The Way, the Truth and the Life

Intro

Luke 24:1–11 ESV

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.” And they remembered his words, and returning from the tomb they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest. Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them.

Who have we been learning about over the past weeks and what is today? (Jesus and Easter)

So what we are going to look at today is the resurrection, literally the most important thing and central belief of a Christian.

How we are going to look at this most important thing is by first revealing to ourselves that it is true because I feel as though some of us don’t really believe it, or rather are still a bit skeptical about it.

Why I say this is because when I was in high school I was just told that Jesus died for your sins which was done through his resurrection but I never really decided to go into the depths of if the resurrection was true and what it truly meant. And so I feel like this is the same case for some of you guys as well

This comes from my own personal experience to which I want you guys to experience as well which is the fact that I want you guys to QUESTION everything, question why things happen in the bible. Because when you get the answer to why certain things you’re not sure about happen in the bible (which I assure you will point to the glory, mercy, love and grace of God) instead of leaving it in you head and not really thinking about it, what will happen is:

Your faith which is ever so correlated with you understanding of Jesus will increase drastically and from that you get true joy and happiness.

And Why? Because when people, non-believers, people who you want to invite into the kingdom of God ask you these questions, how are you going to respond? “Oh my parents said so, oh my pastor said so and I just believe them”, you know what they are going to say? “And what”, “how is that proving to me that Jesus died on that cross and resurrected”, “why do I have to give up on what I want to do”.

Jesus calls us to make disciples and that is done through Evangelism where preaching the gospel is caring about them and doing anything you can so that they come to know the LOVE of Jesus and who he is.

And so the questions we are going to try answer today is through 2 questions:

What proves the resurrection is real?

Why is the resurrection so important in our life?

Question: How do you determine if something is true?

What proves the resurrection is real?

What I want to preface or give a little disclaimer is, is that I want you guys to think about what really believing something means. Lets not think about Jesus and his resurrection for now, but just the essence of believing and for yourself how you proclaim a historical event to be true.

How we do it (and we probably don’t even realise it) is we gather enough evidence to convince ourselves that it is true, where we decide if something is true based on what has the highest chance in our head to be correct.

E.g) How do you know that your chair will not break when you sit on it, you prove to yourself that after countless times it doesn’t break so you don’t even think about doubting it.

What I mean by this is, say for example, do you believe that the holocaust was an event that happened in history? Yes I do, and I guarantee all of you do, but were you there in real life to see it? No, so then why do you believe it? Becuase you have evidence, you have eyewitnesses, you have recounts, you have all these museums, you have everyone talking about it, and the only reason we know about it now is because we talk about it in high school.

But what if I came up to you and said what if EVERYONE who saw it was lying, all the videos were edited, people created the things displayed in the museum. Outrageous right, you probably think I’m crazy. Guess what, thats exactly how people view the Gospel of Jesus.

Why is this question to prove to ourself that proving the resurrection is real important to understand for ourself? Because if you don’t think that the actual event happened then your faith is grounded on nothing.

And so there are 3 main things (now there are many more) but for now 3 main things:

The existence of women eyewitnesses

Luke 24:10 ESV

Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles,

The first witnesses of the resurrected Christ was women and ONLY women where we see here that it is important to understand the CULTURE and CONTEXT of the time in Jesus’ day where in this day where females were considered of low or even no social status. e.g) The testimonies of females were not considered as evidence in court. Why is this so important?

Because this proves that the only possible motivation the writers of the gospels Matthew Mark Luke and John would have is that it ACTUALLY happened. And whats even more astounding is the fact that ALL the gospel writers included this in their recount. If you read the gospel accounts, theres some stories where it overlaps between writers, but for some reason this fact that WOMEN saw the resurrection meant that for each writer it was so important they had to write it down.

Why would you put women in there if you were lying and writing about it back then, literally no-one would believe you unless it was ACTUALLY true

If these gospel writers wanted people to believe their ”made up story” then logically would you not put a prominent male figure (like a king or a disciple) into the story so its more believable? Yet they didn’t and wrote women ALL women

The reliability of the eyewitnesses

What we are are going to look at is the perspective of Mary and her friends, and the disciples and see what they thought.

Mary and her friends

Luke 24:1–4 “But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel.”

Now in the verses prior to this, Jesus tells them, prophesies, that before he actually dies that he will die by the hands of sinners, and rise again on the third day. But the verse is saying that Mary and her friends were “perplexed” about the fact that the stone rolled away from the tomb and that the body of Jesus wasn’t there. They couldn’t figure out why Jesus’ body wasn’t there even though they were told the truth.

Disciples

Also in the book of John which tells the same story, Peter and John also come in but what it says is that “they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead” at that point.

We see a similar thing in the end of Matthew 28:16–17 “Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted.”

What we see in this verse is that EVEN THE DISCIPLES, people who were literally with Jesus every single day, doubted that Jesus resurrected.

Why would the gospel writers write this in ? Because thats how real life works - to them the resurrection seemed so surreal they couldn’t believe (even after they saw all the mircales), and we see that right now do we not? People doubting his resurrection in today’s day and age, the disciples were people just like us.

Guys, they weren’t dumber than us, in fact I feel like they were smarter than us because they memorised the texts that they had back in the day off by heart. So why did they doubt? Because they needed evidence just like us

An example of a disciple who doubted was Thomas, who didn’t believe that Jesus had been resurrected even after the other disciples told him that he did. Just like us he needed convincing evidence which was tangible.

But what happens in the end is

Mary - Jesus appears to her physically

Peter and John - Jesus appeared to them physically

Thomas- Jesus appeared to them physically - Jesus specifically here tells us ”You believe because you can see, but blessed are those that believe but cannot see” (talking about us and John put this in because he knows people will doubt just like him)

Once all these disciples get TANGIBLE evidence that he in fact DID resurrect, you know what they did ? Alright bet, lets do everything in the name of Jesus. The lives of the disciples transformed after the resurrection

The transformed lives of the people who saw and believed the resurrection

Once the lives of the disciples were transformed, they carried on to live for Jesus, to truly lay down their life and give everything they had for him.

This then becomes another point of WHY would anyone sacrifice everything in their life, why would they focus on Jesus now and be able to be persecuted for it. Because it was true. You don’t just let everything go and focus on one thing if you don’t believe in it you can’t, thats just not possible, because whenever something that is hard and suffering comes your way you’re going to think oh whats the point I’ll give up because its not real, BUT because the resurrection is real, because it did happen, that is why they were able to live the life Jesus called them to do - make disciples.

Another significant character of Paul - a literal Jew and one that was good at his job I might add. He killed Christians - KILLED, but his life suddenly changed after Jesus revealed himself to him after the resurrection. Jesus literally told him “For I will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name”, and he did, but he did and accepted it because he found out that Jesus was the Son of God and because of that he WANTED to do all the things he did across all the countries and churches he went and wrote letters to.

What does the resurrection prove and why is the resurrection so important in our life ?

Now that the resurrection is hopefully evident to you as real and an event that actually happened, it still means nothing if it doesn’t change a person’s life. If we just accept it as a fact and it doesn’t change our life then it has no meaning. e.g) Take the fact that I drove to church today, its a fact, but do you care? I hope not because theres nothing to care about the fact that I drove to church, it doesn’t change your life if I drove. But this resurrection, is something that changes your life and we focus it on Jesus.

What does his resurrection mean?

That Death was truly defeated - How?

Jesus died on the cross to take away our sins - he was the one that was perfect, absolutely no sin, YET he sacrificed himself, he took all the sins that we commit BOTH PEOPLE THAT DO BELIEVE HIM AND ALSO DON’T and took it to his death. BUT, the resurrection MEANS that Jesus defeated Death, conquered it, and arose to become seated at the right hand of God MEANING, he rules over the world every single bit of it. MEANING that whatever thing you’re going through, whatever is going on in your life, Jesus will and can overcome it if he defeated death because he is soveriegn.

If the ressurection did not happen, then our sins will not be washed away and we will still be sinful in front of the eyes of God. Then Jesus was lying but the fact that he did resurrect means he can’t have lied

It proved/vindicated that Jesus was truly the Son of God, that all the old testament prophecies about a coming Messiah was true, that he truly was the one to save Israel and all nations. Jesus became the ultimate sacrifice for us so that we are viewed as perfect in the eyes of God

And the fact that it proves that Jesus was truly the Son of God, then that means everything that he said in his whole life in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John HAVE To be true IT HAS TO BE. Means that everything in the bible has got to be true

What does that mean for me and you ?

And for us that gives us TRUE peace and freedom, the Jesus is with us every step of the way, the peace that no matter what we go through, Jesus has control over our lives so that we continue to abide in his love, we continue to seek him, we continue to be with him BECAUSE he knows that it is only through believing in this resurrection that we can TRULY be SAVE - THERES NO OTHER WAY.

Faith in Jesus doesn’t remove fear, but it OVERCOMES IT

I sent a video to the Year 12 class 2 weeks ago regarding HSC and how obviously in the moment it feels as though HSC is the most important thing in your life and the only thing you can think about it HSC. Now yes while it may feel like that and I know that for the rest of you it will as well, I want you guys to look at the bigger picture. For the year 12s, the focus in HSC, but for the rest of PW, I know you guys have that one thing that you’re either stressed about, or put all your heart into thats not God. Whatever it is, I want you to listen carefully.

Whatever or whoever you worship is the thing or person that you think determines your future. - Are we going to worship something that is not-living or living?

Matthew 6:31–34 “Therefore do not be anxious, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For the Gentiles seek after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you. “Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.”

This means that you put God first, you put Jesus first, you don’t compromise church, you prioritise church, you prioritise fellowship, you prioritise loving others as Jesus has loved us FIRST.

Jesus calls us to “seek first the kingdom of God in his righteosness, and all these things will be added to you” where “all” refers to everything that God knows that you need in your life, NOT the things that you want in your life

WHat this means is, even if something happens in our life that we don’t want, even if we don’t get what WE think we want, God provides everything that HE knows WE need, NOT everything that WE think WE need.

THIS is what gives us true peace where he calls us not to be anxious about all these worldly things because he knows we need them all, how much of it, when to give it.

If you prioritise something - do you not give everything you have towards it, even if it’s hard to maintain, even if something goes wrong, if you prioritise something you put everything you have into it. Do we as Christians truly put everything we have to glorify God ? We know that all of the bible is true, all of Jesus words are true, everything is true, but do we truly put God first ?

If I’m in worship team, do I really give my best ? If I’m a teacher or leader, am I really prioritising God and giving my best? If I have a role in the church, am I really prioritising God and giving my best?

Being a Christian is not saying, I will study first, I will do this first, I will do that first and then I’ll come to you - thats not prioritising - we’ve got our important things the wrong way around. Guys, seek first the Kingdom of God.

Don’t fall into the danger of putting God second, because you might think in that moment you think you can go back to God but I promise you you will be tempted by more and more things the longer you wait. And before you know it, you will have decided that these wordly things are better than God. You guys might not accept that is the case, but deep down and truthfully that is inherently how you do really feel.

These are all taught by Jesus FOR YOU - please don’t treat it as rules, but as guidelines on our relationship with God and Jesus to HELP US:

Talk about the fact that we are weak and cannot do anything no matter how we try ourselves, but can only be truly saved through Jesus’s death and resurrection

One of the QT passages this week (wednesday), was talking about Jesus and how he was feeling, he was so depressed that he literally asked God if he didn’t have to die for us, he prayed 3 times to God asking the same thing over and over again, yet what he said was If it is by your will, I will listen. Guys he loves us so much and he died for us as dirty rotten sinners who continue to betray him. That’s gotta impact you in some way if you believe in the death and resurrection, it has to.

Guys follow and believe in Jesus’ death and resurrection not because you’re scared of going to hell because what that ends up leading into is believing that the goal of actions will get you into heaven,

But follow Jesus because you want to, because you recognise how much he does love you and you recognise that you WANT to be with him from the roots of love and nothing else, because you know what his death (being the atonement/taking away our sins) and resurrection (defeating death) means.

You can either be fully a believer or fully not a believer, you can’t be in the middle, there’s no such thing as being a mild Christian because if you believe in the resurrection then theres no way you don’t WANT to live the life Jesus calls us to live.

Talk about going out to houses and the purpose

I don’t want people to go to hell, I really don’t.

Treat it as cancer - they just don’t know it exists but once they do they would want to come back to their doctor (Jesus)