Would you take your Bibles, please, and turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 15? We have been in that 15th chapter all week. Perhaps you saw these little booklets as you came in, these little expositions we did through Holy Week, on the resurrection of Jesus Christ and our resurrection called the first fruits of the grave. There are more of these out there. I would recommend that you get one of these. I think this is a little devotional book that will not just instruct you about Easter, but will give you the heart of Christianity and something that you'll use again and again. Because we live in an age where many people are religious, but few people believe in a resurrection. It may surprise us to find this fact that America remains, according to every study and statistic that we can muster, that America remains the most religious country in the world. There's more people to go to church on Sunday in America than anywhere else in the world. 95% of Americans say they believe in God. That's a number that's held steady for over 70 years. Despite the fact that we're told that atheism is growing, 95% of Americans say, I believe in God and they believe in one God. There's also a large proportion of these people, about 90% of them who believe that there is a life after death of some sort or another. And about 80% of those people who believe in God believe in the Bible. They say they believe the Bible is the Word of God and a great majority of them. Some 70% believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the deed died for our sins and that He loves us. And yet, the vast majority of Americans will not go to church on today, Easter Sunday. Then that seems strange to you, I mean, it does to me, maybe because I'm a preacher, maybe because I can't help it. But it seems odd, but it's not because you can believe in God and you can believe in an afterlife and in the Bible, you can even believe that Jesus died for your sins and not believe in a resurrection of the body. That's what was happening in the church at Corinth. Paul's the largest church, probably his most gifted church, and certainly the most famous of all of his churches. He wrote four letters to them. We only have two of them, the second and the fourth, which we call first and second Corinthians, respectively. He writes them about a number of things in this first letter. He writes them about how to get along with each other, how to get politics out of the church and Jesus Christ centered in their mind. He talks about what the ministry's like and talks about the Bible, whether they should show each other in court or how they should behave at the Lord's table at communion time or how men and women all relate to each other in marriage. And whether or not they ought to eat meat, sacrifice to idols, and he talks a lot about worship and their spiritual gifts, especially this gift of speaking and tongues that was kind of controversial at the time and kind of disrupting their fellowship and their worship. So it seems odd to many commentators that after 14 chapters on practical living in the church, he suddenly transitions and says, now I would remind you brothers of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to, unless you believe in vain. Why would he go so suddenly from all of these practical relational things to a long exposition on the resurrection? What JB Phillips calls the most important chapter in the Bible, and I agree. Well, because these Corinthians were a lot like Americans, at least a significant number of them were. They did believe in God, they believed in the Bible, they believed in Jesus, that he died for their sins, and they believed that because of that, they would live forever with Jesus in heaven, but they didn't believe that they would do so in a resurrected body. In fact, if you look in the passage, over in verse 35, Paul says this, anticipating their question, but some will ask, how were the dead raised with what kind of body do they come?
They didn't ask that question probably as nice as I just refraised it. They probably said, well, how are the dead raised? What kind of body would they come forth from the grave? You know how people ask you a question in such a way that before you answered, you already feel like you're stupid? What kind of body could we possibly have that would come from the grave? Now why would they feel this way? Well because they were Greeks, and the Greeks were dualists. That means they saw life as divided between two great forces, the good and the bad, God and the demigod, and God created the spiritual life, the soul, and the Greeks believed in the immortality of the soul. They believed that their spirits would live on forever, but they believed that spiritual life was good. In fact, they believed that they were never free until their spirit was free from their body, because they believed that the demigods, the demigod, the bad God made the flesh to imprison this soul, so that spirit is good and flesh is bad, spirit is light and flesh is darkness, spirit is freedom, but the body is prison. That's what Socrates taught them, because he learned that from Plato and Plato learned it from Aristotle. This is exactly what Socrates would say. He would write to them about how the soul is entirely fastened to and welded to the body, and is compelled to regard realities through the prison bars of the flesh. These great Greek philosophers said that the body held back the soul, so that when someone died and the body rotted the soul was finally free, the Epicurian philosophers, who Paul quotes down in this passage in verse 33, they said, well, let us eat and drink and be married for tomorrow we die. They said, we can do anything with our body, we can get drunk, we can be immoral, we can commit gluttony. It doesn't matter when the body dies, the soul is free. So here's how you live life, sounds kind of American. You go for all the gusts or you can get, because you only go around once in life, old Michelot beer, right? You live for all the gusto you can and you shed this old carcass, and then the spiritual life goes to the rather boring but blissful thing of floating around on the clouds and playing a harp. So enjoy all you can of life, be carnal, then be free of your spirit and be whatever you're going to be, because that's the way life is. You would say, well, how could they be Christian? Paul says they are. Go back to the very, look at chapter 15, verse 1, look at what he writes. Now I would remind you, brothers, he calls these people brothers, brothers and sisters in Christ. I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preach you, which you received, in which you stand and they which you are being saved, unless you believed in vain. Look down in verse 11, whether then it was I or they so we preach and so you believe, these people believed in Jesus Christ. They believed that Jesus Christ died for our sins. They believed that Jesus Christ was buried. They believed that Jesus Christ rose. Look what Paul says. For I delivered to you as a first importance, what I also received that Christ died for our sins, in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. They believed that, that Jesus died for our sins, that he went into the grave and remained on the power of death for a season, and then he rose, but he rose spiritually and left his body, because Jesus had to be free from his body, just as you and I need to be free from our bodies. We know this was prevalent in the early church. About ten years after Paul wrote this, he would write another one to a young intern of his, he would become a pastor, a guy named Timothy, and he would say, but avoid irreverent battle for it will only lead to more and more ungodliness, and their talk was spread like gangrene. Among these men, or hymenaeus and phylatists, who have swirled from the faith, saying that the resurrection is already taken place, and thus they are upsetting the faith of many. Some men said that the resurrection had already taken place in the Spirit. They taught that once you received Christ, once you believed that Jesus died for your sins, and you received him as your Savior, you received the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit brought you the Spirit life, and with it, spiritual gifts, which are proof that you were now, a new creature in a new plane of existence, and the gift that proved it more than anything was the gift of speaking and tongues. That's why, at the end of chapter 14, about speaking and tongues, Paul rolls right into the resurrection. Saying in a sense, that's not true. We don't have this resurrection life in fullness because we receive the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the presence of the Spirit. We don't have resurrection life in its fullness until the body. Is as filled with the Holy Spirit as the Spirit is, the soul is, until we've been resurrected from the dead, and until what God made in the beginning is immortal and will live forever in the beginning. God made the heavens in the earth, and the Lord took the dust from the ground and shaped it into a man, and breathed into him the breath of life, and man became a human being. Thus God made man in his own image male and female, he made them in his own likeness. There's the truth. You and I were made not just to be free floating spirits. We were made body and soul. I would suggest to you that Genesis says the body was made first, and then the soul was given to animate the body. A male body, and a female body, with a male soul and a female soul, and that's what we are. And because of sin and the death of the body and the death of the soul, Christ came to make us alive. But in reverse order, first the Spirit working from the inside out and then the body. We do have someone to realize eschatology as they say when we receive Christ and we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. If an amen being Christ, he has a new creation. We do have the Holy Spirit which is a down payment, a earnest Paul says of eternal life living within us, and the proof of it is the fruit of the Spirit and his spiritual gifts. But that's not all there is. That's not the peak. The great climax Paul says is when the Holy Spirit raises life. Out of death, as he would say in another place, the Spirit who gives life to Jesus Christ shall give life to your mortal bodies that you might live forever with him. Jesus didn't come to say half of me, or half of you, but for all of us, all of us meaning body and soul. You know, we meet people like this all the time. People who think that Jesus Christ is good for the Spirit, but they really don't care about the body. And those are the people who believe in the Bible and believe in God and believe in Jesus, but aren't in church on Easter Sunday because, well, the resurrection is just not believable. So Paul, as Bernie Lawrence said the other night, the second attorney prosecuting a case begins to build his case for what is the heart of the gospel. The one climatic belief of Christianity, the thing, the theologian say, make sense of everything else, the discristian, the resurrection. And here's how he does it. Brian Peterson told us Monday night that he begins by talking about the first thing. Now, I would remind you brothers of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and which you stand by, which you are being saved if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain, for I delivered to you as of, listen to this, first importance that Christ died for our sins. That he was buried, that he was raised, that he appeared to many. This is the first importance. Bernie Lawrence followed that the other night and said, here's truth number two. The resurrection is the center of the Christian life and faith and our only hope, verse 12. Now, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can you some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead verse 19 if in Christ we have hope in this life only, we have all people most to be pitied. Why? Why believe in Jesus Christ and not just do whatever you feel like doing if you're going to leave the body and an ash heap afterwards and just go on and float around? I mean, if there's no resurrection, I believe in megalob. You only grow along once in life. Therefore, sin to your heart's content. Paul says, no, we have a greater hope than that. Truth number three, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the first fruits of the resurrection of all Christians. This is what Dave backs to talk about when he preached to chapter 15 and he looked at verse 20. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. Then came truth number four, the resurrection gives both meaning and hope in the midst of our personal suffering. Mike Miller had the most difficult text and in this whole chapter, where Paul talks about, and verses 29 through 34, all the suffering that he went through and he said, you know, why are we suffering? Why are we denying ourselves? Why are we even in danger of martyrdom? If there is no resurrection from the dead. Then truth number five, Stuart Neely talked about Friday night, the resurrection gives reason for death because out of the grave comes immortal life. But some of them will ask, how are the dead raised? With Pontine of body, do they come? You foolish person. What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. The bodies we have, Stuart told us, are a seed. They must be planted in the body and that old husk must dissolve only to be resurrected again in the new fruits of a resurrection body. And then yesterday we read in our devotional book that what Bruce Creswell taught us that the resurrection brings about the transformation that fits us for heaven, verse 42. So it is with the resurrection of the dead. One is sown perishable, what is raised is imperishable. What is sown in dishonor is raised in glory. It is sown in weakness. It is raised in power. And that leads us to Paul's concluding statement. Like an attorney now, he stands before the jury of humanity and he makes this closing argument. And he says the resurrection gives meaning to all of life, beginning in verse 50. I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the king of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable behold. I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable and we shall be changed. For this perishable body was put on the imperishable and this mortal body was put on immortality. And when the perishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass. The saying that is written, death is swallowed up in victory. Oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, death, a little grave, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord, Jesus Christ. Therefore, this is where it's driving. Therefore, my beloved brothers, be steadfast and movable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that in the Lord your labor is not in vain. Here is the final great mystery that Paul turns to be. Hold, I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. I've told Jane a number times. We ought to have that made on little plaques and hung over every infant nursery in churches in America. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed. That's true, you know. But here he means, we shall not all die. Paul used to sleep as a euphemism for death. And I want to say that to you people who have lost a loved one this week or two. You haven't lost anything. There are no more lost to you than if they went to Florida for six months or to China for ten years. You haven't lost anything. They're not dead. If they died in the Lord, they're asleep. They will be awakened again, and he said, and when they're awakened, they will all be changed. We shall not all die, he says. Some of us will be alive when Jesus comes back, but we shall all be transformed, every one of us. So this is his great closing argument. Three things we shall all be changed. We shall all be victors over death. We shall all be rewarded for how we lived in Christ. Look at the first point. The resurrection of Jesus Christ will change all believers. I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Paul has been describing in the paragraph before in verses 42 to 49. He's been talking about two kinds of bodies. He describes it with this. The one is earthly, natural, perishable, weak, and even dishonorable. It's our present broken, sinful bodies that are getting sick and dying. The other describes our new bodies. They are heavenly, imperishable, spiritual, powerful, and glorious. These are the resurrection bodies that we will receive in days yet to come. The first body is obviously, he says, from Adam. And when Adam sinned and we all died in Adam, then death began to work on our bodies. But the second body will come from the new Adam, the new man he calls him. Jesus Christ and its resurrection body that cannot die and won't decay. Drawing for that marvelous truth, Paul says this, I tell you this, brothers, flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Paul, in a sense, is agreeing with the Greek philosophers. This old sinful, aging, limited, and finite body cannot go to heaven with us. That's true. All the crude ideas of a free spirit, re-imprisoned in a mortal body are quite frankly impossible. The bodies we now possess cannot inherit the kingdom of God. They're just flesh and blood. There's no resurrection in them. Our bodies must be born anew. Jesus had said this before, you know. He said to a rabbi named Nicodemus, truly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus said to him, how can a man be born when he's old? Can he enter a second time into his mother's womb and be born? And Jesus answered truly, truly I say to you, unless one is born of the water in this spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. For that which is born a flesh is flesh. And that which is born of the spirit is spirit. Do not marvel then that I say to you, you must be born again. Jesus was saying that you and I must be refitted, remastered for the new world and the new life. First beginning with the soul. We must be born again in the soul so that the life of Jesus Christ fills us. So I've been crucified with Christ. And there's no longer I who live but Christ who lives in me. And the life that I now live in this flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself on the cross for me. That becomes the animating spirit of my new soul. Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him in baptism into death, nor that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. This seed of resurrection is already been planted within our souls. Jesus Christ is reversing the death effects of the fall from the inside out. God made man from the outside in Jesus Christ is rushing in from the inside out. First the soul. The soul must be born again. It must be refitted for a new life. But then the body as well. You know why? God always intended us to be completely redeemed. I don't want Jesus to save half of me. I want the whole my cross. I don't want him at all. God made us soul and body. And he'll redeem us soul and flesh. That which is mortal, my body must become immortal. That which is perishable, my flesh must become imperishable. So Paul says, behold, I tell you a mystery. Now this word mystery moves Stereon. It's a big word for Paul, especially in 1 Corinthians. Over in chapter 2 when he said, this is my ministry for you. He said, I did not come to you with persuasive words of wisdom, declaring to you the mystery of God. He said in chapter 2, we speak God's wisdom in a mystery. The hidden wisdom which God predestined before the ages to our glory. He said about his own ministry, let a man regard us in this manner as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. About their speaking and tongues, he says, for one who speaks and a tongue speaks not to men, but to God. For no one understands him for in his spirit, he speaks mysteries.
Now he says, look, literally in Greek look or see here. Look up here. I tell you a mystery. I tell you something that you would never know by your own experience or observation or scientific study. I tell you something that you will only know because it has been revealed by God to you. We shall not all die, but we shall all be transformed. I don't know if there are more what I call goosebumps scriptures in the scripture than these. Listen to what he says. I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye. At the last trumpet for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised in perishable and we shall be changed. He says, this will happen in a moment in an Atmos, the word we get from where we get the word Atom. It's the word in Greek that means the one thing that cannot be divided. I know that my wife's a math teacher and she tries to explain these basic. There is a number that can't be divided anymore. There is something that cannot be broken down beyond itself, the Atmos. I tell you in an Atmos. I tell you Paul says when we get down to the one thing that can't be divided or changed. This will happen in the twinkling of an eye. Before you can bat your eyelashes, when we hear that last trumpet announcing that Jesus Christ is returning in his glorified body, we shall all be changed. Like that, Jesus didn't die to forgive us of our sins. Jesus didn't die just to make us sons and daughters of God. Jesus didn't die so that you'd be holy and pleased God. He died to forgive you of your sins, to adopt you as God's children, to sanctify your life so that you could be glorified, so that you could rise and be just like him. So we do not lose heart. For though our outer self is wasting away, yet our inner man is being renewed day by day for this momentary light affliction, sharing in us an eternal way to glory, as we look not at the things that are seen, but at the things that are unseen, for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom, and we all with unveiled face are beholding the glory of the Lord, and are also being transformed into that same image for one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord who is the Holy Spirit. Did you hear that we are being changed from one degree of glory into another? There is a glory of men and women made in the image of God. We are the climax of creation. We are the top of the feeding chain. There is no creature more glorious than a human being. Even more so than the angels who possess only a spirit, we reflect God in a spirit had a body. We have a double glory, but that is one glory that is going to be changed into a greater glory, into a glorified and resurrected glory of Jesus Christ. Some day in terms of eternity, just the twinkling of an eye, just a moment, a moment in forever, something will happen. We do not want you to be unformed, brothers, about those who have fallen asleep, so that you may not grieve like those who have no hope. Since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so, through Jesus, God will bring us with Him and all those who have fallen asleep. For this we declare to you by the Word of the Lord that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord will not proceed those who have fallen asleep. For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a cry of a command, with a voice of the archangel, and with a sound of the trumpet, and the dead in Christ will rise first. And then we who are alive will be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air, and we will therefore always be with them, with the Lord forever. Therefore, comfort one another with these words. This is going to happen. One day when we least expect it, in this atom of time, the heavens will split open, and down will come glorified Jesus Christ. He will give a great command, saints of the earth, rise up, and the graves will open up. And all of our mothers and fathers and our grandparents and brothers and sisters and children and grandchildren and friends who died in the Lord, their dust will come together, and it will come out of the grave in a glory like the blazing sun, to meet their soul that's coming down with Jesus Christ. They will be fused together in one twinkling of an eye, and as soon as we see that, we shall be sucked up. That's what the word means. Literally in Greek, to be caught up with the breath. God will inhale us up, and as we go up, we who are alive, there will be a transformation that we can't imagine. We won't have autism anymore. We won't have as-burkers in them, or bipolar disorder, will be mentally and spiritually and emotionally whole. The cerebral palsy will be gone. The Parkinson's will leave. The Alzheimer's will be dead. Our hearts won't skip any beats anymore. Our blood sugars won't go out of control. Our eyes will see things they've never seen before. Our ears will hear things they've never heard before. As Paul said in this epistle, things which I have not seen and ear has not heard, which have not even entered into the heart of man, all that God has prepared, all that God has prepared. For those who love Him. Bruce Craves will summarize this beautifully in this little booklet. What an exciting future we have as the children of God, with our new bodies, the possibilities are infinite. If you belong to Jesus, your future supernatural resurrected body is just as certain as your present natural flesh. Christ in us. That is the DNA that we now have. We are like a seed that will be planted and will sprout to unexpected new life. Indeed, we will be resurrected and transformed into glory. It's hard to believe, isn't it? You know why? Because everything around us lies under a pale shadow called death. But that is soon to end as well. The resurrection of Jesus Christ will put an end to death. Look at verse 54. When the imperishable puts on the imperishable and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written. Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh, death, where is your victory? Oh, grave, where is your sting? The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul would say earlier in this chapter, verse 26, the last enemy to be destroyed is death. You say, well, why does it take so long? Because of sin, my sin, your sin, our sin. Every time we sin, we give death a second breath. The power of death has been broken by the cross and the death of Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is releasing billions of people. I'm not exaggerating billions of people around the world from the power of death through the regeneration of the Holy Spirit and the promise of a resurrection. One day, he will simply sweep death aside like an old carcass. He will deal to death the death blow and he will raise his saints in their bodies from the grave. Paul is quoting Isaiah and Hosea. He swallowed up death forever. Oh, death, where are your plagues? Oh, grave, where is your sting? He pictures death as a venomous snake, but the bite has no poison anymore because when it bit Jesus on the cross, an amazing thing happened. Jesus sucked all the venom of death into himself and left the serpent a toothless beast. We cannot die forever because of Jesus Christ. I know that someday you and I will live in a world where there are no armies, no weapons, no war, no policemen, no firemen, no emergency medical people because I won't be emergencies. There will be no doctors and there will be no lawyers. But best of all, there will be no preachers. You won't need them anymore. We won't need insurance or morticians or cemeteries. You won't want to watch the evening news because it's all good news. You know it anyway and you'll never hear this in heaven. Don't play in the street. Don't talk to strangers. Don't go out alone in the dark. Don't get up on the ladder at your age. I don't know about you, but doctors get younger every year. Do you notice that? And someday some young man or young woman is going to come into the office and they're going to say, Mr. Ross, I have something to tell you is your wife with you. It's if my wife could do anything about it. But someday I won't hear that because as the book of Revelation says, death and hideous will be thrown into the lake of fire which is the second death. So because that's true, listen quickly. The resurrection of Jesus Christ gives purpose and hope to life. Therefore this is where he's driving. This whole argument, therefore my beloved brothers, be steadfast and movable. Always abounding the work of the Lord knowing that in the Lord your toil is not in vain. Everything in this world I will leave behind except what I did with Jesus Christ. Everything else will be burned up with death. But as C.T. stood the great missionary said, only one life will soon be passed only what's done for Christ will last. Paul's way to put that is this. Know that your toil is not in vain in the Lord. You know, my father died 40 years ago. He was 55. And I'm sure as he was dying, he wondered if his life had counted for anything that had. This young man from Columbus, Ohio fell in love with the girl from Indiana. And the product of their love was a red-headed boy who had both heard DNA in his. In his soul, he's sometimes like his dad and sometimes like his mother. And his faith is a product of their lives and their faith. I wonder sometimes whether all these sermons and all this work have done any good whatsoever. Paul says they have what you do in the Lord is never in vain. And his shooster concludes our little devotional book that with this wonderful exhortation, all this means is that Christians live with a very different perspective than those who do not believe in Christ. For the unbeliever this life is all there is. For the Christian, we realize that our lives are a stewardship given by God meant to be invested in the light of eternity. Christians understand that you can lose your life or you can give your life away, but under no circumstances can you keep your life. You can lose it by thinking that this is all there is this life or you can invest your life by thinking that our best life is not now, but on the day of resurrection. And that's how you save your life. People will say pastor, this is hard to believe. How do I know this is true? Well, because the Bible says it's true. You say, well, that's not good enough for reason. Well, were you listening to the choir saying, do you believe that Jesus was born in Bethlehem? Will you do? Because there were eye witnesses. There were shepherds in May, John, his mom and dad and other people in town and relatives. You believe that he performed miracles and taught in the temple as the choir said, you do? Because there's dozens of stories about that, historical records of people who heard him and wrote down his message just like the sermon on the Mount or the parables of the upper room discourse. He prayed in the garden where Peter, James and John fell asleep twice, but they said he did that he died on the cross. Hundreds saw that happen. Roman soldiers and Jewish rabbis and his mother and friends and other people who were shocked by it. Hundreds saw him die. I believe it was buried. There was a small group with Joseph, Mary, but they did that. And then you come to the resurrection. And all of a sudden we want to change the rules, except that Paul says this, I delivered you a first importance that Christ died for our sins and that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures. And that he appeared to caifus, that is Peter, and then to the 12, then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time. Most of whom were still alive, though some had fallen asleep, then he appeared to James, his brother, and then to all the apostles last of all, as to what untimely born, he appeared also to me. Well then it was I or they. We eyewitnesses have preached this. And so you believe. Do you believe what you see on the news? You do. You see the birth of people that you've never met and you believe it. You see the world events, although you weren't there and you believe it. You hear about people dying and you believe it because there are witnesses to it. I'm not pulling some fantasy out of some etherworld. I'm talking to you about something that over 514 people at least saw with their own eyes and touched with their own hands. A dead Jesus Christ, risen from the grave who said, I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me will never die. And even if you die, you will live. For behold, I tell you a mystery. We will not all die. We shall all be changed when Jesus comes back. And calls us out of the tomb. Either you believe that and rescue your life or you don't and you lose it all. The choice is yours. Let's pray. Father, it is in any rational court of human beings a historical fact with enough eyewitnesses to be established as true before any judge and jury in any place on the globe. The Christ died for our sins that he was dead and buried and that he rose again and appeared to many people. Each time he appeared to them, he gave them the promise that if they believed in him, they too would rise and rise to glory. That is the hope of Easter Sunday. That is the truth of the gospel. That is the heart of our Christian faith, our most holy religion. Believe in God, the Father, Creator and Jesus, the Redeemer. We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver of life. And we believe in the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. And we believe this in Jesus' name, but for our six. Amen.