Good morning. So what would life be like if
there was no resurrection? We certainly wouldn't be here
today, would we? Worshipping Jesus?
We wouldn't know what to do or where to go when our hearts are
broken by circumstances in life that we have no control over.
And we come to church not for religious purposes or duty.
We come as brothers and sisters in Christ because we all know
that we need Jesus. Amen.
And the older you get and the longer you live, the more you
realize that you need Him 24/7, right?
This not once in a while, and I'm thankful that we're gathered
together here today to to learn more about him and to learn more
about the gospel, the good news that the world needs.
I don't have to tell you about the news media.
There's wars and rumors of war everywhere, whether it's Ukraine
or Israel or the potential conflict with China and Taiwan
and now Venezuela, Nigeria. It tells us in the Bible in the
last days there will be wars and rumors of wars.
And boy, we sure have them, don't we?
It seems like we have an all time high of world conflict and
division and divisiveness and hatred, especially for truth and
for the clarity of the gospel. And so we're fortunate, those of
us who are here today that believe in Jesus Christ, we have
hope and eternal hope, a living hope, a lasting hope and
everlasting hope. If you're here today and you've
never come to faith in Jesus, I pray today would be the day that
you would recognize you need him and you would open your heart to
him and invite him to commend your life and change your life
and save you from the the power of sin that we all struggle with
until we have Jesus. And when you have Jesus, you
have a way out of your sinful tendencies.
You have a way out of the patterns and habits and
addictions that control your life and ruin it.
So let's pray, Father God, you've brought each of us here
today for a specific purpose. Somehow you work in our minds
and in our conscience and call us to yourself.
You draw us to yourself, Lord. That's the mystery of the faith.
Is it that we don't seek You? You seek us, and then you cause
us to seek you. You cause us to pursue you.
You cause us, Lord, by your grace, to want to know the
answer of life. Why are we here?
Why do we go through what we go through?
Why do we experience death? Why do we experience heartache?
Why do we experience tragedy? Why do we experience broken
relationships? Lord, all the things that affect
all of us as human beings. And Lord, we are so grateful
that you've opened our eyes to realize that you are the Christ,
the Son of the living God, that you are the resurrection and the
life. And whoever believes in you
shall not perish, but have everlasting life.
For you said I am the resurrection and the life.
He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live,
and he that believeth in me shall never die.
Oh God, thank you for coming into this world and not leaving
us to our sin. You came because you knew we
needed a way out of the madness and the insanity and the
brokenness of human life apart from you.
And we really don't experience life or no life until we come to
know you. For you are life.
You are the giver of life. There is no life apart from you.
We just walk around as dead people until we come to know you
and are born again and brought into a relationship with you
where we have a new life and a life that's worth living.
And we praise you for that, Lord.
And as we enter into this new year, Lord, we pray by the power
of your Holy Spirit that you would make each of us and this
church in this ministry a mouthpiece for the gospel of
Jesus Christ into a broken and lost world.
That we would go out, each of us this year.
And when we meet people and we run into people who are broken
hearted and hopeless and despairing, that we would, Lord,
be used by you to tell them the good news that Christ died for
our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried
and that he rose again on the third day.
The day. Lord, we study these teachings
that you've given us in First Corinthians 15 regarding the
gospel. And what a wonderful Sunday that
we can all be here together, starting this new year, focusing
on the most important thing in life, and that's the gospel of
Jesus Christ. So Lord, we commit ourselves to
you. We surrender to you.
We don't make promises or resolutions.
Lord, all you ask us to do is surrender to you and yield to
you to say, not our will, but your will be done.
And that's I pray the prayer of all of us today.
And we commit all these things to Lord the day.
Lord, touch the hearts of all those you brought here in the
specific and only way that you can to comfort, to encourage, to
bring hope, to bring belief, and to bring peace, Father, and to
each heart and the families that are represented here this day.
Let us be different when we leave here today, more different
than we've ever been before because of your word and the
power of your Holy Spirit. And we pray and we ask these
things in Jesus name, Amen. If you have your Bible turn to
1st Corinthians chapter 15. You can Google it on your phone
as well so you can see where we're at.
And we're going to look at the 1st 8 verses today.
And I wanted to thank you guys, Lewis, myself, Cindy Terry, the
leaders of the church for your prayers, your love for each of
us as we serve you. The gifts, the cards, the
prayers, the texts, the phone calls are just amazing.
As you well know, Cindy, my wife's been really going through
it this year. So she was in the hospital for I
think about 8 days over Christmas and they're trying to
diagnose what's going on. She's having trouble walking and
having stability, so it's sort of a challenge every day for her
right now, but she's encouraging the Lord.
She's trusting Him. She just said to me this morning
as we were praying, Clerk, all I want to do is go deeper in
Jesus. Isn't that awesome?
I'm so thankful that I have a wife that knows Jesus and knows
that He's the answer for every need that she has.
And I feel the same way. So thank you for your love and
your prayers. So anyway, we are in this book
of First Corinthians chapter 15. Last time I spoke, prior to
Pastor Lewis's time to teach in December, I had finished pretty
much with the first part of this chapter regarding what the
gospel is. I'm going to read it again and
review and then get into a couple things this morning to
help us understand more about this history that we have of
Jesus raising from the dead. Moreover, brethren, I declare to
you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received,
and in which you stand, by which you are also saved, if you hold
fast that word which I preached to you, unless you believed in
vain. For I delivered to you first of
all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins
according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He
rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and
that He was seen by Cephas. Then by the 12.
After that He was seen by over 500 brethren at once, of whom
the greater part remained to the present, but some have fallen
asleep. After that He was seen by James,
then by all the apostles, then the last of all, he was seen by
me also as by one born out of due time.
So the Gospels explain very clearly the history of of what
had happened. I'm going to go to Luke chapter
24 and I'm going to read a lot of scripture today.
This would get you up to speed again in regard to the
significance and the historical evidence that this is not make
believe. This isn't something that some
of this thought up. That would be an interesting
story. This is all historical fact
proven by the eyewitnesses that actually saw Jesus after his
resurrection and Luke chapter 24.
Now on the first day of the week, very early in the morning,
they and certain other women with them came to the tomb,
bringing the spices which they had prepared.
But they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, and then
they went in and did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.
And it happened, as they were greatly perplexed about this,
that behold, 2 men stood by them in shining garments.
And then, as they were afraid, they bowed their faces to the
earth and said to them, Why do you seek the living among the
dead? He is not here, but is risen.
Remember how He spoke to you when he was still in Galilee,
saying the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of
sinful men and be crucified. And the third day rise again.
So the Lord told his followers what he was going to encounter
and that he was going to be crucified, and then he was going
to die and He was going to rise again from the dead on the third
day. It's interesting when He did
that, they didn't catch on like saying, well, he's he's not
going to stay dead. He told us he would rise again.
No one picked up on that. Shows you how blind we can be as
as human beings. And then they remembered his
words. Then they returned from the tomb
and told all these things to the 11 and to all the rest.
It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and
the other women with them who told these things to the
apostles. I find it fascinating that the
guys weren't at the tomb. Why were the women there?
Well, the women have a very important role in the history of
Christianity. Jesus decided that he was going
to reveal himself first to a woman and then tell her to go
tell his closest followers who were all afraid, hiding out,
hoping that they wouldn't be arrested or be crucified.
And so these wonderful women had this privilege of having this
encounter and they got to go tell the apostles.
And their words seem to them like idle tales.
They did not believe them. So these these women come to the
the house and and begin to tell the story of what they had
disencountered and and they thought that this seemed like
make believe. There's no way that this could
happen. But Peter that we remember
Peter, Simon Peter had denied Jesus hours before his
crucifixion. He probably wasn't in a good
state, mentally or emotionally, definitely spiritually, because
he knew he had denied the fact that he even knew Jesus.
So Peter Rosen ran to the tomb, and stooping down, he saw the
linen clothes lying by themselves, and he departed,
marvelling to himself at what had happened.
I find it fascinating that he ran to the tomb.
Something in him caused him to think or to know that something
miraculous must have happened. And he sees the garments lying
there and thinking like what has gone on here?
What has happened? Now down the road there, several
of the other apostles are walking.
Now behold, 2 of them were traveling that same day to a
village called Emmaus, which was 7 miles from Jerusalem.
They talked together of all these things which had happened.
So it was while they converse and reason that Jesus himself
drew near and went with them. But their eyes were restrained,
so they did not know Him, so they weren't able to recognize
who was walking along with them. He said to them, What kind of
conversation is this that you have with one another as you
walk and are sad? Then the one whose name was
Cleopas answered and said to him, Are you the only stranger
in Jerusalem? And have you not known the
things which happened there in these days?
And he said to them, What things?
And they said to him the things concerning Jesus of Nazareth,
whom was a prophet, mighty indeed in Word before God and
all the people, and how the chief priest and our rulers
delivered him to be condemned to death and crucified him.
But we were hoping that it was he who was going to redeem
Israel. Indeed, beside all this, today
is the third day since these things have happened.
Yes, in certain women of our company who had arrived at the
tomb early, astonished us when they did not find His body, and
they came saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who
said He was alive. And certain of those who were
with us went to the tomb, and found that just as a woman had
said. But Him they did, we did not
see. Then He said to them, O foolish
ones and slave heart, to believe in all that the prophets have
spoken ought not to Christ to have suffered these things and
to enter into His glory. And beginning at Moses and all
the prophets, he expanded to them all the scriptures, the
things concerning himself. How awesome was that?
They're getting like this eyewitness, perfect miraculous
account of everything that was prophesized regarding Jesus
coming to this earth throughout the Old Testament and that
everything that happened, happened according to what the
Scriptures had foretold. And he started way back in the
time of Moses and he went through all the prophets.
We don't have time today to look up all the verses that talk
about what happened and how these were all fulfilled 100%.
And he and he explained to them all these things.
And so they drew near to the village where they were going,
and he indicated that he would have gone farther, but they
constrained him, saying, abide with us, for it is toward
evening and the day is far spent.
And he went to stay with them. So he's getting ready to take
off. They convince him to stay and
hang out for a while. And they were probably
wondering, like, how in the world does this guy know all the
stuff he's just told us? Now it came to pass as he sat at
the table with them, that he took bread and he blessed it and
he broke it, and he gave it to them.
So every week we take the Lord's Supper and this represents the
body that was given for us, the Lord's body and the blood that
he was shed for us for the remission of our sins.
When Jesus was in the upper room the night before his
crucifixion, he had what was called the Last Supper.
And when he broke the bread and gave the cup, they had never
experienced anything like that ever before because he's telling
them that this represents him, his body.
So that was the last thing they remembered before his
crucifixion. And so here's Jesus now sitting
with them at the table with them.
He takes the bread, He blesses it, He broke it and gave it to
them. There's no one that can break
bread like Jesus, right? It's it's a supernatural
encounter. And whenever he did that, it
says their eyes were open and they knew him and he vanished
from their sight right away. They said this is the Messiah,
this is Jesus. We've seen him.
He truly has risen from the dead.
And they said to one another, did not our heartburn within us
while we talked with us on the road and while we opened the
Scriptures to us. And that's what happens to me
and to you every time we open the Word of God, whether it's 5
minutes or five hours, it doesn't matter.
You read the Word of God. It's a living word and it goes
into your heart and to your spirit.
The Holy Spirit takes what it is you're reading and begins to
burn things in your heart and make them real and make them
alive and make them living. And they they said the evidence
of this experience was that whenever this word was
proclaimed to them, something was happening internally in
their heart. And that's what my prayer is
every time we come here together and gather whoever is preaching,
whoever is teaching the studies throughout the week, the women's
studies, the men's studies, a small group studies of the
pastor teachings, the Wednesday night guys.
Every time the word's broken, something's happening in the
heart. And that's why you want to take
advantage every time the church is open.
And when the word is being broken, come and fellowship and
allow the Lord to work in your heart through the word of God.
And so they. Are amazed at what has happened
so they rose up that very hour they returned to Jerusalem and
found the 11 and of course we know Judas had committed suicide
so he wasn't there yet anymore and the apostle left at this
time who were with them gathered together saying the Lord has
risen indeed and has appeared to Simon exclamation point and they
told about the things that had happened on the road and how he
was known to them by the breaking of bread.
It's interesting how the Lord encourages us to take the Lord's
Supper as frequently as we possibly can, because every time
we take the Supper, Jesus says we remember his death till he
comes again. Something happens to us
supernaturally when we take the Lord's Supper.
It's not a ritual, it's not a routine.
It's something that glorifies God beyond what our imaginations
could even consider, that He loves us to remember what He's
done for us because it's easy for us to forget it.
It's easy for us to take it lightly.
And every time we have the privilege to break the bread
together with Him and with one another, he does something
supernaturally in US. And now in verse 36, as they
said these things, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them and
said to them, Peace to you. These are these are some of the
occurrences of the eyewitness accounts after Christ rose from
the dead. And they were terrified and
frightened and supposed they had seen a spirit.
He said to them, Why are you troubled?
And why do you doubt? Why do these doubts arise in
your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet that
it is I myself handle me and see.
For the Spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I
have. So he had this resurrected
physical, actual body, flesh and and bone, but but a body that
was now never going to die again, never suffer again.
So he gave them the opportunity to touch him.
And it would have been great to have been in that room to see
that. I don't know what you would have
been. I've probably been like, he's
really here. This is not a ghost.
This is a real person. And then everybody else, I'm
sure we're gathering around hugging them and who knows what
they were up to. And when he had said this, he
showed them his hands and his feet.
And while they still did not believe for joy and marvel, he
said to them, have you any food here?
Now when he shows them the hands and the feet, the, the, the nail
pier scars are still there and they'll be there throughout all
eternity. When we're in heaven one day,
we're always going to remember when we're with Jesus for what
he did for us and why we're actually able to be there with
him because of what he did for us.
And we know Thomas, who wasn't at that particular meeting, he
shows up down the road later. He actually, you know, didn't
believe until we was able to put his hand into the Neil Pierce
scars and then he recognized that it was the Lord himself.
But Jesus knows that they're still like, and their rational
minds thinking like, OK, I'm, I'm experiencing this.
I'm seeing this, I believe now and I but how I need a little
bit more help to really think that this is really real, right?
So then Jesus says, do you have any food here?
The Lord didn't need anything to eat, but he wanted to prove to
him that he still liked to eat. And that's sort of interesting
because when we get to heaven, we're just not sitting around in
clouds, you know, kumbaya worshiping all the time.
Our worships going to be involved in every activity that
we experience in heaven and there's going to be food in
heaven. What do you think about that?
Are you excited about that? No, no food poisoning.
I guarantee the the best fillets that are probably ever possible
be able to be put out there on a table.
This a marriage supper to the lamb that we're all going to
experience in that that first opportunity to be with him in
the Kingdom. This wonderful, wonderful days
ahead for us and those the Lord. So they gave him a piece of
broiled fish and some honeycomb and he took it and he ate it in
their presence. Then he said to them, These are
the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that
all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of
Moses and the prophets, and the Psalms concerning me.
And he opened their understanding, that they might
have comprehend the Scriptures. And he said to them, Thus it is
written. And thus it was necessary for
Christ's suffering to rise from the dead the third day.
Now this is what I want us all to capture and think about, and
that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His
name to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem.
The last thing He said to them also said it in Matthew.
He says it to us today. What needs to be done is that we
need to tell people they need to repent from their sins and that
Jesus will forgive them and cleanse them from their sins and
give them everlasting life. This should be preached in His
name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.
So our job as followers of Jesus Christ in studying about the
resurrection is to take this message that God has given to
you and me and give it to everyone we possibly can.
Amen. Looking for opportunities to
tell people that don't know anything about what it is.
We know that don't even think there's a possibility of
forgiveness from guilt and shame and sin and we've all committed.
The people for the most part are hopeless and they don't realize
that there is the potential to have life after death.
It's good news. I remember someone saying years
ago, and if you've lost people to cancer or you've had cancer
yourself and it's a wicked, wicked disease, if you had a
literal cure for cancer, you would not hide that cure and
that answer for that disease. You would be breaking down every
hospital door in room where a patient was suffering from
cancer and say, I got good news for you.
I'm going to tell you something and if you believe it, you're
not going to have cancer anymore.
You would tell everybody, well, we have a message that's greater
than the cure for cancer. We have the message, the cure
for death, that people can have life everlasting and forgiveness
of their sin. And so Jesus, he went through
all this, not only for you and me, but he went through this for
everybody that would come to live after you and me, so that
they would hear this perpetually from one generation to the next
generation until he comes again and he says, and you are
witnesses of these things. Now these people were
eyewitnesses. They were standing there, they
were experiencing his literal physical body.
They heard his voice, they saw his presence.
Behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you.
And this is the power of the Holy Spirit.
But Terry, in the city of Jerusalem until you were endued
with power from on high. So they had to wait till they
had the Holy Spirit's power to have the boldness and the
courage to tell people about what Jesus had done for them,
because they knew that they were potentially going to be martyred
and killed because of following Jesus.
And this is one of the greatest endorsements of the reality of
the history of the resurrection. There's no way people would give
their lives to potentially die and be martyred for something
that was not true. These men and these women
throughout the histories of life and martyrdom said this is worth
dying for. This is worth giving my life
for. We received the Holy Spirit when
we were born again. When we receive Jesus into our
heart as our Lord and Savior, we're not alone anymore.
God lives within us and so when we hear the word of God, if
we're believers, it resonates is the truth.
We don't doubt anymore. We know it's true because he
lives within us. What propels us to do what it is
we do for God in Our Calling and our giftings is made possible by
the Holy Spirit that lives in each of us.
So you and me and, and, and everyone else that believes in
the Lord, we're out in the marketplace, we're out in the
world, we're out in the culture, we're out in our jobs, our
occupations and our families and our sports activities, our
leisure. And there's always an
opportunity to run into someone that knows nothing about what we
know. And the Holy Spirit convicts you
and you think, how can I get a conversation going with this
person I'm starting to enjoy being with?
To tell them more about my life and how many kids I have, or
where do I live, or what kind of job I have, or what kind of car
I drive or where do I like to go on vacation, All that kind of
stuff. Small talk, weather, politics,
whatever. To find a way that I can tell
them about what Jesus has done for me.
Get that conversation going. And then hearing them either
blowing you off and ignoring you or laughing at you, which
happens sometimes, or someone saying, that's interesting, I'd
like to know more about that. And they ask you questions and
you build a friendship, you build a relationship.
And, and because of those conversations, God uses you to
to see people LED into the Kingdom of God to believe in
Jesus Christ and become saved and on their way to heaven.
And he led them up out as far as Bethany, and he lifted up his
hands, and he blessed them. This is the last thing they
remember seeing. Now it came to pass while he
blessed them, that he was parted from them and carried up into
heaven. So they saw the ascension occur.
And this also is discussed in the book of the Acts.
It said, Madam, brethren, why are you looking up?
Remember that the same Jesus is being taken up from you shall
come again in like manner. So physically I saw him come up
and the Bible says the second coming of Jesus physically, eyes
will see him come back to this earth, establish his Kingdom in
Jerusalem for 1000 years, the millennial Kingdom and they
worshipped him and they returned to Jerusalem with great joy.
And we're continually in the temple praising and blessing
God, I should say. So this was a real revival.
This wasn't something like the Steelers will win the day and
then we'll rejoice and we'll be excited and and then two hours
later, we could care less, right?
This is an event that you can't ever get out of your head.
And and it says that they they return to Jerusalem with with
this great joy. And I think we say happy New
Year, right? I think we should say joyous New
Year because happiness is based upon circumstances.
And is everybody happy? Yeah.
Sometimes you're happy, sometimes you're sad, sometimes
you're mad, sometimes you're glad.
But joy is a fruit of the spirit.
When the joy of of the Lord is in US, they can't be drained.
It's it's eternal, it's supernatural, it's something you
can draw from no matter what you're going through and what
you're dealing with in life. The joy of the Lord is our
strength and we see that in the lives of each other.
When we suffer, we're not excited about suffering and
tragedy and difficulty and heartache.
But when Jesus is in the midst of your suffering, there's this
presence of joy, isn't there? It's and it's not something we
can manufacture or try to make happen.
It's something that's supernaturally is given to you
and me as a gift. It's a fruit of the Spirit, the
love, the joy, the peace, the long-suffering, the gentleness,
the goodness, the meekness. All the attributes of Jesus are
in us because Christ is in US, Christ in you the hope of glory.
And so whenever we we watch that little video clip there of of
Jesus showing up at at Lazarus death.
It's it's interesting because Lazarus is about his figure
about 30 years old when that happened and Jesus, he knew all
about it ahead of time and he didn't show up immediately
because there was a reason for what had happened and why it
happened the way it happened. But Lazarus was supernaturally
resurrected from a terminally dead condition.
Of course, it wasn't the final resurrection because even though
he was healed and brought back to life, he eventually died,
right. But but Jesus resurrection was
the fact that he can never die again and never will die again.
And so whenever we're resurrected, we're never going
to die again. And so this this issue of what
happened with Lazarus was the fact that it was a precursor of
about 6 days before Jesus would actually be raised from the dead
himself. And they wanted to eliminate
him, the enemies, because of what he had done for Lazarus.
Because a lot of people there were skeptics up until that time
regarding Jesus and his message of repentance and remission of
sins became believers because what had happened to Lazarus.
So they saw Jesus as being a great threat to the rest of the
nation of Israel, and they wanted to eliminate him and get
get rid of him. And so Mary and Martha and
Lazarus lived in Bethany and Jesus throughout his lifetime
had developed a friendship with them.
So on his way to celebrate Passover, he would stay at their
house. So they were really, really
close friends and Jesus hung out there a lot with them.
And whenever Martha first came and said, Lord, if you would
have been here in time, he wouldn't have died.
He saw the anguish in her, the heartache, the desolation, the
confusion. Because Jesus is a man of
sorrows and acquainted with grief.
There's not one thing you and I go through that we go through
alone as his kids. He suffers with you when you're
suffering. He, he enters into your life and
the times that you're broken and your your heart is blown apart.
He's there to bring comfort. He's there to bring courage.
He's there to bring strength. He's there to bring hope and
reason and peace. And the longer you walk with the
Lord and the more you begin to know Him and the older you get
in your relationship to Him, He never doesn't show up and
minister to you. Now at first when you're going
through whatever it is, you, you, you want a miracle right
away. You want help now, not like 10
minutes from now or two days from now.
Lord, I need you right now. And he's there.
We just don't sense it sometimes He, he lets us like get
desperate to really push into him and the struggle to really
find him. He says if you seek me with all
your heart, you'll find me. If you seek the Lord with just a
superficial heart, He's still there, but He's not going to
show up the way you want him to. But when you're desperate for
Him and you're crying out to Him and He knows you're at the point
of ready to receive and experience Him, He will show up
in a very powerful way. So even though Jesus knew he was
going to raise Lazarus from the dead, when Martha shared her
brokenness to him, you know what it says in the Bible?
Jesus wept. Why would He weep?
He knows the end from the beginning.
Beginning from the end. He weeps for us because He knows
we don't understand at times. Why, Lord, why?
And our hearts are broken, but he puts the heart back together
again. And I find through crisis and
adversity and suffering and tragedy, it's a paradox because
it's the best thing that can happen to a human being because
it causes them to look for God and then perhaps even maybe
believe in God because of what they've gone through or what
they're going through. He's a master physician.
He knows how to touch the heart. He knows how to pull out the,
the stuff that needs to be exposed and to, to be repented
of and to, to be seen as as ugly as it is.
And why he had to die that violent death on the cross for
the sins that we've committed against him, past, present and
future. The the lack of.
Compassion that we have for this great God at times is that's
what I marvel about. I say, Lord, how can you love me
so much when I've loved you so little?
But His love for me and you is not predicated or conditioned
upon a temperature of what He thinks or sees and how we love
Him. It says He loved us, and while
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, our worst place in life
and time. He died for us because He loves
us. So when we look at this section
in First Corinthians 15, I pray, and this is a long chapter,
we're going to get into a lot of interesting teachings regarding
what happens to the body after death and the type of the
resurrection that occurs. For the resurrection from the
dead, for those resurrection of righteousness believers and the
resurrection of condemnation and guilt for those who are
unbelievers who unfortunately will suffer all eternity and
hell because they refused to believe on Jesus and accept Him
as their Savior. All these people that were
exposed to this experience, Peter Cephas, that's another
name for Simon Peter. Then they called him the 12,
even though there was only 11 left.
They were known as the 12 apostles, the 500 people that
saw him at one time, then James Peters or Jesus brother, half
brother that the whole life of growing up as a kid in the
house, as I mentioned last time, all these other brothers were
always getting in trouble. I'm sure getting spanked.
Jesus never got spanked once and they would call him goody 2
sandals. Jesus never does anything wrong.
You love him more than you love me because he never he's
perfect. They didn't even know what they
were saying. Surely he was perfect and is
perfect without sin. And then Paul, we'll get into
that next week. He says last of all, he was seen
by me also as by one born out of due time.
And how Paul got saved is a miracle in and of itself.
Martyring Christians, putting them in prison, having them
killed because they followed Jesus and the and the humor of
Jesus. Guess who I'm going to pick to
be one of the leaders of my, my New Testament church?
Paul Tarsus, You got to be kidding me.
This guy was a murderer. You can't trust him.
We hate you know no way but God chooses a weak and foolish
things of this world to confound the wise that no flesh your
gloriness present. I am the last person and I Lewis
will say the same to be doing what we're doing.
You got to God. You got to have a good sense of
humor to you would call us out of our sinful lifestyles and our
self centeredness and our pride and our greed and all these
weaknesses of our human feralities and feelings.
And you, you choose to speak through us.
He could speak through a donkey, right?
He can speak through an ass, right?
So it's humbling. So as a worship team can come
forward, 11:45 I stop at 11:45. Lewis stops at 1155 S.
Do you like me better than Louis because I quit sooner.
No, I used to like preach for an hour and a half.
I was telling Louis and finally I realized like people checked
out like a long time ago. So we only have so much
bandwidth. But anyway, it's a privilege to
be able to teach this to you today, and I pray that the Lord
will touch your heart and bring healing to where it needs to be
healing. I know some of our family in
this church has lost loved ones this year.
Some are dealing with serious illnesses.
Some are dealing with wayward family or broken kids, marriages
that have been in disarray, whatever.
But we're also grateful for all the answers to prayer that we've
had at Calvary Chapel this year, all the wonderful things that
God has done in your lives and the lives of many that we care
about and love. So keep praying, keep trusting
the Lord, keep asking questions, and we're here for you to help
you in your path and your walk as you help us as well.
Let's take the Lord's Supper together.