Excitement To Victory By Way Of Suffering

[0:00] Good morning. I'm glad to be speaking to you today.! The Christ.

[0:32] He was welcomed into Jerusalem by a multitude of the common citizens. He was riding on a donkey. And as he approached the city wall and the gate, the people started singing and shouting and Hosanna and being very happy.

[0:51] It was a tremendous, exciting time to have because they were welcoming the Messiah into the holy city, the city of Jerusalem. And so he tore off palm branches and threw them down.

[1:05] That's where he gets the name Palm Sunday because the donkey then walked on the palm branches. The people took off their coats and threw them down. He did that and he went inside the city.

[1:16] And the common people were there. They were so excited. They were shouting Hosanna, which simply means save us. We pray, save us. And they were welcoming the son of David into the city.

[1:32] And so as they came inside the wall, Jesus went down to the temple. And he went into the temple and lived in a different atmosphere there because he was very angry.

[1:47] And he started turning over the tables of the money changers. He got cords and he chased the animals out of the place that they were buying for sacrificing.

[1:58] And he said, you have made my father's house. This is supposed to be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves and robbers. And that kind of started off his week as he had questions that he dealt with.

[2:14] And he was doing various things, getting ready for his final hours. And the enemies of Jesus reared their heads. And the crowd was kind of fickle.

[2:28] And over the period of that week, people turned against Jesus. Of course, they were led into this by the religious leaders who wanted to kill Jesus.

[2:40] And they finally did that. But they reared their heads and they twisted the arms of the politicians. And they got it worked out so that Jesus had a kangaroo court system work after his time of prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane.

[3:00] And they captured him and they finally had him beaten. They slapped him. They spit on him. They did everything they could to ridicule him.

[3:13] Then they had him flogged with cat-of-nine tails. Then they took him down and nailed him to a cross. Held him up and he died.

[3:24] Then they took him down and they put him in a tomb. And the people asked for his guards to be placed because they said this imposter talked about resurrecting from the dead.

[3:41] So we wanted to make sure that doesn't happen. So they put the Roman guards there at the tomb. Well, Saturday passed and disciples, we don't read too much about them.

[3:52] But I'm sure what was going on in their minds was that they captured our leader, Jesus, and they are killing him. We're next.

[4:04] Well, that's what I would have thought anyway. And so anyway, they laid low. And early in the morning, on the first day of the week, some of the women, one of them was Jesus' mother and the other were the companions with them.

[4:19] And they went to the tomb to finish preparing his body for burial. And they were wondering who was going to roll away the stone.

[4:30] They didn't know how they were going to do that. But when they got there, they were met by an angel. And he said, he's gone. Jesus has resurrected from the dead. He's no longer dead.

[4:40] He's alive. So go tell his disciples. And so the women, they got excited. They did so. One of the women saw Jesus there in the garden and thought he was a gardener.

[4:52] But anyway, they went on there and they told the disciples. And the disciples came and checked it out for themselves. And the thing is, Jesus resurrected from the dead. And he made many appearances.

[5:03] In fact, he appeared to hundreds of people. One time, there was 500 people he appeared to. And they knew that he was real.

[5:15] He wasn't a ghost. He wasn't an hallucination. He was real. He was back alive from the dead, as he said he would do. And so the disciples were taken by Jesus.

[5:31] And they were with him in the upper room for a period of time. And he showed himself alive for 40 days. People saw that.

[5:43] And they could have checked out the tomb. And they probably did. But anyway, after that, they were told by Jesus, he took them out to the Mount of Ascension.

[5:55] And he ascended into heaven. And he gave the Great Commission to his apostles. And he told them to go and wait in Jerusalem. And you'll find out what you're supposed to do then to take the message of my kingdom to the world.

[6:12] And so they went back and they waited 10 days. Then it says on the first day of the week, the day after Pentecost, they were in the one place. And the sound of a rushing mighty wind.

[6:24] And they were baptized in the Holy Spirit. They began speaking in tongues. And Paul started preaching to them. And he preached the first gospel sermon. And people became Christians. And so basically, the church started then.

[6:39] And so this brings me to the bulk of the message that I have for you today. That sets the scene. And the thing is, Paul, the apostle Paul was converted later on.

[6:56] And he was commissioned by God to go to all the world. I mean, all the disciples were. But he had a special job for Paul to do. And so Paul went to mainly Greece, that area.

[7:13] And he went to cities. He went to towns. He went everywhere. And he preached the gospel. And every place he went, he started a church. He spread the good news, the gospel of Jesus Christ, his death, his burial, and his resurrection.

[7:29] That's the gospel. And the church started. And then things went on. And he moved around the town. He went to the town of Corinth in Greece.

[7:40] And he spent a year and a half there. He started the church. And then he taught with them. And he witnessed with them. And he fellowshiped with them. And then he left and went to some other cities.

[7:51] He got in trouble because he was preaching the gospel. And a lot of places, that was outlawed. They weren't allowed to do that. And so especially when he talked about the resurrection of Jesus, that was just too much for people to take.

[8:06] They couldn't understand that. And so Paul wrote to the Corinthians because he had heard that they had had some problems in the church.

[8:20] And one of the problems he talks about here in the 15th chapter of Corinthians.

[8:37] And it's called the resurrection of Christ. And he says, If it is preached that Christ has raised from the dead, how can some of you say there's no resurrection of the dead?

[8:50] Now that's kind of shocking to read. That was a key part of the gospel. Death, burial, and resurrection. And here these people were Christians.

[9:03] They had a church. But some of them said, Well, I don't know about that resurrection stuff. That's pretty hard to believe. And so he includes in this letter a section of it.

[9:17] And he gets on their case about that. And here's what he says. If it is preached, If it is preached, that Christ has raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there's no resurrection of the dead?

[9:37] If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless, and so is your faith.

[9:49] More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise from him, if, in fact, the dead are not raised.

[10:05] For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile. You are still in your sins.

[10:16] Then those who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.

[10:27] But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of them who have fallen asleep. Paul uses reasoning here.

[10:40] He talks like a lawyer. Really, he makes a very logical argument that if Christ is not raised, things are not right.

[10:52] And he points out that they are wrong because he changes that with the word now. Indeed, Christ has been raised from the dead. Now, there's implications of these ifs.

[11:05] The whole Bible, all of the world, all of our society, all of our education, all of our, everything is based on Christ's resurrection from the dead.

[11:18] All of the events from the Garden of Eden to the time of the birth of Christ, all the Old Testament, is worthless. It's just empty storage. All the time from Christ's birth to the end of the Bible.

[11:35] It's worthless too if he did not resurrect from the dead. It's just a dream. It's just an empty story. It's a fable. Well, what we believe today is based on the very fact that Jesus came back to life and was raised from the dead.

[11:57] If he didn't resurrect, all his teachings and values and purpose and all of truth does not exist. Truth does not exist.

[12:08] Life is just one big zero. It's nothing. Nada. Zip. The devil knows this. And so that is why his favorite thing to do is to do away with the belief in the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

[12:25] Christ. The efforts still continue that way. In fact, a man by the name of Origen was a Christian apologist, a writer back in the 4th century.

[12:38] And people were already starting to think, well, did Jesus really resurrect from the dead? And they made up different reasons. They think maybe he swooned.

[12:49] He really didn't die on the cross. He just had a faint and they thought he was dead. So they put him in the tomb and the cruel tomb revived him and he pushed open the door and he said he resurrected.

[13:01] Or they say, no, his disciples came and stole the body. Or they say, no, they went to the wrong tomb. Now there's all kinds of things that have been said, all kinds of things that people make up every once in a while.

[13:15] But Mr. Origen, what he did, he refuted all those back in the 4th century. And really, nothing new has been added. It's just a little dressing up of those various things they've said about that time.

[13:29] But most people think, well, what's the big deal? What's so important about the resurrection? And so they become wishy-washy and doubtful and say, well, he was a nice moral teacher and he was a good guy who went around doing good deeds.

[13:47] Folks, if Jesus did not resurrect from the dead, he promised he was going to do it, he did it, he appeared to people, and the witnesses put that down, important witnesses who always tell the truth.

[14:03] If he didn't do that, then he's the worst man who ever walked the face of the earth because he claimed to be the son of God who resurrected from the dead.

[14:16] Well, that's what we believe. And some people say, well, what difference does it make? Just do good deeds. Well, what makes the difference is your soul makes the difference.

[14:28] Where you will spend eternity makes all the difference in the world. And your belief in the resurrected Lord is one of the key issues. There's examples of people who set out to disprove the Bible as false.

[14:45] And I think this is kind of interesting. Civil War General Lou Wallace planned to write a book exposing the falsehoods about Jesus and the Bible.

[14:58] But his research led him to become a believer. And so he wrote a book about Jesus. It's called Ben-Hur, A Tale of the Christ.

[15:10] And he has some fictional things in there, of course, and some suppositions. But the resurrection is one of the key things that happened. William Ramsey was a historian and a geographer.

[15:22] and he looked in the book of Acts and he was acquainted with a lot of places that Paul visited. And so he said, I want to prove that man wrong. So he set out on a journey and he went to every site, every city, every town, every village that's mentioned in the book of Acts.

[15:41] And when he got done, he became a Christian. He was led to Christ because he said, I had to be honest with the truth. C.S. Lewis said the same thing.

[15:52] He was an atheist. He was converted to Christ and he said it was like he was dragged, struggling, and fighting. He said, I did everything to resist, but I had to be honest with the evidence.

[16:06] So he accepted the truth. He said, Josh McDowell could not resist the facts of the evidences. In fact, he has a big book out called Evidence That Demands a Verdict.

[16:22] And if you have that book, it gives you all of those reasons in detail about how we can know that that is the truth that Jesus resurrected from the dead.

[16:35] Well, I happen to believe that spiritual blindness is possibly the worst disease that there is. Spiritual blindness.

[16:47] Not physical blindness. I mean, Jesus healed physical blindness. And we've got doctors today, I'm amazed at what they're able to do in the vision world.

[17:00] It's amazing. But in 2 Corinthians 4.4 he says the God of this world blinds unbelievers.

[17:11] In Ephesians 4.8 he talks about the ignorance and hard hearts. And folks, I happen to believe that all of these things are what lead to the unforgivable sin.

[17:26] The unforgivable sin of rejecting Jesus Christ. of not believing that he resurrected from the dead. Jesus told about three different kinds of soils in the parable of the sower.

[17:42] And there was three of them were bad and one was good. The bad one, one was hard as pavement. See, it couldn't grow. One of them had thorns and they grew and choked them.

[17:56] And another one had stony ground and they started to grow and then they died off. But then the good ground grew. And that's the way our hearts are. People have different kinds of hearts that want to receive the truth.

[18:12] And I can tell you honestly and as sincerely as I can that I just cannot understand people who will not believe in Jesus for salvation.

[18:24] will not believe he resurrected from the dead. Now I used to think that they were just lazy. Lazy thinkers or dishonest. If they would study the evidences and use common sense they would arrive at the same conclusion that I have.

[18:43] Yeah, that's what I believed. But I realized actually there is a leap of faith for the soul-saving truth. For instance, the fact of the resurrection.

[18:54] or the fact of God's creation. Belief in the Bible. Inspiration of the scriptures. The necessity of accepting Jesus Christ as Savior and following what he says, following his plan of salvation.

[19:09] Those things do not come easy. But they must be faced. Every person, every person must face their relationship with God.

[19:19] God's God's faith in the The facts need to be presented in such a way that a person can understand them and then make that decision when the truth is so obvious that it cannot be forced.

[19:33] you cannot force people to become Christians. You cannot make them do that. You can't make them believe that Jesus was erected from the dead, but you can present it in the right way.

[19:45] The evidences are accurate and they're true, but the step of faith must be taken. And that's where prayer comes in. That's where we have to pray.

[19:56] Prayer becomes imperative. It's absolutely necessary. We have to partner with God. We have to do like someone says, we need to work like everything depends on us and pray like everything depends on God.

[20:11] And then we'll strike a good balance. And we have to get that message out. We must ask God to prepare the soil, prepare the hearts of people that we love, people that we're friendly with, people that we talk to, people that we meet, people that we're able to have some kind of a conversation or influence with.

[20:33] Human beings are not robots. We cannot be programmed like a computer. In fact, we have to get that message out.

[20:45] And he tells us in 1 Peter chapter 3 and verse 15 what we're supposed to do. He says, be ready to give an answer for the faith that you have within you.

[20:57] But do it with kindness and with fear. That's what we have to do, folks. We as Christians must be ready to share the faith with other people.

[21:11] Because, like I said, we can't be like a computer because we're not robots. We're packed with human weaknesses. We have strengths. We have inconsistencies.

[21:22] And we especially have a multitude of sins that we have to deal with. And God deals them in his way. Now, God has the privilege of giving us free will so we can make our own choices.

[21:38] We get to decide. You get to decide where you will spend eternity. Are you going to spend it with God in heaven?

[21:50] Are you going to spend it in the miseries of hell? every person has to make that decision. And he counts it so important to us.

[22:01] He lets us do it. And he gives us all the evidences. He gives us all these reasons that we can follow him. But God has done and continues to do.

[22:14] He won't force you. But he will do all he can to woo and win us every human being. God appeals to us. But the decision is still there.

[22:25] It's up to you and it's up to me. In fact, as I close this, I want to say let your ifs become indeed. Let it become now.

[22:39] No longer am I thinking, well, if I live so long or if I do this, I'll be Christian. No, just let it be now. Today is the day of salvation. Now is the right time for you to follow that Christ.

[22:52] I saw one time, I read about the man and I saw graffiti on the law. I guess I saw it because I've seen this slogan written many places. Well-meaning Christians.

[23:06] Right then and there it says, God is the answer. That's a good phrase. God is the answer. But one place this was put up and somebody had written underneath it.

[23:21] What is the question? What is the question? And folks, I'm afraid sometimes too often we're guilty of trying to pass off easy answers.

[23:34] Like, well, Jesus is the answer. That's true. That's good. But I'd say it in a different way. Make it personal. You have to say, God, am I important?

[23:50] God, am I important? Do I matter to you, God? And the answer is, Jesus' resurrection proves it.

[24:05] Relish that, folks. Revel in it. Enjoy it. and spread the news in every way you can. God bless you.

[24:15] Thank you.