You're very welcome to today's Triumph Church podcast.
We pray that you enjoy the message.
If you brought your Bibles, we're going to begin in 1 John
chapter 3 and verse 16. It says we know what real love
is because Jesus gave up his life for us.
There are moments in in history that divide time, moments that
really are so significant that things are changed, that there's
a a stark difference between what was previous and what is
going forward. Everything feels different after
them. You have the invention of the
printing press. That changed the spread of
knowledge, didn't it? You have the discovery of
electricity that we're so thankful for.
We have lights, we have sound, we have all these wonderful
things that transform civilization.
Then you have the invention of the airplane that changed the
way we travel, right? Are you thankful for an
airplane? Sure.
Saves us a lot of time, doesn't it?
Then you have the development of the Internet.
That could be a good or bad thing, depending on how you look
at it. But that changed how we access
information, right? But there's one moment that
stands above every other moment in human history, a moment that
did not simply change politics or science or culture, but it
changed everything. Nearly 2000 years ago, outside
the city of Jerusalem, there's a man named Jesus of Nazareth who
was executed on a Roman cross. And by all appearances, his
story was finished. His body was wrapped in burial
clothes. A stone sealed the tomb that he
was placed in. Roman guards were stood to
watch, and everything about that scene communicated this one
message that it was over. Everyone thought it was over.
But three days later, something happened that changed the world.
The tomb was empty, and from that moment forward, history has
never, ever been the same. Today, we're not remembering a
religious story, though some people may think of it as that.
This is much larger than that. We're confronting the single
greatest event in human history, and that is the resurrection of
Jesus Christ. And if this is true, all right,
and the evidence say that it is, then that changes everything,
doesn't it? So we're going to look at 3
realities today about what the resurrection reveals.
The first thing we're going to look at is the historical
reality of Jesus life, his death and his burial.
In One Corinthians chapter 15 and verses 3 and 4, the apostle
Paul wrote this. He said that I passed on to you
what was most important and what had also been passed on to me,
that Christ died for our sins, just as the Scripture said.
And in verse four, he was buried and he was raised from the dead
on the third day, just as Scripture said.
The Apostle Paul wrote these words really within a few
decades of this event of the crucifixion, and many of those
who had been eyewitnesses to Jesus after the resurrection
were still alive. So they could either deny that
that was true or they could corroborate that this was truth.
That what the apostle Paul wrote here, that he died for our sins,
he was buried and he was raised from the dead, that they could
say and agree that that is true. Notice the order of this
declaration. Christ died, He was buried, and
then he rose again. Those aren't poetic words, these
are historical claims. The historical of evidence of
Jesus life is overwhelming. Roman historians like Tactus
wrote about his execution under Pontius Pilate.
Jewish historians like Josephus referenced him as well.
And much of the 1st century world knew about this man from
Nazareth named Jesus. The point being is that Jesus
lived, that this is a historical fact, but more importantly that
Jesus died in Luke chapter 23 and verse 46, as Jesus hung upon
the cross and as he was about to die, it says and then Jesus
shouted, Father, I entrust my spirit into your hands.
And with those words he breathed his last.
Isn't that amazing? He did that for you.
The Roman crucifixion was designed for one purpose.
It was designed for a painful, excruciating and humiliating
death. The soldiers who carried it out
were professionals. They knew when someone had died.
They were experts at it. They were tasked to ensure it.
They were trained executioners. In Mark chapter 15 and verse 39
it records one of these soldiers noting Jesus death, but it also
notes a a realization that he had of something far greater.
In verse 39 it says And when the Roman soldier who stood facing
him saw how he had died, he exclaimed, This man truly was
the Son of God. He saw that Jesus was dead.
He was trained to know when someone was dead.
And after Jesus died, his body was taken down and placed in a
tomb belonging to Joseph of Armethia.
A big stone was rolled in place and Roman guards were assigned
to the site to ensure that no one was able to steal the body.
Both the Romans and the Jewish leaders wanted to ensure that
this story had ended. Everything about the burial
confirmed the same reality that Jesus was truly dead.
And this matters because Christianity isn't built on
inspirational sayings or moral philosophy, is actually built on
an historical event. If Jesus did not truly die, then
the resurrection really means nothing, does it?
But the historical evidence shows something undeniable, that
Jesus lived and that he was crucified and that he was
buried. And that brings us to a deeper
question. Why would the Son of God come
down into the world only to be executed?
Why would he do that? To answer that we have to
understand the purpose of his life.
This brings us to the second point.
The purpose of Jesus life was to make a way to the Father.
Jesus did not simply come to perform miracles or start some
religion. His purpose was to restore
humanity's relationship with God, Yours and my relationship
with the Heavenly Father. From the very beginning,
humanity was created to know God, but sin separated us from
Him. Unrighteousness caused
separation and every generation since has been trying to bridge
that gap through morality, through philosophy, through
religion and effort on our part. But Jesus made a bold claim that
there is only one way back to the Father.
He made this claim in John 14-6 where he said, and you probably
know the Scripture, He said that I am the way, the truth and the
life, and no one can come to the Father except through me,
through Jesus. Notice what he did not say.
He did not say that he would show the way, right?
He said that He is the way. That statement alone is one of
the most radical claims ever spoken.
Every other religious teacher has said follow my teaching,
right? But Jesus said follow me.
Why? Because the problem of humanity
isn't merely ignorance. We have lots of knowledge, don't
we? The problem isn't enlightenment.
The problem is sin. Sin separates us from a holy and
just God. No amount of good deeds on our
part in our effort can reverse it.
No amount of religious activity or church attendance can erase
it. No philosophy can fix it.
No effort on our part can undo it.
And that is why Jesus came. He had to.
We were without hope, right in Mark chapter 10 and verse 45,
Jesus spoke these words. He said for even the Son of Man
came not to be served, but to serve others and to give his
life as a ransom for many. That's all of us.
Jesus entire life was moving towards this one moment, the
cross. And on the cross He carried the
weight and the penalty of all of our sin, all of humanity's sin,
and the punishment that justice demanded fell upon him.
But here's the good news. He did that so that mercy could
be offered to you and I. Isn't that good news?
The cross was not an accident. It was actually a mission.
It was Jesus mission. And what makes Christianity
different from every other religion is what happened next.
What we're celebrating today is the resurrection.
The resurrection proves Jesus authority over death.
Let's read this in Matthew chapter 28 and verses 2 through
verse 6 and verse 2 it says, And suddenly there was a great
earthquake, for an Angel of the Lord came down from heaven, and
rolled aside the stone and sat on it.
And verse 3 And his face shone like lightning, and his clothes
were as white as snow. And verse 4, the guard shook
with fear. And when they saw him, they fell
into a dead faint kind of picture, something like a kids
cartoon there where you have these, these big muscular, you
know, scary soldiers. And they see this Angel and all
of a sudden they're terrified, right?
And all of them faint of fear. These are Roman soldiers,
trained killers. And then in verse 5, the Angel
spoke to the women, the two Marys that came, and they said,
don't be afraid. I know you are looking for Jesus
who was crucified, but he isn't here.
He is risen from the dead, just as he said that it would happen.
Three days after the crucifixion, the tomb was empty,
not because someone moved Jesus body, but because Jesus rose
from the dead. And the evidence for the
resurrection is astonishing. And we're going to look at some
of it this morning. We don't have time to go into
the all, all the evidence, but we're just going to look at
three things here this morning. First, the tomb was empty, in
spite of the tomb being sealed. And they poured.
When it says it's sealed, they actually poured wax between the
stone and the tomb to ensure and make sure that that stone was
not moved. And if it was moved, they would
know it. And whoever moved it would be
put to death. This was something serious.
So the tomb was sealed. But not only that, it was
heavily guarded by trained soldiers.
And these soldiers were elite, all right.
There would have been a fierce battle to get past these
soldiers. If someone was attempting to
steal Jesus body. Listen to a typical guard unit
at the time would have consisted of a minimum of four soldiers up
to maybe 16 soldiers. The Roman soldier was highly
trained, highly skilled, But the interesting thing about the
soldier is they risked death for failure.
So you can bet that they were not going to allow that tomb to
be messed with and that body to be stolen.
The second is Jesus appeared to hundreds of people.
Paul writes in One Corinthians that more than 500 witnesses saw
him alive after the resurrection.
In any court of law, that would have been considered
overwhelming testimony. If you go to court and there's
500 witnesses who have signed some kind of affidavit, who have
sworn their testimony and they say something had had happened,
like that's a done deal in the court, right?
So here you have over 500 people who saw and could verify that
Jesus has resurrected from the dead.
The third thing is the disciples themselves were transformed.
And this is what is so fascinating and compelling
because after Jesus was hung on the cross, after he was dead,
what did the disciples do? Did they go out and share the
gospel and tell people about Jesus?
Hey, we're here to tell you about our dead Savior, all
right? No, they were scared.
They were terrified. They went into hiding.
But what changed? What happened that you have all
these men and these people who were cowering in fear all of a
sudden. You have in the first or in the
2nd chapter of Acts, you have the Holy Spirit come.
You have the 120 in the upper room, right?
And you have the apostle Peter. He denied Jesus three times,
didn't he? He couldn't even stand up to a
little girl who asked him if he was one of the disciples.
He said Nope, right, He was a coward.
All the disciples went into hiding.
But Peter and all the other disciples, on the day of
Pentecost, they're preaching to thousands of people, declaring
Jesus his life, his death, his burial and his resurrection.
Right. What changed the disciples from
cowards to people who were empowered, who were bold to
share their faith in Jesus? It was that they had encountered
the risen Savior, just as Jesus had said.
What's funny is, is people try to come up with all sort of
ideas, you know, to explain away the Bible, to explain away these
different things. Like all those people, they had
a hallucination, right? These 500 people all had all had
the same hallucination, right? That Jesus was risen from the
dead. Like that is mathematically
something that is not going to happen.
It's just foolishness, right? You know, the same, these are
the same people who said that, well, it was really easy for the
children of Israel to cross the the Red Sea with Moses, right?
Because it was only it was really shallow.
So they were able to cross the Red Sea really easy.
They went at the shallow point. Well, OK, explain to me how the
entire Egyptian army drowned in really shallow water.
All right, the world comes up with all sort of ideas to try to
explain away Scripture, right. Well, why would they want to do
that? Why would the devil want to do
that is the real question. It's because everything hinges
on the resurrection. Everything hinges on this book
actually being truth, right? This is truth.
We know love. We all know real love because
Jesus came to die upon the cross for you and I.
But that love was proved, and that love was demonstrated not
just with his sacrifice, but with his resurrection.
Amen. So the disciples were
transformed. They went from people who were
cowards to people that were bold, unafraid to share even in
the midst of persecution, even in the point of being threatened
with death. And let me tell you, all of the
disciples except for John, the disciple Jesus loved, right?
All of the disciples died horrendous deaths.
They all died martyrs, even doubting Thomas made his way to
to India. And they have in, in in Shania.
There they have a monument to Thomas who who went across the
world to share the gospel. And there they say that he was
speared to death for sharing this truth, right?
What made Thomas so bold? He encountered the risen Savior.
Something happened which changed them, which emboldened them,
which empowered them, right? Jesus resurrection changed them
forever. And it changes our lives too.
What empowers us to share this real love with other people?
It's because we're all convinced.
We all believe we have faith that just as Scripture had said
that it is true, right? Jesus said this in Revelation
chapter 1 and verse 18. He said I am the living one, I
died, but look, I am alive forever and ever, and I hold the
keys of death and the grave. The resurrection was not simply
a miracle, it was a miracle. It was a declaration that Jesus
had authority over death, but even more, He has authority over
life. Jesus said this in John 10/10.
He said the thief does not come except to steal, to kill, and to
destroy. But I have come that they may
have life and that they may have it more abundantly.
Amen. This world is terrified of death
because they don't know what comes after, right?
But you and I know what comes after because we have faith in
the resurrected Savior. We have faith that we have
eternal life with our heavenly Father through Jesus.
Man, if you want to come to the front here, Aiden, play quietly
on the guitar. Jesus came to bring life.
But to do this, Jesus had to conquer death.
And this brings us to the most important question of all.
What does that mean for you? If Jesus truly rose from the
dead, then he's not just a philosopher, he's not just a
teacher or a prophet, but he is Lord.
And if he is Lord, then every person must eventually answer
the same question. What will I do with Jesus?
If he is the fulfillment of Scripture, if he is the Savior,
if he is the King of kings and the Lord of Lords, and there's
no other way to God except through Jesus Christ, then we
must ask ourselves the question, what will we do with Jesus?
The resurrection proves that sin can be forgiven.
That's good news, isn't it? It proves that death has been
defeated, and it proves that eternity, eternal life with God
is possible. But it also confronts us each
with a choice. All of humanity is faced with
this choice because Jesus didn't merely come just to make your
life better. He came to give you life, and
life is better with Jesus, but he came to give us new life
entirely. We become a new creation through
Christ, Paul says, and Jesus said this in Matthew chapter 16
and verse 24. He said if any of you wants to
be my follower, then you must give up your own way.
That's hard, isn't it? But that's the requirement of
Jesus. If you want to be a follower of
Him, then you have to lay your own way at the foot of the cross
and let it die. You offer your own way to Him,
but in place of that He offers you His way, which is life, and
life more abundantly. We serve a good God.
He didn't come here just to oppress us and suppress us.
He gave. He came to bless us, to bless us
with life, but to bless us with life more abundantly.
That's eternity with him. That's this life so much better
than we could possibly do on our own, so much better than we
could even imagine. So I want to ask you all a
question today. Will you answer Jesus call and
follow him if I could have every person's bow your heads and
close your eyes? Many of us have tried life our
own way, but that way has failed us.
It's failed US time and again. It's led to allowing the devil
to steal our joy. It's allowed the devil to kill
our dreams, and it's allowed him entrance to cause destruction in
our life and in our family. But Jesus is giving us a choice.
He came to give us life, and that choice is now yours.
Do you want to follow Jesus? Will you make him the Lord of
your life and receive forgiveness of sin?
If you want to follow Jesus while every eye is closed, I
just want you to raise your hand.
No one's looking around, it's just me, you and God.
If you want to follow Jesus, just raise your hand.
Maybe we've been a Christian for many years now, but really, if
you're honest, you really haven't done what Jesus said and
given up your own way. I want you to raise your hand
too. This is probably the most
consequential decision that you're ever going to make right
here this morning. And I want to wait just a moment
longer because I believe that there's more people here that
you either haven't made a decision for Christ or you've
been living in your own way and you want to make a change.
You're choosing to put down your own way.
Lay that at the foot of the cross and follow Him.
Is there anyone else here this morning?
Listen, honestly, that could be each and every one of us if we
could just pray all this together.
We can all stand and we'll pray this prayer together.
Dear Heavenly Father, I believe in Jesus.
I believe he's resurrected, I believe Jesus as my Lord, and I
repent of all my sin today and I'm making the decision to
follow Jesus. Fill my heart with you, God,
help me live my life to please you.
Help me walk in your ways. Thank you for this new life in
you in Jesus name, Amen. Hallelujah for those of you who
who raised your your life. Listen, Pastor Amy and I would
love to connect with you and I have a a book, you know, if
you're a first time guest to the church, you would have get
gotten this in a welcome bag there.
It's the book so loved and it's based off Ephesians chapter 2
and verse four in the amplified classic version.
You know, and of course we know John 316 for God so loved,
right, So loved you read that. It's not a long book.
I think it's like 84 pages, but it kind of explains this in more
detail, what we talked about today, how much God loves you,
but we'd love for you as well to, to connect with us after
service. Just let us know of the decision
that you made. Sometimes it it's good just to
fortify that choice that you've made, fortify that decision that
you made and say, listen, Pastor Brad, I just want you to know
that I gave my life to Christ today.
Listen, Pastor Brad, I'm choosing to set aside my own way
and I'm choosing to be uninhibited in following Christ.
Amen. Hallelujah.
Heavenly Father, Lord, we just thank you.
Lord, you're so good. Your goodness leads us to
repentance. Lord, you didn't come to this
world to judge us. You came to this world to save
us, Lord, and we thank you for that.
Lord, I just pray that for the rest of this day, for the rest
of this week and month, Lord, let every day be a celebration
of Jesus. Let every day be a celebration
of his death and his burial and his resurrection.
Thank you, Lord, that we wouldn't take that for granted.
We wouldn't set it aside as as just a story or or some
religious thing, Lord, but something that is a historical
fact that Jesus did for us. Jesus name Amen.
Thank you for listening to the Triumph Church podcast this
week. If it was a blessing to you,
share it with someone you know. For more information on Triumph
Church, you can visit us at www.triumphchurch.ie.