though years ago, New Zealand and Australia sent out more missionaries to the world per capita than any other nation in the world, it only took one generation of Christianity to subside among the next generation.

And the reason is very, very clear.

It's the same reason in the 1980s we saw digression in the Christian faith in most of the affluent West.

It's not because it was no longer relevant, and it's not because it had been tried and failed.

It was simply...

The reason for its demise, and you've got to be careful here because Christianity is still growing, folks.

People are coming to Christ all the time.

But in the affluent West, there is a crisis of hope and faith.

And the reason is because there's an ongoing effort by a liberal Christianity.

that wants to make Christianity like other religions, in their words or mine, in order that it can be more relevant to an educated society.

So here's what they did.

Back in the late 70s, they said, let's remove the supernatural aspect of Christianity in order to align it with modern sensibilities.

We are far too educated to believe in miracles.

Let's rewrite the narrative of the Bible to suggest that Jesus'birth, death, and resurrection are not actual historical events, but are real events.

but legends and parables and examples of how we all should live.

Basically, in effect, they say modern people won't believe these stories, so let's reinterpret them as fiction.

But fiction that perseveres or preserves the essential principles of living that are found in the Christian faith.

So in other words, they would say the crucifixion did not happen, but it's a good moral story.

We should be also willing to sacrifice for each other.

And the resurrection did not happen, but nature does show us that after winter comes spring, and after death often comes light.

All that really matters is that Christians love each other and make the world a better place.

After all, Jesus really wasn't God.

He was just a good teacher of justice and love.

So this is the type of Christianity that started to develop.

But this is not an updated version of Christianity.

This is a different religion altogether.

Because Christianity has a unique message that you will not find in any other religion or philosophy or faith system.

And it's this.

You and I are saved.

We are put in a right relationship with God, not on the basis of what we have to do, but upon what God accomplished in history, what God has already done.

There's no other faith system like that.

so that the cross and the resurrection are inextricably tied together.

In the resurrection, God affirms, This is my Son, my power is upon Him, and He has achieved the mission for which I sent Him, to die on the cross for the salvation of all who would call on His name.

Without the resurrection, it is doubtful that anything would have ever changed just by the death of Jesus.

But with the resurrection, the death, burial, and resurrection, nothing could ever be the same, and it wasn't.

And so scholars and historians alike relentlessly ask the question, what was the electrifying message of Christianity?

Why did the message of Jesus change the world?

Why does it give us hope for the future?

Why does so many people place their hope in Jesus Christ and the Christian faith system?

Is it because it stands for social justice?

Maybe it's because it stands for equity or equality.

Maybe it compels us to love, forgive, have mercy.

Well, yes, it does all those things, but there are other movements that do that.

So what is the uniqueness of Christianity or Jesus Christ?

What is the key?

to its power of transformation.

And the historical reality is simple, that God's power in the cross and the resurrection has come from the outside of history into this world.

Jesus Christ died for our sins in our place so that through faith we can know his love and receive a guarantee of eternal life all by grace as a gift.

No one else offers that to you.

So that Jesus rose from the dead to bring into history the powers of the age to come into the present world in which we will all be resurrected and every tear will be wiped away.

So because of Jesus'death and resurrection, because it happened in history, everything has changed.

Everything.

And that's the ultimate foundation and source for hope.

In fact, Paul says, if Christ has not been raised, so he's saying historically, If this is just a feeling, but it really didn't happen, our preaching is useless.

That's the Greek word kinos, powerless, impotent.

If Jesus was not physically, historically raised from the dead, then there's no power in the present or hope for the future.

If this is mere symbolism, we're all doomed and pitied.

Now, stay with me.

This is the hard work of an opening part of the series.

Although liberal Christianity, as I've described it, is in steep decline, It remains highly popular in the Western media and in social circles.

And famous people and many athletes try to keep a general faith in God and Christianity while avoiding the ridicule that comes with a belief in the supernatural.

That's why there's no real power in so many people's lives who claim to be Christ followers, because they don't believe in the miraculous supernatural power of Jesus'work on the cross and in his resurrection.

There's a famous news presenter, I don't want to use any names, but he signs off his program every evening with John 14, at least the beginning of it.

He says, let not your hearts be troubled, and he stops right there, because if you keep going on, you're going to have to say things like, trust in God, trust also in me.

And I believe, and I don't know this man's personal life, I know a little bit of it because it's in the media all the time.

But...

I believe that he represents most in the media who call themselves Christ followers, not all, and a lot of sports figures who call themselves Christ followers.

In other words, I will salute him when I score a touchdown.

I will mention him when I want to align myself with something that is good and resonates with many Americans.

I like Jesus'positivity and love.

I would like to have his power in my life, but in reality, I think his death and resurrection are symbols, not historical realities.

Nobody really believes that stuff anymore.

It's all symbolic of the power of the universe and the goodness and purity to which we all must conform.

That is why you see so many Christians with so little change happening, with so little power in their lives.

Remember what the Apostle Paul said in the epistles when he said, you know, there's a form of Christianity, but there's no power associated with it.

A non-historical faith and a non-supernatural faith simply will not do, and it could have never changed the world.

So Scripture tells us, first of all, that Jesus'death, burial, and resurrection are historical realities.

that Jesus'resurrection happened in real time and real space, and it's just as much a part of history as any other trusted historical occurrence.

As sure as the sun rose in the east and set down in the west yesterday, and every day before, Jesus Christ rose from the dead on the third day.

Now here's the second thing.

Not only is it historical, it's reasonable.

Reasonable.

Here's what is absolutely cool.

Now you think, man, that's a strange word for a sermon like this, but I like that.

It's really cool.

When you think about it, it's cool to think about.

One of the oldest theories is that the legend of Jesus'resurrection developed only many decades after the actual events had faded from living memory.

So think, okay.

Resurrection didn't happen, but a generation or two later, legend developed and people started to believe it.

Ah, there's a problem with that because now we come to 1 Corinthians 15.

All scholars, both liberal and conservative, now know that this text, one of the first letters recorded in the New Testament, was not constructed or composed by the Apostle Paul, but was actually an early gospel summary used by the early church in its evangelism and instruction.

In other words, these statements...

had become creeds long before Paul began to write, and now he's simply recording what had been in circulation for some time.

So he says, For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas and then to the twelve.

So knowing that this letter was written somewhere around 15 to 20 years after Jesus'death, Paul is simply reiterating what was passed down to him, that Christ died, was buried, and rose again.

It's amazing.

So this disproves the theory that the resurrection story only developed years later after those who were present to witness it were long gone.

The story of the resurrection immediately began to circulate as soon as Jesus died, was buried.

and rose again.

In fact, there's something else that we ought to know here, and this seldom gets talked about, but thousands of Jewish men and women, we know historically speaking, were worshiping Jesus as Savior and risen Lord within the same generation.

the same generations of the lives and teachings of the disciples.

Do you know, folks, historically speaking, how unlikely this is?

Because the Jews, we're talking about a thousand years of history here, the Jews did not believe a man could ever be God.

That was blasphemous, maddening.

Worshipping Jesus as God is unprecedented, something that Jews simply will not do.

And yet immediately after Jesus'death, thousands upon thousands began doing just that.

I don't think we realize how strange that really is.

That's like a Dodger fan becoming a Giants fan overnight.

Or a Raider team actually beginning to win overnight.

Or down in New Zealand, Kiwis giving up rugby overnight.

It just wouldn't happen.

And that's why historians are at a loss for words.

How is it possible that people who are steeped in a couple of thousand years of history would suddenly go against the grain?

of the fundamental beliefs that no one could ever, ever be God, and then suddenly start worshiping a man as God.

And the only plausible explanation is that something momentous, something supernatural had happened.

Notice again that Paul also says that Jesus was raised on the third day.

That undermines the second theory that the disciples or earliest followers did not literally see the resurrected Jesus with their own eyes, but only...

experienced his presence in a spiritual type manner in their hearts.

But when Paul says the third day, that shows that Jesus'resurrection was an actual event with a timestamp.

What else did he say?

He said, and that he, Jesus, appeared to Cephas and then to the twelve.

After that, he appeared to more than 500 of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.

Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles.

And last of all, he appeared to me also as to one abnormally born.

This list challenges the third major hypothesis, and that is that the resurrection was a hoax.

Paul says, wait a minute, Peter.

James, brother of Jesus, Paul himself, they all claim to have seen, literally seen, Christ back from the dead.

That's not all.

Jesus also appeared to 500 people at one time, which means there are hundreds of corroborating eyewitnesses.

I got to remind you again, these accounts were written and circulated within the same generation as the events themselves, which is rare in literary antiquity.

So it would be easy to corroborate or deny.

It's like I've mentioned before, you know, if you want to know if Jesus really did raise Lazarus from the dead, all you had to do is go to Bethany, set up some eyewitness interviews, let's do a Dateline or a 60 Minutes episode and find out what really happened.

Legend typically waits till all the people are dead so that no one can be questioned as to the legitimacy of the claim.

But that's not what happened in Jesus'death, burial, and resurrection.

And sometimes we think of people back then of being easily fooled because they were more superstitious and less educated.

Let me tell you something.

The Jews would have never believed, never believed that a man was God or that a resurrection could happen without significant substantiation.

A resurrection was against everything they believed, which is the reason Paul writes as if his readers would be unwilling to accept such a claim without evidence.

When Paul gives the names of these people who saw the risen Lord, here's what he's saying.

Most of these eyewitnesses are still living.

I invite you to seek them out.

Listen to their eyewitness testimony.

Determine for yourself.

He's saying, basically, Paul is not a fightist.

He's not saying, I know I don't have any arguments or reasons for you.

You just must take a wild leap of faith in the dark and believe what I'm telling you despite the lack of evidence.

That's not Paul.

And that begs the question, why were the people of Paul's day so reluctant to believe in the resurrection?

And the answer is because the Jews simply did not believe in the resurrection of a single individual.

especially in the midst of history while evil, suffering, pain, and death are continuing as before.

Now, some did believe in a general resurrection at the end of time when pain, suffering, and evil stopped because of the coming king, but somebody rising from the dead, one individual right now in the midst of pain, suffering, and evil before God's kingdom had come to full reality?

No way!

There is simply no other plausible explanation for the explosion of the church, the transformation of the disciples from spiritual wimps to spiritual muscle men, and thousands of Jews worshiping Jesus as God.

There's no other plausible historical information other than this thing really happened.

So no, the resurrection is not legend that developed after all the eyewitnesses were dead.

No, the resurrection is not a hoax as if the disciples were so brokenhearted that they concocted this story of something they truly wanted to believe.

A resurrection would not have even entered their minds.

That's the other thing.

If you're going to concoct or make up a story, this would not be it because no one would have believed them.

It would be very difficult to convince anybody of a story like this.

And we're still like that today, are we not?

I remember visiting New Zealand probably about 10 years ago.

And I was told this pastor wanted to meet me and he was going to pick me up from the airport and take me to the hotel.

So he picked us up.

We got in the car.

And one of the first things he did, I don't know if he was trying to impress me or what, but one of the first things he said is, you know, I just got back from a trip in Fiji where we raised 100 people from the dead.

Now, most of you know me.

I'm just thinking in my mind, who is this fruitcake?

Well, Pastor Jeff, don't you believe that's possible?

Well, I guess, but not likely.

And for me to believe that, I'm going to have to have some evidence.

If you're going to change my mind of that, I'm going to need some eyewitness testimony.

I'm going to have to meet some of those who have been raised from the dead.

I want to interview some family members.

I want to talk to the press because you better believe if you're raising 100 people from the dead, the press will be all over that.

Think of the disciples just for a moment.

They knew the reality of Jesus rising from the dead or not.

And this has been an argument made for a long, long time.

It has been true in history that people would die for a lie that they did not know was a lie.

But to find somebody who died, who would die for a lie, who knew that this was a lie, no way.

At some point when the disciples were about to be killed, they would have raised their hands and said, Oh, sorry, I'm just kidding.

You know, there was no resurrection.

Let's just all go back with our lives.

But they knew it was true and they were willing to die for it.

Now there's something else.

Let's move and then we'll make the application here.

In Acts chapter 26, Paul speaks to King Agrippa and Festus, the Roman governor.

He talks about Jesus'death and resurrection.

And Festus says to Paul, he says, your great learning is driving you insane.

Paul's response is respectful, but very confident.

Here's what he says in Acts chapter 26, verse 25.

I am not insane, most excellent Festus, Paul replied.

What I am saying is true and reasonable.

The king is familiar with these things, and I can speak freely to him.

I am convinced that none of this has escaped his notice because it was not done in a corner.

Paul says, what I'm saying to you, and you know it, Festus, is reasonable.

It's a word that means careful, rational thought.

He says, Festus, you know these things.

You know the fact of Jesus'death.

You're aware of the Jesus movement and the empty tomb.

You're aware of the eyewitnesses.

This was not done in a vacuum.

This is public knowledge.

In the words of Ray Barone, everybody knows it, man.

Everybody knows.

Paul is doing in 1 Corinthians 15 for all readers, present and future, what he did before Agrippa and Festus.

He provides two arguments.

One, the tomb was empty.

You've got to explain it.

Historically speaking, the tomb is empty.

I think it's important here to remind us that an empty tomb is accepted by most scholars.

There's just too much evidence.

So the argument has always been what happened to the body, and then they come up with the kind of theories, what happened to Jesus'body, because there's not even one Jewish polemic source from antiquity to deny that the tomb was empty.

Not even one.

So we know the tomb was empty.

The question is what happened to the body.

And besides that, if you think about what Christianity was doing to Rome, it was taking over Rome completely.

and will do so in a couple of hundred years, all the Romans had to do to squelch once and for all Christianity was to take the body from the tomb of Jesus and put it on a card and roll it downtown Jerusalem and Christianity would have died before it was even born.

So first of all, Paul provides the argument, you know, the tomb was empty.

And second, the eyewitness testimony.

There are so many people, a large number of people across a diversity of circumstances testified to the...

fact they had seen the risen Christ and you could go and interview them.

One man wrote it like this.

I love this.

The resurrected Jesus is recorded as appearing in Judea and in Galilee, in town and countryside, indoors, outdoors, in the morning and in the evening by prior appointment and without prior appointment, and distant and by a lake to groups of men and groups of women, to individuals and groups of up to 500 sitting, standing, walking, eating, and always taking or always talking rather.

And many of those accounts are close-up encounters involving conversations.

And so historians write and say that it's hard to imagine this pattern of appearances recorded in the Gospels and early Christian letters without there having been multiple individuals who claim to have seen Jesus risen from the dead.

Now, of course, over the course of history, many have tried to explain this away.

But here we have in the New Testament a well-attested early document written by the Apostle Paul.

You add that together with the fact that the first witnesses of the resurrection were women.

Now, if you know anything about first century women, we're not credible witnesses in a patriarchal culture.

So if you're going to make up a story, you don't want to make it up by women being the first ones to witness.

The only plausible reason the disciples would talk about the women being the first ones to see the body of Christ is because the women were the first ones to see the resurrected Jesus.

So we're left with those two hard facts.

The tomb was empty, and hundreds of people were eyewitnesses to the risen Christ.

So therefore, when you read other accounts, if you, as a historian, and this is the problem, if you try to rule out the resurrection as history, you've got a formidable challenge because you've got to come up with a historical, possible, alternative explanation for those two facts.

That one, the church, that one, the tomb was empty, that two, hundreds of eyewitnesses, and three, how do you explain the birth of the church, a movement that changed?

the world forever.

The reality of these things must be contended with honestly and intellectually.

And so the question is, can we know the resurrection of Jesus happened?

Can we know it?

Well, I would fire back with this question.

Did William the Conqueror invade England in 1066?

Because sometimes somebody will say to me, well, Jeff, when you can prove the resurrection scientifically, I'll believe it.

No event in history can be empirically proven the way something is tested in a laboratory.

That's ridiculous.

We prove that something happened in history by historical evidence, not by test tubes in a laboratory.

So what about the resurrection?

If you ask historians to answer the question, what explanation do you have for this rapid development of this new view of the resurrection and for the explosive growth of the church?

They have to answer historically.

And the reality is that no explanation has been offered in 2,000 years of sneering skepticism that can satisfactorily account for the tomb and how it became empty, for how the disciples began to see Jesus and how their lives and worldviews were transformed and...

how they transformed the world.

In other words, the resurrection of Jesus has an enormous footprint in history.

resurrection faith is not blind faith that rejects human reason.

It is based on evidence in history.

Okay.

We've said it, we've done it, we've done the work, but for the resurrection to have any meaning in your life and to make a difference in your life, the evidence of the resurrection must first be believed, but then it has to be appropriated into your life.

For instance, if Jesus rose from the dead, then yes, that means he's Lord over all things, but is he Lord of your life?

You can state the former without applying the latter.

Do you really believe there's nothing you're facing that Jesus can't fix?

I mean, if he can come back, if death is defeated, there's nothing in your life that he can't defeat.

Yeah, Pastor Jeff, but I've prayed and I've prayed and he's not delivered.

Okay, what does that tell you?

If there's nothing he can't do and he does not do it, it's not a matter of his inability, but his unwillingness, which means his refusal becomes part of a redemptive plan for your life and for the world.

Do you understand that?

Let me say it one more time.

If there's nothing he can't do, he's not a man of his word.

and he doesn't do it, it's not a matter of his inability, but more of his unwillingness, his refusal then to do something you think he ought to do in your life becomes part of his redemptive plan for you and for the world.

He's either the Lord of the universe or he's not.

Second, God's plan for history will succeed.

Now we know that with certainty.

That does not mean that God causes evil pain and suffering in this world.

It means that he allows more than we think he should, but it also means that he prevents more than we could ever imagine.

Since the one who came back from the dead has the power over all things, he must be trusted to turn our worst failures or setbacks into our greatest victories.

When you truly appropriate the resurrection of Jesus that happened in history into your life, you will always be counting backwards.

Do you know what I mean by that?

You know, when you get in trouble with your mother, your mother says, okay, I'm going to count to three.

One, and you know at the end of that something bad's going to happen.

But when you count backwards, ten.

Nine, eight, there's the launch of the space shuttle.

Something explosive, something incredible, something extraordinary is going to happen.

When you understand that through the cross comes the resurrection and through death comes new life, you will start to appropriate the resurrection into your life so that no matter what you face in life, you learn to count backwards because you know something stupendous, extraordinary is at the end of it.

Third, you know now that death is defeated.

The church is always saying Jesus died to take away our sins, but she's seldom heard saying Jesus rose to conquer death.

And when you truly appropriate that truth into your life, everything changes.

Everything.

Folks, I'm telling you, this is not theory to me.

This is lived out, but it took me 47 years to figure it out.

And I go back again to a period in my life when I'm suffering severe anxiety.

And there's always a reason that emotional breakdown occurs.

Sometimes it's hard to figure out, but there's always a reason.

But the thing I learned most during that period was that I had this incredible fear of death, not of dying, but of leaving my children or my wife behind or my family behind.

In order for God to break that in me, he had to give me new vision, a new understanding of the resurrection.

And once you appropriate the resurrection into your life, let me tell you something.

Anxiety dies, depression dies, fear dies.

And do you know why?

Because you know all of history's headed toward the redemption of all history.

So you're gonna suffer some setbacks and losses, but ultimately you'll live with no fear because you know God has the final word.

Do you know in 1527, stay with me, the bubonic plague was spreading across Europe.

An elector John, that's Martin Luther's sovereign, you know Martin Luther, father of Reformation, his superior ordered Luther to leave in order to save his life, to escape the bubonic plague.

Luther disobeyed, he stayed, and he ministered to the sick and the dying.

He eventually turned his own home into a field hospital.

But if you read the account, and Luther's written this, and I don't have time to describe this to you, but the foundation of Luther's remarkably calm yet realistic response to the plague was his complete lack of fear of death.

Man, when you don't have a fear of death, you can stop calmly and do the good, do what is right.

You know, during COVID, when we thought it was, you know, we weren't sure who was going to live and who's going to die.

I remember my father-in-law, Charlie, sitting around the table one evening at dinner and everything got quiet.

And he says, I need to say something to my family.

I need to say something to all of you.

I want you to know if I die, it's okay.

That was his response.

No panic, no fear.

no anger just a calm resolve he looks to his family and he says if i die i'm okay it's good i'm with god luther took care of the sick charlie confronted his family and comforted his family at the same time by reminding them that death is not the end and those who appropriate the resurrection into their lives man they'll stand strong with great courage and be able to do the right thing because they're not governed by an emotional demeanor that flees every difficult circumstances out of fear of death.

Now, there's one last thing to say.

I've often wondered, you know, at the end of this section in 1 Corinthians 15 and verse 58, Paul says, therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm, let nothing move you.

And it's an incredible Greek word, hamataketato, which is a word that means unmovable, but it's unmovable not only physically staying stable, but it's an emotional stability.

And he says, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm, let nothing move you.

Because you know of the resurrection, because you know of the life, that is coming, that all of history moves toward redemption of all things, don't move.

Don't be shaken emotionally and physically.

But then he says in Philippians 3.10, stay with this, how I want to end.

Philippians 3.10, I've often wondered what this means.

He says, I want to know Christ.

He has to know the power of his resurrection.

And I have heard so many sermons on this and they're all good.

And I've often wondered, you know, what does that actually mean?

It can't mean that he wants to rise from the dead because he says, that again in the next verse, so that would be redundant.

So what does he mean, I want to know the power?

And again, I've heard great sermons, the power of God in us.

Can I tell you, after significant research on this, can I tell you what I think is happening here?

Let me do it by an illustration.

On March 12th, 1998, Stephen Wrigley Pfeiffer died.

Now, most of you say, who on earth is that?

You won't know who he was, but I can tell you he was only eight days old.

He was born with a rare disease and never really had a chance to live.

But Stephen was not the only one who died that day.

Something died in his parents as well.

You can imagine the pain and suffering of having a child not stillborn, eight days old, and then the child passes away.

Stephen's parents found themselves in a place beyond grief.

Their lives stopped, came to an end.

They were breathing, but not really alive.

They both realized their lives could not go on.

You ever felt like that?

You say, Jeff, how do you know this story?

The only reason I know this story is it made news.

It was on national television.

Eight years later, after the death of their son, they made national news as they were described then as heroes in the world.

What happened?

And you go on to learn that out of their profound grief, they moved to Kenya to spend one year working with a school.

When they saw the hunger and the poverty, they realized there's no way they could return to the U.S.

It suddenly dawned on them that contrary to the modern consumerist culture, their lives did not belong to them.

They had to pour it all out.

Something bigger than themselves began absorbing them.

So knowing that they could no longer live, they decided to die and then live again, resetting their lives.

And as they did, they began to feed 18,000 children every day.

They built solar-powered computer labs in some of the most isolated places in Kenya.

Their lives fell into the soil.

They died to their old life and sprang up life that was extraordinary.

Do you know what I firmly believed in the basis of the content and context of Philippians 3?

I believe Paul is saying this.

You know what?

I've been full of myself all my life.

I have chased after things I've wanted to be at the top of the class.

I've been absorbed by my own pursuits.

I've suffered greatly and caused suffering.

I want to find real life now.

Resurrected life that comes from dying to my own wants, needs, and desires.

Do you know when Abraham went to the top of the mountain to sacrifice his son, he was dying to himself.

He was dying to his deepest desire because he felt if he could just have a son, he would have everything that he's ever been looking for.

And God made him die to that.

So that when he came off the mountain, he was a changed man.

And because Abraham died to himself, he could now live for God.

That is resurrection power.

I'm fully convinced.

Here is how you appropriate the power of the resurrection into your life.

You got to die in order that you may begin to truly live.

Have you ever asked God, I mean, you got all these pursuits in your life that are killing you.

You want this, you want that, you want this, you're pursuing that.

All of it's killing you and you know it.

Have you ever just stopped and said, God, what do you want me to do with my life?

I will die to me, but you got to show me what you want me to do.

And when he's convinced that you're honest and you're willing.

to die to your desires and passions.

then he'll give you a new life.

And you know what?

You'll come down off that mountain and God will show you the course of your life and it will bring you ultimate joy.

Do you know how many people never stop to ask God, God, please help me die to myself so that I can live in the power of the resurrection, new life, new life.

I just want to challenge all, no matter what age you are at this point in your life.

I don't care what age you are.

God, have I been doing the wrong thing?

I mean, look.

You got to feed your family.

I got, we all have careers, jobs.

I got that.

But for most of us, we're involved in the rut of everyday life.

There's no meaning to it.

There's no cohesion to it.

There's no fulfillment to it.

But we're so unwilling to stop and say, God, I really want to live.

I want to die this life.

And I want to start living with the resurrection power.

When you truly believe that Jesus rose from the dead, I'm telling you, you will live without fear to live, to die to self.

and to live the life that Christ has called you to live.

And more importantly, I'm telling you, you will find yourself.

That is the very beginning of the restoration of hope.

This is just the beginning of this series.

When you stop striving for what you want and you die to it and you ask God, what do you want me to do with my life?

That's when you'll start living.

The resurrection happened in real time and space and history.

Because of the resurrection, you and I will live forever.

There is no need to fear change.

There is no need to fear and have hopelessness in a world that's falling apart around us.

Because even in that, even when it doesn't look like it, God is still moving all of history toward the ultimate redemption story.

And because you and I know that ultimately we will have the greatest victory, we can have peace and courage and even joy during the temporary losses of this life.

Father, thank you for the beginning of a promising series of hope, hope rediscovered, that we can know that as the world is falling apart, that we have a kingdom that's unshakable.

And because of that, we can actually live with peace and courage and joy.

And if we're willing to die to our pursuits and live for you, then we can live with peace and courage and joy.

and live for what you've called us to achieve in our lives, no matter what age we are, we can discover resurrection power and joy.

And I pray we would do just that in Christ's name.

Amen.

Well, we hope you enjoyed today's sermon.

I want to encourage you, if you want to make a decision or if you have made a decision to follow Christ, go to oneandall.church.com and we want to help you alongside this journey.

I hope you have a blessed week and we'll end as we always do with one hope, one life in Christ.