Calvary Chapel Staten Island

Max Lucado: In times like these, we all need a word of encouragement. From pastor and bestselling author Max Lucado comes The Max Lucado Encouraging Word Podcast. With over 40 years of ministry and more than 145 million books sold in 50 languages, Max shares the greatest story ever told: the living savior who brings hope for a lifetime.

Through rich biblical insight and heartfelt storytelling, you'll be reminded that God is always near, always for you, and always in you. Listen to The Max Lucado Encouraging Word Podcast where hope meets your day. Subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts.

Guest (Female): Hello and welcome to God in Our City, the daily edition. Your host and Bible teacher is Pastor Dave Watson. Pastor Dave has been the pastor of Calvary Chapel on Staten Island for 35 years. In addition, he is the co-founder and president of the New York Institute for Biblical Studies.

To receive a special downloadable gift from Pastor Dave, please go to calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. That's calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. Now here's Pastor Dave and our show.

Pastor Dave Watson: Hello everybody. Welcome to today's broadcast podcast. We're so grateful that you're with us. We've had an incredible week here in what is customarily called Holy Week or Passion Week. We've been talking all week about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, how important that is to all of us, and the difference it makes in our lives.

We've used an interesting term. We've said, "What do you find in an empty tomb?" Then we've gone on to do our best to describe all the blessings that we find because of the empty tomb of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. It's Good Friday, the end of the week. If you don't have a place to go tonight, it's a little late, but please you can join us at Calvary Chapel at 7:30 for our Good Friday service. It's entitled "The Day He Wore My Crown."

Then the next day, Saturday, tomorrow at noon, our kids have their annual Easter egg hunt. It's our 27th annual Easter egg hunt at the location that we are at on 30 Maple Parkway. Please come on down. We'd love to have you participate with your kids. We preach the gospel unashamedly to them through the Easter egg hunt.

Then on Sunday, Easter Sunday, we have an 8:30 and 11:15 service, 10:00 time for music and other kinds of celebration regarding Easter, 1:15 Spanish Bible study. You're invited to any and all of it. It will be a blessing to you. I am absolutely positively sure. Well, if you've not yet done it, please go and get your resources for what we're walking through here. We want you to have them. They'll be a blessing to you.

It's the study guide to our lessons and it just helps you to follow along. Our review a little bit of it today, but it's there for you and it's there for free. Just download it. You'll see our Proverbs stuff is still up, and we'll be getting back to Proverbs, God willing, next week, talking in our ninth week regarding some important truths, some important topics in Proverbs. All of that's there. You can still order whatever you want. Most of it's free. This study guide is free. Just please let us know you want it, download it. It'll be the last day that it is available to you.

We have been looking at passages of scripture having to do with the resurrection of Jesus. We've looked at the Gospels, and today we're going to read 1 Corinthians 15. We're going to do verses 1 through 9. They're just so powerful when it comes to the resurrection. I could have gone Acts as well, but I decided to get the Apostle Paul in here.

So here is 1 Corinthians chapter 15 for our study today. We're going to be looking at really the "so what's it to me?" regarding what do we find in an empty tomb. These words reinforce the resurrection. It says, "Now I remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you're 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 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 Scripture, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles."

"Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God." Shall we pray together now? Thank you, Lord, for your word. Please help us, Lord, in every way, shape, and form to embrace it, to want to live it out every day. Help us, Lord, to live in the reality of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

We are not alone. You are helping us. You are in the midst with us. You, Lord, are not allowing us to falter. You are everything to us. Thank you, Jesus, that you are alive. Thank you, Jesus, that you change lives even today. Thank you, Lord, that you can change our life. Lord, we need to be changed, and we need to take this message of salvation to the world around us.

Lord, help us to do that. Help us to learn and grow today, and then help us to apply all the truths that we're learning to our lives in the coming days. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen. I can remember right before I came to faith in Christ. I used to be annoyed at people who called themselves Christians because some in the Catholic world around me celebrated something called Good Friday.

I said to them out loud, "How is it a Good Friday? You crucify somebody and you call it Good Friday." Well, it wasn't until much later I learned that it really is Holy Friday. The word "good" in the language of its day meant pious or something that was holy. So it wasn't like, "Oh good, they crucified him," but his death was a pious thing.

His death was a holy thing. So I just share that with you so that you have that in your mind, in your thoughts as we celebrate that day today, considered the most sacred day of all of Christians. By way of review, I just want us to note what we've gotten through so far. We've talked about what you find in an empty tomb.

Well, what you find in an empty tomb is faith. We find a place to place our faith because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It tells us in 1 Peter 20 and 21 that it's by his resurrection that we believe. So it is because of the resurrection we believe and therefore what we find in that tomb is faith. In fact, 1 Peter 3:15 and 16 will tell us to be able to give an answer for the reason for the hope that's in us.

So we should be able to give a reason for our belief, and the reason for our belief is the resurrection. We should understand why we believe the resurrection is indeed the resurrection and not something else. That's another sermon. That's another lesson. The same thing we find is hope. We learn from 1 Peter chapter 1 verse 3 that God is to be blessed because he's begotten us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

If Jesus didn't rise, we would have a dead hope, and a dead hope is no hope at all. But we have a living hope because Christ has been raised from the dead. So we find faith, we find hope, we find peace because Jesus, according to Romans 4:25, was raised again for our justification. Justification means to be declared righteous. Jesus was raised to declare us righteous.

We have two problems: one, we're too bad to get into heaven; number two, we're not good enough to get into heaven. Jesus dies for our sin, taking care of the bad, but he also declares us righteous, judicially right in God's sight by giving to us his righteousness. That's why it says in Romans 5:1, "Therefore having been justified," made righteous, declared righteous, "by faith, we have peace with God."

So through the resurrection, we have faith, we have hope, we have peace, and then we have change because just as Christ died and was buried, Romans 6:4 and 5 says, it tells us just because of his resurrection, we should walk in newness of life. We should be different people, not because of our physical baptism, but because of our spiritual baptism, our association with Jesus.

What he went through, we went through. He died, we died. He was buried, we were buried. He rose, we rose with him. Made like him, like him we rise. And then we're victorious. God has set Jesus high above all principalities and powers, not only in this age but the age to come. And we, because we are risen with him, are victorious with him. We are victors in this world, not victims.

"Greater is he that is in us than he that's in the world," and "This is the victory," 1 John 5:4 says, "that overcomes the world, even our faith." And then we have a friendship. We have a friendship with Jesus. Paul said that Jesus isn't dead, he's alive. "I met him on the road to Damascus, and I've never been the same." I hope you can say that you've met Christ and you've never been the same.

Right now, he's your friend. Maybe he's your best friend. For some of us, he might be our only friend, but he wants to be our friend. He wants us to have him walk through life with us. He's alive, and he's making intercession for us even as I speak. Finally, not only faith, hope, peace, change, victory, friendship, we also have mission.

We have mission. We've been told, "As the Father has sent me, so send I you." We've been told that we will receive power through the Holy Spirit coming to indwell us and we will be witnesses unto Christ in Jerusalem, Judea, unto the uttermost parts of the earth. What do you find in an empty tomb? Everything you need to live your Christian life, everything you need to be a successful Christian.

How does that play out every single day? We ask a question in our church at the end of every sermon: "So what's it to me?" I full credit I got that from a man named Lon Solomon who used to preach in Northern Virginia, McLean Bible Church. He would be on the radio once a week and it would be "The Big So What? So what?" So I took a little bit of a piece of that and said, "So what's it to me?"

Well, first of all, I want us to know that through the empty tomb, my doubt can be replaced by faith. My doubt can be replaced by faith. Have you ever doubted Christianity, whether it's real? Have you ever doubted whether it is the only way? Have you ever thought, "Well, maybe someone else is right"? I can remember going to a funeral of a prominent person on Staten Island.

And someone who was a prominent politician came up to me while I was at that funeral in line to pay my respects, and they said, "Dave, we're right, aren't we? We're right, aren't we?" The woman who was being celebrated at the funeral was a Christian with a tremendous testimony, but the politician said, "We're right, Dave, right? We're right." And I assured them we're right.

But we're right because of the resurrection. We're not right because we're smarter than other people. We're right because Jesus has indeed risen. So my doubt can be replaced by faith. I can be fully assured that what I believe is true. But you're not the only one who has doubts. You're not the only one who has struggles in this regard. Remember Thomas? Do you remember Thomas?

Thomas tended to doubt a lot of things. In John 14, Jesus talks to them about not letting their hearts be troubled. Says, "You believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. If I go to prepare a place for you, I'll come again to receive you unto myself that where I am, there you may be also."

Thomas then says, "We don't know where you're going. How can we know the way?" Jesus then says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father but through me." And in John 20, Jesus appears to the disciples Sunday evening in the upper room, and it is without Thomas. And when they tell Thomas they've seen the Lord, he goes, "Unless I can put my hands in the nail prints in his hands, my finger in the nail prints in his hands, unless I can thrust my hand in his side, I won't believe."

Seven days later, the following Sunday, Jesus shows up in a locked room, and the first person he talks to is Thomas. And he said, "Bring your fingers here and put them in my hands where the nails went. Thrust your hand in my side and don't be faithless but believing." Thomas needed proof. He needed evidence, and Jesus gave it to him.

The most attested fact in history is the resurrection of Christ. It has so many eyewitnesses. And perhaps the greatest witness to it is that all of the disciples, save John the Beloved, who wrote the book of Revelation and the Gospel of John and the epistles of John, who probably died in exile on the Isle of Patmos, all of them and so many more died martyrs' deaths for what they believed.

You say people die for stuff that's wrong all the time. Men will die for something they believe to be true. Men will not die for a lie. They will not die for a lie. The resurrection is one of the most attested truths in history. Through the empty tomb, my despair can be replaced by hope. My despair can be replaced by hope. At the empty tomb, Mary Magdalene is broken up.

She thinks she has run into the gardener and she says, "Tell us where you've laid him. Tell us where you've taken him." She's beside herself. But then Jesus speaks to her and says, "Mary," and she recognizes his voice, and because she's met the risen Christ, her despair is replaced by hope. Listen, you and I are going to lose people we love.

We're going to stand at graveyards, at cemeteries, and we're going to be at wakes, and we're going to be beside ourselves with loss. But we sorrow not as others who have no hope. Why? Because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is also true that the empty tomb can turn my anger, my enmity to peace. We no longer need to be at war with God.

We no longer have to be at war with others. We can have peace: peace with God, peace with others, and the peace of God as we live our life. Don't believe me? Just ask the Apostle Paul. The Apostle Paul was an angry man. He was upset at Christians, at people who had left Judaism to follow Jesus. And he has letters to destroy them, to throw them into prison in Damascus.

And on that road to Damascus, he is struck down. He meets the risen Jesus, and he's a different person. The enmity is turned into energy for the Lord. His anger, his hatefulness is different. Such that people said, "The man who once persecuted is now part of the team preaching him." And he had that peace with God. And he writes about it in Romans chapter 5 and verse 1.

So through the empty tomb, we can have peace with God. Our enmity can be replaced by peace. Through the empty tomb, our status quo can be replaced by change. Just ask the Apostle John. John and his brother were known as the sons of thunder. They could clear out a bar quicker than you could count to three. They were the sons of thunder.

They were guys who maybe were a little hot-tempered. They also were ambitious. They actually ran or put Mama up to ask for the right and the left hand of the Lord when he came into his kingdom. But they were radically changed. John, his brother first of all was radically changed because his life was taken. But John was radically changed.

And this guy who wanted preeminence, this guy who was called the sons of thunder was called the disciple Jesus loved and the beloved disciple. Jesus changed him. Beyond that, through the empty tomb, my defeat can be replaced by victory. Just ask Peter. How did it go with Peter in his own strength, his own abilities? He said, "I will never betray you," the first of many statements he made.

When Peter didn't know what to say, he said something. That was the crazy thing. And how many times did he go back on his word with Jesus? Three times. The third when the rooster crowed, he wept bitterly. But this Peter was changed. Jesus said in Mark 16, "Go tell my disciples and Peter." 1 Corinthians 15 indicates that Peter is one of the first people who met Jesus after the resurrection.

And Peter preached one of the greatest sermons ever at Pentecost. This defeated man preached his heart out about Christ, and 3,000 were saved. Through the empty tomb, my loneliness can be replaced by friendship. Just ask the disciples on the road to Emmaus. They were distraught. They had lost the savior. They had lost him.

We're not totally sure, other than Cleopas, who these disciples actually were. We don't know where they fit into everything. But they were distraught and discouraged and were by themselves, and Jesus meets them. And they say later, "Did not our hearts burn when he taught us the scriptures?" And then through the empty tomb, my aimlessness can be replaced by mission.

Just ask all the apostles. Jesus gave them a mission, and he gave them a mission so powerful that they all, with maybe the exception of John who died in exile on the Isle of Patmos, they all died for their faith and they took the gospel to the world. And through the empty tomb, finally, my death is replaced by eternal life. Jesus said to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life," regarding her brother Lazarus.

"He who believes in me, though he may die, he shall live. He shall live." Because of the resurrection of Christ, we can be assured of heaven. We can be assured of heaven. We've had a great week talking about what you find in an empty tomb. I hope it has touched your heart. I hope you'll go to calvarychapelsi.org/gioc, take advantage of our free resources.

Hope you'll consider making a gift to God in Our City. We'll be back in Proverbs next week. Please join us again. Please have an amazing Easter celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ the Lord. God bless you. Thank you for joining us.

Guest (Female): Thanks for listening to God in Our City with host Pastor Dave Watson. We hope the show was a blessing to you. Again, to receive a downloadable gift from Pastor Dave, go to calvarychapelsi.org/gioc. That's calvarychapelsi.org/gioc.

Please check out Pastor Dave's blog at nycshepherd.com. That's nycshepherd.com. Please invite a friend and join us every weekday for another edition of God in Our City.

Max Lucado: In times like these, we all need a word of encouragement. From pastor and bestselling author Max Lucado comes The Max Lucado Encouraging Word Podcast. With over 40 years of ministry and more than 145 million books sold in 50 languages, Max shares the greatest story ever told: the living savior who brings hope for a lifetime.

Through rich biblical insight and heartfelt storytelling, you'll be reminded that God is always near, always for you, and always in you. Listen to The Max Lucado Encouraging Word Podcast where hope meets your day. Subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts.