Life Triumphs over Death

[0:00] Well, welcome to church tonight. If you haven't got a Bible in front of you, great. Our helpers would love to get you one. So if you want to just stick your hand up, if you haven't got one, John 20.

[0:10] And also there's some service outlines you can sort of follow along where I'm up to in tonight's message. If I've not met you before, my name's Stephen, the senior pastor at church. And it is a crack of a day to be at church with you as we look at the central meaning of Christianity.

[0:30] If you don't have a service outline, you can use the St. Paul's app as well to follow along. It's really only got three points. So if you can't remember that, I can't help you. Let's pray and we'll launch into it.

[0:42] Gracious God, we thank you for the great news of what we're looking at tonight, the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. And I pray that you help us to understand it, to be open to it.

[0:53] And I pray especially that you might help us to see the transforming nature of what Christ has achieved for us. Change our hearts wherever we are of this, whether we come in as doubters and skeptics or believers.

[1:07] We pray, Lord, that we would go out of here changed, transformed by you, embracing the Lord Jesus as God and Lord over all things. And we pray for your glory. Amen. Benjamin Law, he's an Australian author and journalist, wrote an opinion piece in the City Morning Herald leading up to Easter a few years ago now.

[1:26] Benjamin describes himself as non-religious. He says, I'm not an atheist, but I'm a happy agnostic, a lifelong doubter. He wrote that if he was to adopt a religious symbol for his life, it would be a question mark.

[1:43] He goes on in the article that he digs the Bible. I'm not sure exactly what that means. I think it's positive. I dig the Bible. But he said, he also added, he said, I love Jesus.

[1:55] Not in the religious sense, obviously, but I think everyone can agree that he sounded like a decent fellow. Jesus distrusted the rich. He helped the poor and embraced the most shunned and vulnerable members of society.

[2:09] He was the first Marxist radical. Needless to say, he says, I have no problem with celebrating and honoring religious holidays.

[2:21] It respects the majority of Australians who identify as Christians and it educates the non-religious about world beliefs. Then he made this point. But why stop at Easter and Christmas?

[2:33] In our cities, especially with their Muslim, Jewish, Buddhist and Hindu communities, wouldn't it make sense to celebrate and learn about these cultures too?

[2:45] He goes on to suggest that that would create a much more tolerant Australia. The opinion piece overall was, it was positive, raised some questions in an authentic manner and basically kept everyone happy.

[2:58] He says, Jesus is a nice bloke and so therefore we should celebrate him as a nice bloke and we should also look at other nice things as well. His article raised two big questions for me and two big questions about Christianity and especially the central events of Easter.

[3:21] And the first question is the truth question. The second is the meaning question. The truth question and the meaning question are both wrapped up together in today on Resurrection Day.

[3:35] It's Easter Sunday. The truth question, the meaning question. Whenever you talk about the resurrection of Jesus, those two questions are intertwined. Truth question, did it actually happen?

[3:47] The meaning question, well, who cares if it did? What difference does it make in my life if he did rise from the dead? You see, there are people who reject Christianity because they simply just don't think it's true.

[4:01] But there are other people who reject Christianity not because they're convinced it's not true, but because they can't see why it would make any difference at all in their life if it was true.

[4:12] The meaning of it is insignificant and irrelevant to what really concerns them. So, for instance, things have changed in our world in case you haven't realized that.

[4:25] Forty years ago, and the older you are, you realize how much things have changed. Forty years ago, there was an assumption in the Western world that there were fixed natural laws that make the world understandable and scientifically manageable.

[4:41] Unfortunately, these laws did not allow for the truth of the claim that someone can come back from the dead and to live forever. The world at that time in its scientific understanding of natural laws did not allow for resurrections and so, get rid of it.

[5:00] Unbelief in the claims of Christianity were often connected to that kind of scientific assumption. Today, however, there's another assumption and this is for everyone who's basically less than 40, which I'm not quite anymore, but nearly, is a differing assumption and today, the assumption is that there's a personal law inside of me.

[5:24] It's called individualism. Us older people call it rampant individualism. One form of individualism is a personal law that says, I don't have to conform or adapt my life to anything that I don't find helpful.

[5:42] Truth for me is what I find acceptable and helpful and useful. Now, this assumption says, I don't care whether Jesus rose from the dead.

[5:52] Don't care if the facts are there because whether he did or not, my issue is, I still don't care. The scientific facts are irrelevant. Even if it is true, what difference does it make to my life day by day?

[6:07] And so both questions, the truth question and the so what question are important to address at the same time, which is what we're going to do in the rest of our time together. I want to tackle three main things, truth question, so what question, and how to move from being a doubter, a skeptic, to a believer.

[6:26] So first of all, the truth question. The great C.S. Lewis, Oxford Don, once wrote that in a world that was making such a rapid advancement in scientific understanding, he said there was a danger of chronological snobbery.

[6:45] He said it's the assumption that any conclusion that was made in previous centuries or frankly people before me, anyone who, before my assumption of things, was their assumptions are always based on ignorance.

[6:59] And especially the further back you go, it's just ignorance. For instance, chronological snobbery might lead some to conclude that the people who lived around Jesus' time, because they didn't have iPhones and internet, they were just gullible peasants.

[7:17] They were just ignorant of reality. And so they'll just believe anything that they've been told. And yet that's not the picture that we have here. So if you've got your Bibles, turn to John 20, it's not the picture we get here in John 20.

[7:31] Look at the first two verses with me. Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.

[7:44] Now this is crucial here in John 20. This is the first person to notice the tombs empty, Mary Magdalene. in John 19, which we saw on Friday, the chapter before, Mary Magdalene is declared to be the witness of the death of Jesus.

[8:04] He's dead. She saw that he was dead. And now she's the first person of the tomb to see that the tomb is empty. So verse 2, so she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said, notice what she says here, they have taken the Lord out of the tomb and we don't know where they've put him.

[8:27] Now, before he was executed, Jesus mentioned a number of times that he was going to be executed, but that he would come back to life.

[8:39] But that is not what Mary is expecting on this Sunday morning as she goes to the tomb. She's not thinking, ah, that's right. Resurrection.

[8:51] She's not thinking that at all. Her first assumption was that the body has been moved. And it's the same in verse 13.

[9:02] She was working on the assumption that the Jewish leaders or potentially the Roman dudes had taken his body and dumped it somewhere outside the city limits. Someone has stolen the body.

[9:15] So like us, Mary didn't just assume that Jesus had come back to life. Even Peter and John, two of his key followers, didn't automatically jump to the conclusion that Jesus had been resurrected.

[9:27] Notice verses 8 and 9. Finally, the other disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in, he saw, and he believed.

[9:38] And then it says, they still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead. What did he believe in? He believed what Mary had just said. He believed that Mary was right.

[9:52] The tomb is empty. But he didn't believe in that moment of the resurrection. That tells me these early followers of Jesus were not easily excitable, gallible peasants who would just believe anything.

[10:06] Even though Jesus had told them repeatedly that he would come back to life, they weren't actually looking for a resurrection. And yet what they were confronted with on that first Easter Sunday was a bodiless tomb.

[10:24] There was no body in the tomb. So you can't play around with the resurrection of Jesus, some have want to do, and just can see that it was just a spiritual resurrection.

[10:35] It's kind of what the disciples felt. They kind of felt that he was risen again, even though his body didn't come back. He just felt he was a spiritual resurrection. There was no body.

[10:50] And you can go to Jewish historians, you can go to Roman historians and Christian historians in that time that wrote in that time and they all declare that the tomb where Jesus was laid was empty.

[11:06] It's one of the great historical facts the tomb was empty. There's no question about that. Even the enemies of Jesus could not produce a body.

[11:24] If they could have, they would have ended this Christianity thing 2,000 years ago. All it would have required is for a Roman or a Jew to put the body of Jesus at a wheelbarrow and take him to Jerusalem and there you go, there's your saviour.

[11:41] Right there. There he is. Dead. Now, some have come up with other explanations as to why the tomb was empty. For instance, some have suggested that Jesus, in fact, didn't really die put him in the tomb and he revived in the cool of the tomb and then moved the stone that required several soldiers to put in place.

[12:09] He revived himself enough and did a bit of buff work over for a couple of days and was able to move the stone and walk out and some have suggested he married Mary Magdalene and then went on a very long honeymoon down to Egypt and no one ever saw him again.

[12:25] Because there's no historical evidence for that and it's not really plausible. And it also goes against the horrible realities of the crucifixion.

[12:36] It goes against the deliberate steps that Pilate took and the leaders, the Jewish leaders took to make sure that he was dead. Look at John 19.

[12:52] They declared, we want to make sure this man's dead because we've got to get to church so can we please kill him? And they went along to break his legs and they discovered they, in their own testimony, said he's dead.

[13:09] They also took enormous steps to make sure that no one got in or out of that tomb. They posted their own guards at the door of the tomb. Others have suggested that the disciples stole the body.

[13:25] If they did, you've got to ask yourself the question, why did they remove the grave clothes? I mean, you've got Roman soldiers at the entrance of the tomb so you get them drunk and then you manage to get the tomb and then you unwrap him and fold up his clothes and then take the naked body away.

[13:45] Why would you do that? Why take off the linen? And more significantly, if they took the body away, it would mean that the disciples began to risk their lives and in fact gave up their lives for nothing more than an April fool's joke that they themselves had perpetuated.

[14:08] God and how else do we account for the dramatic change in the disciples after Good Friday if it wasn't for the resurrection? The fact is these guys were utterly dejected and terrified after the death of Jesus.

[14:24] They were scared that they were going to be treated in exactly the same way that Jesus had been treated. They feared for their lives. They did not have hope for a resurrection and they were basically ready to go back fishing when everything died down a little bit.

[14:39] They were hiding in a secluded room and were unwilling to believe the first reports of Jesus' appearance three days after he was executed. And yet in a matter of weeks, these men were filled overflowing with joy and courage and not only ready to die for Jesus but in fact did die for Jesus.

[15:03] What happened? Their own explanation as to what happened is that we saw Jesus alive after we saw him dead. Now there is, quite frankly, far more historical evidence than just that.

[15:24] But doubting the resurrection of Jesus is common and strangely enough the first person to doubt the resurrection is not someone opposed to Jesus. It's one of his close followers. It's a guy named Thomas. As we saw in John 20, Thomas is the most famous of doubters.

[15:40] And we've got this saying in our own culture about skeptics and doubters. We call them doubting Thomases. And so this poor bloke has had a pretty bad rap for 2,000 years. That's what he's known for.

[15:51] He's known for being a doubter. And so for those of us struggling to understand or accept the resurrection, you've got to ask yourself the question tonight, if Thomas can help you here.

[16:01] Is he someone who can help you in doubts? Now we are told that Thomas wasn't there when Jesus first appeared to his disciples soon after he rose from the dead.

[16:12] So have a look at verse 24. It says, Now Thomas called Didymus, one of the twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came and so the other disciples told him, we have seen the Lord. But he said to them, unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand in his side, I will not believe it.

[16:33] Unless I see it for myself, I'm not going to believe it. I will believe it if God shows himself. If Jesus comes and shows himself to me, that's the condition of my belief.

[16:48] Now, there's a little strange here because Thomas is an orthodox Jew and so the idea of a resurrection is not unusual for him.

[16:59] He believed that all people would be resurrected in the end when God calls this world to an end. And yet he doubts the resurrection here.

[17:11] And his response to his mates is in absolute terms. He makes his demands in absolute terms. Unless I see and I place my hands, I will not believe.

[17:24] He demands exhaustive proof rather than sufficient evidence. So, believing Jesus, believing the resurrection comes down to a battle of the will.

[17:37] Thomas rejects witness of ten or more of his trusted friends. He dictates absolute terms to God about believing. Now, we're not told specifically why Thomas was so skeptical.

[17:54] So, anything I say as to why he was skeptical is speculation. But I'm going to speculate anyway because it might be helpful for us.

[18:04] maybe it was his personality. Maybe he was what some personality tests call a sensing person. Myers-Briggs personality tests weren't around in the first century as far as I'm aware.

[18:20] But sensing people are people who pay more attention to physical reality, to facts, to hard evidence. And I'm one of those sensing people.

[18:35] The opposite is an intuitive person who goes on perceptions and gut instincts and that kind of stuff. Another alternative is that he was skeptical of everything supernatural or anything supernatural.

[18:47] Dead people don't come alive and that's it. It's probably unlikely for Thomas, but it's common in our modern world. Modern secular people have a worldview which is not a pervasive worldview, I might add, across this world.

[19:04] that says miracles don't happen. Now, it might not be his problem, but when we look at Thomas in John 20, we project our worldview onto him, is what we do.

[19:23] We read Thomas and we go, ah, he's got some intellectual problems with the resurrection. resurrection. You know, Thomas's problem with the resurrection of Jesus is an intellectual one.

[19:35] It's about facts. But skepticism is never just an intellectual issue. Imagine, for instance, that someone very close to you is dying.

[19:50] Some of us might not have to imagine too hard on that one. you've finally accepted that the hope of a recovery for your loved one is gone, it's lost, and your loved one is going to die.

[20:06] And in fact, I've got someone who was in my year at college going through that right now with his family. Then all of a sudden, someone says to you as your loved one is there, clearly dying, terminal illness, someone says to you, I've just heard there's a possible cure.

[20:31] It's on the other side of the world. Possible cure in this clinic. And you had once upon a time hoped for recovery.

[20:44] And then you went through the process of your hopes being dashed and you realized that your loved one is going to die. And all of a sudden, someone comes in with this 50-50 chance that it might not be over.

[21:04] Most people in that moment, don't go awesome and all of a sudden their hopes go skyrocketing again. Most people don't do that.

[21:20] Most people in that moment cannot bear to get their hopes up again only to have their hopes dashed again. They can't bear to get their hopes up and then to lose the person again.

[21:38] Maybe that's what's happening here for Thomas. There's no indication in the Bible anywhere that Thomas was a perpetual doubter on all things.

[21:50] There's no indication that he didn't love Jesus like any of the other disciples loved him. No reason to believe that he wasn't as devastated as everyone else about the execution of Jesus.

[22:02] And now these guys come along and they say, hey Thomas, great news, he's alive. Maybe he's simply saying here, don't you dare get my hopes up.

[22:17] Don't you dare get my hopes up. Thomas is a disciple who had all his hopes pinned on Jesus. and then Jesus dies.

[22:30] And now he's hearing he's alive? You're kidding. Don't do that to me. Maybe he's afraid to hope.

[22:42] In the same way that many people today are afraid to hope. It may be that your worldview says this can't happen. It may be your personality that says, I need more evidence.

[22:57] It might, on the other hand, be a heart that is afraid to be drawn into something and getting disappointed. I suspect that's what's going on for Thomas.

[23:11] And I'll tell you why in a moment. What we need to see is Thomas, the first and most famous of doubters, in the end believed with joy.

[23:22] He's the biggest doubter and yet his confession of faith is also the greatest. I want to emphasize that point. There is no greater confession of faith in the entire Bible than this one.

[23:36] Verse 26. A week later, his disciples were in the house again and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, peace be with you.

[23:48] And then he said to Thomas, put your finger here, see my hands, reach out your hand and put it in my side, stop doubting and believe. And then Thomas said to him, my Lord and my God.

[24:03] That's a remarkable statement. for a Jewish man to call another human being, not just Lord, but God is culturally incomprehensible.

[24:18] His religion did not allow it. There is no higher confession of faith in all of the Bible. Thomas goes from zero to hero, super quick.

[24:32] Super quick. So that brings me to the so what question. Of course for some their doubts is not a matter of having significant evidence, it's a matter of the claims that Jesus has made about himself and his mission and this is the so what question.

[24:53] That is, it's not just about intellectual stuff, it's about the heart and the will. That's a comfortable place of happy ignorance for many.

[25:06] Thomas' declaration of faith in verse 28 addresses the so what question. This is broadly the meaning of the resurrection. My Lord and my God.

[25:22] So Thomas apparently doubts the resurrection and the first words that come out of his mouth in seeing Jesus is not about the resurrection but what the resurrection meant.

[25:38] My Lord and my God. You see, the whole issue Thomas had was I want to see Jesus for myself and I won't believe unless I touch the wounds.

[25:55] Jesus shows up to Thomas touching the wounds. At all.

[26:09] That is, the wounds on Jesus were so much more than evidence that someone can come back to life. They were evidence of something significantly more powerful and that is the hope that Thomas had placed in Jesus in the first place.

[26:27] What he's saying here in this moment is that everything that Jesus said about himself is true. He is God. He is the king of the universe. He is my Lord. He is my king.

[26:37] He is my boss. He is my ruler. He is my God. He is my creator. The resurrection means that what Jesus promised must have been delivered.

[26:47] Thomas has just joyfully discovered that the wounds of the cross of Jesus that he thought two days earlier had ruined his life had in fact saved his life.

[27:03] That's the answer to the so what question. The resurrection means everything Jesus said about himself is right and true. He is the way.

[27:15] He is the truth. He is the life. He is the way for humanity to be reunited with their creator. Jesus did everything possible, everything possible for us not to conclude what Benjamin Law concluded.

[27:36] He's a decent fellow. God. How dare we say he's a decent bloke? How dare we say Jesus is to be admired?

[27:53] He polarized people when he walked the face of the earth between those who worshipped him and those who hated him and desired his crucifixion.

[28:05] how dare we domesticate him into a nice bloke to be admired a couple of times a year. He worked hard to make sure we never come to the conclusion that he's a good bloke.

[28:20] To leave him there as just a bloke to be admired means that we have not seen him for who he is and we need to actually look harder at who he is.

[28:34] The resurrection means he is who he says he is. He is our God and he is our Lord. But it also graciously means that human guilt and shame has been dealt with finally and fully through Jesus satisfying God's justice on the cross on our behalf.

[28:54] It means that death has been confronted by him and has been conquered by him. It means that new and true life can be experienced before death and eternal life after death.

[29:05] It means that hope for better things has gone from the category of a maybe to an absolute certainty, a definitive certainty. It means that the new heavens and a new earth where those who trust in Christ will live forever like he lives forever is coming.

[29:22] This is what Jesus offers everyone who trusts him. A number of chapters earlier in John's gospel. The good news, Jesus talks about the good news and he declares the life changing news of Easter when he says, I am the resurrection and the life and the one who believes in me will live even though they die and whoever lives by believing in me will never die.

[29:50] He says, do you believe this? the resurrection means that Jesus is not just one option. Something incredible, unique and life changing and worldview shaping has happened with the resurrection of Jesus.

[30:14] And that is what Thomas has discovered. So how do we move from doubt to belief? A number of years ago, I was in Canada, an airport moving from Canada to the US and you go to customs and the guy at customs said, you know, where are you going?

[30:39] I'm going home. He says, what do you, you know, they ask you the questions, what do you do? What's your nature, your business, that sort of stuff? And he said, so what do you do? And I said, well, I'm pastor of a church. All right, you're one of those God-botherer guys.

[30:51] Yes, you know, let's not elevate the situation too much. And he said to me, okay then, if that's the case, what would you say to a person who says to you, show me God and I'll believe in him?

[31:08] I'm like, is this a pass the test category? Like, what's going on here? You know, is he actually seriously asking the question for himself or for a friend? Or is this like the guy was actually secretly a theologian?

[31:22] He's trying to call me out here. And I thought, okay, let's have a crack at this. And I said to him, well, it's interesting you could ask that question.

[31:32] Jesus said, Jesus said, you see me and you see the Father, you see God. And what Jesus did is he revealed the character and the nature of God for three years on the earth.

[31:46] He did countless miracles. He raised the dead. He healed people. He showed his power over nature. Plenty of people saw him do that. And I said, plenty of people saw him do this most amazing miracle where he called Lazarus, a guy being dead in the tomb for four days, called him out of a tomb and they saw him walk out of the tomb at the command of Jesus.

[32:09] He had power over life and death. And yet in that moment when people saw Jesus do that, half of the crowd went, well, that's amazing, let's worship him. And half the crowd said, let's call him.

[32:21] He's messing things up for us. So I said to him, the reality is, even if God was to present himself to you right now, seeing doesn't equal believing. Got to know that from a start.

[32:31] John chapter 20, Jesus himself says, blessed are those who don't physically see me and yet believe. And so there is sufficient evidence that's been written down by those who did see Jesus and come to believe in him.

[32:45] But in the end, you can look at that evidence and discard it. It's a matter of the will. And I said, I could be God right here, right now in front of you and just happen to have a passport.

[32:57] And I could say to you, I am God and I could do all of the miracles of Jesus. But frankly, you if you don't want to believe are going to keep changing the goalposts.

[33:08] It's going to be perform that miracle. Okay. And eventually I'm going to be at your beck and calling and the God that you have in your mind is someone that you've formed. So believing in Jesus is not just a matter of seeing him.

[33:21] It's a matter of the will and surrendering your heart to him. That's roughly what I'd say. And the guy just stamped my passport and let me go.

[33:36] Seeing is not necessarily believing. As I said, many people saw the miracles of Jesus and yet they didn't believe. there are way deeper dimensions to believing than just seeing.

[33:53] How then do we move from doubt to belief? Firstly, two points I want to make on this. Firstly, it's important to listen to the eyewitness accounts. That's the first step.

[34:04] We are told that Thomas was there when Jesus first appeared to the disciples. One week later, Jesus shows up again with Thomas present. During the week in between, we are told in verse 25, that the other disciples kept telling Thomas that they'd seen Jesus risen.

[34:23] In fact, the original language is really clear. It kept telling him, telling him, telling him, telling him, telling him, telling him that Jesus has risen. And so during that week, before Jesus appeared to Thomas, Thomas is in exactly the same spot that you and I are in.

[34:44] Like him, we have access to people who saw Jesus raised from the dead. In fact, they are the exact same people that Thomas had access to.

[34:56] Their eyewitness accounts are written down in the New Testament and especially the Gospels, one of which we're looking at here tonight in John's Gospel. A number of years ago, several decades ago, it was a common accusation that the Gospel accounts of Jesus are fables that are written down long after the events, way, way after the events, and therefore they're not trustworthy.

[35:19] The reality is that there is enormous amount of scholarship, both Christian and secular, that actually argues that the Gospels in the New Testament do not have any marks of fiction in them at all.

[35:39] They have the marks of oral history and eyewitness testimony. When these events were written down, nearly all of the eyewitnesses were still alive and could vouch for them.

[35:55] That is essential piece of information as we read in 1 Corinthians 15. I could come up with a fable right now, I could write it down, send it off the City Morning Herald and tell everyone, I just saw last night a UFO land in Chatswood, believe me.

[36:15] Angels came down and I could start that going. Anyone who was in Chatswood at the time could say, well, that's a load of rubbish. That didn't happen, that's a fable, that's not true.

[36:33] It was absolutely essential that there was lots of people that you could go to in the first century when these guys wrote their accounts and no one was coming back at them saying, well, that didn't happen.

[36:46] Jesus didn't exist. The sort of fables that modern secular people come up with. He wasn't crucified. John, who wrote this biography, was one of the eyewitnesses and this is what he says about how we come to see and believe in verse 30.

[37:02] Jesus did many other miraculous signs in the presence of his disciples which are not recorded in this book, but these are written, that is the ones he has written, that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

[37:20] What he is saying is that what he has written in this biography of Jesus' life, his ministry, his death and his resurrection, is by an eyewitness and that's all you need to believe.

[37:32] And frankly, it makes pure sense because it's how we operate in every area the rest of our life.

[37:44] What I mean is this, how many of the things that you believe happened in history did you actually see? How many of the things that you believe happened in history did you actually see?

[38:02] We actually believe eyewitness testimony that's been written down by historically reliable authors. And so why do we not do it when it comes to the person of Jesus?

[38:14] Because it's not a historical fact. It's got to do with his claims. It's got to do with who he is and his demands in our life. We don't need to know anything more than what John's written in this gospel or any of the other biographies to see and to believe.

[38:32] It's a matter of the will. So can I encourage you to give one a read? Get yourself immersed in it. If you've not done that, read them as eyewitness accounts and think.

[38:43] Think. Grab one. You know, there's Bibles at the entrances. You know, we won't even call it stealing. We'll just take one home. We'll call it a gift. Just take one.

[38:54] In fact, we've even got some Chinese versions here as well floating around. Just take them and read them. The second thing to do, to move from doubt to belief, is to drop your conditions.

[39:07] Every single one of us moves towards Jesus with a set of conditions. No one ever goes to Jesus because he's great and he's God and he's Lord for his own sake.

[39:19] We always move towards him because we want something which means we have conditions. I've known of people who have refused to become Christian because it would mean that they would need to repair a relationship or to change a habit.

[39:39] You know, like people, Steve, you mean Jesus offers me eternal life but if I want to take up eternal life, you mean I've got to forgive my mother-in-law? Deal off. That ain't gonna happen.

[39:51] And that's all of us. It's like he offers us eternal life, sounds fantastic but I don't really want him to disrupt my family.

[40:07] I really don't want him to interfere with my career. don't want him to start dominating my weekend, eternal life or the beach.

[40:26] We need to drop our conditions because they say, Jesus, you might be Lord, you might be God but I'll only come to you if. And yet Jesus didn't do that for us.

[40:39] He loved us unconditionally. If you were here on Friday, you would have heard it declared that his death was no accident of history. Jesus died and rose to redeem us and to reclaim us to God.

[40:53] It was all God's plan. The Bible says that while we were still his enemies, Jesus chose to die for us. He sees all of our flaws.

[41:05] He sees all of our failures. He knows the evil which lies in the depths of our heart that virtually no one else knows. And yet he still loves us unconditionally.

[41:18] So can I just say God has brought you here this Easter Sunday afternoon for this message, for this bit of the Bible, for this story of the resurrection, for this eyewitness account, so that you might see Jesus and believe in Jesus as Thomas did, and that you might have life in Jesus that triumphs over death.

[41:51] So drop your conditionsemiys and believe in him. ... ... ...

[42:05] ... ...