The title of this message is A Resurrection
That Never Ends.
A resurrection that never ends, that is what
we have in Jesus Christ.
That is what Jesus Christ has since he
rose from the dead.
In the Bible, in 1 Corinthians chapter 15,
verse 3, Paul writes and he says, For
I delivered to you, first of all, that
which I also received, that Christ died for
our sins according to the Scriptures.
And he was buried, and then he rose
again the third day according to the Scriptures.
So everything that Jesus Christ did was already
foretold in the Scriptures.
In Ecclesiastes chapter 3, verse 11, it says
that God has made everything beautiful in its
time.
And, look at this, he has also set
eternity in the hearts of men.
Yet, they cannot fathom what God has done
from beginning to end.
I thank God for how much light Jesus
Christ sheds on that Scripture.
Well, there's three things I want to talk
to you about, and they are before us
today.
One is the sense of eternity that is
in every man's heart.
The other is the fact, and thank God
for it, that a Savior came out from
eternity to address the longing in our hearts
for eternity.
And the final thing is the seal of
the resurrection upon eternity for us, for you,
for me.
There is a sense of eternity in every
man's heart.
We read that in Ecclesiastes 3, verse 11.
What an interesting thing to read, that God
has set eternity in man's heart.
In other words, man does not have to
be taught to think about eternity.
It is there.
God has set it in man's heart, just
as he sets other things in the hearts
of his creation.
You know, I come from Southern California.
I've lived all around the country, but I
come from Southern California.
There's an old mission there that was founded
by Father Junipero Serra years ago.
The mission at San Juan Capistrano.
And you know, the most amazing thing happens
every year.
The swallows come back to Capistrano.
How do you know that, even out here
in the middle of America?
Because they're famous for coming back.
There's songs that have been sung about it.
Why do the swallows come back to Capistrano?
God has set it in their hearts.
It's amazing.
I've watched them do it, and it happens
every year, right on time.
You don't have to teach a fish to
swim, all the things that go on in
life.
Who ever taught a beaver to build a
dam?
You ever seen a beaver out there with
a manual?
Let's see now, step one, have a big
flat tail.
Got that?
No, but if you watch them, it is
fascinating to behold.
An amazing thing to watch a beaver build
a dam.
In the same way as God has put
things into the heart of his creation, he
has put eternity into his highest creation, which
is man.
He's put eternity into man's heart.
So every man has thoughts about eternity.
As a result, God allows man to then
long for an eternal answer.
It's in the passage.
Ecclesiastes 3.1. He has set eternity in
the hearts of men, yet they cannot fathom
what God has done from beginning to end.
So man is perplexed.
He has this eternal longing in his heart,
and yet as he looks around at his
life, he can't figure out how it all
fits together because the truth is the answers
to life are not to be found on
this earth or in your experience on this
earth.
And God uses that, and God uses the
effects of man's sin to drive him into
the arms of a risen Christ.
You know how he does it?
He has set eternity in your heart.
You long for it, but then you begin
to live your life out and you start
to find out what life is really all
about.
It doesn't take very long to find out
there is a huge lack of justice in
this life.
Would you agree to that?
From your own experience, or look at Paul
the Apostle.
He sits in the dungeon, this great man
of God, and Nero sits upon the throne.
There is this great injustice that goes on
in life at every turn.
And we go through life and we become
so frustrated with that.
And then there is the whole quest in
life for satisfaction.
So that here we are in this temporal
life and it passes by so quickly and
you begin to figure out how things work
and then you start in your life to
try to find satisfaction.
Do you find it?
Have you found it?
Can you get satisfaction?
If you get it, it seems to fly
away so quick, doesn't it?
There is an anthem in the rock world.
A song by the Rolling Stones.
Do you know the song?
I can't get no, what?
Satisfaction.
And I try, and I try, and I
try, and I try, and I can't get
no, what?
How do we all know that?
Why did the whole world like that song?
Mick Jagger probably wrote it in 30 seconds
like most of his songs.
Why would it become a hit for the
whole world?
Because the whole world can relate to it.
The lack of justice, the lack of satisfaction.
Someone as well said that that only is
worth my having which I can have forever.
That only is worth my grasping which death
cannot tear out of my hand.
So we look for that.
We fail to find it.
Lack of justice, lack of satisfaction.
I think one of the most frustrating things
in life that forces us to look out
toward eternity is the lack of completion.
The lack of completion.
A brilliant songwriter dies.
We're off Mick Jagger now, obviously.
A brilliant songwriter dies in the midst of
the greatest composition.
You have actors in Hollywood working on a
film, and before the completion of the film,
which may be to them one of their
most important works, they suddenly die.
You read of someone doing a concert.
They hop in a plane.
They go to fly home, and they crash.
That has gone on throughout my lifetime.
The works that don't come to completion, the
projects that are left unfinished, the bulldozed dreams
that are left unrealized.
Lack of completion.
So much is left so incomplete here.
And you start to look inward.
You start to look outward, and you start
to ask the question, what is this all
about?
There must be more.
And so you can only hope and speculate
that maybe there is more.
So you try things.
You try religion.
As your heart is longing for an answer
beyond this, you try religion.
You start to look.
I remember that quest in my own life.
I started to look at all these things,
and I said, there has to be more.
This cannot be all there is.
I started to turn toward religion.
Frankly, I turned away from the dead Christianity
I was exposed to growing up.
Actually, I hated going to church.
I hated it.
It just was so dead and so boring.
Nobody ever preached to me or spoke to
me of a living, exciting Christ who could
answer the longings of my heart.
So I began to look elsewhere.
Went to Confucius, and he confused me.
I went to Buddha.
He was benevolent, but he didn't have the
answers.
And I went through all these different religions,
and I exhausted all the systems of Eastern
thought.
Hinduism, hello, is a hodgepodge of millions of
gods.
And the idea of a recycled life never
appealed to me anyway, especially when you see
them worshiping cattle and rats.
Rats are one of their gods.
Well, the nation starves.
There's food, but they don't have it because
the rats eat it.
They won't kill the rats because their gods
are eating the food.
I looked at that, and I said, sorry,
I'm not even interested.
And I explored all of that.
I read the Upanishads.
I read the Koran.
I explored Islam.
All of it, in the end, was a
dead-end street.
And I kept looking out, going, there has
to be more.
There has to be more.
And God has set eternity in man's heart,
and God allows man to long for an
eternal answer.
And in the end, you have only the
expectancy that maybe I hope that there is
something beyond this.
And we start to say things to each
other like, well, maybe we'll all be together
in the great beyond.
What is the great beyond?
That is the strangest statement.
We'll gather together in the great beyond.
How do you know it's so great if
your life here has been so crummy?
The great beyond.
The only way to know that there is
something great beyond all this is to go
to Jesus Christ, who is the only one
who ever went into death and came back
out alive to tell mankind what it was
all about.
And that is our Lord Jesus Christ.
He died and he rose again.
It wasn't just the God in him that
rose again.
He rose again as a human being.
And that is why W.A. Criswell, that
great pastor who's now gone to heaven, used
to say we are all fascinated with the
future because that is where we will live
for the rest of our lives.
I'm not looking anymore.
Now I'm studying.
I'm studying my future, my eternity.
That's why I'm going to live for the
rest of my life.
Because the sense of eternity that was in
my heart that is in yours is answered
by the Savior that came out from eternity.
And that is my second main thought today,
a Savior from eternity.
He came here purposefully to die.
He was born to die and then to
rise again.
You realize when he was born in Bethlehem
that his birth was attended by angels.
The shepherds out in the field were heralded
by angels that he was born.
You realize that throughout his life, angels ministered
to him.
You realize that when he rose from the
dead, angels were there.
Hey, the Roman soldiers, these rough, tough, burly,
battle experienced men were standing outside that tomb
on that resurrection morning.
And the earth shook and an angel showed
up shining as bright as the sun.
And he sat on the stone that was
rolled away from the tomb, sat there and
the Roman soldiers fell over and fainted big,
burly dudes.
Then they got up and looked and realized
that the tomb was empty, but they knew
that they were there.
And so it was empty when the stone
rolled away.
So they went to the religious leaders and
they told all the details of what had
happened, that he had indeed risen from the
dead.
And the reason they were very careful to
do that is because otherwise, if Pilate found
out that they were asleep on the job
and he escaped from the tomb or the
disciples busted in and stole his body away,
then they would be executed for sleeping on
the job and not getting the job done.
They were assigned to that job on pain
of death.
So they had to convince, follow this, they
had to convince the religious leaders that he
really did rise from the dead Roman soldiers
and they did convince them.
And when they convinced them, they said, see
that you tell no one of this.
Here is a large sum of money.
Now you say this, you tell everybody from
now on his disciples came and stole him
away.
Well, wait, that means we were asleep on
the job.
We'll be in trouble with Pilate.
Here is a large sum of money.
You say his disciples came and stole him
away.
And when the news comes to the governor
of this, we have an even larger sum
of money for the governor.
Don't you worry about Pilate.
You take that cash and go.
You share that lie with anybody that will
listen and we will take care of the
governor and he will enjoy the cash that
we have for him.
And the saying is told to this day.
That's what Matthew tells us, that his body
was stolen away.
But you see that the Roman soldiers knew
he had risen from the dead.
Their lie proves the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
He came out from eternity and he came
attended by angels in his birth, attended by
angels in his death and resurrection.
He came to die and rise.
According to the scriptures, Paul said he came
to die and rise as he had promised.
Turn to Matthew 12, 40.
Matthew 12, 40.
Jesus promised he would rise again from the
dead.
He says, for as Jonah was three days
and three nights in the belly of the
great fish, so will the Son of Man
be three days and three nights in the
heart of the earth.
You ever wonder why Jonah is in the
Bible?
It's the strangest account ever.
A guy gets a call from God.
God says, go to Nineveh and preach Nineveh.
I might as well tell you, if you
don't know, the Jewish people hated Nineveh because
the Ninevites didn't like them either.
In fact, if they caught one of the
Jews, they would hold them prisoner.
And what they would do for any of
their enemies, what they did is they would
bury you in the desert, in the sand,
up to your neck with just your head.
You've seen in the movies just your head
sitting there.
Then they would.
This was their means of torture.
Then they would pull your tongue out, stretch
it out and attach a leather strap to
it and then nail that into the ground.
So your tongue would be pulled out, hooked
to a leather strap, nailed down to the
ground.
But the sun would come baking down on
your head and on your tongue and your
tongue and get sunburned.
You know, you can imagine how it would
be.
So God says, Jonah, I want you to
go to Nineveh.
And he's no possible way.
I am not going to have my head
sticking out of the sand and the tongue,
the whole thing that you know about already.
So he said, I'm not going.
And he went and he jumped on a
boat to Tarshish.
You know where that was?
It was out on the corner of Spain.
It was the jumping off point.
They called it the end of the world.
He said, I'm not going there.
I'm going to go to the end of
the world.
I'd rather go to the end of the
world and go there.
So he heads off to the end of
the world.
It was a very short journey to Nineveh.
It was a very long journey to the
end of the world over.
We had to sail across the Mediterranean, everything
else.
So he gets on this boat.
And you ever wonder why this account and
the storm breaks out and their lives are
in jeopardy.
And Jonah says, listen, I can tell you
why we're in a storm.
And everybody says, tell us, tell us why.
Why?
He says, because of me.
You see, God asked me to go to
this place and I said no.
And I'm on this ship with you guys
going in the opposite direction.
So he's allowed the storm to come.
If you want the storm to stop, you're
going to have to toss me over, fellas.
And so they said, well, no, let's pray
about that.
That's not really a nice thing to do.
No, you don't see any of that.
You just see a heave and a ho
and over you go.
And a fish pulls up.
I'm so sure a fish pulls up.
He owns Jonah lands right in his mouth
and he takes off and sails away.
The Bible says God had prepared a great
fish and Jonah was in there inside.
And then that fish went cruising up.
You know where that fish drove himself.
He drove right over to the shores of
beach near Nineveh.
And away he goes.
You say, well, why is it even in
the Bible?
It's in the Bible because it was a
picture way back that the son of God
would come and he would be three days
and nights in the heart of the earth.
It's only there to be a type to
point to Christ.
And it's so odd that it gets your
attention.
And even children know it and remember it
from Sunday school.
That's why it's in the Bible.
And, you know, something, the thing that is
so amazing to me is that he came
to die and raise again from the dead,
as he promised.
And as I study my Bible through the
years since I've gotten to know him, I'm
so fascinated because the longer I know him
and the more I study and the more
I look at the Bible, the more of
those things I understand, the more fascinating my
God is and the more awesome he is
and the more I love him and appreciate
him.
And the more exciting it is for me
to be a Christian.
In Matthew 16, 21, it says, From that
time, Jesus began to show his disciples that
he must go to Jerusalem.
Matthew 16, 21, that he must go to
Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders
and the chief priests and the scribes and
be killed and be raised.
What does it say?
The third day.
So the Old Testament foretold it in a
type and many other places.
Jesus himself foretold it.
He predicted his own death and resurrection right
there.
Matthew 16, 21.
The situation then at the time of Jesus
is so amazing to see how it all
unfolds.
He foretold it and then it happens.
They came and they arrested him, you remember,
in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Some people imagine Judas with a couple of
the high priests or whatever.
He goes over, he hugs Jesus, he gives
him a kiss.
The truth is, historians from their research believe
there may have been up to, up toward
the number of 1,000 people that came
to the garden to get him that night
because they were taking every precaution against him
using his power to get away.
I'll tell you what, when Judas goes to
identify him by hugging him and giving him
that Mediterranean kiss on each side of the
cheek, you know, that tells you how common
Jesus was in his appearance.
In other words, the only way to be
able to recognize him is if I go
right up to him and point him out
to you.
I will use my friendship to betray him.
So they arrested him.
They took him away.
They tried him through the night.
It is amazing once it starts to happen
how fast it goes.
Out from eternity comes God.
He's born in a manger, attended by angels.
He grows.
He lives.
At 30 he goes public.
He lives a life that nobody ever lived
before.
He basically blazes a path of miracles through
Palestine, wiping out disease, healing people, healing broken
hearts and healing broken bodies, opening blind eyes
and casting out demons everywhere he went.
He had power over disease and power over
Satan.
He lived a life that nobody lived, and
when they capture him and then the events
are in place now, the time goes so
fast.
And they try him in the middle of
the night.
They had left the upper room, and he
was in the garden around 1 o'clock
in the morning, probably in the trial about
1.30. By 6.30 in the morning,
he was in front of Pilate.
Pilate didn't know what to do with him,
and Herod was in town.
So he sent him over to Herod, who
was just right nearby.
Herod and Pilate sort of played ping pong
back and forth with Jesus.
He sent him over to Herod.
Herod wanted him to do some miracles.
He wouldn't do anything.
He sent him back to Pilate.
Pilate didn't want to sentence him to death
because he hadn't done anything wrong, and the
problem was that Pilate had done things wrong.
When he came into Israel, when he came
into Jerusalem, when he first came to be
governor, he offended the Jewish people.
They made big trouble with him, and it
got back to Caesar, and he got in
big trouble.
And then another time he was in big
trouble with the Jewish people, and he got
in trouble with Caesar.
If he was in trouble one more time,
he would be removed as governor and exiled,
if not even put to death.
So the crowd began to shout to Pilate
that they said, If you don't judge this
man, then you make yourself to be a
friend of him.
He makes himself to be a king, and
we will have no king but Caesar.
And if you don't judge this man and
send him to his death, you are not
Caesar's friend.
If you are not Caesar's friend and you're
his friend, then you are against Caesar.
We're going to tell Caesar on you.
If there's any more trouble with us and
you, you are out.
They blackmailed him.
And that is why he finally gave in.
But it all goes so fast.
6.30 in the morning, he's in front
of Pilate.
By 9 o'clock, think of it, by
9 o'clock, he was hanging on the
cross.
They didn't really give him even that much
time.
And they led him through the streets of
Jerusalem.
The Bible says that he bore his cross.
It would have been the crossbeam.
It weighed around 125, 130 pounds.
The vertical part of the cross was too
heavy for a man to carry.
The Romans made the crossbeam just as heavy
as a man could possibly carry.
A little over 100 pounds.
Just enough to aggravate the whipped back, the
bloody back, and all that he'd already gone
through.
They made him carry that.
They led him down what is now called
the Via Dolorosa.
The road to the cross.
It goes through Jerusalem, out to Damascus Gate.
And as you come out of the Damascus
Gate, straight ahead of you, you see it.
It looks just like a skull.
This calvary.
And they crucified him there.
In what is called the Place of the
Skull.
In Matthew 27, verse 33, it says when
they had come to a place called Golgotha.
That is to say, place of a skull.
That's just outside, as I said, the wall
of the city of Jerusalem.
Right outside the Damascus Gate.
It's called that because the road that runs
to Damascus is there.
It goes one way to Jericho, the other
way to Damascus.
Old, old, old trade route.
They took him out the Damascus Gate and
they crucified him at Calvary.
The Place of the Skull.
I want you to turn your Bible to
John 19, 38.
I want to look at the situation at
that time and compare it with the situation.
The scene at this time in life right
now.
But at that time, they took him to
the Place of the Skull.
And then the Bible in John 19, 38
says there was a garden tomb there.
And after this, Joseph of Arimathea, being a
disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of
the Jews.
Here's a secret disciple.
He besought Pilate that he might take away
the body of Jesus.
And Pilate gave him leave.
He came, and therefore, and he took the
body of Jesus.
And there came also Nicodemus, which first came
to Jesus by night.
Do you notice how John is so careful
to point out they are both secret disciples?
Joseph of Arimathea being a disciple of Jesus,
but secretly.
And there came also Nicodemus.
You remember, he came to Jesus by night.
I am so thankful that that is in
here.
Because at this point, the body of Jesus
Christ is there on the cross.
He is dead.
It looks like.
But the fact that Joseph of Arimathea comes
to take and ask Pilate if he can
take the body away.
Tells me that though his body was dead,
he was alive.
And he from beyond the grave reaches out
into the heart of Joseph of Arimathea.
And he says, I know you've been a
secret disciple all this time.
But that's all going to change right now.
And though you can't see me, though you
can't talk to me, though you can't feel
me around you.
You can feel me inside of your heart.
And now you're going to feel a tug
in your heart that's beyond anything you've ever
felt before.
And it's going to pull you out into
a brand new life.
It's time for you to go public and
tell everybody who will listen or look that
you know and love Jesus Christ.
And so when he went and took that
body off of the cross.
Know this.
It was the lowest point in the reputation
of Jesus Christ, beaten and bloodied.
And it appeared to the world he was
dead.
And yet at that point, as he took
that body off the cross and got some
help from other people, did it in front
of the Roman centurion and all the religious
leaders who were mocking standing there in front
of them all.
He was not ashamed to say, I will
do this for my Jesus, because I don't
care if the whole world sees me identified
with him now.
I finally understand what he's all about, and
I'm going to do anything I can for
him at this point.
He goes public, but Jesus, you can't even
see him or talk to him at that
point.
And you know something?
He's still doing that.
That is how I came to know Jesus
Christ.
If you know him today, that's how you
came to know him.
And there came also Nicodemus, who first came
to Jesus by night, and he brought a
mixture of myrrh and aloes, about a hundred
pound weight.
You know what is so tremendous about this?
Is that anytime the Lord really works in
your heart and he draws your heart out
toward him and you just you get to
that point where you don't care what anybody
thinks, you're going to follow Jesus, you're going
to attend to Jesus.
As soon as you bump into somebody else
who's recently had the same experience, you just
get together and it's the most joyful experience.
Wow, you too?
It's happening to you too?
And you know, as he went to take
the body of Jesus off the cross, there
came also Nicodemus, who came to Jesus by
night.
It was happening to both of them at
exactly the same time.
You can just see it.
He has over a hundred pound weight of
myrrh and aloes and all this.
He would have to have something akin to
a big wheelbarrow.
Can you imagine?
The secret disciple has to come to the
crowd like this.
Excuse me.
Wheelbarrow here coming through.
Excuse me.
And then all of a sudden, Joseph of
Arimathea looks over and hears.
Excuse me.
Oh, my gosh.
It's Nick at night.
Next up, man.
Hey, you too, huh?
Yeah.
Joseph, what are you doing here?
I thought you were a secret disciple.
Yeah.
And you're Mr. Nick at night.
What are you doing here?
Well, suddenly I just felt God telling me
to do this.
Yeah, me too.
What are you doing here?
You know what I love is he's still
doing that.
That's what we've been saying to each other
here.
Well, suddenly I felt like this is what
God wanted.
And he's been doing great things in my
life.
He is alive.
He's still working in the hearts of men
and he's still making secret disciples, public ones.
I thank God for that.
That was the situation at that time.
They laid him in a new tomb.
We are told here in John, 1941.
There was a in that place where he
was crucified was a garden and in the
garden, a new tomb or sepulcher where never
yet a man was laid.
And they laid Jesus there because of the
Jews preparation day for the sepulcher was near
at hand.
So here is Jesus.
He has to be into a tomb before
sundown, which would be the beginning of a
new day to fulfill his own prophecy.
So the tomb would have to be right
here by the cross.
In order to fulfill his own prophecy.
You'd have to be very close.
And we read in John, 1942, that they
took him and laid him in a tomb
that was near at hand.
That was the situation at that time.
You know what the situation is at this
time right now in life.
If you go to Jerusalem and you go
out the Damascus Gate, you will see straight
in front of you.
Golgotha, Calvary.
You'll see the place of the skull and
you'd have to be a blind man to
not see it.
The minute you walk out the Damascus Gate,
you look straight ahead.
You go, wow, that hill over there looks
like a skull.
It's really weird.
And then whoever is with you goes, yes,
that's why they call it the place of
the skull.
That's where he was crucified.
It's so obvious.
Then if you go to Calvary, just 500
feet from the little hill, 500 feet down,
there's a tomb.
The British take care of it.
It's called, it was discovered by General Gordon.
Gordon's Calvary, they call that hill.
And there's a tomb that's only 500 feet
just down from the hill.
And if you go inside of that tomb,
because it's empty, you find that it is
hewn out of rock.
The most amazing thing, I've been in it
a number of times, the most amazing thing
is when you walk up to it, you
see the track where the stone would have
rolled across.
And as you walk into it, going in
directly to your right, you see this area.
It's been carved out of the rock.
Immediately to your right is an area that's
unfinished.
Definitely an area for a few more people.
It's unfinished.
But then over to the left as you
look at it, it's all finished in just
one spot, just right for an adult to
be laid there in the tomb.
And that is believed to be the tomb
in which they put Jesus Christ.
One of the reasons they believe it is,
is because it's unfinished.
It was new.
Something stopped the whole process.
It is so close to Calvary, only 500
feet.
And the Bible says right here in John
19, 41, in that place there was a
garden.
When you go to the tomb there, they
call it the garden tomb, there is a
huge underground well.
It's huge.
Huge.
It's like above these lights.
If you're above these lights looking down into
the ground, there's a huge area about where
we are here that is there.
It's an underground well.
It is the kind that you would have
to have to have a huge garden where
you would grow not only little plants but
olive trees as well.
And right next to that well is, it's
really more of a giant cistern really, right
next to that is the tomb.
So there would have been a garden there.
Everything fits perfectly, absolutely perfectly.
The underground tank, the tomb that is unfinished,
Calvary, the place of the skull, and the
tomb is empty.
That is the great thing.
The tomb is empty.
And I'll tell you something.
When you, I've seen it happen with every
person I've ever been to Israel with.
When you walk up to that tomb and
you look over to the place of the
skull and you can see it and you
can see the empty tomb, you just know
in your heart this is the place.
And every person I've ever been there with
has that moment where they just burst into
tears.
Often it happens right in the tomb.
First time I ever walked in there, I
asked to please be excused and I shut
the door and I just burst into tears
because here is the place where my Lord
was laying and yet he rose from the
dead right here.
This is the tomb that Peter and John
raced to and John stopped and was peering
in and Peter came running by.
He says, let me in.
And they saw the very linen, verse 40
of John 19, that they had wound around
his body.
They saw it like a cocoon laying there
in perfect shape and the part that was
around his head laying there separately, completely in
perfect shape because he had risen up and
out in a new body that was able
to pass right out of the linen cloths
and then right out of the tomb while
it was still sealed.
That tomb is empty.
That is because our Christ is alive.
He is the Savior from eternity who answers
the longing, the sense of eternity in my
heart and in rising from the dead, he
sealed everything for eternity because he put the
seal on all the Old Testament prophecies.
He put the seal on all of his
promises for forgiveness.
When he said to people in his life,
I forgive you and others around would just
gasp.
No man can forgive sins.
Only God.
When he rose from the dead, he proved
he was God and he rose from the
dead after he had borne our sins.
So by rising from the dead, he took
the pain.
He took the guilt.
He took then the punishment for our sin.
And then when he rose from the dead,
it was paid for.
There was nothing more to be done.
He said it is finished.
He put the seal on all the promises
of forgiveness.
So for you today, there is full forgiveness.
You can put your past in the hands
of Jesus and let it go.
To me, it is one of the greatest
things in all of life.
You can put your current sin in the
hands of Jesus and ask him to forgive
you and he will.
And you have not only forgiveness for your
current sin, but you have full forgiveness for
every sin you will ever commit.
Past, present or future in Jesus Christ.
He said it is finished and he meant
paid in full.
All the penalty for your sin paid in
full.
So he puts the seal on all the
Old Testament prophecies, all the promises for forgiveness,
and all of our hopes is the best
part for our future.
Because when he came out of that tomb,
he made it crystal clear that he was
in fact risen from the dead and he
was in fact still Jesus.
He appeared to Mary and he appeared to
the disciples.
They were in the room, the door locked
because they were afraid the government would come
busting in and get them.
He appeared in the room and you know
what he did?
He did this.
I call it revelation, presentation, demonstration, explanation.
It just kind of stuck in my head.
That is what he did when he rose
from the dead.
Revelation to Mary.
She's looking in the tomb after Peter and
John left.
And there's two angels, one at the feet
of where he would have been laying and
one at the head because the grave clothes
are there.
There's an angel at each end just as
some food for thought.
It's another study, but it's the fulfillment of
the Ark of the Covenant with the two
angels facing each other.
The mercy seat inside the Holy of Holies.
Here is the place where he laid after
his blood was given.
And there's angels facing each other.
Just a side thought.
Throw into the message for free today.
And it was Mary, a common woman, who
got to see that most glorious fulfillment.
And so you have this.
She's standing there and the angels said, why
are you weeping?
And they see Jesus behind her.
Why are you weeping?
He's like standing behind her.
And they go, they've taken away my Lord
and I don't know where they put him.
I just want to know where he is.
I'll go get him.
I'll carry him to some other place.
I know this is a borrowed tomb.
And she doesn't know Jesus is standing behind
her.
She turns around.
She thinks he's the gardener.
She's weeping her eyes out.
And he says one word, Mary.
And it came from that man, that voice
that she knew so well.
The only man in her life who had
never mistreated her.
A woman whom seven demons had been cast
out of.
The door to that kind of demon possession
would be immorality.
Sin, gross sin.
But that voice had always brought freedom and
love to her life.
Mary.
That's all it took.
She said, Rabboni, Master.
And she bowed down and worshipped him.
He revealed himself to her.
Revelation.
The disciples are hidden in that room with
the door closed.
He shows up right in the middle of
the room.
Presentation.
Hi, I'm alive from the dead.
And they were afraid, so he gave them
a demonstration.
Revelation, presentation, demonstration.
Thomas, I understand you had a few doubts.
Wait, Lord, you weren't around.
How'd you know?
Because I'm always around, even when you can't
see me.
Thomas, if you really doubt, look.
It's me.
Put your finger right there in the hole
in my hand.
Or my side.
Thomas bows before him.
He doesn't even touch him.
And he says, my Lord.
One of the greatest confessions of the deity
of Christ in all the Bible.
My Lord and my God.
And then he gave them a demonstration.
He sat down with them.
And he ate honeycomb and some fish.
Honeycomb and some fish.
Why?
Because he wanted them to know.
Hey, it's me.
Now, I know I'm kind of amazing.
Appeared out of nowhere.
But hey, pass a little fish over.
And a little honeycomb.
So they give him the fish and the
honeycomb.
You know what it is?
It's a demonstration that our new body on
the other side of the grave is still.
We're still going to be us.
And we still get to eat.
One of the most important revelations ever.
Demonstration of the new body you can't eat.
A revelation, a presentation, a demonstration of life
after death.
That it's real.
You get to be you.
You're not some ethereal floating mist.
And finally, an explanation that went on for
you want to know how long?
You know some of you.
Forty days.
For forty days he appeared and disappeared and
appeared and disappeared and appeared and disappeared.
Teaching them concerning the things of the kingdom
of God.
That now made sense with him risen from
the dead and a glorified body before them.
He took all the fear out of their
hearts concerning death.
By forty days of explanation taught in a
brand new risen from the dead.
Other side of the grave glorified body.
Jesus Christ is risen from the dead today.
And everything in the world is different because
he rose.
Father thank you.
For answering the longing of our hearts.
Thank you Jesus.
That in every possible way you have shown
us life on the other side of death.
Lord work your saving work in every heart.
And Lord we'll give you all the glory
as we see you work your life saving
work.
And continue to manifest your risen life in
us.
In Jesus name we pray.
Amen.