The Resurrection Changes Everything!

You're very welcome to today's Triumph Church podcast.

We pray that you enjoy the message.

If you brought your Bibles, we're going to begin in 1 John

1 John 3 · chapter mention

chapter 3 and verse 16. It says we know what real love

is because Jesus gave up his life for us.

There are moments in in history that divide time, moments that

really are so significant that things are changed, that there's

a a stark difference between what was previous and what is

going forward. Everything feels different after

them. You have the invention of the

printing press. That changed the spread of

knowledge, didn't it? You have the discovery of

electricity that we're so thankful for.

We have lights, we have sound, we have all these wonderful

things that transform civilization.

Then you have the invention of the airplane that changed the

way we travel, right? Are you thankful for an

airplane? Sure.

Saves us a lot of time, doesn't it?

Then you have the development of the Internet.

That could be a good or bad thing, depending on how you look

at it. But that changed how we access

information, right? But there's one moment that

stands above every other moment in human history, a moment that

did not simply change politics or science or culture, but it

changed everything. Nearly 2000 years ago, outside

the city of Jerusalem, there's a man named Jesus of Nazareth who

was executed on a Roman cross. And by all appearances, his

story was finished. His body was wrapped in burial

clothes. A stone sealed the tomb that he

was placed in. Roman guards were stood to

watch, and everything about that scene communicated this one

message that it was over. Everyone thought it was over.

But three days later, something happened that changed the world.

The tomb was empty, and from that moment forward, history has

never, ever been the same. Today, we're not remembering a

religious story, though some people may think of it as that.

This is much larger than that. We're confronting the single

greatest event in human history, and that is the resurrection of

Jesus Christ. And if this is true, all right,

and the evidence say that it is, then that changes everything,

doesn't it? So we're going to look at 3

realities today about what the resurrection reveals.

The first thing we're going to look at is the historical

reality of Jesus life, his death and his burial.

In One Corinthians chapter 15 and verses 3 and 4, the apostle

Paul wrote this. He said that I passed on to you

what was most important and what had also been passed on to me,

that Christ died for our sins, just as the Scripture said.

And in verse four, he was buried and he was raised from the dead

on the third day, just as Scripture said.

The Apostle Paul wrote these words really within a few

decades of this event of the crucifixion, and many of those

who had been eyewitnesses to Jesus after the resurrection

were still alive. So they could either deny that

that was true or they could corroborate that this was truth.

That what the apostle Paul wrote here, that he died for our sins,

he was buried and he was raised from the dead, that they could

say and agree that that is true. Notice the order of this

declaration. Christ died, He was buried, and

then he rose again. Those aren't poetic words, these

are historical claims. The historical of evidence of

Jesus life is overwhelming. Roman historians like Tactus

wrote about his execution under Pontius Pilate.

Jewish historians like Josephus referenced him as well.

And much of the 1st century world knew about this man from

Nazareth named Jesus. The point being is that Jesus

lived, that this is a historical fact, but more importantly that

Jesus died in Luke chapter 23 and verse 46, as Jesus hung upon

Luke 23 · chapter mention

the cross and as he was about to die, it says and then Jesus

shouted, Father, I entrust my spirit into your hands.

And with those words he breathed his last.

Isn't that amazing? He did that for you.

The Roman crucifixion was designed for one purpose.

It was designed for a painful, excruciating and humiliating

death. The soldiers who carried it out

were professionals. They knew when someone had died.

They were experts at it. They were tasked to ensure it.

They were trained executioners. In Mark chapter 15 and verse 39

Mark 15 · chapter mention

it records one of these soldiers noting Jesus death, but it also

notes a a realization that he had of something far greater.

In verse 39 it says And when the Roman soldier who stood facing

him saw how he had died, he exclaimed, This man truly was

the Son of God. He saw that Jesus was dead.

He was trained to know when someone was dead.

And after Jesus died, his body was taken down and placed in a

tomb belonging to Joseph of Armethia.

A big stone was rolled in place and Roman guards were assigned

to the site to ensure that no one was able to steal the body.

Both the Romans and the Jewish leaders wanted to ensure that

this story had ended. Everything about the burial

confirmed the same reality that Jesus was truly dead.

And this matters because Christianity isn't built on

inspirational sayings or moral philosophy, is actually built on

an historical event. If Jesus did not truly die, then

the resurrection really means nothing, does it?

But the historical evidence shows something undeniable, that

Jesus lived and that he was crucified and that he was

buried. And that brings us to a deeper

question. Why would the Son of God come

down into the world only to be executed?

Why would he do that? To answer that we have to

understand the purpose of his life.

This brings us to the second point.

The purpose of Jesus life was to make a way to the Father.

Jesus did not simply come to perform miracles or start some

religion. His purpose was to restore

humanity's relationship with God, Yours and my relationship

with the Heavenly Father. From the very beginning,

humanity was created to know God, but sin separated us from

Him. Unrighteousness caused

separation and every generation since has been trying to bridge

that gap through morality, through philosophy, through

religion and effort on our part. But Jesus made a bold claim that

there is only one way back to the Father.

He made this claim in John 14-6 where he said, and you probably

know the Scripture, He said that I am the way, the truth and the

life, and no one can come to the Father except through me,

through Jesus. Notice what he did not say.

He did not say that he would show the way, right?

He said that He is the way. That statement alone is one of

the most radical claims ever spoken.

Every other religious teacher has said follow my teaching,

right? But Jesus said follow me.

Why? Because the problem of humanity

isn't merely ignorance. We have lots of knowledge, don't

we? The problem isn't enlightenment.

The problem is sin. Sin separates us from a holy and

just God. No amount of good deeds on our

part in our effort can reverse it.

No amount of religious activity or church attendance can erase

it. No philosophy can fix it.

No effort on our part can undo it.

And that is why Jesus came. He had to.

We were without hope, right in Mark chapter 10 and verse 45,

Mark 10 · chapter mention

Jesus spoke these words. He said for even the Son of Man

came not to be served, but to serve others and to give his

life as a ransom for many. That's all of us.

Jesus entire life was moving towards this one moment, the

cross. And on the cross He carried the

weight and the penalty of all of our sin, all of humanity's sin,

and the punishment that justice demanded fell upon him.

But here's the good news. He did that so that mercy could

be offered to you and I. Isn't that good news?

The cross was not an accident. It was actually a mission.

It was Jesus mission. And what makes Christianity

different from every other religion is what happened next.

What we're celebrating today is the resurrection.

The resurrection proves Jesus authority over death.

Let's read this in Matthew chapter 28 and verses 2 through

Matthew 28 · chapter mention

verse 6 and verse 2 it says, And suddenly there was a great

earthquake, for an Angel of the Lord came down from heaven, and

rolled aside the stone and sat on it.

And verse 3 And his face shone like lightning, and his clothes

were as white as snow. And verse 4, the guard shook

with fear. And when they saw him, they fell

into a dead faint kind of picture, something like a kids

cartoon there where you have these, these big muscular, you

know, scary soldiers. And they see this Angel and all

of a sudden they're terrified, right?

And all of them faint of fear. These are Roman soldiers,

trained killers. And then in verse 5, the Angel

spoke to the women, the two Marys that came, and they said,

don't be afraid. I know you are looking for Jesus

who was crucified, but he isn't here.

He is risen from the dead, just as he said that it would happen.

Three days after the crucifixion, the tomb was empty,

not because someone moved Jesus body, but because Jesus rose

from the dead. And the evidence for the

resurrection is astonishing. And we're going to look at some

of it this morning. We don't have time to go into

the all, all the evidence, but we're just going to look at

three things here this morning. First, the tomb was empty, in

spite of the tomb being sealed. And they poured.

When it says it's sealed, they actually poured wax between the

stone and the tomb to ensure and make sure that that stone was

not moved. And if it was moved, they would

know it. And whoever moved it would be

put to death. This was something serious.

So the tomb was sealed. But not only that, it was

heavily guarded by trained soldiers.

And these soldiers were elite, all right.

There would have been a fierce battle to get past these

soldiers. If someone was attempting to

steal Jesus body. Listen to a typical guard unit

at the time would have consisted of a minimum of four soldiers up

to maybe 16 soldiers. The Roman soldier was highly

trained, highly skilled, But the interesting thing about the

soldier is they risked death for failure.

So you can bet that they were not going to allow that tomb to

be messed with and that body to be stolen.

The second is Jesus appeared to hundreds of people.

Paul writes in One Corinthians that more than 500 witnesses saw

him alive after the resurrection.

In any court of law, that would have been considered

overwhelming testimony. If you go to court and there's

500 witnesses who have signed some kind of affidavit, who have

sworn their testimony and they say something had had happened,

like that's a done deal in the court, right?

So here you have over 500 people who saw and could verify that

Jesus has resurrected from the dead.

The third thing is the disciples themselves were transformed.

And this is what is so fascinating and compelling

because after Jesus was hung on the cross, after he was dead,

what did the disciples do? Did they go out and share the

gospel and tell people about Jesus?

Hey, we're here to tell you about our dead Savior, all

right? No, they were scared.

They were terrified. They went into hiding.

But what changed? What happened that you have all

these men and these people who were cowering in fear all of a

sudden. You have in the first or in the

2nd chapter of Acts, you have the Holy Spirit come.

You have the 120 in the upper room, right?

And you have the apostle Peter. He denied Jesus three times,

didn't he? He couldn't even stand up to a

little girl who asked him if he was one of the disciples.

He said Nope, right, He was a coward.

All the disciples went into hiding.

But Peter and all the other disciples, on the day of

Pentecost, they're preaching to thousands of people, declaring

Jesus his life, his death, his burial and his resurrection.

Right. What changed the disciples from

cowards to people who were empowered, who were bold to

share their faith in Jesus? It was that they had encountered

the risen Savior, just as Jesus had said.

What's funny is, is people try to come up with all sort of

ideas, you know, to explain away the Bible, to explain away these

different things. Like all those people, they had

a hallucination, right? These 500 people all had all had

the same hallucination, right? That Jesus was risen from the

dead. Like that is mathematically

something that is not going to happen.

It's just foolishness, right? You know, the same, these are

the same people who said that, well, it was really easy for the

children of Israel to cross the the Red Sea with Moses, right?

Because it was only it was really shallow.

So they were able to cross the Red Sea really easy.

They went at the shallow point. Well, OK, explain to me how the

entire Egyptian army drowned in really shallow water.

All right, the world comes up with all sort of ideas to try to

explain away Scripture, right. Well, why would they want to do

that? Why would the devil want to do

that is the real question. It's because everything hinges

on the resurrection. Everything hinges on this book

actually being truth, right? This is truth.

We know love. We all know real love because

Jesus came to die upon the cross for you and I.

But that love was proved, and that love was demonstrated not

just with his sacrifice, but with his resurrection.

Amen. So the disciples were

transformed. They went from people who were

cowards to people that were bold, unafraid to share even in

the midst of persecution, even in the point of being threatened

with death. And let me tell you, all of the

disciples except for John, the disciple Jesus loved, right?

All of the disciples died horrendous deaths.

They all died martyrs, even doubting Thomas made his way to

to India. And they have in, in in Shania.

There they have a monument to Thomas who who went across the

world to share the gospel. And there they say that he was

speared to death for sharing this truth, right?

What made Thomas so bold? He encountered the risen Savior.

Something happened which changed them, which emboldened them,

which empowered them, right? Jesus resurrection changed them

forever. And it changes our lives too.

What empowers us to share this real love with other people?

It's because we're all convinced.

We all believe we have faith that just as Scripture had said

that it is true, right? Jesus said this in Revelation

Revelation 1 · chapter mention

chapter 1 and verse 18. He said I am the living one, I

died, but look, I am alive forever and ever, and I hold the

keys of death and the grave. The resurrection was not simply

a miracle, it was a miracle. It was a declaration that Jesus

had authority over death, but even more, He has authority over

life. Jesus said this in John 10/10.

He said the thief does not come except to steal, to kill, and to

destroy. But I have come that they may

have life and that they may have it more abundantly.

Amen. This world is terrified of death

because they don't know what comes after, right?

But you and I know what comes after because we have faith in

the resurrected Savior. We have faith that we have

eternal life with our heavenly Father through Jesus.

Man, if you want to come to the front here, Aiden, play quietly

on the guitar. Jesus came to bring life.

But to do this, Jesus had to conquer death.

And this brings us to the most important question of all.

What does that mean for you? If Jesus truly rose from the

dead, then he's not just a philosopher, he's not just a

teacher or a prophet, but he is Lord.

And if he is Lord, then every person must eventually answer

the same question. What will I do with Jesus?

If he is the fulfillment of Scripture, if he is the Savior,

if he is the King of kings and the Lord of Lords, and there's

no other way to God except through Jesus Christ, then we

must ask ourselves the question, what will we do with Jesus?

The resurrection proves that sin can be forgiven.

That's good news, isn't it? It proves that death has been

defeated, and it proves that eternity, eternal life with God

is possible. But it also confronts us each

with a choice. All of humanity is faced with

this choice because Jesus didn't merely come just to make your

life better. He came to give you life, and

life is better with Jesus, but he came to give us new life

entirely. We become a new creation through

Christ, Paul says, and Jesus said this in Matthew chapter 16

Matthew 16 · chapter mention

and verse 24. He said if any of you wants to

be my follower, then you must give up your own way.

That's hard, isn't it? But that's the requirement of

Jesus. If you want to be a follower of

Him, then you have to lay your own way at the foot of the cross

and let it die. You offer your own way to Him,

but in place of that He offers you His way, which is life, and

life more abundantly. We serve a good God.

He didn't come here just to oppress us and suppress us.

He gave. He came to bless us, to bless us

with life, but to bless us with life more abundantly.

That's eternity with him. That's this life so much better

than we could possibly do on our own, so much better than we

could even imagine. So I want to ask you all a

question today. Will you answer Jesus call and

follow him if I could have every person's bow your heads and

close your eyes? Many of us have tried life our

own way, but that way has failed us.

It's failed US time and again. It's led to allowing the devil

to steal our joy. It's allowed the devil to kill

our dreams, and it's allowed him entrance to cause destruction in

our life and in our family. But Jesus is giving us a choice.

He came to give us life, and that choice is now yours.

Do you want to follow Jesus? Will you make him the Lord of

your life and receive forgiveness of sin?

If you want to follow Jesus while every eye is closed, I

just want you to raise your hand.

No one's looking around, it's just me, you and God.

If you want to follow Jesus, just raise your hand.

Maybe we've been a Christian for many years now, but really, if

you're honest, you really haven't done what Jesus said and

given up your own way. I want you to raise your hand

too. This is probably the most

consequential decision that you're ever going to make right

here this morning. And I want to wait just a moment

longer because I believe that there's more people here that

you either haven't made a decision for Christ or you've

been living in your own way and you want to make a change.

You're choosing to put down your own way.

Lay that at the foot of the cross and follow Him.

Is there anyone else here this morning?

Listen, honestly, that could be each and every one of us if we

could just pray all this together.

We can all stand and we'll pray this prayer together.

Dear Heavenly Father, I believe in Jesus.

I believe he's resurrected, I believe Jesus as my Lord, and I

repent of all my sin today and I'm making the decision to

follow Jesus. Fill my heart with you, God,

help me live my life to please you.

Help me walk in your ways. Thank you for this new life in

you in Jesus name, Amen. Hallelujah for those of you who

who raised your your life. Listen, Pastor Amy and I would

love to connect with you and I have a a book, you know, if

you're a first time guest to the church, you would have get

gotten this in a welcome bag there.

It's the book so loved and it's based off Ephesians chapter 2

Ephesians 2 · chapter mention

and verse four in the amplified classic version.

You know, and of course we know John 316 for God so loved,

right, So loved you read that. It's not a long book.

I think it's like 84 pages, but it kind of explains this in more

detail, what we talked about today, how much God loves you,

but we'd love for you as well to, to connect with us after

service. Just let us know of the decision

that you made. Sometimes it it's good just to

fortify that choice that you've made, fortify that decision that

you made and say, listen, Pastor Brad, I just want you to know

that I gave my life to Christ today.

Listen, Pastor Brad, I'm choosing to set aside my own way

and I'm choosing to be uninhibited in following Christ.

Amen. Hallelujah.

Heavenly Father, Lord, we just thank you.

Lord, you're so good. Your goodness leads us to

repentance. Lord, you didn't come to this

world to judge us. You came to this world to save

us, Lord, and we thank you for that.

Lord, I just pray that for the rest of this day, for the rest

of this week and month, Lord, let every day be a celebration

of Jesus. Let every day be a celebration

of his death and his burial and his resurrection.

Thank you, Lord, that we wouldn't take that for granted.

We wouldn't set it aside as as just a story or or some

religious thing, Lord, but something that is a historical

fact that Jesus did for us. Jesus name Amen.

Thank you for listening to the Triumph Church podcast this

week. If it was a blessing to you,

share it with someone you know. For more information on Triumph

Church, you can visit us at www.triumphchurch.ie.