You know, almost 2,000 years ago, the very first Easter began with an angel saying these words, Matthew 28 verse 5. He said, Fear not, for I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified.
He is not here. He has risen just as He said He would. There was an interesting article in Newsweek magazine entitled, Rethinking the Resurrection. Here's what Newsweek had to say about it.
And I quote, Newsweek said, Well, Newsweek is absolutely right. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the most radical doctrine in all of Christianity, and yet it forms the absolute bedrock of Biblical Christianity. So the question we want to talk about this Easter morning is, did the resurrection of Jesus really happen? Did Jesus really rise from the dead? The way He said He would?
And if so, well, what difference does that make to your life and to my life today? So that's our plan. Let's get going. Did the resurrection of Jesus really happen? Well, remember what the angel said. The angel said that Jesus is risen just as He said He would do. The point I want you to see is that while Jesus was here on earth, He was constantly telling people that He was going to rise from the dead. Jesus told this, for example, to His disciples, that He must go to Jerusalem, that He must be killed, and on the third day be raised to life again. After He died on the cross, the Jewish leaders went to Pontius Pilate, Matthew chapter 27, and they said, we remember that while He was alive, this deceiver said, after three days, I will rise again. I mean, friends, to live in Israel 2,000 years ago and say what resurrection of Jesus would be like having lived in the 60s and saying, what Vietnam War? Or living in the 70s and saying, what Watergate break-in?
Or living today and saying, Osama bin Hu? Everybody in Jerusalem knew about Jesus' claim that He was coming back from the dead three days after He was put in the grave. The question is, did He do it?
The question is, did it really happen? Well, in that regard, I have four pieces of compelling evidence that I would like to present to you this Easter Sunday that corroborate the fact that the Lord Jesus really did rise from the dead the way He said. Evidence number one is the evidence of the Roman soldiers. While He was still alive, that deceiver said, after three days, I will rise again. So please give the order for His tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, His disciples may come and steal His body and tell people that He's been raised from the dead, and then this last deception will be worse than the first. So Pilate said to them, take a squad of Roman soldiers and make the tomb as secure as you know how. So the Jewish leaders posted this guard at Jesus' tomb. Now, we know that a Roman security team like this guarding a prisoner would usually consist of 15 enlisted men and one officer, and these soldiers had a deeply vested interest in making sure that no one tampered with the body of Jesus Christ. Because if a Roman soldier lost his prisoner, even his dead prisoner, that Roman soldier lost his life. Many of you will remember in Acts chapter 16, the story of the Apostle Paul being in jail in Philippi, a city in northern Greece, on his second missionary journey. If you don't, let me just tell you that Paul was thrown in jail, and then in the middle of the night, an angel came and blew the doors off all the cells in this prison.
And I want you to see what happened next. Acts chapter 16 verse 27, then it says, the jailer, who by the way was a Roman soldier, woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. Now, why was this Roman soldier going to commit suicide? Well, because he knew that if he had lost his prisoners, his superiors were going to kill him anyway, so he figured he'd save them the trouble and just do it to himself. Now, friends, in light of this, do you really think that a bunch of unarmed women and fishermen could have gotten past these battle-hardened Roman soldiers and actually stolen the body of Jesus when these soldiers knew their very life depended on that not happening?
Preposterous, impossible. And then second of all, when it comes to evidence for the resurrection, we have the evidence of Jesus's enemies. You see, as soon as the news began to spread through Jerusalem that there had been a resurrection that the Lord Jesus had risen, the Jewish leaders, the Bible tells us, became determined that they were going to quash that rumor, that they were going to discredit that news at all costs. And so the Bible says, Matthew 28, that the Jewish leaders gave the soldiers a great sum of money and said, we want you to say that Jesus's disciples came and stole his body away while you were sleeping, and if this news gets back to Pilate, we will keep you out of trouble.
Now, here's the question, folks. In order to discredit the resurrection of Jesus, why did these Jewish leaders have to spend all this money, and why did they have to be willing to go to all this political trouble? I mean, all they really had to do was roll the stone away, pull the dead body of Jesus out of the grave, put it on public display somewhere in Jerusalem, and invite everybody to come see it, and news of the resurrection was over. It was finished, kaput, finito. So why not just do that?
That was a lot easier. Well, the answer is, the reason they couldn't put Jesus's dead body on display is because there was no dead body to get out of the tomb and put on display. The tomb was empty. And we've already said that because of the Roman soldiers being there, no human being could have emptied the tomb of Jesus.
So where did the body go if not the resurrection the way the Bible says is the answer to the empty tomb? Number three, I'd like to present to you the evidence of the eyewitnesses. You know, my middle son is a lawyer in Chicago, and when he went to law school, he, like every other law school student, had to take a course on evidence. And one of the classic commentaries on the laws of evidence is called Phippson on evidence. And here's part of what Mr. Phippson says about eyewitness testimony, and I quote. He said, as a general rule, courts may act on the testimony of a single witness and where that testimony is unimpeached, they should act on it. However, as Phippson goes on to say, corroboration by other witnesses is always desirable as it can turn a probability into a certainty, end of quote.
Do you understand what Mr. Phippson is saying? What he's saying is if you've got one witness that saw something and they are a creditable witness, well, you've got a probability. But if you've got two witnesses, three witnesses, 10 witnesses, 12 witnesses who all saw the very same thing, it's not a probability anymore, it is a certainty. Well, friends, when it comes to the resurrection of Jesus Christ, it's the latter case that we have. Jesus was not seen by one eyewitness or two eyewitnesses or three eyewitnesses, but by hundreds of eyewitnesses who saw and talked to the risen Christ. This is what the Apostle Paul says, 1 Corinthians 15, he says, the risen Christ appeared to Peter and then to the 12 disciples. And after that, he appeared to more than 500 people, most of whom are still living, as I write this, although some have died. And then he appeared to James.
And last of all, Paul says, he appeared to me also. This is why Peter said in Acts 3, speaking to the Jewish people in Jerusalem, he said, you killed the Prince of Life, but God raised him from the dead, watch now, a fact to which we are all eyewitnesses. The point, my friends, is that according to every rule of jurisprudence, this much eyewitness testimony to the resurrection of Jesus Christ turns, as Phippson says, a probability into a certainty. You say, but Lon, what if all these witnesses were liars?
What if all these witnesses were dishonest and crooked and it was all a con game that they were running and they were just con men and con women? Well, that brings us to the fourth and final piece of evidence to support the resurrection, and that is the evidence of their martyrdom. You see, my friends, virtually every one of these eyewitnesses that we just mentioned gave their life rather than recant their testimony that Jesus had come back from the dead. For example, the apostle James, when he refused to recant, was arrested and killed by Herod, Acts Chapter 12. And Stephen, when he refused to recant, was stoned to death, Acts Chapter 7. And when the apostle Paul refused to recant the resurrection, Emperor Nero cut his head off.
And when Peter refused to recant the resurrection, that same Emperor Nero crucified him upside down in Rome. Now, how do we explain the willingness of all these people to die rather than deny the resurrection? Well, it's simple, my friends, they weren't running a con game. Listen, when you're running a con game and the con is up, maybe every person doesn't defect and tell the truth, but some people do.
I mean, just watch Law and Order. You understand what I'm saying, right? And yet none of these people did this. You know why?
I'll tell you why. It's because these people had seen the risen Christ with their own eyes. These people had talked to the risen Christ and they knew what they had seen. And they knew what they had experienced. And they refused to recant something that they knew absolutely was true.
So let's summarize. The risen Christ is the sine qua non, the without which nothing of the Christian faith. And the evidence confirming that there is a risen Christ is compelling. Number one, we have the evidence of the Roman soldiers which makes human tampering with the body of Jesus impossible. Number two, we have the evidence of Jesus' enemies who could have stopped Christianity dead in its tracks by simply producing the dead body of Jesus, but they didn't because they couldn't. Number three, we have the evidence of the eyewitnesses, hundreds of whom saw the risen Christ with their very own eyes.
And finally, we have the evidence of their martyrdom, the fact that these very same men and women died rather than recant their testimony about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now, can I prove to you in a test tube that the resurrection of Jesus Christ happened? No, I can't. But can I give you such a strong preponderance of evidence that even Judge Judy would be convinced?
Yes, I can. As a matter of fact, I just did. Now, that's as far as we want to go in our discussion of did the resurrection happen because now we want to talk about, well, what difference does that make to us? And we do this here at McLean Bible Church by shouting a little phrase. And since some of you may be visiting and I want you to participate, let's show them, Cheryl, what our little phrase is, shall we? All right, there it is on the screen. So what? So are we ready?
This is Easter Sunday now. Are we ready? All right, here we go. And I want to hear all of you folks on the internet campus and all you folks at Louden and everybody in the edge and the community. Here we go.
Ready, one, two, three. So what? Oh, that was good. You say, all right, Lon, so what? Say, the resurrection. Okay, so it's true. So what difference does that make to my life here today in the 21st century? Well, we're going to talk about that because, friends, if the resurrection really did happen, the implications of that for your life and my life are enormous.
They're huge. Listen, if the resurrection is true, it means that Jesus really is Jehovah God in the flesh exactly the way he claimed to be. If the resurrection is true, it means that there really is an afterlife and that heaven and hell really do exist exactly like Jesus said they do. And if the resurrection is true, then, finally, it means that the plan of salvation that Jesus offers us that enables us to escape hell and get into heaven, that it is really the one and only plan that works exactly the way Jesus declared it to be. And I want to talk to you about the plan of salvation that the Lord Jesus Christ offers to us in the little bit of time I have left. And let me begin by saying that we need to understand that every other plan of salvation offered to us by every other so-called savior, whether it's Buddha or Confucius or Muhammad or Rabbi Schneerson or Joseph Smith or L. Ron Hubbard or any, you know, secular philosopher, it doesn't matter.
We need to understand that all of these plans are based on human effort and human works and human performance of one kind or another. Now, the problem is that God says in the Bible that all such human performance systems are worthless when it comes to getting into heaven and being righteous in his sight and getting eternal life. Listen to Romans chapter 3, verse 20.
It says, no one, may I repeat that? No one will be declared righteous in God's sight by observing the law, by works of human performance, good works, religious activity, trying to keep the Ten Commandments, all other forms of human effort. The Bible says anybody who tries to approach God like this, I don't care how sincere you may be.
I don't care how hard you may be trying. The Bible says God's answer to this kind of a system will always be no. But you see, the plan of salvation that the Lord Jesus Christ offers you and me is completely different. And let me tell you the three ways that the plan of salvation that Jesus offers is different from every other plan that every other ism and every other ology might offer us. Number one, it's different because Jesus' plan of salvation is not based on our own redeeming works that we do for ourselves, but it's based on Jesus' redeeming work that was done for us.
Dying on the cross to pay for our sins, shedding his blood to ransom us back to God, and rising from the dead to seal the deal. This is why Titus chapter 3 says, not by works of righteousness that we have done, but by his own mercy God saved us. And it's why the great old hymn says this. It says, I come on the merits of Jesus who for sinners bled and died. The pearly gates will open and they'll welcome me inside. You see, my friends, if you come to the pearly gates or I come to the pearly gates on our own merits based on our own righteousness that we've tried to earn, the pearly gates aren't opening at all. That's what the Bible says.
They are saying slam shut. But when we come on the merits of Jesus and not our own merits, when we come on the basis of his redeeming work for us on the cross and not on the basis of our own redeeming works for ourselves, what does the hymn say? And what does the Bible say? The pearly gates will open and they'll welcome us inside because Jesus' plan of salvation is founded in Jesus' redeeming work for us, not our own works of human righteousness. The second way in which Jesus' plan of salvation is different from every other plan is number two, Jesus' plan of salvation. Number two is activated, is activated not by human performance, but it's activated by faith in Jesus Christ.
Let's go back. Romans 3.20, we read it a moment ago. No one, the Bible says, will be declared righteous in God's sight by observing the law, by human performance. Watch now, next verse, but now.
You say, but now what? But now that Jesus has died on the cross and risen from the dead, but now God offers us a way to be declared righteous in his sight apart from our own human works. And how do we activate this offer from God? Well, the next verse says, this righteous position before God comes through faith in Jesus Christ to everyone who believes. Friends, the Bible says that when we believe in Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior, when we rely on, when we lean on, when we rest in the finished work of Christ on the cross for us as our only hope of salvation, our only hope of eternal life, the Bible says God declares us righteous in his sight. Now, are we really righteous in the sight of God? I mean, the day before you give your life to Christ, are you a sinner? And the day after you give your life to Christ, suddenly you're sinlessly perfect and you're completely righteous? Of course not.
Of course not. We're still the very same sinners through and through that we were the day before. It's just that in his mercy, because of Jesus' work on the cross for us, God agrees to see us as righteous in his sight, in his judicial sight for all of eternity. And because of this new standing that we have with God through Jesus Christ, that we are now righteous in his judicial sight, well, now, God is free to grant us eternal life. Now, God is free to invite us into heaven.
God is free now to adopt us as his children. Friends, this is the greatest transaction ever carried out in the history of the human race. And this transaction takes place every single time a person embraces the work of Jesus on the cross for them as their only hope of eternal life, heaven, and salvation. Amazing.
Amazing transaction. Finally, Jesus' plan of salvation is different because, number three, it is exclusive. This is what Jesus said.
It's the one and only way. John, chapter 14, verse 6, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Here comes the key word, no one. No one comes to the Father. No one gets eternal life. No one gets into heaven except through me. This is Acts, chapter 4, verse 12, which says salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven. Not Buddha, not Confucius, not Mohammed, not Rabbi Schneerson, not L. Ron Hubbard. There is no other name under heaven given to men by which we can be saved. You say, all right, all right, all right, Lon, stop.
Take a breath. Listen, you know, I don't see how you can say this. I mean, in our world, in our pluralistic world today, in our diversity-driven world today, in our world where there's tolerance for every religion is the highest value and every religion says they're all taking us to the very same place, how in the world can you justify a narrow position like this that Jesus Christ is the only way?
Well, it's very simple, my friends. Buddha's tomb isn't empty. Confucius' tomb isn't empty. Mohammed's tomb isn't empty. Rabbi Schneerson, Joseph Smith, L. Ron Hubbard, their tombs are not empty, but the tomb of Jesus Christ is empty. Hallelujah.
And you know what we love to say around here? We love to say, follow a dead savior and you'll end up just like him. But the great news of the Bible is we don't have a dead savior. We have a living savior. The great news of the Bible is we have a risen savior. And listen to what our living risen savior said. He said, John 14, 19, because I live forever, you who follow me will live forever also. He said, our risen living savior, John 11, 26, the person who believes in me shall live even after they die here on earth because I am alive forever and I'm running eternity and I'm going to see to it, Jesus said.
And yet that means that the converse is just as true of what we just said, follow a living savior and you'll end up just like him. You know, a couple of years ago, I was on an airplane flight coming back from San Francisco and things really got turbulent. I don't know what we hit.
I don't know if we hit wind ch... I don't know what happened, but I mean, it was quite a ride. And I remember that the flight attendant came on the PA system and she said, please, please, she said, put your seat belts on and tighten them really tight. And she said, and if you have a lap infant, she said, hold on to that lap infant really tightly. And I thought, well, what else would you do with it?
Place it completely under the seat in front of you? I mean, of course you hold on to your lap infant. Anyway, I'm telling you, this ride really got sketchy. I mean, we had people screaming out loud.
I'm talking out loud, just blood curdling screams. And where I was sitting, I could see two of the flight attendants sitting down facing backwards and I could see the fear on their face. I could see the look in their eyes. I mean, we were going every which way on this plane. Well, we obviously made it. I mean, I'm here. We made it. But listen, when I got back, I was telling a friend of mine about this and he said to me, man, he said, I'll bet you, you were really holding on to those armrests for dear life.
Friends, look here. It was not the armrests that I was holding on to for dear life on that airplane. I was holding on to the living, risen, resurrected Christ on that airplane.
You can clap. And look, because I know that his tomb is still empty to this day, I have to tell you, I was as relaxed as could be. I mean, I figured, hey, you know what? If the plane lands, then I'm going to go on having the same meaning and the same purpose and, you know, and the same hope in life that God's given me for the last 38 years as a follower of Christ. And if the plane crashes, then I have the promise of the living, risen Messiah that because I live, he said, Lon, you're going to live too. Don't worry about it.
I got this under control. Now, I admit, there were a couple times on that ride where I said secretly on the inside, Lord Jesus, get ready to catch me because here I come. But let me tell you something. The good news is I was saying it not to a dead person in a tomb. I was saying it to a living, risen, resurrected Savior. And had it come down to that, he would have caught me.
So the way I looked at it is land the plane, crash the plane, either way, I was fine. You say, you know what, Lon? You must be crazy. Friends, I am not crazy. No, no. It's just that I understand what it means to have a Savior whose tomb is empty.
Yes, you understand that? When you got a Savior whose tomb is empty, it changes the way you see life. It changes the way you live life.
It changes the way you see death and the way you face death. Everything is different when you got an empty tomb and your Savior is alive, is alive. Now this is the confidence that the Lord Jesus Christ wants to give every one of you here today. Friends, he wants every one of us to have been able to be on that airplane and to have been just as calm and just as relaxed as I was able to be because you know that your life is safe and you know that your eternity is safe in the hands of a risen Savior. This is the inheritance of every follower of Jesus Christ, that we can face life unafraid and we can face death unafraid. This is our possession as a follower of Jesus Christ.
And you know what, if you don't have that, that's why the Lord Jesus Christ went to the cross for you, my friends, and that's why He rose from the dead for you, my friends, so that you could have that same confidence to face life and to face death. And that's what I'm going to offer you today on behalf of the Lord Jesus right here where you're sitting. So let's bow our heads together, shall we? Let's close our eyes. And with our heads bowed and our eyes closed and nobody looking around, here's what we're going to do.
If you'd like to trade in today every other system of salvation you've ever trusted, if you would like today to trade in your own human works of righteousness to get you into heaven, a system that God says is bankrupt, and if you instead would like to embrace Jesus Christ and what He did on the cross for you and me as your hope of salvation, the response of which will be that God will declare you righteous in His sight today, that transaction we talked about will take place for you today, then here's what we're going to do. I'm going to pray a short prayer out loud. I want you to pray silently right behind me. And let's tell God that and let's get it done.
So here we go. You pray silently. I'm going to pray out loud. Jesus, I come to you today because I want to be able to face life unafraid and death unafraid. I want to know that I have eternal life. I want to know that I'm going to heaven when I die.
And I want a life here on earth that's worth getting up for in the morning. And so today I give up every other plan of salvation I've ever trusted. Today I give up trying to earn my way into heaven with my own acts of righteousness.
And instead today I embrace what Jesus did for me on the cross, shedding His blood to pay for my sin. As my only hope of eternal life and heaven. Lord Jesus, come into my heart today. Become my personal Lord and Savior. Forgive my sins. Grant me eternal life and make me a new creature in Jesus Christ. Declare me righteous in Your sight as You promised You would.
I commit my heart and life to You today. In Jesus' name I pray. And Father, I want to pray for the folks who prayed that prayer, that You would confirm in their hearts, even as they sit here today, that the transaction we talked about, God pronouncing them righteous in His judicial sight, if they were serious, has taken place in the heavenly places. And they have passed, as John 5-24 says, from death into eternal life, never to go back. And for the rest of us here who have already done that, I pray, Lord, that You would remind us today that because the tomb is empty, there is always something right going on every day. We may have problems, we may have struggles, but as long as Jesus is alive and His promises to us are true and amen, then there is always a reason to have hope and resiliency every day in our life. This is the legacy of the empty tomb for us. And so, Lord, encourage our hearts this Easter season with Your resurrection.
And may it be the dominant feature of our life every day that brings hope and resiliency to our everyday existence. Thank You, Lord Jesus, for rising from the dead. We look forward to meeting You eyeball to eyeball one day because You have guaranteed it as our living risen Christ. Hey, we are so glad that you came today, so glad that you were part of celebrating the resurrection of Christ with us this Easter weekend. And I want to thank you so much for being here. We're going to dismiss you with the Hallelujah Chorus. You're free to go. You're free to stay and listen. Either way, I hope you have a wonderful Easter weekend. God bless you guys.
