Good morning, Calvary Chapel. Good morning, everybody.
It's a beautiful resurrection day.
Morning. And I just want to say to
everybody, happy resurrection day.
Jesus is risen. He is risen indeed.
Amen. Amen.
What a blessed day to be here today.
You know, and I, but I just want to say that whoever keeps
raising this platform every week and making it harder for Clark
and I to get up on this, no one's doing that.
I would just getting older, I guess, getting more challenging.
Amen. Well, please turn in your Bibles
to the 5th, the 16th chapter of the book of Mark.
That's what we're going to be coming out of today.
And while we're doing that, I want to thank our sister Carrie
for the gracious welcome of everyone that's here.
New, those who are coming who are new, and of course, those of
you who come all the time. But I just want to extend also a
very warm welcome to those who are listening behind prison
walls this morning. We're not forgotten.
And we are praying for you. And we pray that today's service
would be a blessing to you. Thank you for joining us today.
So without getting into too many other things, let's just pray
and let's get into the Word of God.
Amen. Amen.
Father, we do thank you for this wonderful day, this blessed day
as a believer. Lord, this is one of the most
favorite on most favorite days of the year as we celebrate your
dominance over death in the grave.
Lord, we thank you that you are risen, that we serve a living
God. We don't serve an idol.
We don't serve a Pagan God. We don't serve many ungodly
deities, but we serve the true and living God.
And this morning, Lord, we celebrate your resurrection, We
celebrate your life. And we thank you, Lord, that you
loved us so much, that just as you live, as you said in your
word, Lord, that we will live also.
So Father, I pray that You would hide me behind the cross this
morning, that You would allow Your word to come forth and not
mine, that You would think with my mind and speak with my lips.
Stand in this old, weak body, Lord, and I pray that everything
that is done today will bring You glory.
We have worshipped, we have sang, and now we will worship
You by sitting under Your Word and not just sitting under it,
but obeying Your word. In Jesus holy name, we pray that
everyone say Amen, Amen. So today is the day of
resurrection and it is one of the most awesome days and not
just in the history of Christianity, but in the world
period. This is history.
This is an event that has taken place in the world period.
And when we're going to start at this this particular study,
we're going to look at Mark chapter 16.
And as you can see, it begins with now when the Sabbath was
passed. But I want to bring you back to
chapter 50 at the end of chapter 15, where it ends with the
events following the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
And in the events following the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, we
see very clearly that the, the men, the Josephs of Arimathea
and, and, and Nicodemus actually took the body of Jesus and they
wrapped them in fine linen and they, they put them in a, a tomb
that was cut out of stone and they put them in a tune and they
sealed that, that tomb was sealed with, with a rock, a big
rock, a big stone. And from that point on you had
grief, you had sorrow. And what I want to do today is
to look at what happened very briefly.
I want to look at what happened between that Friday, which was
the day of his crucifixion, and the day of preparation for the
Sabbath, and that Sunday, which was the day of Jesus rising from
the dead. And that would be the Sabbath
day, the Saturday. We never talk too much about
Saturday. We talk about Good Friday and we
talk about the Cruces and we talk about the rest day of
resurrection, but we never talk too much about Saturday.
But if you can imagine with me, just for a couple minutes, what
was it that the disciples, what were the people who believed in
Jesus Christ? What were they going through at
that particular time? I mean, they, they, they have,
they have just seen that their, their savior, their hope was,
was, was crucified. Many people believe that that
Saturday was the darkest day in the history of mankind because
their Savior lay dead in the tomb.
It was a day of sorrow, a day of grief, a day of mourning, a day
of weeping. But it was also a day of fear
because they feared that those who were arrested and crucified,
their Lord was also looking for them as well.
So they hid, and they, and they and, and they, they, they
coward. And according to John 20 and 19,
it said that they were hiding in fear from the Jews, from their
own people. But what's amazing is that prior
to that, everything seemed to be going so well.
I mean, they were walking with their Lord.
They were watching Him do miracles.
They were listening to his teaching.
They could feel His love. They were communing with him,
dining with Him, going from town to town, just doing the work of
the Lord. Everything seemed to be going so
well. But then the unthinkable
happened. The unthinkable.
One of their own betrays the Messiah.
Jesus is arrested. Peter denies him three times.
Jesus is crucified and he dies in their hopes.
All their hopes, all the things that they imagined would happen
died with them in their hearts. They didn't recognize, They
didn't remember the promise that he gave them several times when
he said it was so, it has to be so and fulfilled that the Son of
Man would would die, He would be he would be crucified and he
would be buried, but he would raise again the third day.
That thought was nowhere in their hearts.
They were it was covered by the grief and the sorrow that they
were feeling those unthinkable things.
But this experience actually revealed evidence of their
disbelief and the weakness of their faith.
Even though he told them on three occasions that this would
happen, they were still caught off guard.
It's, it's, it's amazing how sometimes even though we can
know or anticipate that something may happen, when it
does happen, we can still be caught totally unprepared and
off guard. All of us have that experience
at one time or another. We've had a life changing
experience where something happened suddenly in like for
example, losing a loved one. Or maybe you have had the
experience of having a, a, a negative medical report from the
doctor test result that may have come up and and it caught you
off guard. Maybe you had the experience of
a financial crisis in your life. The COVID epidemic caught many
people off guard and unprepared. How about this war and the
crisis that the country is going through right now?
And for a lot of people, they are dealing with grief and and
they're dealing with sorrow as a result of these things.
But thank God for his scriptures, his scriptures that
we can go to for comfort. And for example, scriptures like
Psalm 46 that says God is our refuge and strength as a very
present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear even
though the earth be removed and the mountains be carried into
the midst of the sea, and though the waters may roar, sometimes
in our life we feel like the waters are all roaring and the
waves are raging. But he says, you don't have to
worry about that because God is our refuge and He is our
strength. Psalm 33 tells us that our soul
waits. Our soul waits for the Lord.
He is our help in our shield. Sometimes we need to remember
that, you know, we want to run to other people when these
things happen sometimes, but it's God who is our refuge.
He is our our our our shield. He is our help for our hearts
shall not shall rejoice in him because we have trusted in his
holy name. So as we move into verse one and
we look at what happened, I'm going to read down to verse 5
and then we'll come back. But he says here and Mark
chapter 16 verse 1, he says now when the Sabbath was passed, so
Saturday is over with Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of
James Salome brought spices that they might come to anoint him
very early in the morning on the first day of the week.
They came to the tomb when the sun had risen.
So that lets us know that they had no intention or no idea that
they would find the tomb empty. They came prepared to anoint
him. They came prepared to finish
with Joseph and Nicodemus had started to anoint them with
these spices to try to delay the decay of the body and to take
care of that odor that happens with the the decaying body, the
odor of death. They didn't come there thinking
that there would be any kind of of of of empty tomb, but they
were looking to see a body. They never considered that he
would be risen. They expect, they never expected
the miracle of resurrection, which really makes that
conspiracy theory which they had tried to conjure up, the
enemies, the the Jews. The Jews tried to conjure up
this conspiracy theory that said that Jesus's followers stole the
body. That sounds even more ridiculous
when you think about the fact that they didn't come prepared
to see a body. They can't prepare to see a
body. They didn't come prepared to see
an empty tomb. They would have never done all
that if they had plans to steal Jesus's body and it came early
in the morning on a Sunday morning could be when the lights
when the sun came up so that they can see inside the tomb.
They knew they needed to have some light because it would be
so dark. But when they got there, they
saw that the tomb was empty and the stone was rolled away.
Look at what it says here in verse 3.
It says and they said among themselves as they were coming,
This is interesting. Who will roll away the stone
from the door of the tomb for us?
But when they looked up, they saw that the stone had already
been rolled away for it was very large.
So they were looking and they were considering as they're
walking along the way. We have our spices and we have
these things that we need to try to minister to our Lord, to our
savior. But we got a problem here.
There's a big stone. This stone is about 1 to 2 tons
and, and we need some help. You know, men can't even move
this thing and it's just three of us ladies, and how are we
going to move this stone? But God had already taken care
of that provision because he had an Angel come down and, and
through the power of God, that stone was rolled away.
But what's interesting about this is that the men were
cowering. They were cowering somewhere.
They were hiding, you know, from the, from the Jews and the
enemies of Jesus Christ. They were all hiding somewhere.
But these women who the only thing they had on their minds
was ministering to their Lord. They didn't care about what the
threat would be if we went out into the public.
They didn't care if they, if they thought that everybody knew
that they were with Jesus. They just wanted to minister to
their Lord and they were fearless about it.
So what the men worried about, they were concerned about who's
going to know that we are followers of Jesus and find out
where we are. And the women, the only thing
they worried about was how we're going to move the stone to
minister to our Lord. So the next verse says in verse
5 says in and entering the tomb. I'm going to come back to that
stone a little later, but entering that tomb, they saw a
young man clothed in in a white robe sitting on the right side
and they were alarmed. Verse 6 says, but he said to
them, do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth who
was crucified. In other words, he had to make
it clear he is dead. He did die.
No one survives crucifixion. He is dead.
But then the next verse is the thing that we are all the reason
why we're all here and the reason why we come every Sunday,
the reason why we believe what we believe, and we're so adamant
about sharing this truth. He is risen.
He is not here.
He's not here. See the place where they laid
him, But go and tell his disciples and Peter that he is
going before you into Galilee. There you will see him as he
said, he's risen, He's risen. The, the, the, the resurrection
has happened. Now there was no one there that
actually witnessed him coming out of the tomb, except for the
angels. But the proof of his
resurrection is massive. It's massive.
And that's what we're going to talk a lot about today is going
to be that the resurrection, the proof of it, what it means, it
was massive. And he says, go tell his
disciples evangelism. Go tell somebody what you know,
go tell the truth. Go tell what you what you just
witnessed here. Go tell them that's evangelism.
And also tell Peter I love that because that tells me that
regardless of my shortcomings, regardless of how many times I
may come short of His glory, He doesn't forget me.
He doesn't forget you. No matter what we do in this
life, if our hearts are to seek Him, if we believe in Him, He
won't forget us. He knew that Peter was
heartbroken. He Peter had just denied him
three times. He probably didn't even feel
like he was a part of the group anymore.
But yet Jesus made it a point to tell the women, When you go tell
the rest of them that I've resurrected, that I'm no longer
here, go tell Jesus. I mean, go tell Peter as well.
Tell Peter. Let him know that I've forgiven
him. Let him know that my grace is
sufficient. Let them know that I have mercy.
And that is such a good, that's such a good, a good message for
me. It's such a good, such a good
word for me and for you. You don't have to be perfect.
We can't be perfect, but we just need to know.
As he said, he'll remember you. Go tell Peter too.
Don't leave him out. Don't leave him out.
So she goes back. These women go back, as you can
see in verse A So they went out quickly and they fled from the
tomb. And they, and they, they, they,
they, they tremble because they, they were in fear, fear of the
fact that what they don't know what the Lord is.
They, they, they, he was told that he was, he was risen, but
we don't know where he is. But they were also amazed.
They were astonished. They had great joy and they said
nothing to no one, for they were afraid.
Now in most manuscripts, this is where the 16th chapter of Mark
ends. You know, some of your Bibles
may not even have the rest of the book of Mark from verses 9
to 20. And the ones of them ones that
do some of your verses, some of your, your books may have
parentheses or braces at the end that starts with the verse 9 and
goes through verse 20 of the book of Mark.
But this is accepted. So we go through and we read the
rest of it. And he says, now from verses 9
to 13, we see something interesting.
You would think, you would think that if the word, the message
was coming through that he's resurrected, that he's not in
the grave. You would think that that would
be met with jubilation. It would be met with a bunch of
joy. It would be meant by people
just, oh, praising and worshipping and being thankful
and belief. But it wasn't.
In fact, verses 9 through 13 tells us that it was actually
met with unbelief. And this isn't from the people,
just the people of the town we're talking about, from his
disciples. It was met with unbelief.
Look at what it says now. When he arose early on the first
day of the week, verse 9, he appeared first to Mary
Magdalene, out of whom he had cast 7 demons.
She went and told those who were had been with him.
And as they mourned and weeped, so they were still weeping, and
they were still mourning as they wanted to meet.
And when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her,
they did not believe. Let's drop down to verse 12 and
13. After that he appeared in
another form to two or three to to two of them as they walked on
the way into the country. That was when he talked about
the, the road, the disciples that he met on the road to
Emmaus. And they went and told it to the
rest. After they saw Jesus, after they
commune with Jesus that night and they realized that it was
Him, they went back and told the rest.
But look at what it says. But they did not believe them.
So it was met. The news of Jesus rising was met
with unbelief. And even to today, there is
still unbelief about the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Still today we're dealing with that.
I looked at a study that was done by Lifeway Research and it
said that 66% of people who profess to be Christians, only
66% actually believe the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus
Christ. Only 66%.
What was wrong with the rest of y'all?
But then it says that 20% don't believe at all and then 14% are
not sure. What's really sad about this is
that that 20 and 14% include. Men who are standing in the
pulpit and preaching the gospel, how can you preach the gospel
when you don't believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ?
Can't happen. It can't happen.
The resurrection is a non negotiable part of the gospel
message. It's non negotiable.
To not believe in the message of the resurrection is to not
believe the gospel at all. That's why at baptism, Pastor
Clark does an excellent job of giving a brief devotional before
anybody gets in the water. He does a brief devotional on
the gospel of Jesus Christ and make sure that everybody
believes it before they step into the water.
Because baptism does not save you.
It's what you believe before you get in that water that saves
you. So he gives that brief he, he
gives that brief devotion. And before they go down into the
water or before they're dipped, they have to agree and they
believe or profess the gospel that Jesus is the Son of God,
God himself in the flesh, that Jesus did die for our sins, that
Jesus was buried and that he arose on the third day.
That is the core message in the central belief of the Christian
faith. Paul says in the in the in the
book of Romans, he says that it's a part of our confession of
faith for salvation. In Romans 10 and 9, he says if
you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your
heart that God has raised him from the dead, that's
resurrection. You shall be saved.
So it's not up for grabs that we talk about resurrection.
I believe that Jesus is the Son of God.
I believe that he died, but I don't know about the
resurrection thing. If you either you believe at all
or you don't believe any of it, it's the gospel.
It's the gospel. So at this point, I'm going to
take your attention to the defense of the resurrection
because today I want each and every one of us.
Just like Jesus made sure that each and every one of his
disciples of his apostles, he made sure that they were sure,
that they were reassured and that without a shadow of a
doubt, they knew that what they would go out and profess, what
they would go out and preach. They did it with the true
understanding and that they believed it with all of their
heart. And that's why he appeared to
them all. They had eyewitness accounts of
their Savior being risen. So today we're going to talk
about the defense of the death of the resurrection.
So with the defense of the resurrection, we have to go back
to the 15th chapter of the book of First Corinthians, 15th
chapter, the book of First Corinthians.
I just want to bring out a few things concerning that.
First of all, from verses one through 8, when we look at that,
we look at first at verses one through 4 which presents the
gospel and it says here, moreover, brethren, starting at
verse verse one and chapter 15, it says, moreover, brethren, I
declare to you the gospel. This is the gospel which I
preached to you, what you also received and in which you stand.
This is important. The gospel message that he
preached was the message in which they stand.
It's the message in which we stand as Christians, as
believers in Jesus Christ, by which also you are saved.
He wouldn't put that in there if it didn't mean something by
which you are saved. This is the gospel.
You can't be saved by another gospel.
You can't be saved by half gospel.
You got to believe in this gospel, this gospel, unless you
have believed in vain. So here's the gospel message.
There's three points to it. Some people say that this is a
A3 legged stool. When I first heard that, I said,
wait a minute, shouldn't it still have 4 legs?
But it can stand on 3A stool, Can't stand on three, cannot
stand on two though not a stool. So he says this, that Christ
died for our sins. According to the Scriptures,
Christ died for our sins. That's important, the death, to
have that, to have the a record of that death.
That's the sacrifice that paid our sin debt.
That's why the death is important.
Without the shedding of blood, there can be no forgiveness of
sins. And only Jesus Christ could have
done it because he was the only one that was without sin.
He was the Lamb. He was the Lamb without spot or
blemish, so only he could have done that.
Because we're not redeemed with corruptible things like silver
and gold. I couldn't come up with enough
money to redeem us and save us or pay for our sin debt.
Couldn't pay for it with enough money.
But it was with the precious blood of Christ as a lamb with
our blemishes spot, according to Peter.
And Peter also understood that it was Jesus who bore our sins
and his own body on the tree, that we having died to sins,
might live to righteousness, by whose stripes we are healed from
that sinful condition. By his stripes we're healed.
His death was prophesied in the Old Testament as well.
If you look at Isaiah 5053 and 80 says he was cut off from the
land of the living for the transgressions of my people, He
was stricken. So yes, there is the proof that
he did die and it was prophesied that he would die.
So that's part of the gospel. The Messiah will come and he
would die for our sins. That's part of the gospel.
And then there's a second part. He was buried.
Now He was placed in a tomb that was secured.
And when he was buried, he was placed in the tomb that was
secured three ways, three ways. The first way he was secured,
they put a they put a guard, they put a door, a rock, a big
stone in the mouth of the tomb where he was.
And then in addition to that, they put a guard to watch over
it. And as if that wasn't enough,
they sealed it. They put a seal on it over in
Matthew chapter 2766 says that they went and made the tomb
secure, sealing it, sealing it with a stone and setting a
guard. So it was sealed and that's
sealed with that seal meant was that it was the authority and
the ownership of the Roman government.
And they knew that if they sealed that tomb that nobody
would tamper with it because to tamper with something that was
sealed by the Roman government meant death.
So that was one of the ways that they tried to secure that tomb
to make sure that nobody, nobody would interfere with it.
And they didn't, but they wouldn't didn't bank on the
power of God. They didn't bank on the power of
God. And you know what, Thank God we
are sealed. The Bible says that when we
believe, at the moment that we believe, we are sealed with the
Holy Spirit of promise. We are sealed.
Each and every one of us who believe are sealed and we are
under the authority and we are the ownership of Jesus Christ.
We serve Him and we're sealed by him.
Thank you, Lord, thank you, Lord.
But then the third part, the third leg of this, of this three
leg of stool is that he rose again the third day.
And that's what we're here celebrating today.
In fact, we celebrate this every Sunday, every time we get
together. It is a celebration of the
resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because without that
resurrection, there'll be no need to come together.
There'll be no need to get up and come to church.
But we do have a reason to come because we raise, we, we, we
serve the risen and living God. Amen.
So that third one is the
resurrection. OK?
Christ is not just our suffering Savior.
He's our living Lord. He is not just your suffering
Savior. It wouldn't mean anything if he
just went to and got and had to suffer, or if he went to the
cross and just died and that was it.
There was a period left or that that wouldn't mean anything but
the resurrection that is what gives our that's our hope.
That's where our faith lies in the resurrection of Jesus
Christ. He is our he's not just our
suffering Savior. He's our living Lord Proof.
Now there's a couple of things that his resurrection proves
first of all proves of his power over death and the grave.
It proves that Jesus is the Messiah, that he is divine, and
that he is the Son of the living God.
And most important, not only that, but it proves that God the
Father accepted his sacrifice when he came out of that grave.
When God raised him from the dead, it meant that he accepted
Jesus Christ as our sacrifice. And because he accepted that
sacrifice, we have forgiveness of sins.
The sin dead is paid 100% paid. Yeah.
He was delivered because of our offenses and was raised because
of our justification. We redeemed through the blood of
Jesus Christ and that was accepted by the Father.
So Paul defends this truth of the gospel, the fact that he
died, the fact that he was buried and the fact that he and
the fact that he rose on the third day.
He defends the resurrection. He defends it based on this, the
authority and the authority has two points.
The authority of the Scriptures. Throughout the Old Testament
Scriptures it prophesied that the Messiah would die, but that
he would be raised again. Again Isaiah 53 and 10 says,
When you make his soul and offering for sin his death, he
shall see his seed. That means he's going to rise
again, and he shall pro, and we shall He shall prolong his days,
and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
That was written 700 to 750 years before he ever went to the
cross. And then Psalm 616 and 10, he
says you will not leave my soul and she O nor will you allow the
Holy one to see corruption. And then even Job, even Job
talked about Jesus resurrecting. He says, for I know that my
Redeemer lives and he shall stand at last on the earth.
So it's well prophesied that they that he would live.
So the so through these through the fulfillment of these Old
Testament prophecies of his death and his resurrection, he
is declared to be the Son of God.
He's declared and what Paul said over in Romans, it just really
strikes me because Paul says over in Romans chapter 1 and
verse three and four, he says concerning his Son Jesus Christ
our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the
flesh and declared to be the Son of God with power according to
the Spirit of holiness. But how did he declare to be the
Son of God according to power? How did he declare to be the
Messiah? How did he declare to do this?
And we look at the last part of that verse.
It says by the resurrection from the dead.
That's how he declared it. So we have proof.
The second authority is the authority of eyewitnesses.
There the resurrection of Jesus Christ is most attested, is the
most attested event in ancient history.
It is the most attested event in ancient history.
What do I mean by the word attested?
It means that it is the most witnessed and confirmed event
and proof that something is true.
When you attest something, you you're basically witnessing that
it is true. That's right, young lady, help
me teach this. He's witnessing that something
is true. So Jesus's resurrection was
witnessed by all the apostles, Not just look at you.
Do the math in your own minds as we go through this.
He was witnessed by all the apostles, and then he was
witnessed, and then He was witnessed by over 500 brethren
at once. Now we're talking about people
seeing the Messiah after He rose, not just hearing about
Him. They saw Him.
They saw Him after He arose from the grave.
And that strengthened their faith and they became bold
witnesses for Christ, even unto death.
That's why you have so many people who didn't, you know, who
didn't shrink in the face a martyr ship in the face of
death. They would get on their knees
and they would start singing hymns and be prepared to die for
their Lord because they knew that what they were proclaiming
was true. They knew it was true.
And last of all, he was seen and witnessed by Paul.
At the last time Paul saw Jesus, he spent time with Jesus and
Jesus taught him the gospel. And that was before he went to
be with the other apostles. So he saw him.
Paul said it was like 1 being born out of time.
So just as a point of reference here, you have 500 / 500
witnesses, and then you have the 12 apostles.
OK. Then you have Jesus's brother
who saw him, and then you have Paul.
That's a lot of people. That's over 500 people who saw
Jesus alive after the resurrection.
Now, the Bible says only two or three in the mouth of two or
three witnesses. Every word is established.
Well, I would think 500 is a lot more than two or three.
And in any court of law, if I was if, if I was defending a
case, OK. If I was defending my brother
Dan here, Dan was accused of robbing the bank down the
street, got a couple $1,000,000 out of there and they accused
him of it. But the first thing they would
do is say, well, Dan, say, well, wait a minute.
I, I wasn't there. I wasn't there.
Well, where were you, Dan? I was at Starbucks.
That would have been my first guess for Dan.
If a police officer ever come to me and say, do you see, have you
seen Dan? Did you check Starbucks?
But he would say, OK, I was at, he was at Starbucks.
Now, if two or three people were to say that, yeah, we saw him at
Starbucks, that would be OK, That would be great for the
court of law. But he has 500 people, that's
it. They saw him at Starbucks, 500
witnesses. So even with that, they still
question the resurrection of Jesus Christ even with that.
So you know, that's nothing but an evil agenda.
And I say this to you because I want us, just like Jesus Christ
wants us to be affirmed in our faith.
That when we go out and proclaim the word of God, regardless of
who we proclaim it to, if we proclaim it to a relative, to a
friend, and we proclaim it to an enemy and we proclaim it to a
neighbor, to a Co worker, no matter who we proclaim it to, we
need to be affirmed that he is who he said he was.
He is Jesus, He's the bread of heaven.
He's God in the flesh. We have to be affirmed to that.
So he goes on and we see that this resurrection is is
falsifiable. What do you mean he's
falsifiable? Well, because anybody could have
went to any of those people and asked them privately.
Did you see him? And anyone could have said no, I
didn't see him, not really. Or all they had to do was
produce a body. If you say he didn't rise from
the dead, OK, produce a body. Where's his body?
It's been almost 2000 years and they haven't come up with a body
yet. I don't think they're going to,
personally. My money is on that.
He's not going to. I feel secure in proclaiming
Jesus Christ as being my Lord and Savior, very secure.
Nothing's going to die. Make me doubt him.
My grandmother used to say, you can't make me doubt him because
I know too much about him. Verse 20 over in verse 20 and
the book of First Corinthians, Paul makes this assertion.
He says, but now Christ is risen from the dead.
Why did he say that? He said that because there were
so many who would doubt that he had risen.
But but Paul understood that if there was no resurrection,
there'd be no Christianity and no salvation.
If there's no resurrection, those who are dead or just
perished, we would have no hope for the future of eternal life.
If He did not rise out of the grave, then we are still all in
our sins with no hope of being redeemed or being forgiven.
But Paul says, but now Christ is risen from the dead and has
become the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
Glory to God because when he says first fruits, then that
means that means it's going to be others to follow.
You can't be the first unless you got somebody coming after
you. And we are those who are coming
after him. Amen.
So with that said, that is the defense for the resurrection.
Now going back to as we come in for a landing pretty soon here
going back to Mark 16, I just want to take another look at
that stone. That stone back in verses 3
through 6 when he talked about the stone that was in the tomb
there verse verse 3. He says and they and they and
they sit among themselves, who will roll away the stone from
the door of the tomb for us. I just want to take a quick look
at that stone. As we said, that stone probably
weighed between 1 1/2 to 2 tons. But there's something that that
stone symbolizes for us. The stone symbolizes the
finality of death. That stone symbolized It was
used as a door to shut death in, just as sin as a door that shuts
us into the prison of death, keeps us in darkness.
But faith in Christ removed that sin and it revives us and brings
us into everlasting life. Just as those ladies were were
able to go in and see what was in the tomb, death was no longer
in that tomb. It was gone.
But Jesus didn't have to have the, the, the stone removed in
order for him to get out. That wasn't why the stone was
removed. It wasn't removed so Jesus can
get out. He could have walked through it.
He could have transported himself.
He rose with a spiritual body. At that point he could have done
a lot of things, a lot of things as he did with the disciples.
He was walking through doors. He was appearing in different
places, so he didn't need anybody to move the door, but
the door wasn't moved for him to come out.
The door was moved for those ladies to be able to see in to
justify their proclamation of his resurrection.
And even when we go, I asked the last time we talked about the
resurrection. I asked because Clark is the
only one that I know to hear it has actually been to Israel on
more than one occasion. And I'm sure he stopped by that
tomb and he affirmed that when he stopped and looked in, Jesus
wasn't there. And that's enough for me.
I don't have to fly to Israel to go to see if he's in the tomb.
I know he's not there based on 501 witnesses now, right?
Amen. Amen.
So this stone that was there to shut in death is no longer
there. And I love what Matthew 28 and
two says. He said the Angel rolled back to
stone and sat on it. He sat on that stone, that thing
that was supposed to be so secure to lead, to have death
shut in, that thing that was going to be so secure to have
darkness be sat in and overwhelming.
He sat on it to show that God's victory over, his victory over
and dominance over death in the grave.
He is victorious over death in the grave.
Death couldn't keep him and the grave can't hold him.
Oh, Death, where's your, where's your thing?
Where's your sting? Death doesn't have sting
anymore. We don't have to be afraid of
death anymore because we know we will rise.
So we don't have to be afraid. Death doesn't have that sting
anymore. Oh grave, where is your victory?
The grave can't keep anybody. It won't keep us because it
didn't keep him. Jesus says you will live because
I live. And if I live, you will live our
soul. So the door to the prison of
death was removed. Charles Spurgeon said this.
He said death's ancient prison house is missing a door.
Glory to God. So today we celebrate and we
recognize that resurrected new life in Jesus Christ.
We recognize his victory over death and the grave.
His resurrection is our hope of eternal life.
He is the first born from the dead, meaning that there will be
others who will follow. But lastly, in the praise and
worship team can come forth now please.
But lastly, that stone represents something else.
That stone represents the obstacle that was in the way of
those women getting to Jesus. It was an obstacle to keep these
women from being able to see Jesus, from being able to
minister to Jesus. It would have been an obstacle
to keep them from Jesus, and it had to be removed.
But they couldn't remove it themselves.
It had to be removed by the power of God.
Many of us have obstacles. We have stones in our lives that
stop us and keeps us from getting closer to Jesus Christ.
Many of us do. We have obstacles that that,
that, that keep us from believing on Jesus Christ or
keeps us from giving ourselves totally to Jesus Christ.
That stops us from giving him all.
Or I'll give him this much, but I can't give him everything from
totally surrendering to Jesus Christ.
There are stones, there are obstacles that stops us from
doing that. What is yours?
What is your obstacle? If you can take a moment, just
think about that. What is the obstacle that's
really stopping you from going deeper in the Lord or stopping
you from serving Him the way that you know that He's worthy
to be served? Or if you're an unbeliever, what
is the obstacle that's stopping you from believing?
What's the stone that's in your way that's stopping you from
believing? What is stopping us from being
more like Jesus Christ? You can put anything in there.
I would follow Jesus closer if wasn't there or I would get I
would give my life today to Jesus if wasn't there.
What's the stone? I would read my Bible more if
wasn't there. I would come and assemble with
the believers more if wasn't there.
What's the stone in your life? We all have to answer that
question for ourselves, we all do.
But one thing we know for sure is that the same stone, the same
God that raised Jesus from the dead, the same God that rolled
the stone away from those women to be able to go in and see the
tomb. The same is the same one who was
able to roll the stone way out of my life and he's able to roll
the stone way out of your life. You just have to determine what
that stone is and give it to the Lord.
Bible says if we submit ourselves to God and resist the
devil, he will flee from us. What's your stone?
So as we go into our communion, Lord's Table, which for some
reason for me today has a little bit more meaning, and it should
have meaning every Sunday. So I even repent for that
because this should have meaning every Sunday.
Because every Sunday that we come and we congregate as a body
of believers, we are celebrating His resurrection because we
wouldn't have to come if He didn't resurrect.
So let's pray. Father, there are so many things
in our lives, Lord, that sometimes keep us from getting
closer to You. And one of those things is
unbelief and doubt. Father, we just talked about how
the resurrection was doubted and and was even not believed by
those who followed you the closest.
So what about us? It wasn't until they saw you,
Lord, that they believe truly and was ready to give their
lives for the cause, give their lives to proclaim you as the
Messiah, the resurrected Lord. But you told Thomas, you said,
Thomas, you believe because you see me.
But blessed are those who believe and not see.
So, Father, we believe even though we don't see, but we see
your effects in our lives. We see your power working
through the Holy Spirit in our lives.
We see, Lord, how you brought us out of darkness and into your
marvelous light. We see how you bless us with
good things, Lord, and how You keep no good things from those
who fear you. We see how you translated us
from the Kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of your dear Son.
We see the effects of your power, the effects of Your
resurrected life. We see that You are still the
advocate for us in heaven. We see that You still work
intercessory for us even here. So Father, we thank you that you
are no longer in that tomb, but you raised, You are risen.
And because of that, we have a living faith because we serve a
living God. We're the only ones who can
boast that Confucius is still in the grave, Muhammad is still in
the grave, Joseph Smith is still in the grave.
But you, you are the living Savior.
You're the living Lord. You arose.
So on a night in which Jesus was betrayed, he took the bread.
And after he broke it, he said, take and eat.
This is my body which is broken for you.
Eat this in remembrance of me. In the same manner he also took
the cup, and after supper he said, This cup is a new covenant
in my blood, which was shed for the sins of many.
Lord, when you went to that cross, when you allowed your
body to be beaten, when you allowed your blood to be shed by
mere men whom you yourself have created, Lord, you did it
thinking about us. You did it because you loved us.
You did it not for your sins, but for ours.
So this is the New covenant in your blood.
Drink this as often as you drink it, drinking in remembrance of
me. For as often as you eat this
bread and drink this cup, you do show the Lord's death until he
comes again. Amen.
I would just ask that if anyone would like to come up to the
altar and just do business with the Lord, to just share what
that stone is that keeps you from being closer to Him.
Whatever that stone is, that prevents you from being able to
see Him more clearly and to serve Him, walk with Him more
dearly. The altar is open.