Jesus Is: The Resurrection | Part 7

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Well, happy Easter Awakening Church.

Great to be with you.

How are we doing?

Good, amazing.

Welcome if you're new.

My name's Ryan.

We're absolutely thrilled to have you join us today.

I'd love to get in on the fun as well.

So he has risen.

Amazing.

Very good.

You're warmed up.

You did fantastic.

Let me ask you this question.

When's the last time you've seriously reconsidered something?

Like when's the last time you just seriously reconsidered?

You know reconsidered definition is to think again about a decision or opinion and decide if you want to change it.

I remember when I reconsidered sushi.

Yeah.

That's why you came Easter Sunday for sushi, right?

By the way, how many are um sushi lovers in the house, by the way?

Uh sushi haters.

Alone woo! Right back there, just so you know.

Didn't mean to point you out.

Um I didn't grow up in a sushi home.

Uh not that it was anti-sushi by any means, but it was more of an absent sushi home.

Uh truth be told, I never had sushi, but I had strongly formed opinions about it.

That it was gross, that it was slimy, um, that it was unsafe, it's raw, right?

What in the world?

And that it's a waste of money.

Um and I remember the day I reconsidered sushi.

I was 19 years old.

I was dating this girl named Jenny, who's now my wife.

It worked out.

Um, and we're gonna go on a double date with some of our dear friends Josh and Danielle, who are now married to this day as well, to sushi.

And so now I'm willing to at least reconsider my sushi idea.

Uh so we get there, it's all brand new.

I'm actually quite nervous, by the way.

Um, they're teaching me everything.

I get the, you know, where to put the soy sauce and then the wasabi, and like, wow, that pack's a punch, didn't expect that.

Um, hello.

And then they tell me this like with the chopsticks, you grab the sushi roll, you have to put the whole thing in your mouth.

I'm like, the whole thing?

Like, yeah, you don't just bite a part of it, you gotta experience the whole roll.

That seemed like a pretty big commitment for somebody who had a pretty strong conviction he didn't like it.

Um, but here's the deal I'm with my girlfriend, I want to make a good impression.

I was at least willing to try it.

And well, the rest is history.

I love sushi.

I do, I love it.

When's the last time you were willing to seriously reconsider something?

Um, you know, the older we get, the more set in our ways we become, don't we?

The less likely we are willing to consider or reconsider something.

Sushi's, you know, a fairly light thing, depend on your personality.

But the less likely we are to consider more serious, deep things like spirituality or purpose and meaning.

And since we're here, and since you're here, once would you at least be willing to seriously reconsider Easter?

I mean, you did it, you got dressed up, you showed up, you might as well think about it.

Hey, let's just think about it just a little bit deeper, because maybe you've done Easter before, and this is just another one among many.

Wake up, get dressed up, you know what, go to this service, a guy goes wah, wah, wah, and then, you know, you say he is risen, you go to brunch, you dye eggs, you hide eggs.

Why?

I'm not really sure, but then Easter is done.

Would you, would you seriously reconsider Easter?

Or better yet, would you seriously reconsider Jesus?

And by the way, I'm not just talking to those who are maybe distant from God, skeptical or searching.

I'm actually talking to Christians.

Christians, would you seriously reconsider Jesus?

You know, in the West, we have reduced Jesus to sound bites that fit our personal preference and our political persuasion that has stripped him of his glory, power, and goodness.

Would you seriously reconsider this Jesus we're gathering to celebrate?

And if you are searching, if you are skeptical, maybe that girl brought you, or he brought you, and you're looking forward to brunch, and so you say, get on with it.

Maybe this could be your sushi moment with Jesus.

I don't know.

But at least would you be open and honest enough?

Could we ask this question?

Why are we still drawn to and intrigued by this Jesus 2,000 years later?

Like, why in the world are we still drawn to?

Like, there seems to be this gravitational pull, doesn't there?

He just keeps coming up.

We can't get rid of him.

And honestly, if you're gonna have any intellectual integrity, we have to ask the question at some point in our life, who really is Jesus?

Or maybe said in a run-on sentence question this way How did this carpenter-turn rabbi who lived in an obscure part of the Roman Empire was ultimately executed as a criminal by Rome at the behest of his own people revolutionized the world as we know it?

Like, how did that happen?

In fact, if you if you read historians, they'll call this one of history's great mysteries, why Christianity even exists.

I mean, his life has had too much impact for us to ignore him.

Think about this.

Jesus, he was born to a poor peasant family.

Eventually, as a young child, he was a refugee in Egypt, grew up in Podunk, Nazareth.

Their catch line was could anything good come from Nazareth?

That's not a great catch line.

Um for the first 30 of these years, we know very little about his life.

We know his dad was a carpenter or stonemason, so he probably adopted the family trade, and then all of a sudden he steps onto the scene.

And what we do know, it's prolific.

We have a lot of information and documents about it, but for just about three years, three years at most, and then he died young.

And yet today, think about this: he divided history and we reckon time by his life.

We're in the year 2023 A.D.

ano domini, year of our Lord.

Every time you write 2023, you are recognizing, whether you realize it or not, the life and legacy of Jesus.

Even on Sunday, think about this, and especially if you come from a background that your language is in the Latin root, yeah, Sunday is Dieus Dominicus.

It's the Latin for the day of our Lord.

Like every single Sunday was named to remind you of the resurrection, the Sunday Jesus rose from the grave.

Like, who is this man?

That 2.6 billion people woke up on this day to celebrate and say he's risen.

At some point we have to ask the question.

And then his teachings.

His teachings echo to something deeply in us, don't they?

Of a society that we long for and a way of being that we see is so needed.

To love the unlovely, to care for those who are mistreated and downtrodden, to, you know, turn the other cheek, to go the extra mile, to love your enemy as yourself, love uh your neighbor as yourself.

I mean, he elevated the dignity and quality of every single person, elevating women and children who are degraded in that day to equality.

And much of our values today are rooted in his teaching.

In fact, most would say he's the greatest teacher who has ever lived.

And I think that's where he stands with this.

Even followers of Jesus, he's a great teacher and a good man, and he lives such an incredible life, a self-sacrificing life.

It's worthy to pattern your life after.

But then there's his claims.

His claims, they're problematic and they're controversial, by the way.

It wasn't his teaching or his life necessarily that got him executed, it was his claims.

It was his claims that got him crucified back then, and it was his claims today, by the way, that keep us, if we're honest, to examine who he was, keep us from saying he's a good man or a great teacher.

Claims like this.

I am the resurrection and the life.

The one who believes in me will live even though they die, and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.

Do you believe this?

Think about that.

Jesus said, I am the resurrection.

He didn't say, I mean, he was a miracle worker, he is known for that.

He didn't say, I possess resurrection, I have some resurrecting power.

Hello.

I know where to find resurrection.

No, no, I am resurrection, and then he didn't ask you to believe in his teaching.

He didn't ask you to believe in a philosophical uh construct or a theological idea.

He asked you to believe in him.

And here's ultimately what Jesus is saying.

Resurrection is a person.

Resurrection is a person.

Jesus is resurrection.

The Jewish idea of resurrection was resurrection was a place and an event all in one.

The resurrection that would happen at the end of the age.

It was this event and place.

And Jesus says, no, resurrection is a person.

I am the resurrection.

And wherever I show up, resurrection's happening.

Dead things are coming back to life.

How could a good man and a great teacher say something like this?

And that is what brings us to Easter.

You know, all of Christianity hinges upon the historical event of the resurrection of Jesus.

It did in Jesus' day, and it does in our day.

If Jesus did not rise from the dead, listen, come on.

If he did not rise from the dead, this is a waste of time.

Get your brunch now.

Get your brunch on.

It's better to celebrate the eggs and the bunnies.

Even the apostle Paul, who once was a persecutor of the faith, said the same thing.

He then had an encounter with the resurrected Jesus, became a follower, and wrote just about half of the New Testament.

He writes this.

And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is what?

Help me out.

If he's not been raised, it's futile, it's useless.

If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

But if it's true, if Jesus did rise from the dead, then all that he said, and yes, all that he claimed is true.

That he is not just a good man or a great teacher, but he is the God man in flesh.

He is resurrection in our presence.

And by the way, Christian, you cannot treat him as a soundbite and pick and choose from what things you like about Jesus.

If he rose from the grave, he is resurrection, he is God, you just get to go, yes, Lord.

Yes, Lord.

And so, if we are going to seriously reconsider Jesus, then we need to take a thoughtful look at the resurrection events.

And did you know that all major historians agree on some foundational and fundamental facts about Jesus and the resurrection?

Let me just give you five of them.

Five foundational facts that theologians, scholars, atheists, theists, agnostics, skeptical, uh, skeptics, they all agree on.

And the first is Jesus was a real historical person.

Jesus was a real historical person.

There's been a little bit of talk lately, and some people that have thrown out some things, well, maybe he wasn't really real.

He wasn't just a myth.

And the evidence that we have of his life and history is overwhelming.

The ancient documents, think about this.

Jesus' life after his death, we have documents dating right two years after his death and resurrection.

We all know Alexander the Great and heard of his life.

Do you know how early the documents and writings we have of him that we think are true and trustworthy?

Four to five hundred years after his life.

See, Jesus was a historical person where we have early documents, not just the eyewitnesses, but other historians of the day.

Josephus, a Jewish historian in the ancient day, wrote of Jesus.

Even the Jewish Talmud writes of Jesus.

There was a Roman historian, Tacitus, and Pliny as well wrote, but Tacitus wrote this, and this was during the speaking of Nero, and when he blamed the Christians for the burning of Rome, he writes this about Jesus.

Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius by the sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilate, and the pernicious superstition was checked for a moment.

Only to be break break out once more, not merely in Judea, the home of the disease, but in Rome itself, where all things horrible or shameful in the world collect and become fashionable.

Well, what do you think about that, Tacitus?

Jesus was a historical person.

It's interesting to note the two people, scholars who've written the most against the pseudo-scholarship are atheists who've written the most about Jesus being a historical person, Bart Ehrman and Maurice Casey.

They have written extensively saying, no, he is a historical person.

Secondly, Jesus was crucified on a Roman cross and buried in a tomb under Roman guard.

We have the ancient historians Tacitus, Josephus, and others who confirmed the early eyewitnesses.

James Tabor, a former chair of religious study at UNC, a skeptic, he writes this I think we need have no doubt that given Jesus' execution by Roman crucifixion, he was truly dead.

By the way, Rome perfected the crucifixion.

They didn't invent it, but they perfected it and they were fantastic at it and took pride.

And so they even the skeptics say, no, Jesus, he really lived, and he really died by execution, and he was really buried in a tomb.

And here's what all major scholars agree on the tomb was empty.

They don't agree on how the tomb was empty, but they agree that the tomb was empty.

All the way back to when Jesus came back to life, the resurrection, the early religious leaders said, no, no, no, the disciples stole the body.

Let's get that going out around.

And that is one of the theories.

Another theory that's interesting is the swoon theory.

Have you heard the swoon theory?

The swoon theory is this that Jesus didn't really die on the cross, he just merely passed out.

You know, so you have your nails in your wrist and your spear in the side.

And then when he was laid in the cool cave, the tomb, uh, the dark and the cool revived him, refreshed him.

Oh, wow, hello.

And then I moved that boulder out of the way like a Herculean moment, and you get to see this bloody, you know, like cryptic wrapped in Jesus.

And the disciples said, Yeah, that's who I'm following.

There are so many, I mean, where you just begin to go, hey, some said maybe he they went to the wrong tomb.

The tomb was empty, but it was the wrong tomb.

Well, the religious leaders, all they had to do was produce the body to squash this new movement.

Uh, the late William Wan from Oxford University writes, all strictly historical evidence we have is in favor of the empty tomb, and those scholars who reject it ought to recognize they do so on some other ground than that of scientific history.

If we're going to reconsider Jesus, we have to take a thoughtful look at this resurrection event.

Jesus, a historical person, crucified, buried.

The tomb was empty, and his disciples believed he rose from the dead and appeared to them.

German New Testament scholar and atheist Jerd Ludemann writes, it may be taken as historically certain that Peter and his disciples had experiences after Jesus' death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.

Now, he believes they had hallucinations of Jesus, but that they really believed they saw the risen Lord.

Now it's interesting that Jesus appeared to just over 500 eyewitnesses over the course of about 40 days, and there's no other record in all of human history that have a mass hallucination of everyone having the same vision at the same time, but that's how we have to explain it away.

Here's what's fascinating uh the late great Jewish scholar uh Panat Lapid, he does not believe Jesus is the Messiah, but based on the historical evidence, he cannot explain any other way but that Jesus really did raise from the grave.

Historical person crucified, buried, empty.

His disciples believed that he appeared to them.

And then finally, the transformation of the disciples and the conversion of skeptics.

Now, I want you to think about this.

Christianity did not begin hundreds of miles away from Jerusalem, and it did not begin hundreds of years after the crucifixion.

Christianity began in the heart of Jerusalem, right where Jesus was crucified, uh, just days after he was crucified.

Peter and the disciples, before the execution of Jesus, they deserted him.

They were locking themselves in a room, afraid that their fate was going to be the same.

Peter denied him three times, and post uh the you know the resurrection, all of a sudden you see Peter bold.

He's declaring.

And eventually, all of the disciples, ten would be executed for their faith and belief in Jesus, one would be exiled.

And then you see the skeptics.

Paul, Saul, he was originally called persecuting and wanting to stamp out this new movement, encounters the risen Jesus, as he says, and he then begins to become one of the greatest minds and proclaimers of the Christian faith, and was ultimately executed for his faith.

And then there's James, the brother of Jesus.

Think about this.

What would it take for you to be convinced that your brother was the son of God?

I mean, that's a tough sell, right?

And the same was true for Jesus' family.

And it wasn't until after the resurrection that they believed he was indeed who he said he was.

And he became one of the leaders in the church in Jerusalem.

Ian Hutchinson, professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, wrote, the historical evidence for the resurrection is as good as uh for almost any event in ancient history.

Friends, listen, all of Christianity hinges upon the historical event of the resurrection.

And so back to our question: how did this carpenter-turned rabbi who lived in an obscure part of the Roman Empire reshape the world as we know it?

One word.

Resurrection.

Historians have no other way of explaining how this group even got off the ground.

One word, resurrection.

The first followers of Jesus believed the resurrection carried life altering significance.

The first followers of Jesus believed his resurrection carried life altering significance.

Why?

Because Jesus said, I am the resurrection and the life.

And then he came back from the grave.

And so they said, Whatever you said, and whoever you claim to be, you are indeed, and you have my entire life.

Do you believe this?

I believe it to the point of death.

And so Jesus said, resurrection is a person.

And I love the context in which Jesus said this.

You can find it in the Gospel of John.

John, one of his disciples, is one of the four biographies of Jesus' life.

John chapter 11.

John 11 · chapter mention

Much of Jesus' teachings were to crowds or to his disciples.

This statement was to one person.

This statement was to Martha, a grieving sister who lost her brother Lazarus four days later or earlier.

And Jesus, in this moment of a grieving sister, and then Mary, her other sister, comes out.

He says, I am resurrection.

He says, resurrection is a person, and as a result, resurrection is personal.

What I love about John chapter 11 is in this moment, in this declaration, there is a funeral going on, there is grieving going on, and Jesus doesn't look at them and go, it's gonna be okay.

John 11 · chapter mention

Stop crying, don't worry about it, suck it up.

I'm gonna do something great in a second, guys.

In fact, we get the shortest verse in all of the Bible.

Do you know what the shortest verse is?

Oh, you do?

Fantastic.

Jesus wept.

Because resurrection, think about this, showed up onto the scene and saw the devastation of sin, saw the ravaging of death and what it did to his creation and to his people that he loved, and resurrection wept.

Resurrection personal.

Resurrection wept and saw your hurt and your pain and your what you're walking through.

It doesn't say just suck it up.

It's gonna be better one day.

It hurts with you.

And then resurrection wasn't willing to just hurt with you, he suffered with you.

Became one of us resurrection.

And resurrection was betrayed, and resurrection was denied, and resurrection was beaten, and resurrection was spat on, and resurrection was nailed to a cross.

And as he was nailed to a cross, his words were, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do, as he cries out for his recreation.

And as he took on the weight and the pain and the sin of all humanity, he cries out, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

As the full weight of everything we've ever done wrong was placed upon resurrection.

And as he breathed his last, he said, It is finished, it is final.

And resurrection was taken down from the cross and placed in the tomb.

And it was silent.

And the grave could not hold resurrection.

And on the third day, he came back to life because he's the author of life.

And Jesus says, Do you believe this?

And where do you need resurrection?

Where do you need it?

Because chances are you walked in and there's parts of you that are dead, there's parts of you that are dying, there's parts of the pain and where you're at and what you're walking through.

And he says, I came to bring resurrection.

It's personal.

And so resurrection is a personal relationship with Jesus.

It's personal, it's not ritual.

It's relationship, it's not religion.

It's presence, not performance.

Where do you need resurrection?

Back to sushi.

A few years later, my wife and I um had an experience that was less than stellar.

It was in Georgia, and I know what you're thinking.

Is uh Georgia one of the great capitals of sushi around the world?

What could go wrong?

Um we were moving back to the bay, and some friends of ours knew that we love sushi and they love making sushi and they wanted to bring us sushi before we left.

I'm like, that's so sweet, so kind, really wonderful of them.

And they brought sushi, they brought a platter, I mean a huge platter.

The sushi rolls were like three times bigger than normal ones.

They're huge.

They're big, they're massive.

And this thing was piled high, smelled a little fishy, uh, and you just felt like, okay, my gosh, we we gotta eat a lot of these to even make a dent.

There's only four of us here.

This is a lot of sushi.

Um if that had been my only sushi experience, it would have confirmed what I believed about sushi.

Slimy, gross, unsafe, and a waste of money.

And the truth is there's some that you've walked away from Jesus or you've never even reconsidered or considered Jesus because of some follower who said they followed Jesus, claimed Jesus, but they left a bad taste in your mouth.

They didn't represent him well.

And if you were able to share your story, we'd all agree and go, yeah, I understand why you walked away.

I understand why you wouldn't consider Jesus.

And my ask and my just plea is just in this moment, I get it, but would you reconsider him?

That wasn't Jesus.

Would you reconsider Jesus?

Because just maybe he offers something.

No, he is something that your heart's been longing for, and my heart's been longing for.

Resurrection is a person, and it's personal through relationship with him.

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