Did Jesus Really Rise from the Grave? - Holy Week

Hey, I'm Steve Holt, the senior pastor of the Road at Chapel Hills.

This is the Red Podcast.

Thanks for joining us.

My heart is to empower you to change the world.

I hope this message impacts you.

We're glad you're here, and we're we just welcome everybody that's come, uh, that maybe doesn't normally come.

And this is the road at Chapel Hills.

We're a pretty fun church, we're a joyful church, um, we're a powerful church.

Uh people are getting their lives changed like almost every day.

And I hear stuff all the time.

In uh first service, people came up and want to know about getting baptized.

And um, we just had a baptism, but but um you're here today, and we're glad you're here today, and it's exciting to be at the road.

It's called the road at Chapel Hills, and the road comes from seven times God speaking to my wife and I of a road less travel.

And that was in a transition.

If you've heard of Mountain Springs Church here in town, I was the pastor who started that church in 1994, and God was moving me out to plant a new church, and he spoke seven times the road less travel.

And why is that important?

It's important because all of us come to junctures in our life, and you come to more than one, some are more major and some are more minor in our lives, where God calls you to do something that you feel like you can't do or that you're scared about.

It's a fearful proposition in your life to do that.

And you're here on Easter.

And for many people that I've met in the ministry that I've had for all these years, Easter became a turning point for them.

They didn't go to church, they rarely went to church, they were kind of Easter and Christmas Christians.

That's the only time they went.

And I understand that.

My dad was a Lutheran pastor.

And so, as a Lutheran pastor, the way I grew up was you hardly had anybody at church during the year, and then it was packed at Easter and Christmas.

Okay?

In our church, it's packed every Sunday of the year, and then it's more packed at Easter and Christmas.

So that's different.

But I would be remiss if I didn't address here at the beginning the fact that some of you here today may not normally go to church.

You're coming because your grandkids are here, or you're here because somebody made you come, or you're here because you saw the sign.

I mean, I don't know why you're here, except that God brought you here.

And so this message today and this worship today and the prayers that are to be prayed are for you.

Because God offers to us at different times in our life a road, less travel.

Jesus called it the narrow way, the narrow way.

He says that it's wide, the road is wide on the way to destruction, but the road is narrow on the way of the kingdom.

And so this is the kingdom way.

And you'll never regret following Christ because he rose from the grave.

And that's why we have Easter, that's why we have Resurrection Day, is because everything rises and falls on either Jesus rose from the grave or he did not.

It's a hoax.

It's either the greatest hoax of all time or the greatest miracle in human history.

And billions around the world, the largest religion in the world is Christianity, believe that it's the greatest miracle of human history.

And so we come because we believe.

But it's not, I want you to understand this, it's not blind faith.

You see, blind faith, it has its place, I guess.

Faith has its place, but blind faith does not have its place, in my opinion.

We have an intelligent faith based on facts, based on historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

But skeptics, media, and quasi-intellectuals look at one side of the story and draw an opinion.

And for some of you in this room, that may be the kind of atmosphere, family, or background that you came out of.

And that's okay.

That's normal, actually.

That's probably where most of America is today.

But the struggle for understanding the purpose of life is really an issue that we don't like to grapple with.

It makes us super uncomfortable.

And if you're like me, I don't like uncomfortable.

I like comfortable.

I like to go where it's familiar ground, I know the answers, I'm in control.

I don't like to go where I feel out of control.

But anytime God is moving in our life to a road less traveled, it gets uncomfortable.

Because then we have to ask new questions that sometimes we don't have an answer for.

For example, how many atoms are there in a Brussels sprout?

How much does your head weigh?

Have you ever measured the weight of your child's head?

Fourteen bizarre questions were asked to English, England's brightest minds, the professors of Oxford and Cambridge.

Fourteen bizarre questions where they had to stand up and answer questions on subjects that they were not experts in.

Question number 10 was interesting.

Why are we here?

Why are we here on this earth?

One person said, only God can answer that.

One philosopher said, well, if you're religious, you believe that you're here to serve God, but if you're non-religious, you're here for no reason.

A TV journalist said, most of us spend our lives trying to answer that question.

And I certainly have not figured it out yet.

Most people go through their entire lives unable to answer what the purpose of life is.

Woody Allen, a tragic but comic figure, but also very intelligent, said this.

The fundamental thing behind all motivation and activity is a constant struggle against annihilation and death.

It is stupefying in its terror and renders anyone's accomplishments meaningless.

Now, to the extent that you follow that and believe that is the extent to which your life is either one that's super depressive or super exciting.

You see, it's kind of an important question.

Like, why are we here?

What's our purpose in being here and in this life?

Well, since we have Darwinism as the main educational foundation in most of our schools today, we could define our existence as time plus matter plus chance equals walking monkeys or human beings.

Like the famous cartoonist Ralph Barton, who wrote this on his suicide note?

I've had few difficulties, many friends, great successes.

I've gone from wife to wife and from house to house, visited great countries of the world, but I'm fed up with inventing devices to fill up 24 hours of the day.

So men and women, does what happened on Good Friday and Easter matter?

Does what happened on Good Friday and Easter have anything to do with the question about why are we here?

What is our purpose in this life?

Does the resurrection of Christ speak to the issues of life that really matter?

Well, let's paint the story.

So there was this guy named Joseph of Arimathea, who was a secret follower of Christ, who gave his tomb.

He gave a tomb that had never been used before because Christ had died.

So they took his lifeless body, which he had died about 3 p.m.

on that particular day on Friday.

They took the lifeless body with a shroud over it and put it in the tomb.

Now there was a rumor going around that Jesus had said that after he died, he was actually predicting and prophesying his death that he would die for the sins of the world.

But on the third day, the rumor was he was going to rise from the grave.

So they took a two-ton rock and they rolled it over the tomb.

Then they put the most elite soldiers of that time, a Roman guard, 24-7, over the tomb.

And then these ladies show up, they bought spices, and the biggest thing on their mind is how are we gonna move this rock to reanoint the body?

And that's where we pick it up.

And if you have your Bible, look at Mark 16.

Mark 16.

If you didn't bring a Bible, we're gonna put the passage up on the PowerPoint.

Mark 16, verses 1 through 8.

Mark 16:1–8

Now when the Sabbath was passed, Mary Magdalene, Mary, the mother of James, and Saloon bought spices that they might come and anoint him.

Verse 2.

Very early in the morning, on the first day of the week, they came to the tomb when the sun had risen.

How many have been to a sunrise service?

Maybe at Easter.

Yeah.

This is where it comes from.

And they said among themselves, Who will roll away the stone from the door of the tomb for us?

But when they looked up, they saw that the stone had already been rolled away, for it was very large.

Most scholars believe it was about two tons.

And entering the tomb, they saw a young man clothed in a long white robe, sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed.

But he said to them, Don't be alarmed.

You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified, he is risen.

He's not here.

See the place where they laid him.

But go tell his disciples and Peter that he's going before you into Galilee, and there you will see him, as he said to you.

So he's already, this angel is pronouncing the prophecy Jesus had already told them that they didn't believe.

So they went out quickly, fled from the tomb, for they trembled and were amazed, and they said nothing to anyone, for they were afraid.

Now, these are women.

So where are the men?

Well, since the death of Christ, the men booked it.

I mean, they're out of here, you know, and the women hang with Jesus, the men flee.

I think you could you could describe four reactions by the men, by the disciples of Jesus.

One was desertion.

They deserted Jesus.

And you know, it when you look at the kind of difficulties we've gone through as a country over the last two years.

Has any of you been surprised who stands and who deserts?

I mean, I've been shocked at the people that I thought were so strong and so courageous when actually the bullets started to fly, so to speak, when things got tough, they desert.

I mean, they're like, where are they?

I mean, they're not they're nowhere to be found.

Well, same thing.

Here, here's a guy, three and a half years.

Jesus, perfect in every way.

And this actually should be good news if you're going through any struggles in your life and people are accusing you of things.

It's probably true.

Okay?

But with Jesus, he's accused of things, and it's not true.

He's perfect in every way.

Signs and wonders, almost daily, miracles, almost daily.

Totally taking care of all the needs of his disciples in supernatural ways.

Feeding 5,000 with a few fish and loaves of bread.

I mean, let's go on and on, all the miracles.

John even says, if I were to write down all the miracles that Jesus did, it would just, it would fill up books that would be, that would that we would spend your whole life trying to read.

All the stuff that Jesus did.

We only have a little clip from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John about what he did.

But when the going got tough, desertion.

Then denial.

Peter denies that even knows Christ to a slave girl at night.

And then all of the disciples deny Christ.

Disbelief.

I mean, disbelief.

When the women come back after seeing Jesus risen from the grave and tell the disciples they still don't believe.

And then disappointment would be another description of them.

On the road to Emmaus.

Do you remember the story?

Jesus shows up.

And I don't get all this exactly, but something about his parents was different.

And as you heard at Good Friday, I talked about the fact that when Jesus died, he went immediately into paradise.

That's what he said to the thief on the cross.

He said, You will be with me today in paradise.

So I don't know if by going into paradise, you know, it physiologically changed him in some way, but either they were blinded or Jesus was different.

But but they, this is what they said when Jesus asked him.

Jesus asked him about Jesus.

They said, Well, we had hoped this Jesus would be our Savior, but so desertion, denial, disbelief, disappointment.

Now, why do I say all that?

Because I think that the response of the men with the death of Christ is not altogether different than some of the experiences that some of you have had with Christianity and with the church.

That you may have had times where you've been majorly disappointed.

You've been let down.

Maybe you've been stabbed in the back by the church.

Maybe you've, I like what Pastor Allison says is a lot of people don't go to church because they know people who do.

You know?

And um, and so we we we have the reality that sometimes we've been in experiences like that.

You're and you're here today, and you grew up in a Christian home, or you grew up in a home where you did go to church.

But for some reason it it really hasn't landed in your heart, it's not real to you.

And men and women, Christianity is is only one generation away from extinction because you can't be born a Christian, you can't hang on to the faith of your parents.

You have to decide.

Everybody has to decide.

I had to decide at 18.

Grew up with my dad as a Lutheran pastor.

I was a PK, a pastor's kid in the Lutheran church, but I didn't have a faith.

I had a religious family.

I had a religious thing that I did on Sundays.

I mean, I was in the church nine months before I was born.

Okay?

And so I had to wear a little clip tie, a little clip tie and everything, and I hated it.

It was super boring.

Anyone been to boring churches?

Okay.

Is the road boring?

I think it's anything but boring.

Okay.

So boring and road is an oxymoron.

Okay.

But something transformed these men.

I mean, they really changed.

I mean, if you take Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, the four gospel accounts of Christ, and then you link it up with the book of Acts, which is the next book in the New Testament, the change, look at the last two chapters of any of the gospels, and then you link that to the first two or three chapters of the book of Acts, it's like total change, man.

It's like a 180 in these disciples.

From being fearful cowards to being powerful preachers, from being hidden away in an upper room somewhere so the Jews can't find them, or the Romans, to being on the streets preaching the gospel.

I mean, if if you talk to Peter, I mean, he's talking to a slave girl at night, and he denies Christ.

To just a month, month and a half later, this guy preaches the gospel of Jesus Christ, that he's risen from the grave, and 3,000 people get saved.

That's weird, man.

What is that?

What transformed these men?

Well, it goes back to Sunday morning.

It goes back to what we call Easter now.

Something really, really happened.

And so that see that's the issue, isn't it?

I mean, that's really the issue for the skeptic.

That's really the issue for the atheist or the agnostic to deal with is that doesn't happen.

You guys, that doesn't happen.

There's no examples in history of anything like this where a bunch of cowards suddenly become courageous and without an explanation.

They saw him die.

But on the third day, history tells us that twelve, now eleven fearful men had their lives rocked by the reality that they said that Jesus had risen from the grave.

They said that this man who is dead is alive again.

With the finest Roman guard 24-7 over the tomb and a two-ton rock over it.

And if the body was stolen, present the body.

If the body was stolen, which is what the Jews told those who came and reported to them to tell everybody, tell everybody the body was stolen.

And any honest inquirer, any honest investigative journalist was, well, then show us the body.

Where's the body if it was stolen?

Find the body, show the body.

Or maybe they just made it up.

I mean, that happens.

It's called cognitive dissonance.

I mean, there could have literally been cognitive dissonance.

I think you can find psychologically examples of that.

Where people say something happened and it didn't happen.

If you're a parent, you know what this is like.

If you have more than one kid, it happens daily.

It's called cognitive dissonance.

Okay?

And your job as a parent is to help your kid marry cognitive dissonance into reality by helping them understand, and sometimes back here, the importance of being honest.

But one or two people having cognitive dissonance we can handle.

But every one of the disciples saying he'd risen from the grave?

A hundred and twenty saying he'd risen from the grave?

1 Corinthians 15 said, a hundred.

Heard and saw him risen from the grave?

So either Jesus died and stayed dead, or Jesus arose.

That's really the only options we have.

So Professor Thomas Arnold, the late chair of modern history at Oxford, author of the famous three-volume set on the history of Rome went throat.

I've been used for many years to study the histories of other times and to examine and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them, and I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort to the understanding of a fair inquirer than the great sign which God hath given us that Christ died and rose from the dead.

So what will you do with the resurrection of Christ?

If you're here today and you've been disappointed by the church, you've been disappointed by Christianity, you've, and I think this is one of the things that people struggle with.

Well, I prayed and he didn't come through.

You know what?

Everybody's experienced that?

We prayed about something that was really important in our life, and it seems like God didn't show up for us.

And that disappointment for some of us has caused us to reject Christ and reject the church and reject God in our life.

I'm gonna ask you today to look past your feelings, if that is true of your feelings, and look at the resurrection of Christ as a possibility that God actually raised his son from the dead.

The implications are heaven and hell.

The implications are joy or despair.

Recently I was talking to a young man who had given his heart to Christ right after a drug overdose.

So he'd overdosed on drugs.

He was laying on the floor in the bathroom, and he is dying.

He's convinced that he's gonna die.

And then he had a vision.

And in one part of the vision, there was a hallway.

And in that hallway, he could see down into the hallway, complete darkness, and he could feel the despair of that hallway.

And then immediately after that, he saw another hallway.

And in that hallway there was light, there was hope, and there was purpose to his life.

And at that very moment, even though he had, as far as he knew, he had never really heard about Christ much other than that you just hear in the supermarket here and there, but he didn't grow up in a Christian home.

He called out to Jesus.

He called out to Jesus, and the overdose ended right there.

He was healed right there, and he's walking with Jesus today.

So, so what is that?

Well, I'll share at the end of the service what I think that was.

In June 1815, a famous day in English history, some of you who are historical buffs would know that.

Wellington versus Napoleon at Waterloo.

And the way they communicated victory or defeat to the English was through ships that were in the English Channel.

So there was a sign that a runner took to the coast of France.

That sign was read by a ship, signal ship, in the English Channel, which was then flashed to Buckingham Palace and to Westminster Cathedral, and there were signal men up there, and it was a foggy day, that day in 1815.

And the sign that the signal person, whatever you call him, at Westminster and at Buckingham Palace could see was Wellington defeated.

So the sign went out from there to other writers that went all over England.

Wellington defeated.

But then the fog cleared, and they could read the second half.

Wellington defeated the French.

Good Friday.

Jesus defeated.

Today, the fog has cleared.

Jesus defeated Satan.

The fog is cleared.

Jesus defeated the grave.

Will you let Christ clear some fog in your heart?

Because if you don't know Christ, Satan is defeating you.

But if you'll give your heart to Christ today, if you'll take that courageous step of faith to believe in him, Christ defeats Satan in your life.

And he begins a great work in your heart.

Come to Christ, smartest decision you'll ever make.

I did at 18, never looked back.

Fantastic life of lots of failures, lots of brokenness for sure.

But we have Christ.

For a long time, even into the 14th century, Europeans believed that there was nothing past the coast of Portugal.

There was even a sign in the port of Lisbon written in French, ne flu ultra.

Ne flu ultra, meaning nothing beyond this.

Then, of course, you know, in 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue and discovered all of the vastness of the new world.

And they changed the sign to flu ultra, which means there's a lot more beyond this.

So what about for you this morning?

Is your life na flu ultra?

There's nothing beyond this.

And if you're an agnostic, that's what you pretty much have to believe.

There's nothing more than what you can see and touch and feel.

Or flu ultra, which there's a lot more beyond this, and there's a road less travel.

There is an abundance that awaits you.

There's a joy that can outlast any pain in our lives.

He alone gives us hope because he rose from the grave.

He alone forgives sins because he rose from the grave.

He alone gives us a future and a purpose because he rose from the grave.

He alone can give you a reason for living because he rose from the grave.

Everything rises and falls on Easter.

Everything rises and falls on the resurrection of Christ.

H.

G.

Wells, the famous atheist, once said this.

I'm an historian and not a believer, but this penniless preacher from Galilee is irresistibly the center of all of history.

Jesus said, I am the way and the truth, the life.

No one comes to the Father but through me.

Meaning that the only route into life is the road less traveled, the narrow way through Christ.

He's the way, he's the truth, he's the life.

He said, the enemy comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but I came to give you an abundant life.

I came to give you life and liberty in your heart with him.

So it was Jesus who said, Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

If anyone hears that knock and opens that door, I will come into him and sup with him.

So God's knocking on the door of your heart if you're here this morning.

Isn't that great?

Yet you're something within you that brought you here, and God's knocking on the door of your heart.

And he wants to come in.

But Jesus will never barge in.

It is always our choice and our decision.

So I encourage you today, experience the resurrection of Christ.

Surrender your life to him, surrender your heart to him.

Begin the wonderful journey that started for 12 disciples that were despondent, they were in disbelief, they gave up.

There was another 120, and there were thousands all over Jerusalem just like him.

But when that Easter Sunday came, everything changed.

Jesus defeated Satan.

And you know, that's part of what we do here at The Road, and this is what I do in having this Road Podcast is to empower people to change their world.

My passion and desire is that you would take God's word through the power of the Holy Spirit and make that relevant for your life.

You know, the reality is that God has placed your life here on this earth to make a difference.

And if you'd like more information about how to grow in Christ, if you need prayer, if you want more equipping in different areas of your life, go to theroad.org.

God bless you.