And but there is no, there can be no repentance without a
recognition of sin. And but then also that he died
according to the scriptures. And we looked at a lot of
different prophecies last week that prophesied that Jesus was
going to come, that prophesied that he was going to die, that
prophesied how he was going to die.
Many of those things that were that were given to us in Psalms,
in Isaiah, we're all proven to be true.
And not just in Matthew, you know, we only looked at Matthew,
but Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, all of them mention it.
Of course, then even Paul and Peter and others mentioned them
as well. Different things that came true
as a result of a fulfillment of prophecy.
Every single thing that was prophesied about Jesus Christ
came true. Not one of them failed.
Which is an amazing, amazing thing, considering how many
years, the period of time over which the Bible was written.
There's no way that there could have been, you know,
collaboration. And you write this and then
we'll write this. There's no way that it's
possible they were separated by hundreds and even thousands of
years. And so it's an amazing thing to
find out that the Bible is true. So we find out, first of all,
that Christ died for our sins. But then #2 and this is on page
22, Christ was buried. And I'll, I'll see about getting
a few people to read tonight. We do have some verses, but most
of them are all kind of in the same general area.
So maybe a little bit easier for us all to just kind of turn to
as many of these as we can. But First Corinthians chapter
15, verse 4 says that and that he was buried.
Now his burial, let's turn over to John chapter.
Keep a, keep a bookmark or ribbon or something there in
First Corinthians 15, because we are going to come back to it in
a few different spots there in First Corinthians 15.
But John, chapter 19, his burial proved that he really died.
And that sounds silly to say that of what?
Why wouldn't you bury somebody that died?
But there's there are people out there who is it's known as the
swoon theory. In other words, that Jesus kind
of just went into a coma for a few days and he woke up out of
that coma and that's what allowed him to come up out of
the ground. He swooned.
He wasn't really dead, but the fact that he was buried, OK, He
didn't merely faint. He didn't, He didn't merely
appear to die, as some false teachers have claimed.
The reason the soldiers didn't break Jesus's legs is because he
was already dead. And by the way, that was one of
the prophecies that was fulfilled.
Not a bone of his would be broken.
They pierced his side and the Bible says the blood in the
water came out. They broke the legs of the other
thieves. Now, the reason why it would it
was necessary for them to break somebody's legs is because
essentially the way that you died during a crucifixion was
from asphyxiation. Now, obviously there was a lot
of blood loss and everything else.
Jesus was whipped more than than a normal prisoner would have
been whipped. He was forced to carry his cross
and and that may be one of the reasons why he died sooner than
the than the thieves that were crucified on either side of him.
But essentially what happened is when you're hanging there on the
cross, you get to the point where you're sinking down so far
that you, you, you really can't. You're gasping for breath.
Well, obviously your feet have been nailed through them too.
And so it's so excruciatingly painful to push yourself back up
just to get a breath that many of them would hang there as long
as they could. And the breasts would get more
and more shallow until eventually they they were going
to die if they didn't push themselves up.
And so they did. They would push themselves up
and then they begin that whole slow process all over again.
But when they were ready to take them down off the cross, they
would break their legs. Now you can no longer push
yourself up and you're going to die from that asphyxiation.
And that's, that's, that was just a horrible, horrible death.
It was the, IT was one of the worst things that they could
come up with as far as the Romans, as far as how they could
cause somebody extreme suffering while they were dying.
Many times then the, the bodies would would stay up on the cross
sometimes for days while they're waiting for death to come.
And, and, and sometimes even after death came, they would
still leave the bodies up there for days.
The dogs would come and many times they were lower to the
ground. The dogs would come and start
eating the body. And especially if it was, if it
was a criminal that didn't really have much of A family or
anything, somebody had to come claim the body eventually would
get thrown into a pauper's grave if it didn't, but the body was
desecrated. They, they left him up there on
those crosses many times as an example to other people.
You don't want this to happen to you.
And, and, and so that's, that's, that's why they would have done
that. They came, they broke the legs
of both of the thieves that were crucified on the other side of
Christ. But they didn't have to break
his legs. Why?
Because he was already dead. If he was in a coma, he still
would have been breathing. Even if he was just unconscious,
he still would have been breathing and they would have
broken his legs and made sure that he was dead before they
brought him off of the cross. Certainly they were not going to
allow this man, the one that they considered to be a
blasphemy, blasphemer, and and Public Enemy #1 to come down off
of that cross without being dead.
And so they made sure that he was dead.
And the fact that they didn't break his legs just goes to
prove that the Roman soldiers were convinced that he was dead
before they put him in that in that grave.
John chapter 19 and verse #31 the Jews therefore, because it
was the preparation that the body should not remain upon the
cross on the Sabbath day. Now this is something that we're
going to come back to because this is important for that
Sabbath day was in high day. That's important.
We saw Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they
might be taken away. Then came the soldiers and break
the legs of the 1st and of the other, which was crucified with
him. But when they came to Jesus and
saw that He was dead already, they break not His legs, but one
of the soldiers with a spear pierced his side and forthwith
came there out blood and water. So His burial proved that He
really died. He was already dead when they
got to Him. Then the Bible says this in
Matthew chapter 12. Let's turn over there, Matthew
chapter 12 and verse #40 that He was in the grave for three days
and three nights. And this is significant as well.
Now this is also, This is where Catholic tradition differs from
the word of God and why it's also very important that even
Baptist tradition be not justified, but I guess maybe
justified is the right word, corroborated if you will, with
the word of God. We need to make sure that we're
not doing it just because this is what everybody has already
always done. We're not just saying it this
just because this is what somebody has always said.
Now, you know that we celebrate Good Friday, right?
Jesus Christ was crucified on Friday.
He came up out of the grave on Sunday.
And so we celebrate Good Friday. No possible way, no possible way
that Jesus could have been crucified on a Friday if you
follow what the Bible says. Now here's what the Bible says
in Matthew chapter 12 and verse #40 For as Jonas Jonah was 3
days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son
of Man be 3 days and three nights in the heart of the
earth. Now we know that Jesus rose from
the dead early on Sunday morning.
The Bible says that in Luke 24, if he was in the grave for three
days and three nights, he died either on Wednesday or Thursday.
Now it's a false idea then that the Catholic Church has come up
with. I have no idea what they have to
gain by having Jesus Christ crucified on Friday.
But if you, if he, if he died on Friday and was put in the grave
on Friday afternoon, he would have been there Friday night and
he would have been there Saturday night.
And that's it. No possible way that he could
have been in the grave for three nights.
Now you could say, well, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you could get
3 parts of days there and say that he was in the grave for
three days. But you cannot get 3 nights by
having somebody crucified on Friday.
Now let me give you a few things here that might be interesting
to you. I think Jesus was was crucified
on a Wednesday. I'm not going to argue with
somebody that thinks it's Thursday, but let's turn over to
Matthew chapter 27. Does it really matter?
Probably not. The thing that matters is that
Jesus Christ did die and he was put in the grave and he rose
from the dead. But I think it's interesting to
to go through this anyway. We just read in Matthew chapter
12 and verse #40 that the Bible says for as Jonas was 3 days and
three nights in the wills belly, so shall the Son of Man be 3
days and three nights in the heart of the earth.
Had the scriptures just said three days then I can understand
where somebody would say Friday. But when you say 3 days and
three nights, that seems to indicate that it has to be 324
hour periods, right? Why do you say day and night if
you didn't mean a full day right?
24 hour periods that Jesus was in the ground.
Now there's three different things that are at play here
when it comes to the, the, the, the, the way that a day was
calculated. The the Roman day began at 6:00
AM OK, so for us, our day begins when 12:00 AM and it ends at
12:00 AM the next day, right? That's how our day goes.
The Roman day actually began at 6:00 AM and ended at 6:00 AM the
next morning. The Jewish day began at sunset
and went through sunset of the next day.
OK, now Matthew chapter 2027 now verse and actually Matthew 27,
Mark 15, and Luke 23 all say the exact same thing here.
I would say that Jesus Christ was placed on the cross at about
9:00 in the morning somewhere around there.
And we and we can see that from Matthew chapter 27 verse 45.
Now from the 6th hour there was darkness over all the land until
the 9th hour. The 6th hour was noon.
The 9th hour was 3:00. And so the because if you if you
start your day at 6:00 in the morning the way the Jews did the
the first hour would it be 6:00. The third hour would be 9:00,
the 6th hour would be noon, right?
The 9th hour would be 3, and so on.
It would just keep going on that way.
So when the Bible says that the darkness came over all the land,
that was Jesus was already Cruz. He had already died by that
point, right? So if you consider that he was
put on the cross maybe somewhere around 9:00 in the morning.
He hung there until he died around noon.
The darkness came over the face of the earth.
The dead came up out of the graves.
The veil in the temple was rent. All of those things happen.
The Bible says that there was darkness for the space of those
three hours. The 6th hour to the 9th hour,
noon to 3:00. That's when Jesus, about the 9th
hour. I'm sorry.
Yeah, I said that the 6th hour, darkness came over.
He died at the 9th hour. My God.
My God, why has thou forsaken me?
Some of them heard that, thought he was calling for Elijah.
They came and brought water. I mean vinegar and put it up to
his mouth and everything else. Verse #50 The Bible says Jesus,
when he had cried again with a loud voice, yielded up the
ghost. He died.
And so then verse 57 the Bible says this is Matthew 27.
When the even was come, there came a rich man of Arimathea
named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus's disciple.
He went to Pilate and begged the body of Jesus.
Then Pilate commanded the then then Pilate commanded the body
to be delivered. And when Joseph had taken the
body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his
own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock.
He wrote a great stone and so on.
All of those things that are happening there's, that was
evening by that point, right? The Jewish, the Jewish day
started at sunset. And so you'd have to say that
somewhere around 4:00, five o'clock, maybe even 6:00 when
Jesus was actually put into the grave, right?
He was still hanging on the cross at 3:00 in the afternoon.
They had to go request the body. They had to take the body down.
They had to prepare the body for burial and they had to put it in
the grave and, and maybe they did it quickly and they could
get that done within three hours.
Now, if you know, if you remember, I should say from the
pictures in the diagrams that I showed you, when, when we were
going through all this stuff about Israel, the place where
Jesus was crucified and the place where Jesus was buried
would have been very close to each other.
So it was not like they had to take him across town and, you
know, transport his body and all of those things.
They would literally have taken him off the cross, walked across
the garden, and put him in the grave, right?
So it wouldn't have taken them that long to do all of those
things. But all of that to say that
probably somewhere around 4-5, maybe even 6:00 of that day,
whatever day that happened to be, Wednesday or Thursday, Jesus
was put in the ground. I'm saying that I believe that
it was Wednesday. And so I'm going to say Jesus
was put into the ground or put into that grave at about 5:00 on
Wednesday night. The Bible says this in Leviticus
chapter 23 and verse #5 through 7, that the first day of the
Feast of Unleavened Bread was a Sabbath day, and it was actually
a high day. The Bible says that John chapter
19. Let's go back over there, All
right? John chapter 19.
This was not just the beginning of a regular Sabbath.
John chapter 19. A regular Sabbath would have
begun at sunset on Friday, but this was a high Sabbath, and so
the Passover Sabbath came on Thursday that week.
And that's what the Bible says in John chapter 19 and verse #31
I'm in verse chapter 20, John chapter 19 and verse 31.
The Jews, therefore, because it was the preparation that the
body should not remain upon the cross on the Sabbath day, for
that Sabbath day was in high day.
It was not a normal Sabbath. It was the Sabbath that actually
started the day before that. So at about sunset on Thursday,
he had been in the grave for one day and one night, right?
Because by sunset you would, you would assume by sunset on
Wednesday night he was in the ground.
Wednesday night to Thursday night would have been one night
and one day. Thursday night to Friday night
would have been two nights and two days.
Friday night to Saturday night would have been three nights and
three days. And somewhere after that Jesus
rose from the dead. Right when the ladies got there,
when the women got there to and the Bible says they they rose up
early that Sunday morning and they went to the grave.
He was already gone, right? He was already gone, so the only
way that you can make Thursday work would be all right.
You counted a part of a day for Thursday, Thursday night, Friday
night, Saturday night, right? If he went into the grave on
Thursday night, you have, you have Thursday, Thursday night,
Friday night, Saturday night. It just, it doesn't give you
enough time for that to happen. It would have to be some time on
Sunday if you're talking. And now this is what I'm saying.
I'm not going to argue with somebody that says they believe
Jesus was, was, was died on a Thursday because the Bible does
not say that it was 24. I mean, it was 3 literal 24 hour
periods that Jesus was was in the, you know, in the grave.
You assume that because it says days and nights, three days,
three nights. You assume that it was a 24 hour
period. And that's where I come up with
Wednesday. If you said Thursday and you
wanted to count a part of a day on on on Sunday, then that's
that's fine. I'm not going to argue with you
against that, argue against you with that.
But the woman came early on Sunday morning our time he was
already gone. So the expression on the third
day in the Gospels referring to his resurrection in our day in
our in our terminology would have been after the third day.
We would we would say after the third day he rose again.
And so Christ was, I believe, crucified on Wednesday.
Maybe you could say that he was crucified on Thursday.
There's one thing that I do know he was not crucified on Friday.
No way that he could have been crucified on Friday because that
was that there's, there's the only nights that you can get
would be Friday night and Saturday night.
And that doesn't leave us enough time.
He didn't raise on Monday morning.
He rose on Sunday morning. The Bible says the first day of
the week. So interesting little study
there. He died either.
And that's where brother Cloud there in the notes says that he
died either on Wednesday or Thursday.
I think there's compelling, compelling arguments for both.
There's there's compelling arguments for Wednesday or
Thursday, but I don't there's no, there's nothing that allows
us to say that Christ was crucified on Friday.
But then the Bible says that his burial also fulfilled prophecy.
It was according to the scriptures.
If you go, you don't have to go back over there.
In fact, let's go to Isaiah 53. But the Bible says that he was
buried and that he rose again the third day according to the
Scriptures. So his burial was also in
fulfillment of prophecy. Isaiah chapter 53, one of the
one of the greatest passages of now talking about Christ in the
Old Testament, I believe Isaiah chapter 53 talking all about the
what he was going to suffer for us.
But Isaiah chapter 53 and verse #9 the Bible says and he made
his grave with the wicked and with the rich in his death
because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his
mouth. So that prophecy that was
written, he says here about 710 years before Jesus was born, it
was fulfilled when Jesus was taken down off the cross by
Joseph of Arimathea, who the Bible says was a very rich man.
Put Joe's put Jesus's body into a into a grave, which the Bible
also said wherein never man was laid and he stayed there.
Now I will say this. Why is I mean, what is the
significance of that? It's not like you unbury
somebody and put another body in it, right?
I mean, you think about how people are buried today.
Obviously you're going to put them in a new grave.
Not so in the Old Testament times.
They would dig a cave into the, OR dig a hollow out the side of
a cave or just hew hew something out of a rock if if it was solid
rock there. And what they would do is they
would put that body in there for about a year and after a year
the decomposition had all pretty much taken place.
They would go in there and they would gather up the bones of
that person who had died and they would put it in what was
called an ossuary or a bone box. And then they would put it
wherever they wanted it to be. They usually would not leave it
in the in the grave. They would take it out and put
it in different places, which is probably what they did when they
carried Joseph's body out of Egypt, right.
It was probably just a bone box. And a bone box is about the
size, probably about the size of the pulpit in width and in
depth. And, and usually about this big
or so really not all that big. And, and depending on how
wealthy you were, that that determined what kind of, you
know, what kind of ossuary you had and what it was decorated
like and all of those things. But that's why it's significant
when you say wherein never man was laid, nobody who had ever
been laid in the grave that Jesus was laid in Joseph of
Arimathea as a wealthy man would have dug that for himself and
for his family, and nobody had been buried in it yet.
And so it's very interesting that way as well.
But that was prophesied 710 years before Jesus actually was,
was buried in that grave by Joseph of Arimathea.
Now the other thing then #3 the third part of the Scripture, as
we read in First Corinthians chapter 15, verse 4, and that he
rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.
His resurrection was prophesied in Psalm 16 and verse #10 Let's
go and look at that. That was actually written 1000
years before Jesus came. Psalm 16 and verse #10 For thou
wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine
Holy One to see corruption. Had Jesus's body been in the
grave for longer than three days, He would have started to
see corruption. His body would have started to
decompose. All the things that happened
after death would have easily happened to him.
It didn't. And that was a prophecy that was
fulfilled. Again, His resurrection proved
that He is the Son of God. Let's go over to Romans chapter
1. Romans, chapter 1.
Romans chapter 1 and verse #4 The Bible says and declared to
be the Son of God with power according to the spirit of
holiness, by the resurrection from the dead, Jesus prophesied
that he would rise again on the third day.
Matthew 16 verse 21 says from that time forth began Jesus to
show unto his disciples how that he must go into Jerusalem and
suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes
and be killed and be raised again the third day.
If he had not done that, then he would have been proven to be a
false prophet and not the Son of God that he claimed to be.
That's the difference between Jesus and everybody else that's
ever claimed to be something special, claimed to be a
prophet, claimed to be important.
A Jesus is the only one that raised from the dead.
Everybody else, you can go see their grave, you can see their
bones. Jesus is gone.
And that's, that's the amazing thing about the gospel.
So is there evidence then that the gospel is true?
Well, Paul gave 2 great evidences of the truth of the
gospel. And first of all, we have the
Old Testament prophecies that prove that he was, that the
gospel is true. And we've looked at a lot of
verses. So we're not going to do that.
But he died and rose again according to the Scriptures, the
Bible, they, we've already looked at these things, but the
Bible prophecy is a great, great miracle.
We don't even know how what will happen tomorrow yet.
The Bible's prophecies describe events thousands of years in the
future with detailed exactness. And as I mentioned a little bit
ago, every single one of those prophecies about Jesus in the
Old Testament came true in the New Testament.
The second thing is the eyewitness testimonies that
prove that the gospel is true and you should be there.
In First Corinthians chapter 15, we'll read verse #5 and that he
was seen of Cephas. Then of the 12 after that he was
seen of above 500 brethren at once, of whom the greater part
remain under this present, but some are falling asleep.
In other words, what Paul is saying is, hey, some of these
have died, but there's a huge number of these that are still
alive. Go ask him if they saw Jesus
alive after he rose from the dead, 500 of them saw him at
once. Go ask them.
They're still alive. You can still ask him today
after that verse 7, he was seen of James, then of all the
apostles and last of all, he was seen of me also as of one born
out of due time. Paul said even I saw Jesus after
he raised from the dead. By the way, that was one of the
things that allowed him to be an apostle.
You had to see the risen Christ and, and, and Paul did verse #9
for I am the least of the apostles, that I'm not meant to
be called an apostle because I persecuted the Church of God.
But the Bible is not a blind religious faith.
It's based on many infallible proofs.
And that's what the Bible says in Acts chapter 1 and verse #3
In fact, if you want to turn over there, it's a great verse.
Acts chapter 1 and verse #3 Jesus the Bible says, to whom
also he showed himself alive after his passion by many
infallible proofs, being seen of them 40 days, and Speaking of
the things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.
This is not just that, Oh, I saw him at a distance and it sure
looked like it could have been Jesus.
No, Thomas saw him in the upper room, and he put his fingers in
his hands. He put his first in his side,
proving that it was Jesus. Jesus was there with him for 40
days, having conversations, talking with them.
It was not just a spirit, It was not just an apparition.
It was not just somebody who looked like Jesus, it was Jesus
and they knew it. Hebrews Chapter 11 verse one
tells us that that biblical faith has substance and
evidence. Faith is the substance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.
So the resurrected Christ, as we just read in First Corinthians
15, was seen by more than 500 people on one occasion.
When Paul wrote this epistle, many of the eyewitnesses were
still alive. He was not writing about things
that had happened long ago and passed down from generation to
generation by word of mouth and dependence on man's valuable
memory. And by the way, I would add to
that, that if what he wrote was false, it would have been easily
disproven. There would have been many, many
people who said, you're making stuff up.
We were there. We never saw him.
We were there. The tomb was still sealed 2
weeks later. You know, it was right outside
the city. It was.
I mean, they would have gone in and out of that gate all the
time as they went in and out of the city.
It's not like it was in some remote corner of the world
somewhere. And this just happened in a in a
vacuum or in a bubble where nobody can see it.
Everybody was there. Everybody saw it.
And when Paul is saying it, Paul is using that to back up his own
evidence. Hey, every 500 people saw it at
one time. And not just that 500 people saw
it, but most of them are still alive.
Go talk to him. Go ask him they saw him.
Even even historical records from men like Josephus, a Jewish
historian, and you can still read Josephus today.
I have I have all of the works of Josephus.
The words are about this big on the page.
It's a thick book with a lot of writing.
And he wrote a lot of stuff about things that the Bible
doesn't even really mention, just historical things that were
happening during that time. But all of the things that
Josephus wrote corroborate the Bible, including everything that
he wrote about Jesus. And he was Jewish.
Don't forget, he was not writing it from a perspective that
really looked on Jesus favorably.
But when you have somebody who is objective and will just write
what he sees, it backs up everything that the Bible says.
So there's not, it's not just that Paul is writing.
It's not just that 500 people saw him.
It's that many other people saw him too.
This resurrection dramatically changed the lives of those who
saw Christ. Let's go over to John, chapter
20. Before he rose, the disciples
were fearful. They were in hiding from the
authorities. What what changed about it?
Well, Jesus was back. And it's not just that they hid
the body. And now they got this, you know,
this strong determination that they're going to go stand up
against the Roman Empire and doesn't matter if you try to
kill us, kill us, we're just going to keep preaching the
gospel. If they knew.
So here's the thing. Many of these, many of the
disciples of Christ and especially the apostles and
those who were alive at that time died horrible martyr
deaths. Every single one of them, with
the exception of John, who was actually exiled on the Isle of
Patmos, died an unnatural death. They were beheaded.
They were they had they were drawn, they had all kinds of
things that were hap that happened to them.
And even Peter, the Bible says, again, this is according to
tradition, the Bible doesn't say this, but Peter was crucified
and he did not deem himself worthy to be crucified in the
same manner that Christ was crucified.
So he asked to be crucified upside down and about.
And history says, not the Bible, history says that Peter was
crucified upside down. You don't go to the cross and
get crucified upside down for something you know to be a lie.
When it finally gets to the point where they're ready to
take your life, you say OK, OK, OK, it's not worth that, right?
What? What motivation did they have to
perpetuate a lie about Jesus? There was 0 motivation for them
to do it. In fact, there would have been a
lot of motivation for them to say the exact opposite of that,
right? And to go along with everything
that the Roman government said and everything else right have
been a whole lot of motivation for them to do that.
And yet every single one of them was willing.
And many of them did give their lives for the cause of Christ
because they believed so strongly, because they were
eyewitnesses of the fact that Jesus had risen from the dead.
But they were, they were fearful, they were in hiding.
Verse #19 Then the same day at evening being the first day of
the week, when the doors were shut, where the disciples were
assembled for fear of the Jews, came Jesus and stood in the
midst and said unto them, peace be unto you.
After they saw the risen Christ, they were bold.
They were willing to lay down their lives for the faith.
And not just willing. Many of them did.
Paul did. Paul was beheaded at Rome.
So many of them, so many of them were persecuted.
But the resurrection, in fact, this is this is great.
Let's let's turn over to John Chapter 7.
You're not too far from there. We talked about this actually
when we went through the book of James a few months ago.
But the resurrection actually even convinced Jesus his own
half brother James. And we say half brother because
Joseph was James his father, but not Jesus his father.
John Chapter 7 and verse #5 the Bible says.
For neither did his brethren believe in him.
James did not believe that Jesus Christ was the Messiah until he
rose from the dead. First Corinthians chapter 15.
If you had a bookmark there, you can just flip right back over to
it. The Bible singles out James
verse #7 after that he was seen of James, then of all the
apostles. And the Bible says in the book
of James that he believed on Jesus after he saw him and his
resurrection. His brothers didn't believe him
until he resurrected from the dead.
If that's not a proof, I don't know what is.
The resurrection also convinced Paul converted him from being a
bitter enemy of Christ. From an earthly perspective, and
this is a great point, Paul had nothing to gain by switching his
allegiance from the Jewish leaders of that day.
The the the Sanhedrin and of course the he was a Pharisee of
the Pharisees. He said to become a Christian.
He had every motivation not to do that.
He was he was the big man, right?
He had he had the authority to go and just do anything that he
wanted to do to these Christians.
And yet he saw Jesus Christ alive after his resurrection,
and it changed his life to the point where not only was he
willing to give up all that status, now not only was he
willing to give up all the power that he had, he became the
haunted. The hunter became the haunted to
the point where Paul actually lost his life by having his head
taken off of his shoulders. So back in First Corinthians
chapter 15, verse #2 says this. Actually, let's just go to verse
one for context. Moreover, brethren, I declare
unto you the gospel which I preached unto you, which also
you have received, and wherein ye stand, but by which also you
are saved, if you keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless
ye have believed in vain. So what then does it mean to
believe in vain? Paul probably means that there
are ways to believe that don't result in salvation.
And so here's a couple things that we'll talk about as we
close out this section tonight. Number 11 can believe in vain by
believing the wrong things. Let's turn over to John chapter
20. Sorry, John chapter 2 for a
little bit of a little bit of context here to see what what
he's talking about when he says that you can believe in vain by
believing the wrong things. Verse #23.
Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, in the feast day,
many believed in His name when they saw the miracles which he
did. But Jesus did not commit Himself
unto them, because He knew all men, and needed not that any
should testify of man, for He knew what was in man.
These Jews believed on Jesus as a as a worldly provider, as
somebody who would feed and protect them, instead of
believing on Jesus as their Lord and Savior.
And there's a big difference, right?
There's a lot of people who believe, right, who have faith,
and this is what he says. Likewise, many today believe on
Jesus in wrong ways. They come to Jesus, they pray to
him so that it'll help them with their problems or build up their
self esteem or make them wealthy or heal them or some other
thing, rather than humbling themselves as sinners and
trusting him solely as their savior.
So there's a lot of people who will believe in God, right?
I believe God. I'm a Christian, they, they
associate themselves with Christianity because they
believe God or, or many times they'll make a deal with God.
If you Get Me Out of this situation, then I will do this
for you, right? Many, many, many people have
made that that decision in their life.
I'm drowning. If you, if you save my life,
I'll give my life to you. And so God saves them and they
give their life to God. That's their salvation
experience. They believe on Jesus.
Well, they're believing in the wrong things, right?
It's not believing on Jesus Christ for salvation.
It's believing on him as a protector.
It's believing on him as, as a provider.
It's believing on him as, as all kinds of other things, but not
as a savior. And we, we need a provider.
We need a protector. If without God's protection,
without God's provision, without God's everything, we have
nothing. But what we need more than
anything else is not food, It's not protection.
What we need more than anything else is somebody to save us from
our sins. And when you start getting
specific and start talking about Jesus as the savior from your
sins, all the sudden people don't want to talk about that
anymore. They'll believe in Jesus, right?
Jesus loves you. Jesus is my copilot.
You know, all the bumper stickers and everything else.
But then when it comes to Jesus being the savior from your sin,
that's not the Jesus that I want to believe in, right?
And, and, and having faith or talking about your faith, but
you can still have faith in the wrong thing, right?
You can say that you have faith in that chair that it's going to
hold you up. And you can even go over there
and sit down in that chair. But I'm not talking about that
chair. I'm talking about this one,
right? And, and honestly that I mean,
you, you have that with a lot of different religions in the
world, right? This is what the Catholic Church
says you have to do, believe in Jesus and do all the sacraments
and be a good person and make sure you go to the priest and
have your sins forgiven and make sure that before you die you get
your last rites and all of those things, and then you have a
possibility of going into heaven.
OK, well, I believe that. I believe it's going to hold me
up and you sit in it, but you're sitting in the wrong chair.
This is the one that's actually going to take you to heaven
because this is what the Bible says about how to get there.
So you're believing in Jesus for all of these things that you can
get out of him or all of these things that he can do for you
when what you need is a savior from your sins.
That's the Jesus that we need to believe in.
And there's a lot of Jesuses in the world today that people are
believing in and believing on, but it's the wrong Jesus.
And you know, the Mormons are, are a great example of that,
right? It's a false gospel.
It's a false Jesus. You know, you, you go into
Mormonism and start reading through their religious
documents, their, their Pearl of great price, their Bible.
And what you find out is that, you know, Jesus and Satan were
brothers and, you know, they had a conflict in heaven and Satan
chose the wrong side and Jesus got the upper seat.
And you know, he's going to be a God someday with his own worlds.
And so can all of us. We can be God someday with our
own worlds, and we're the brothers of Jesus and all of
these other things. It's not the same Jesus that the
Bible is telling us about. It's Jesus.
And so when you talk to a Mormon, he's going to tell you
that he believes in Jesus. And, and many of them have the
greatest intentions and they think they're talking about the
same Jesus. But if they would actually read
their own Bible, they would find out that we're not talking about
the same Jesus at all. So you can believe on Jesus, but
you're believing on the wrong one.
And you're believing in the wrong things to take you to
heaven, right. You can't get to heaven in the
Mormon church unless you have a temple recommend.
How do you get a temple recommend?
Well, you have to be in good standing with the Mormon church
and you can go and you can get baptized for the dead people who
have been dead for 100 years. You can go in there and if you
have a list to prove that you know who this person is and
they're in your family and everything else, you can go get
baptized for them so that in the afterlife, they might hopefully
have a chance of getting to heaven at some point, right?
And and people will go in and get baptized in the Mormon
church in the temple 15 times for 15 different people who
didn't believe in the Mormon Jesus and who didn't believe in
the Mormon doctrine and died in their sin.
And now you can get baptized for them so they can have a chance
of getting out of hell and getting into heaven in the
afterlife. That's not in the Bible.
It's a different Jesus, right? So believe in him all you want,
but you're believing in the wrong things.
Your faith is misplaced, right? You can believe all you want to,
but if it's in the wrong thing, it doesn't do any good for you.
What does the Bible say Not what did some man make up not what
did not? What does this church say you
have to do not what does this man say you have to do?
What does the Bible say? And if it doesn't say it in the
Bible, then we should not be following it.
So that's what happens. You can believe in vain by
believing the wrong things. Now you can be sincere and be
sincerely wrong, right? I mean, you think, OK, let's,
let's just take the stock market for example, right?
This stock is good is the next big thing.
I'm putting all my money into it.
That's how much I believe in this stock, right?
And you put all your money into it and it tanks.
You believed it sincerely and you proved it because you put
all of your money into that, into that stock.
But just because you believed it doesn't make it true, right?
Just because you thought that that was going to happen and you
put all your faith in that stock, it's still tanked, right?
And the same thing is true. There's a lot of people out
there in religions in the world today who are very sincere and
who are trying to do everything they can to follow what that
religion says they have to do. There are very sincere Catholics
out there in the world today who are very religious people and
who won't miss a single Mass and who won't miss a single prayer
of the rosary at night, and who won't miss a single opportunity
to confess their sins and do everything right because they're
very, very, very sincere. They're going to find out when
they get to heaven and stand before God that that wasn't
God's way. That was some man's way.
Something that man made-up, they're going to find out when
they get there that even though they were very sincere, they
were sincerely wrong and their faith was misplaced because it
wasn't in the Jesus that the Bible tells us about.
So how do you believe in vain? You can believe the wrong things
#2 you can believe in vain by believing without repentance.
And we see that. In fact, let's just go to Luke
chapter 13, Luke chapter 13, and verse #3 verse 2.
Jesus answering, said unto them, Suppose ye that these Galileans
were sinners above all the Galileans, because they suffered
such things? I tell you, nay, no, because,
but except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish.
Let's go over to Acts chapter 17.
And again we don't. I'm not trying to hammer a point
that we've already talked about because these are all the same
verses that we talked about when we went to when we went through
repentance. But Acts chapter 17 and verse
#30 is one that we haven't looked at.
And the times of this ignorance God winked at.
In other words, God overlooked it, but now commandeth all men
everywhere to repent. And this was this was Paul
standing there and preaching to the Athenians, to those in
Athens, Greece, on Mars Hill. And they were very sincere.
They had they had monuments to all these gods.
In fact, that just in case they missed one, they had a monument
to the unknown God. And Paul said, who is that
unknown God? He preached to them Jesus.
And he said, listen, it's understandable because you don't
know the truth. But now that you know the truth,
God commands you to repent. The times of this ignorance you
didn't know. God winked that, but now
commandeth all men everywhere to repent, because he hath
appointed a day in the which he will judge the world in
righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained, whereof he
hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him
from the dead. And then they had a choice.
Are they going to accept it? Were they going to reject it?
Well. And when they heard of the
resurrection of the dead, some mocked and others said, we will
hear thee again of this matter. Paul departed from among them.
They had a choice after that. But very, very clearly, Paul
said you need to repent. Belief without repentance is not
salvation. Repentance means to surrender to
God. Many want to believe in Jesus
without surrendering their lives to Him, but it's impossible to
be saved without repentance. By the way, let's turn over to
James Shepherd too. I think this is one of the one
of the clearest examples that we have that it's not just belief.
I think this is a great argument for those, and there's a lot of
them out there nowadays that are saying that that repentance is
just a change from unbelief to belief.
That's not repentance. Repentance is surrendering to
God. Repentance is recognizing that I
am a Sinner and without Christ I am going to spend an eternity in
hell. James chapter 2 and verse #19
Thou believethest that there is one God.
Thou doest well. The devils also believe and
tremble. But wilt thou know, O vain man,
that faith without works is dead?
The devils know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.
The devils know all of these things, and not just that they
know it, they believe it. I believe he said there's one
God, thou do as well. The devils also believe and they
tremble. They know that He exists, but
they don't submit to Him. And many sinners are doing the
exact same thing. They they acknowledge the
existence of Jesus Christ. They acknowledge his death, his
burial, his resurrection. They acknowledge those things,
but they don't acknowledge him as the Savior from their sin.
That's that's a lot of these people who are going and getting
baptized as their salvation experience.
I went to church today for the first time in 10 years and I got
baptized. You're recognizing Jesus as
somebody who died, buried, and was resurrected, but you are not
making Jesus Christ the Lord. You're not surrendering to Him
if there's no repentance. And how The third way that you
can believe in vain is by believing a false gospel or a
false Christ. Second Corinthians.
Let's turn over this one as the last one.
Second Corinthians Chapter 11, 2nd Corinthians Chapter 11 and
verse #3 and four. And I kind of hit on this
already, but I would have you know that the head of every man
is Christ, and the head of the woman is the man, and the head
of the Christ is God. Every man praying or prophesying
had having his I'm sorry, that was like does not make sense.
Second Corinthians does not make sense with what I what we needed
to what we're talking about here.
Second Corinthians Chapter 11 verse 3 and 4.
But I fear lest by any means as the serpent beguiled Eve through
his subtlety, so your mind should be corrupted from the
simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preaches
to another Jesus whom we have not preached, or if you receive
another spirit which you have not received, or another gospel
which you have not accepted, ye might well bear with him.
For I suppose I was not a whit behind the very chief of his
apostles. And he continues on there.
But basically what he's saying is, don't accept anybody.
And he says, if I or an Angel from heaven come preach in
another gospel, reject it, right.
If that's not, I mean, if that is not the majority of religion
in the world today. In fact, Mormonism very clearly
says this is another testament, it's another gospel.
I mean, if you don't need, if you need a stronger warning than
that against those that are coming and preaching another
gospel, I don't know how you can get any clearer than this.
I don't know what other rejection of Mormonism you need
other than something that says this.
If somebody comes preaching another gospel, don't, don't
accept it. It's not the truth.
And they say, oh, we got another gospel.
And everybody says, oh, another gospel, let's take that.
All right, why would you do that?
The Bible very clearly says don't, right?
And they're coming and they're preaching another Jesus.
And that's how that's how you know that there is another
Jesus, right? Because the Bible says it.
For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus whom we have not
preached, that means there are other Jesuses out there that are
being preached. If it's not the Jesus of the
Bible, then we need to reject it.
Many believe in a different gospel or a different Jesus than
that which is revealed in Scripture.
For example, they believe in a gospel of faith plus works or
Jesus plus sacraments or Jesus that is not almighty God in the
flesh. And there's, there's a million
other things that people believe that's not in the Bible.
And that's why I say you want to know the truth.
Is it in the Bible? If it's in the Bible, it's the
truth. If it's not in the Bible, it's
not the truth. I don't care who you are.
I don't care who you claim to be.
I don't care who you claim to talk to.
If it's not in the Bible, we have everything we need from
God's Word. There are no new revelations
today. Everything we need we've been
given already. And he said the things that you
find in this book, you better not add to it.
Better not take away from it, or you going to face the wrath of
God. I think I'll just stick with
what's here. We don't need anything else.
So the gospel important, obviously it's the foundational
element, repentance, faith, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Without that, everything else, everything else is just building
on a foundation of sand and you can know all of it's going to
come crumbling down. You could be the best builder
there is. You can build a beautiful,
beautiful house. If it's built on sand, it's
going to collapse, right? And that's what we, that's what
most people are doing. They're building on sand because
they've never come to Christ in repentance and faith.
They've never made Jesus Christ the Savior that they need
because of their sin. And they put the sanctification
in front of the justification. And you do all of these things
that Christians do, but all of these things that Christians do
are built on sand because this is the foundation, repentance,
faith, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
That's the foundation and without that you can build, you
can put all these things together, but it's going to come
crashing down and it's going to be hollow.
It's going to be empty because it's not built on the foundation
of Jesus Christ. So we're going to continue,
we're going to continue talking about some more of these things
and, and, and really some of these, even the next one,
evidence of salvation, baptism after that, a lot of different
things, eternal security. Those are all things that come
after salvation, but until you until you know Christ as your
Savior, until you have that foundation, then it doesn't
matter what you build on top of it.
You need that foundation first, then you can build and then it
will be strong and then it's going to last.
All right, we'll do some questions from that next week.
And I know there's a lot of them, a lot of verses in there
as well, but a good study. Let's pray.
Father, again, we thank you so much for your goodness to us.
Thank you for the opportunity that we have to study through
these things. I pray that it's a help to us.
God, may you make us strong in understanding these things.
May you make us strong and being able to explain this to somebody
else from God's word. And God, if it's in the Bible,
may you help us to be strong on it.
If it's not in the Bible, may you help us to reject it.
We thank you again for all you do for us in Jesus name, Amen.