Many of us here like uncertainty.
Now, I think many of us like to
say, oh, no, no, the world is hungering
for certainty.
And I'm hungering for certainty.
But, loved ones, many of us actually prefer
uncertainty.
That's why a lot of us go to
graduate school.
Now, a lot of us go to graduate
school because we know why we're going.
But a lot of us go to graduate
school because it puts off the terrible risk
of committing ourselves to some enterprise whereby suddenly
we would discover what we're worth.
And we'd rather be a non-achiever than
be a possible failure.
And so we keep on putting off the
evil day when we have to commit ourselves.
And that's really why we like uncertainty.
Because uncertainty gives you an excuse for spinning
your wheels, for marking time, for putting off
committing yourself.
And so we tend to want to hold
on to uncertainty.
I agree with you completely.
There's something in us human beings that want
certainty.
But I put it to you, there is
something in us that likes uncertainty.
Because it enables us to excuse ourselves for
not committing ourselves definitely and clearly to some
enterprise.
And I would just really push those of
us who are older.
And I'd say to you, isn't it true
that we ourselves fiddled around for years and
years before we committed ourselves to something.
And we were all the time trying to
avoid the horrible reality of what we were
worth or what we weren't worth.
And that's why many of us get so
wrapped up in Easter bunnies and that kind
of stuff, you know.
I mean, it's dumb all that stuff.
And I apologize with apologies to all of
you who are going off for lovely lunches
today.
That's why I think many of us try
to get wrapped up in Easter lunches and
picnics and all that kind of important stuff.
Because in our hearts we don't like the
certain day that Easter brings.
Easter is the most certain day in the
whole year.
The first Easter Sunday was the clearest day
that the world ever saw.
You remember that song, On a Clear Day
You Can See Forever?
And I do a great imitation of Frankie
on that.
But my wife said, promise you won't sing
it.
But On a Clear Day You Can See
Forever, and this is the clearest day of
the whole year and the clearest day in
the whole world.
On this day you can see forever.
Suddenly all vagueness disappears on this day.
And that hits many of us where it
hurts.
Because a lot of us here like to
say, oh for goodness sake, there's no certainty
anywhere.
You can't find certainty.
Let's face it, no one knows what is
the meaning of the universe.
Nobody really understands why we're here.
No one understands where we all came from.
Let's face it, we all just have to
live the best way we can because we've
had all kinds of holy men and the
world is full of religions and they all
have their own story.
You can never know, you can never know
for sure.
All we can do is do our best.
And there are many of us, loved ones,
that love the uncertainty that comes from that
kind of viewpoint.
And on this day, all that disappears.
Because millions may have followed Muhammad.
Millions may have followed Buddha.
There may be thousands of other so-called
religious leaders that have claimed to do mighty
deeds and around which great legends have gathered.
But this Easter day sets one person above
all of those.
Buddha didn't even believe in a personal God.
Muhammad never claimed to be more than an
ordinary human being.
But there is only one man who not
only claimed to be the unique son of
our Creator but who died so publicly that
even Roman historians, critical of the faith that
he established, recorded his death.
And this same man, three days later, came
back from being dead and for more than
a month walked and ate and slept with
a material body among people who challenged their
own contemporaries to disprove the resurrection of this
man.
Only one man has set before the world
such plain and obvious proof asking the world,
contradict this, contradict it.
Loved ones, it's the last way you would
try to pull a hoax on people.
The way this man did it.
He died so publicly and so obviously.
He was so efficiently killed by the military
experts at killing of that day.
He so clearly presented himself as one who
was alive and challenged so plainly anybody to
disprove it that either this man is true
or history itself is not real.
And loved ones, Easter sets this man above
everybody else.
And if you say, what is certainty?
Well, I'll show you.
It's in that verse that we read.
If you like to look at it, it's
that John chapter 20.
John 20.
And it's verse 17.
That's the most certain verse in the whole
world.
John 20 and verse 17.
It's page 945.
John 20 and 17.
Jesus said to her, Do not hold me,
for I have not yet ascended to the
Father.
But go to my brethren and say to
them, I am ascending to my Father and
your Father, to my God and your God.
A lot of other people have said that.
But we've never seen them again.
But he came back the next day to
tell us what our Father was thinking of
us.
Now, loved ones, that's certainty.
No Muhammad, no Buddha, no Philokal Smith, no
Zoroaster, no moon can give that kind of
certainty.
That is certainty.
And you and I really have to deal
with that certainty today.
I did not like it.
I tried to deal with it the way
probably many of you have.
I tried to get rid of it.
Because I was the same as many of
you and the same as Aldous Huxley.
I felt that I wanted to live life
my own way.
I didn't want to have to commit myself
to some other person or to some definite
way of life.
I wanted to live it the way I
wanted to live it.
So I wanted to retain uncertainty as far
as some final authority in the universe is
concerned.
I was happy with the idea that we
should all make our own standards, live by
the golden rule, be as kind as we
can to everybody.
I was happy with that because that made
me the God of my own life.
And I could decide how kind I was
to be or how unkind I was to
be.
But I hated the idea of somebody who
was clearly and obviously the son of the
person who made my hands and my feet
and therefore the one who had the right
to have authority over my life.
So I tried to get rid of this
certainty.
And I did it the way most of
us do.
You know how we tackle it.
We say, OK, well, that's history, I see.
Well, yeah, yeah, but...
But it needn't have happened that way, need
it?
And then you know the way we go
on in our high school games.
We say, now, I know the evidence suggests
that it did happen that way, but it
could have happened some other way, couldn't it?
And then we scrounge around in the old
wastebasket up here and we think, now what
way could it have happened?
Jesus could have been a green leprechaun.
That's a possibility.
It could have happened other ways.
And that's the way we tackle it, don't
we?
We say, now, maybe he wasn't resurrected from
the dead.
Maybe something else happened.
And we get caught up in that kind
of theorizing, don't we?
And we say, now, it could have happened
some other way, so perhaps it didn't happen
that way.
It's a ludicrous approach to history.
It's absolutely ridiculous.
But we get involved in it because we
have a volitional, a will interest in disproving
this.
It would be mad if we were to
do it with ordinary history.
I'll try one on you.
You know how Carter got elected?
You think it happened the way they said
it happened.
But don't you think that he could have
bribed every elector by promising three pounds of
peanuts for life?
And you know your reaction.
You say, yeah, he could have done that,
but there's no evidence to suggest that he
did.
I haven't eaten a peanut for weeks.
In other words, our response to that is,
look, that's just imagination.
It's not true.
There's no evidence to suggest that that happened.
Yes, it could have happened that way, but
there's no evidence to suggest it.
But yet, that's what we do with this
resurrection business.
We tend to say, look, I know there's
no evidence to suggest what I'm going to
suggest to you, but it could have happened
that way, couldn't it?
And therefore, maybe it didn't happen the way
it's supposed to have happened.
And that's what we do.
And I won't draw it out, because a
lot of us just know the thing off
by heart, but you know there are two
great facts on which the resurrection stands.
The empty tomb and the resurrection appearances.
Those are the twin bases of the resurrection.
And so, we tackle the fact of the
empty tomb.
And we start with our crazy little imaginations
and we say, now it could have happened
some other way.
I know they went on that first day
of the week to the wrong tomb.
That's it.
And we try that for a while and
then realize it was a private cemetery and
there was only one tomb.
And anyway, if they had gone to the
wrong tomb, the authorities could have come and
gone to the right tomb.
So, we try that.
And then, you know, and it's almost, I
mean, you have to call it high school,
because it is almost high school.
And yet, you know, loved ones, how often
we've listened to this stuff and shared it
ourselves.
I know the Roman authorities or the Jewish
authorities or anybody, we almost get to that
point, but the Roman authorities or the Jewish
authorities stole the body.
And then suddenly you begin to wonder, well,
if they stole the body and they had
the body and they were so anxious to
destroy the Christian sect, why didn't they just
bring the body out and parade it through
the streets of Jerusalem and say, look, these
people are saying this man rose from the
dead.
Here's his body.
He didn't rise from the dead.
Here's his body.
You can see that.
And that's true, isn't it?
If they stole the body, whether it be
the Romans or the Jews, all they had
to do was produce the body and that
was the Christian sect destroyed.
They were exposed as liars.
And then we say, well, maybe not.
Maybe they didn't steal the body.
I know the disciples stole the body.
They stole the body.
The disciples.
And yet, loved ones, you know there's an
ethical problem in that when you begin to
think about it.
Can you imagine having your children at home
and knowing that this man, Jesus, didn't rise
from the dead.
Knowing that he's an ordinary man.
He claimed to be the Son of God,
but he's just an ordinary man.
And he didn't rise from the dead at
all.
But you go and you steal the body
and you hide it somewhere.
And then you come out and you preach
that he rose from the dead.
And that's the very reason for the persecution
that comes upon you.
And yet, you keep on preaching this lie
even when you end up going into a
lion arena with your children by the hand.
And even as you see one of those
lions eating up one of your children, and
you know that they're dying for a lie,
and yet you still keep pretending that this
man rose from the dead.
No man, no woman, however insane they are,
will go that far.
They may die for something that they think
is true, but they will not die for
something that they know is not true.
None of us will die for a lie.
And yet, loved ones, these disciples and their
followers and their friends died in thousands.
The Roman emperor used them as torches, put
tar over them and lit them and used
them as torches in his garden parties.
He tore through them by the thousands.
And yet, these so-called Christians kept on
claiming that this man really did rise from
the dead.
Loved ones, if they knew that was a
lie, even if the first ones, the Peters
and the Johns, knew it was a lie,
they would not die for it.
They'd have pulled off the hooks when it
began to cost them their lives and the
lives of their families.
And then some of us try the other
one, you know, well, do you really think
that Jesus died?
Do you not think that he may be
swooned or fainted from his wounds?
And, you know, it sounds plausible until you
see and study the narratives of what he
did immediately after his resurrection.
And then it becomes ridiculous.
Because you're forced to believe, first of all,
that the Roman soldiers, who were experts in
killing, did such a poor job that Jesus
was still alive on the cross, that they
thought he was dead and therefore did not
break his legs.
Because that's what happens.
When they weren't sure a person was dead,
they would break his legs.
They didn't break Jesus' legs because they thrust
a spear into his side and blood and
water came out and they were absolutely sure
he was dead.
But you have to believe, first of all,
that they did such a poor job that
he was still alive when he was taken
from the cross and put into the tomb
and bound tightly with those cloths that are
talked about in that chapter that we read.
And then that he lay there in the
coldness of the tomb, bleeding all the time.
And then that he recovered sufficiently to do
really what is a Houdini, to get himself
out of those bonds that were binding him
so tightly, and then was strong enough, losing
all that blood all the time, strong enough
to get up and push the stone away
that it took two men to remove.
And then that he appeared in the garden
and then disappeared immediately and travelled miles at
supersonic speed to get to another place, to
appear in another room, to pass through walls
and through locked doors and present himself alive
again and then over the next forty days
make fourteen different appearances in different geographical spots.
Loved ones, he gave an impression of being
more alive than he had ever been in
his life before.
It's incredible to believe that a man who
was dying from his wounds could bring about
that kind of physical transformation.
And yet that's what you have to believe
if you believe this wound theory.
And it's the same, loved ones, with the
old hallucinations, you know.
Because many of us have tried to tackle,
alright, we can't deal with the empty tomb,
you can't undermine that fact, we can undermine
the appearances, the resurrection appearances.
He appeared on thirteen or fourteen different occasions.
Hallucinations.
But any psychologist here knows that the appearances
don't fit any of the laws that govern
hallucinations.
There are definite psychological laws.
One is, a hallucination is usually subjective.
It's usually something that you experience just yourself.
It's you alone that sees it.
Jesus appeared to seventy people in the upper
room, to above five hundred people at one
time.
He was seen constantly by groups of people.
A hallucination has to be an individual thing.
It has to be something that occurs to
an individual, not to a group.
A hallucination has to be something that you
want to see.
You know, it's a dear mother whose son
has been killed in Vietnam, and she desperately
wants him back.
And she wants him back.
And she sits there at the door of
the kitchen, and she sees him coming through
the door.
Because she wants that.
These disciples had given up hope.
They said, we thought this man was the
man who was to lead Israel.
But he's now dead.
Repeatedly you find them imprisoned in an upper
room because they're scared and afraid, and they
feel, no, he wasn't really the Son of
God.
He's finished and done with.
They had given up any hope of seeing
Jesus.
So that when he appeared to them on
the road to Emmaus, or appeared to Mary
in the garden, they thought he was somebody
else.
They had given up hope that they'd see
him.
A hallucination has to appear over a long
period of time, years and years and years.
Here, Jesus appeared over a period of 40
days, and then the appearance is stopped.
The hallucinations usually take place with people that
are nervous and imaginative, not people like Peter
and the down-to-earth fishermen who were
very practical men.
Loved ones, I don't know if you tried
those arguments out, but I tried them.
And I tried somehow to persuade myself that
this resurrection had not really taken place, and
that this Jesus was no different from any
other religious leader.
But, loved ones, the more you try to
offer arguments to explain the resurrection, the harder
it gets to believe the arguments themselves, and
the easier it becomes to believe the resurrection.
But, of course, loved ones, the truth is
that's a ridiculously unhistorical approach to take to
history.
You don't confirm history or disprove history by
saying it couldn't have happened because I can
think in my little head of some other
way that it could have happened.
You examine the evidence, and when you examine
the evidence for the resurrection, it is beyond
the evidence of any other historical event.
Westcott said it's the best-attested fact in
history, the resurrection of Jesus.
And it is, loved ones.
The witnesses are the most reliable witnesses that
we have ever had to examine.
They have made an impression of honesty and
sanity in our world.
Wherever you get true Christianity, you get an
influence for health and sanity in our society
that has come from the Peters and the
Johns, and the Simon Peters, and the James.
These men were the most reliable people that
we have met in our history.
They were people who died for what they
witnessed to.
And they witnessed to it.
You remember, John said, what we have felt
and seen, what we have touched with our
hands.
This is what we tell you.
We have seen this man.
We have walked with him and eaten with
him.
We know him.
We have talked with him.
We saw him healing the leper.
And if you doubt, you know, if you
wonder, well, can you prove that they were
eyewitnesses?
Sure.
The literature of the first century is filled
with their letters.
Letters from this man to this group.
From this group to this group.
Even the Roman historians, even people like Tacitus
and Suetonius, even critical historians like Pliny and
Celsus and Porphyry, refer to these men as
being alive at this time, and to this
man, Jesus, being alive and being crucified at
that time.
And so, not only are they reliable eyewitnesses,
but their eyewitness account is corroborated by the
contemporary historians of their time.
Not only that, of course, but they wrote
the account at a time when other people
were alive who had seen these events.
I don't know if you've examined carefully Islam
or Buddhism, but you'll find that all the
other religions are built on so-called facts
that were only recognized two or three hundred
or four hundred years after the person actually
lived.
So they discovered all kinds of miracles a
hundred years after Muhammad lived, after Buddha lived.
And most of the other religions are built
on that kind of legend that is built
up years after the events took place.
These men wrote about Jesus' resurrection as early
as 48 A.D. That's the book of
Galatians.
It was circulating around the ancient world in
the year 48 A.D. Now, do you
see what that means?
If you had a 30-year-old alive
in 30 A.D. who had observed the
resurrection, that 30-year-old was only 48
when the letter to the Galatians was circulating.
All they had to do was say, I
saw it.
It did not happen that way.
There were thousands of people who were still
alive when the New Testament was circulating, and
all they had to do was say, no,
it didn't happen that way.
That man really died and he never rose
from the dead.
Loved ones, whenever you begin to examine the
history of the resurrection, you come up against
history that is better than anything else we
have.
Even if you tackle it along the line
of, well, who knows if this is what
they really wrote.
After all, it was 1900 years ago.
Maybe it's all been changed.
Loved ones, you know that what you depend
on is the manuscripts, the manuscripts, you know.
And all Caesar's Gallic Wars, written in 50
B.C., ten manuscripts we have.
Some boy could have gone around and changed
the ten manuscripts.
Really.
We don't really know what Caesar wrote, what
we say he wrote.
There were only ten manuscripts, and those are
ancient.
It was written in 50 B.C. The
earliest one is 900 A.D. Some fella
could have rewritten the thing five or six
or seven times.
In the New Testament, there are 4,000
Greek manuscripts behind the New Testament.
The earliest one is 130 A.D. 130
A.D., there's a manuscript in the Manchester
Museum of part of John's Gospel.
Do you see how impossible it would be
for some happy little forger to tour around
all the caves of Qumran and all the
deserts?
And not only that, but he'd have to
do it over a period of 1,000
years, because these 4,000 manuscripts are dated
from 130 to 1,000 A.D. He'd
have to have a whole family.
He'd have to get his sons to promise
to get their sons to send their sons
around and change all the manuscripts.
It's impossible.
You couldn't do it.
Loved ones, really, when you deal with the
resurrection, it's the best attested fact in history,
and that's why I say to you, this
is the most certain day in the whole
world's life.
And this man, Jesus, is really the son
of your Maker.
He really is.
He's the son of your Maker, and if
you try to get around it, you're just
rejecting reality.
And God, your God, on the final day,
will say, No, no.
Don't come that story with me that you
hadn't enough evidence.
Don't come that story with me that there
were so many religious leaders and so many
great religions that you couldn't tell which was
true.
My son's death and resurrection was clearly different
from all of the others.
And my son was obviously my son.
And don't tell me that I didn't give
you enough evidence.
I give you black and white evidence scattered
throughout the world.
I give you a living church that has
never failed to celebrate his last supper one
evening since it was first celebrated by him.
Don't come and tell me that I didn't
give you any certainty or any information.
Loved ones, truly, I'm thinking of those of
you who are sitting here today and saying,
Well, it's good, but it's not good enough.
Loved ones, honestly, your God, your God will
call your bluff.
He will, on the final day.
He will say, Look, you just didn't want
to commit yourself to my son.
That was it.
You just wanted to be your own God
in your own life.
Some of you may say, Well, you mean
that Jesus is alive today?
Loved ones, of course He is.
If He destroyed death once, He can destroy
it all the time.
Sure, He's alive.
He's alive here in this room.
In this room, He's alive.
And if you say to me, Well, how
do you know and I don't know?
Loved ones, it's really very simple, the answer
to that.
How Jesus makes himself real to you.
Judas, not Iscariot, but Judas, one of the
other disciples, said that to Jesus.
Lord, how is it that you'll manifest yourself
to us and not to the rest of
the world?
You might like to look at the answer,
loved ones.
It's John and chapter 14 and verse 22.
John 14 and verse 22.
It's page 939.
John 14 and 22.
John 14 and verse 22.
Judas, not Iscariot, said to Him, Lord, how
is it that you will manifest yourself to
us and not to the world?
Jesus answered him, If a man loves me,
he will keep my word, and my father
will love him, and we will come to
him and make our home with him.
He who does not love me does not
keep my words, and the word which you
hear is not mine, but the Father's who
sent me.
I think some of you who even claim
to be Christians do not sense the reality
of Jesus alive in your own spirits and
your own hearts.
And I think many of you wonder, why
is that so?
How is it that Jesus is not making
himself real to me?
And I think a lot of us, loved
ones, get caught up in little techniques.
Well, if you say the Lord's Prayer holding
your mouth this way, Jesus will show himself
to you.
Or if you speak in tongues, Jesus will
show himself to you.
Or if you have some shattering emotional experience,
he'll show himself to you.
Or if you're imaginative and kind of a
liberal arts enthusiast and very emotional, Jesus will
show himself to you.
Loved ones, it's so good that Jesus gave
such a clear answer.
If a man loves me, he will keep
my words, and my father will love him,
and we will make our home in his
heart.
That's it.
If you would clean up your life, God
by his Spirit will make his Son real
to you.
That's it.
If you say you love Jesus because he
died for you, and because he is the
Son of your Maker, then you'll keep his
words.
That's what Jesus says.
If you love me, don't talk a lot
about it, don't express it, don't keep saying
praise the Lord and Amen and Hallelujah.
If you love me, you'll keep my words.
You'll be honest with your income tax results.
You won't be angry with your brother, because
whosoever is angry with his brother is guilty
of the judgment.
You will not look unto a woman to
lust after her in your heart, because I
say to you that they said of old
that whoever commits adultery is guilty of the
judgment.
But I say to you if you look
unto a woman to lust after her in
your heart, you're guilty of the judgment.
In other words, you'll obey Jesus' words.
You know that's the final proof.
You know it.
You brothers who are down-to-earth practical
men, and you sisters who are subtle and
shrewd.
If I say that I am the Son
of your Maker, the creator of the world,
you know you'll have one re-attitude to
me.
If only to get in good with the
one in authority.
You'll say, what does your Father want me
to do with my life?
How do you want me to live?
What am I doing that you don't like?
Loved ones, that's it.
Jesus said if a man loves me, he
will keep my words, and my Father will
come to him and make my home in
his heart.
It's not a spooky spiritual experience.
It's not some thrilling, exciting high that you
bring on with drugs.
It's not some emotional kind of trip.
It's a down-to-earth thing.
If you believe that Jesus is the creator
of the world, make your life what He
says it should be.
Clean your life up.
Stop sinning.
Obey Him.
And if you say to me, oh now
listen, will that do it?
That'll do it.
There'll be a strange new spirit will come
into your life and you'll begin to feel
at one with your creator and you'll begin
to feel that Jesus is real to you.
That's it, loved ones.
That's it.
That's to those of us who aren't Christians
here and to those of us who are
Christians and have lost the sense of Jesus'
presence.
Loved ones, it's the same story.
Lord, how is it that you will manifest
yourself to us and not to the rest
of the world?
If a man loves me, he will keep
my words, and my Father will love him,
and we will make our home in his
heart.
That's it.
So it's so beautiful.
It's so simple.
And that will work, loved ones.
It truly will.
So could we just, in a few minutes
now, would you examine any place in your
life where you're not obeying what Jesus said?
That's what's keeping Him making Himself real to
you.
Dear Father, we would pray now for each
other, for judgment day honesty.
Lord Jesus, it does seem plain from simple
intellectual examination of the facts of history that
you are alive and that you are actually
the Son of our Maker.
Lord Jesus, many of us have no awareness
of you, no sense of your reality, and
so we're missing a whole world that is
obviously there that we can't touch at all.
Lord, we want to touch that.
So will you show us where we're not
keeping your words in our life?
Will you show us, Lord, where we're all
talk about loving you but no action?
Lord, if we've reneged on our finances in
some way, by that old half-honesty in
business that shows that we're just trusting ourselves
to manipulate our way through, Lord, will you
convict us now of that?
And Lord, we'll put that right, even if
it means sending in a new report, Lord.
We'll put that right.
If it means giving some money back to
somebody, we'll put that right, Lord.
We never saw before that your presence depends
on our obedience.
Lord, we always thought it was something to
do with our imaginations, our emotions.
But Lord, we'll put those things right.
Lord, if we're indulging in something that we've
known for years is wrong, we'll stop that
now.
We're tired of the unreality and the hypocrisy
in our lives.
And Lord, we commit ourselves to putting these
things right now because this is such a
clear day that we can see forever, right
down to our life's end, to looking into
your eyes and confronting you with the broken
bits of our lives in our hands and
trying to make excuses.
Lord, that's too clear a view.
We're going to act on the clear view
that we have, and we're going to put
things right this very moment.
Lord, will you take care of manifesting yourself
to us?
We're not going to be all preoccupied with
trying to feel you.
Lord, you said you'd take care of that.
Your Father would make his home in our
hearts if we keep your words.
So we commit ourselves to that now for
your glory.
And thank you, Lord, that this can be
the most beautiful Easter Sunday that we have
ever had in our whole lives, so great
that at last throughout every day and every
night of our lives to that final morning
when the breath goes from us and we
meet you, the Lord of eternal morning and
are welcomed into your home.
Now the grace of our Lord Jesus and
the love of God and the fellowship of
the Holy Spirit be with each one of
us now and until we see Jesus face
to face.
Amen.