1 Corinthians 15 What Would Life Be Like if There Were No Resurrection?

Good morning. So what would life be like if

there was no resurrection? We certainly wouldn't be here

today, would we? Worshipping Jesus?

We wouldn't know what to do or where to go when our hearts are

broken by circumstances in life that we have no control over.

And we come to church not for religious purposes or duty.

We come as brothers and sisters in Christ because we all know

that we need Jesus. Amen.

And the older you get and the longer you live, the more you

realize that you need Him 24/7, right?

This not once in a while, and I'm thankful that we're gathered

together here today to to learn more about him and to learn more

about the gospel, the good news that the world needs.

I don't have to tell you about the news media.

There's wars and rumors of war everywhere, whether it's Ukraine

or Israel or the potential conflict with China and Taiwan

and now Venezuela, Nigeria. It tells us in the Bible in the

last days there will be wars and rumors of wars.

And boy, we sure have them, don't we?

It seems like we have an all time high of world conflict and

division and divisiveness and hatred, especially for truth and

for the clarity of the gospel. And so we're fortunate, those of

us who are here today that believe in Jesus Christ, we have

hope and eternal hope, a living hope, a lasting hope and

everlasting hope. If you're here today and you've

never come to faith in Jesus, I pray today would be the day that

you would recognize you need him and you would open your heart to

him and invite him to commend your life and change your life

and save you from the the power of sin that we all struggle with

until we have Jesus. And when you have Jesus, you

have a way out of your sinful tendencies.

You have a way out of the patterns and habits and

addictions that control your life and ruin it.

So let's pray, Father God, you've brought each of us here

today for a specific purpose. Somehow you work in our minds

and in our conscience and call us to yourself.

You draw us to yourself, Lord. That's the mystery of the faith.

Is it that we don't seek You? You seek us, and then you cause

us to seek you. You cause us to pursue you.

You cause us, Lord, by your grace, to want to know the

answer of life. Why are we here?

Why do we go through what we go through?

Why do we experience death? Why do we experience heartache?

Why do we experience tragedy? Why do we experience broken

relationships? Lord, all the things that affect

all of us as human beings. And Lord, we are so grateful

that you've opened our eyes to realize that you are the Christ,

the Son of the living God, that you are the resurrection and the

life. And whoever believes in you

shall not perish, but have everlasting life.

For you said I am the resurrection and the life.

He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live,

and he that believeth in me shall never die.

Oh God, thank you for coming into this world and not leaving

us to our sin. You came because you knew we

needed a way out of the madness and the insanity and the

brokenness of human life apart from you.

And we really don't experience life or no life until we come to

know you. For you are life.

You are the giver of life. There is no life apart from you.

We just walk around as dead people until we come to know you

and are born again and brought into a relationship with you

where we have a new life and a life that's worth living.

And we praise you for that, Lord.

And as we enter into this new year, Lord, we pray by the power

of your Holy Spirit that you would make each of us and this

church in this ministry a mouthpiece for the gospel of

Jesus Christ into a broken and lost world.

That we would go out, each of us this year.

And when we meet people and we run into people who are broken

hearted and hopeless and despairing, that we would, Lord,

be used by you to tell them the good news that Christ died for

our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried

and that he rose again on the third day.

The day. Lord, we study these teachings

that you've given us in First Corinthians 15 regarding the

gospel. And what a wonderful Sunday that

we can all be here together, starting this new year, focusing

on the most important thing in life, and that's the gospel of

Jesus Christ. So Lord, we commit ourselves to

you. We surrender to you.

We don't make promises or resolutions.

Lord, all you ask us to do is surrender to you and yield to

you to say, not our will, but your will be done.

And that's I pray the prayer of all of us today.

And we commit all these things to Lord the day.

Lord, touch the hearts of all those you brought here in the

specific and only way that you can to comfort, to encourage, to

bring hope, to bring belief, and to bring peace, Father, and to

each heart and the families that are represented here this day.

Let us be different when we leave here today, more different

than we've ever been before because of your word and the

power of your Holy Spirit. And we pray and we ask these

things in Jesus name, Amen. If you have your Bible turn to

1st Corinthians chapter 15. You can Google it on your phone

as well so you can see where we're at.

And we're going to look at the 1st 8 verses today.

And I wanted to thank you guys, Lewis, myself, Cindy Terry, the

leaders of the church for your prayers, your love for each of

us as we serve you. The gifts, the cards, the

prayers, the texts, the phone calls are just amazing.

As you well know, Cindy, my wife's been really going through

it this year. So she was in the hospital for I

think about 8 days over Christmas and they're trying to

diagnose what's going on. She's having trouble walking and

having stability, so it's sort of a challenge every day for her

right now, but she's encouraging the Lord.

She's trusting Him. She just said to me this morning

as we were praying, Clerk, all I want to do is go deeper in

Jesus. Isn't that awesome?

I'm so thankful that I have a wife that knows Jesus and knows

that He's the answer for every need that she has.

And I feel the same way. So thank you for your love and

your prayers. So anyway, we are in this book

of First Corinthians chapter 15. Last time I spoke, prior to

1 Corinthians 15 · chapter mention

Pastor Lewis's time to teach in December, I had finished pretty

much with the first part of this chapter regarding what the

gospel is. I'm going to read it again and

review and then get into a couple things this morning to

help us understand more about this history that we have of

Jesus raising from the dead. Moreover, brethren, I declare to

you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received,

and in which you stand, by which you are also saved, if you hold

fast that word which I preached to you, unless you believed in

vain. For I delivered to you first of

all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins

according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He

rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and

that He was seen by Cephas. Then by the 12.

After that He was seen by over 500 brethren at once, of whom

the greater part remained to the present, but some have fallen

asleep. After that He was seen by James,

then by all the apostles, then the last of all, he was seen by

me also as by one born out of due time.

So the Gospels explain very clearly the history of of what

had happened. I'm going to go to Luke chapter

Luke 24 · chapter mention

24 and I'm going to read a lot of scripture today.

This would get you up to speed again in regard to the

significance and the historical evidence that this is not make

believe. This isn't something that some

of this thought up. That would be an interesting

story. This is all historical fact

proven by the eyewitnesses that actually saw Jesus after his

resurrection and Luke chapter 24.

Luke 24 · chapter mention

Now on the first day of the week, very early in the morning,

they and certain other women with them came to the tomb,

bringing the spices which they had prepared.

But they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, and then

they went in and did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

And it happened, as they were greatly perplexed about this,

that behold, 2 men stood by them in shining garments.

And then, as they were afraid, they bowed their faces to the

earth and said to them, Why do you seek the living among the

dead? He is not here, but is risen.

Remember how He spoke to you when he was still in Galilee,

saying the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of

sinful men and be crucified. And the third day rise again.

So the Lord told his followers what he was going to encounter

and that he was going to be crucified, and then he was going

to die and He was going to rise again from the dead on the third

day. It's interesting when He did

that, they didn't catch on like saying, well, he's he's not

going to stay dead. He told us he would rise again.

No one picked up on that. Shows you how blind we can be as

as human beings. And then they remembered his

words. Then they returned from the tomb

and told all these things to the 11 and to all the rest.

It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and

the other women with them who told these things to the

apostles. I find it fascinating that the

guys weren't at the tomb. Why were the women there?

Well, the women have a very important role in the history of

Christianity. Jesus decided that he was going

to reveal himself first to a woman and then tell her to go

tell his closest followers who were all afraid, hiding out,

hoping that they wouldn't be arrested or be crucified.

And so these wonderful women had this privilege of having this

encounter and they got to go tell the apostles.

And their words seem to them like idle tales.

They did not believe them. So these these women come to the

the house and and begin to tell the story of what they had

disencountered and and they thought that this seemed like

make believe. There's no way that this could

happen. But Peter that we remember

Peter, Simon Peter had denied Jesus hours before his

crucifixion. He probably wasn't in a good

state, mentally or emotionally, definitely spiritually, because

he knew he had denied the fact that he even knew Jesus.

So Peter Rosen ran to the tomb, and stooping down, he saw the

linen clothes lying by themselves, and he departed,

marvelling to himself at what had happened.

I find it fascinating that he ran to the tomb.

Something in him caused him to think or to know that something

miraculous must have happened. And he sees the garments lying

there and thinking like what has gone on here?

What has happened? Now down the road there, several

of the other apostles are walking.

Now behold, 2 of them were traveling that same day to a

village called Emmaus, which was 7 miles from Jerusalem.

They talked together of all these things which had happened.

So it was while they converse and reason that Jesus himself

drew near and went with them. But their eyes were restrained,

so they did not know Him, so they weren't able to recognize

who was walking along with them. He said to them, What kind of

conversation is this that you have with one another as you

walk and are sad? Then the one whose name was

Cleopas answered and said to him, Are you the only stranger

in Jerusalem? And have you not known the

things which happened there in these days?

And he said to them, What things?

And they said to him the things concerning Jesus of Nazareth,

whom was a prophet, mighty indeed in Word before God and

all the people, and how the chief priest and our rulers

delivered him to be condemned to death and crucified him.

But we were hoping that it was he who was going to redeem

Israel. Indeed, beside all this, today

is the third day since these things have happened.

Yes, in certain women of our company who had arrived at the

tomb early, astonished us when they did not find His body, and

they came saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who

said He was alive. And certain of those who were

with us went to the tomb, and found that just as a woman had

said. But Him they did, we did not

see. Then He said to them, O foolish

ones and slave heart, to believe in all that the prophets have

spoken ought not to Christ to have suffered these things and

to enter into His glory. And beginning at Moses and all

the prophets, he expanded to them all the scriptures, the

things concerning himself. How awesome was that?

They're getting like this eyewitness, perfect miraculous

account of everything that was prophesized regarding Jesus

coming to this earth throughout the Old Testament and that

everything that happened, happened according to what the

Scriptures had foretold. And he started way back in the

time of Moses and he went through all the prophets.

We don't have time today to look up all the verses that talk

about what happened and how these were all fulfilled 100%.

And he and he explained to them all these things.

And so they drew near to the village where they were going,

and he indicated that he would have gone farther, but they

constrained him, saying, abide with us, for it is toward

evening and the day is far spent.

And he went to stay with them. So he's getting ready to take

off. They convince him to stay and

hang out for a while. And they were probably

wondering, like, how in the world does this guy know all the

stuff he's just told us? Now it came to pass as he sat at

the table with them, that he took bread and he blessed it and

he broke it, and he gave it to them.

So every week we take the Lord's Supper and this represents the

body that was given for us, the Lord's body and the blood that

he was shed for us for the remission of our sins.

When Jesus was in the upper room the night before his

crucifixion, he had what was called the Last Supper.

And when he broke the bread and gave the cup, they had never

experienced anything like that ever before because he's telling

them that this represents him, his body.

So that was the last thing they remembered before his

crucifixion. And so here's Jesus now sitting

with them at the table with them.

He takes the bread, He blesses it, He broke it and gave it to

them. There's no one that can break

bread like Jesus, right? It's it's a supernatural

encounter. And whenever he did that, it

says their eyes were open and they knew him and he vanished

from their sight right away. They said this is the Messiah,

this is Jesus. We've seen him.

He truly has risen from the dead.

And they said to one another, did not our heartburn within us

while we talked with us on the road and while we opened the

Scriptures to us. And that's what happens to me

and to you every time we open the Word of God, whether it's 5

minutes or five hours, it doesn't matter.

You read the Word of God. It's a living word and it goes

into your heart and to your spirit.

The Holy Spirit takes what it is you're reading and begins to

burn things in your heart and make them real and make them

alive and make them living. And they they said the evidence

of this experience was that whenever this word was

proclaimed to them, something was happening internally in

their heart. And that's what my prayer is

every time we come here together and gather whoever is preaching,

whoever is teaching the studies throughout the week, the women's

studies, the men's studies, a small group studies of the

pastor teachings, the Wednesday night guys.

Every time the word's broken, something's happening in the

heart. And that's why you want to take

advantage every time the church is open.

And when the word is being broken, come and fellowship and

allow the Lord to work in your heart through the word of God.

And so they. Are amazed at what has happened

so they rose up that very hour they returned to Jerusalem and

found the 11 and of course we know Judas had committed suicide

so he wasn't there yet anymore and the apostle left at this

time who were with them gathered together saying the Lord has

risen indeed and has appeared to Simon exclamation point and they

told about the things that had happened on the road and how he

was known to them by the breaking of bread.

It's interesting how the Lord encourages us to take the Lord's

Supper as frequently as we possibly can, because every time

we take the Supper, Jesus says we remember his death till he

comes again. Something happens to us

supernaturally when we take the Lord's Supper.

It's not a ritual, it's not a routine.

It's something that glorifies God beyond what our imaginations

could even consider, that He loves us to remember what He's

done for us because it's easy for us to forget it.

It's easy for us to take it lightly.

And every time we have the privilege to break the bread

together with Him and with one another, he does something

supernaturally in US. And now in verse 36, as they

said these things, Jesus himself stood in the midst of them and

said to them, Peace to you. These are these are some of the

occurrences of the eyewitness accounts after Christ rose from

the dead. And they were terrified and

frightened and supposed they had seen a spirit.

He said to them, Why are you troubled?

And why do you doubt? Why do these doubts arise in

your hearts? Behold my hands and my feet that

it is I myself handle me and see.

For the Spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see I

have. So he had this resurrected

physical, actual body, flesh and and bone, but but a body that

was now never going to die again, never suffer again.

So he gave them the opportunity to touch him.

And it would have been great to have been in that room to see

that. I don't know what you would have

been. I've probably been like, he's

really here. This is not a ghost.

This is a real person. And then everybody else, I'm

sure we're gathering around hugging them and who knows what

they were up to. And when he had said this, he

showed them his hands and his feet.

And while they still did not believe for joy and marvel, he

said to them, have you any food here?

Now when he shows them the hands and the feet, the, the, the nail

pier scars are still there and they'll be there throughout all

eternity. When we're in heaven one day,

we're always going to remember when we're with Jesus for what

he did for us and why we're actually able to be there with

him because of what he did for us.

And we know Thomas, who wasn't at that particular meeting, he

shows up down the road later. He actually, you know, didn't

believe until we was able to put his hand into the Neil Pierce

scars and then he recognized that it was the Lord himself.

But Jesus knows that they're still like, and their rational

minds thinking like, OK, I'm, I'm experiencing this.

I'm seeing this, I believe now and I but how I need a little

bit more help to really think that this is really real, right?

So then Jesus says, do you have any food here?

The Lord didn't need anything to eat, but he wanted to prove to

him that he still liked to eat. And that's sort of interesting

because when we get to heaven, we're just not sitting around in

clouds, you know, kumbaya worshiping all the time.

Our worships going to be involved in every activity that

we experience in heaven and there's going to be food in

heaven. What do you think about that?

Are you excited about that? No, no food poisoning.

I guarantee the the best fillets that are probably ever possible

be able to be put out there on a table.

This a marriage supper to the lamb that we're all going to

experience in that that first opportunity to be with him in

the Kingdom. This wonderful, wonderful days

ahead for us and those the Lord. So they gave him a piece of

broiled fish and some honeycomb and he took it and he ate it in

their presence. Then he said to them, These are

the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that

all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of

Moses and the prophets, and the Psalms concerning me.

And he opened their understanding, that they might

have comprehend the Scriptures. And he said to them, Thus it is

written. And thus it was necessary for

Christ's suffering to rise from the dead the third day.

Now this is what I want us all to capture and think about, and

that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His

name to all nations, beginning in Jerusalem.

The last thing He said to them also said it in Matthew.

He says it to us today. What needs to be done is that we

need to tell people they need to repent from their sins and that

Jesus will forgive them and cleanse them from their sins and

give them everlasting life. This should be preached in His

name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.

So our job as followers of Jesus Christ in studying about the

resurrection is to take this message that God has given to

you and me and give it to everyone we possibly can.

Amen. Looking for opportunities to

tell people that don't know anything about what it is.

We know that don't even think there's a possibility of

forgiveness from guilt and shame and sin and we've all committed.

The people for the most part are hopeless and they don't realize

that there is the potential to have life after death.

It's good news. I remember someone saying years

ago, and if you've lost people to cancer or you've had cancer

yourself and it's a wicked, wicked disease, if you had a

literal cure for cancer, you would not hide that cure and

that answer for that disease. You would be breaking down every

hospital door in room where a patient was suffering from

cancer and say, I got good news for you.

I'm going to tell you something and if you believe it, you're

not going to have cancer anymore.

You would tell everybody, well, we have a message that's greater

than the cure for cancer. We have the message, the cure

for death, that people can have life everlasting and forgiveness

of their sin. And so Jesus, he went through

all this, not only for you and me, but he went through this for

everybody that would come to live after you and me, so that

they would hear this perpetually from one generation to the next

generation until he comes again and he says, and you are

witnesses of these things. Now these people were

eyewitnesses. They were standing there, they

were experiencing his literal physical body.

They heard his voice, they saw his presence.

Behold, I send the promise of my Father upon you.

And this is the power of the Holy Spirit.

But Terry, in the city of Jerusalem until you were endued

with power from on high. So they had to wait till they

had the Holy Spirit's power to have the boldness and the

courage to tell people about what Jesus had done for them,

because they knew that they were potentially going to be martyred

and killed because of following Jesus.

And this is one of the greatest endorsements of the reality of

the history of the resurrection. There's no way people would give

their lives to potentially die and be martyred for something

that was not true. These men and these women

throughout the histories of life and martyrdom said this is worth

dying for. This is worth giving my life

for. We received the Holy Spirit when

we were born again. When we receive Jesus into our

heart as our Lord and Savior, we're not alone anymore.

God lives within us and so when we hear the word of God, if

we're believers, it resonates is the truth.

We don't doubt anymore. We know it's true because he

lives within us. What propels us to do what it is

we do for God in Our Calling and our giftings is made possible by

the Holy Spirit that lives in each of us.

So you and me and, and, and everyone else that believes in

the Lord, we're out in the marketplace, we're out in the

world, we're out in the culture, we're out in our jobs, our

occupations and our families and our sports activities, our

leisure. And there's always an

opportunity to run into someone that knows nothing about what we

know. And the Holy Spirit convicts you

and you think, how can I get a conversation going with this

person I'm starting to enjoy being with?

To tell them more about my life and how many kids I have, or

where do I live, or what kind of job I have, or what kind of car

I drive or where do I like to go on vacation, All that kind of

stuff. Small talk, weather, politics,

whatever. To find a way that I can tell

them about what Jesus has done for me.

Get that conversation going. And then hearing them either

blowing you off and ignoring you or laughing at you, which

happens sometimes, or someone saying, that's interesting, I'd

like to know more about that. And they ask you questions and

you build a friendship, you build a relationship.

And, and because of those conversations, God uses you to

to see people LED into the Kingdom of God to believe in

Jesus Christ and become saved and on their way to heaven.

And he led them up out as far as Bethany, and he lifted up his

hands, and he blessed them. This is the last thing they

remember seeing. Now it came to pass while he

blessed them, that he was parted from them and carried up into

heaven. So they saw the ascension occur.

And this also is discussed in the book of the Acts.

It said, Madam, brethren, why are you looking up?

Remember that the same Jesus is being taken up from you shall

come again in like manner. So physically I saw him come up

and the Bible says the second coming of Jesus physically, eyes

will see him come back to this earth, establish his Kingdom in

Jerusalem for 1000 years, the millennial Kingdom and they

worshipped him and they returned to Jerusalem with great joy.

And we're continually in the temple praising and blessing

God, I should say. So this was a real revival.

This wasn't something like the Steelers will win the day and

then we'll rejoice and we'll be excited and and then two hours

later, we could care less, right?

This is an event that you can't ever get out of your head.

And and it says that they they return to Jerusalem with with

this great joy. And I think we say happy New

Year, right? I think we should say joyous New

Year because happiness is based upon circumstances.

And is everybody happy? Yeah.

Sometimes you're happy, sometimes you're sad, sometimes

you're mad, sometimes you're glad.

But joy is a fruit of the spirit.

When the joy of of the Lord is in US, they can't be drained.

It's it's eternal, it's supernatural, it's something you

can draw from no matter what you're going through and what

you're dealing with in life. The joy of the Lord is our

strength and we see that in the lives of each other.

When we suffer, we're not excited about suffering and

tragedy and difficulty and heartache.

But when Jesus is in the midst of your suffering, there's this

presence of joy, isn't there? It's and it's not something we

can manufacture or try to make happen.

It's something that's supernaturally is given to you

and me as a gift. It's a fruit of the Spirit, the

love, the joy, the peace, the long-suffering, the gentleness,

the goodness, the meekness. All the attributes of Jesus are

in us because Christ is in US, Christ in you the hope of glory.

And so whenever we we watch that little video clip there of of

Jesus showing up at at Lazarus death.

It's it's interesting because Lazarus is about his figure

about 30 years old when that happened and Jesus, he knew all

about it ahead of time and he didn't show up immediately

because there was a reason for what had happened and why it

happened the way it happened. But Lazarus was supernaturally

resurrected from a terminally dead condition.

Of course, it wasn't the final resurrection because even though

he was healed and brought back to life, he eventually died,

right. But but Jesus resurrection was

the fact that he can never die again and never will die again.

And so whenever we're resurrected, we're never going

to die again. And so this this issue of what

happened with Lazarus was the fact that it was a precursor of

about 6 days before Jesus would actually be raised from the dead

himself. And they wanted to eliminate

him, the enemies, because of what he had done for Lazarus.

Because a lot of people there were skeptics up until that time

regarding Jesus and his message of repentance and remission of

sins became believers because what had happened to Lazarus.

So they saw Jesus as being a great threat to the rest of the

nation of Israel, and they wanted to eliminate him and get

get rid of him. And so Mary and Martha and

Lazarus lived in Bethany and Jesus throughout his lifetime

had developed a friendship with them.

So on his way to celebrate Passover, he would stay at their

house. So they were really, really

close friends and Jesus hung out there a lot with them.

And whenever Martha first came and said, Lord, if you would

have been here in time, he wouldn't have died.

He saw the anguish in her, the heartache, the desolation, the

confusion. Because Jesus is a man of

sorrows and acquainted with grief.

There's not one thing you and I go through that we go through

alone as his kids. He suffers with you when you're

suffering. He, he enters into your life and

the times that you're broken and your your heart is blown apart.

He's there to bring comfort. He's there to bring courage.

He's there to bring strength. He's there to bring hope and

reason and peace. And the longer you walk with the

Lord and the more you begin to know Him and the older you get

in your relationship to Him, He never doesn't show up and

minister to you. Now at first when you're going

through whatever it is, you, you, you want a miracle right

away. You want help now, not like 10

minutes from now or two days from now.

Lord, I need you right now. And he's there.

We just don't sense it sometimes He, he lets us like get

desperate to really push into him and the struggle to really

find him. He says if you seek me with all

your heart, you'll find me. If you seek the Lord with just a

superficial heart, He's still there, but He's not going to

show up the way you want him to. But when you're desperate for

Him and you're crying out to Him and He knows you're at the point

of ready to receive and experience Him, He will show up

in a very powerful way. So even though Jesus knew he was

going to raise Lazarus from the dead, when Martha shared her

brokenness to him, you know what it says in the Bible?

Jesus wept. Why would He weep?

He knows the end from the beginning.

Beginning from the end. He weeps for us because He knows

we don't understand at times. Why, Lord, why?

And our hearts are broken, but he puts the heart back together

again. And I find through crisis and

adversity and suffering and tragedy, it's a paradox because

it's the best thing that can happen to a human being because

it causes them to look for God and then perhaps even maybe

believe in God because of what they've gone through or what

they're going through. He's a master physician.

He knows how to touch the heart. He knows how to pull out the,

the stuff that needs to be exposed and to, to be repented

of and to, to be seen as as ugly as it is.

And why he had to die that violent death on the cross for

the sins that we've committed against him, past, present and

future. The the lack of.

Compassion that we have for this great God at times is that's

what I marvel about. I say, Lord, how can you love me

so much when I've loved you so little?

But His love for me and you is not predicated or conditioned

upon a temperature of what He thinks or sees and how we love

Him. It says He loved us, and while

we were yet sinners, Christ died for us, our worst place in life

and time. He died for us because He loves

us. So when we look at this section

in First Corinthians 15, I pray, and this is a long chapter,

we're going to get into a lot of interesting teachings regarding

what happens to the body after death and the type of the

resurrection that occurs. For the resurrection from the

dead, for those resurrection of righteousness believers and the

resurrection of condemnation and guilt for those who are

unbelievers who unfortunately will suffer all eternity and

hell because they refused to believe on Jesus and accept Him

as their Savior. All these people that were

exposed to this experience, Peter Cephas, that's another

name for Simon Peter. Then they called him the 12,

even though there was only 11 left.

They were known as the 12 apostles, the 500 people that

saw him at one time, then James Peters or Jesus brother, half

brother that the whole life of growing up as a kid in the

house, as I mentioned last time, all these other brothers were

always getting in trouble. I'm sure getting spanked.

Jesus never got spanked once and they would call him goody 2

sandals. Jesus never does anything wrong.

You love him more than you love me because he never he's

perfect. They didn't even know what they

were saying. Surely he was perfect and is

perfect without sin. And then Paul, we'll get into

that next week. He says last of all, he was seen

by me also as by one born out of due time.

And how Paul got saved is a miracle in and of itself.

Martyring Christians, putting them in prison, having them

killed because they followed Jesus and the and the humor of

Jesus. Guess who I'm going to pick to

be one of the leaders of my, my New Testament church?

Paul Tarsus, You got to be kidding me.

This guy was a murderer. You can't trust him.

We hate you know no way but God chooses a weak and foolish

things of this world to confound the wise that no flesh your

gloriness present. I am the last person and I Lewis

will say the same to be doing what we're doing.

You got to God. You got to have a good sense of

humor to you would call us out of our sinful lifestyles and our

self centeredness and our pride and our greed and all these

weaknesses of our human feralities and feelings.

And you, you choose to speak through us.

He could speak through a donkey, right?

He can speak through an ass, right?

So it's humbling. So as a worship team can come

forward, 11:45 I stop at 11:45. Lewis stops at 1155 S.

Do you like me better than Louis because I quit sooner.

No, I used to like preach for an hour and a half.

I was telling Louis and finally I realized like people checked

out like a long time ago. So we only have so much

bandwidth. But anyway, it's a privilege to

be able to teach this to you today, and I pray that the Lord

will touch your heart and bring healing to where it needs to be

healing. I know some of our family in

this church has lost loved ones this year.

Some are dealing with serious illnesses.

Some are dealing with wayward family or broken kids, marriages

that have been in disarray, whatever.

But we're also grateful for all the answers to prayer that we've

had at Calvary Chapel this year, all the wonderful things that

God has done in your lives and the lives of many that we care

about and love. So keep praying, keep trusting

the Lord, keep asking questions, and we're here for you to help

you in your path and your walk as you help us as well.

Let's take the Lord's Supper together.