Hope From the Word

Guest (Male): Eyewitness testimony to the resurrection of Jesus from the dead. That's now on Hope From the Word with Pastor Bill Luebkemann.

Bill Luebkemann: The resurrection is essential to the Gospel message. If Jesus didn't rise from the dead, then his death to pay for sin was meaningless. But the empty tomb is God's receipt, declaring that the debt of sin was paid in full. So the resurrection is essential, but is it true? I'm happy to report it is. You see, we have eyewitness testimony to establish the fact.

Guest (Male): In Luke Chapter 24, here's Pastor Bill Luebkemann on Hope From the Word.

Bill Luebkemann: We had wrapped up, as you recall, the disciples walking on the road to Emmaus, walking alongside of Jesus, not knowing who he was. He asked them, "Hey, what's going on, guys?" And they said, "Are you new to town? You don't know these things that have been going on here?" And they tell him what's been going on, and he enlightens them to the scriptures.

He points out to them how foolish they were and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken. Belief, we said, comes from the heart, not from the mind. We're going to get more into that in a few minutes, but they were slow in their heart to believe. Eventually, they broke bread together—he broke the bread, actually, with them there—and they realized it was Jesus.

Their eyes were opened. Supernaturally, they had been prevented from recognizing him, and now, supernaturally, their eyes were opened, and they realized who it was. They recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. At once, they scrambled back to Jerusalem, a seven-mile hike back up to Jerusalem to tell those gathered there that the Lord had appeared to them.

The two told what had happened on the way and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread. So we'll kind of pick up in verse 36 here. While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you." They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost—some translations say there "terrified."

He said to them, "Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I, myself. Touch me and see. A ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have." When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet, and while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, "Do you have anything here to eat?"

They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence. Yes, I know some translations say honeycomb. Why they can't decide what it was, I don't know, but it was food, and he ate it. And that's the important point here.

Jesus here appeared among them, it says in verse 36. While they were still talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you." Jesus himself. Whenever God repeats things, that always tells me he must want us to make sure we get that right. He could have just said, "Jesus stood among them and said this," but then somebody would say, "Well, was it really him? Was it his ghost? Was it his spirit? Was it a holographic projection?"

So when it says Jesus himself, that's kind of a way of rubbing it in here. It's said twice. He appeared among them. It doesn't say he knocked. It doesn't say he even came through the door. We know the door was locked. They were scared to death the Romans were going to come and take them away next. So he didn't knock, he didn't come through the door, the door wasn't even open. It gives us some kind of idea here of what a heavenly body must be like. We're going to see more on that in a little while here.

But right now, let's look at his greeting: "Peace be with you." This is a salvation message, I think, in just a few words, and it pretty much sums up what the whole Bible has to say—a message from God to us: "Peace be with you." God wants to give us peace—peace with God and the peace of God.

It's not the peace of man, which was brought about by some diplomat and is taken away by some other diplomat. Sometimes they try to bring about the peace of man by taking a piece of a man, shooting each other. It's not a peace that lasts for a few years or for a generation or two. As in the history of Israel, they had peace for a while, and then the king died and a new king came, or the prophet died or the judge died and a new one came, and then things weren't the same and they didn't have peace for a while. It went up and down, kind of like in a cycle.

It's not the peace we get when we have a full stomach. It's not the peace we get when we get a good report at the doctor. It's not the peace of a new job, a new house, or when we get married, a new bride or a new groom. They may all be good things, but they don't bring lasting peace. This is a peace that we can have with God.

And the connotation is that we didn't have it before. He wouldn't need to bring us peace if we already had it. You don't need to give somebody things they already have. When you get two of something—you have a bridal shower or wedding shower and you get married and you get three of the same thing—"Oh great, we need three crockpots. We can cook for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday at the same time." You know what'll happen if you do that? You'll blow the circuit breaker.

That happens in my house. I'm working in my office downstairs and my wife's doing something and I hear bang in the utility room downstairs as she turns on too many things and the juice goes off. The implication here is that we didn't have peace with God before because we were at war with him, because we're sinners separated from God, doing our own thing, going our own way on the path to hell, going in the wrong direction.

All are born and all fall short of the glory of God. All are born sinners, and we need God to give us that peace. And that's what he did on that cross. It's a peace that we can have with God because our sins were forgiven. We're no longer doomed to destruction, but instead, we're destined to live with him forever. And we can be at peace with God.

A lot of people today think they're at peace with God, but they're really not, and they don't know it because they're blinded by the world or the flesh or the devil. A lot of people today think that God's a mean, old, nasty ogre and that they have to keep doing things to please him. We have to do this, this, and this right, and if we can just get it right, then he'll be happy. And if we can just arrive.

Like the fellow who was here last week talking about ministering to Hindus in Nepal said, they have like a million gods and they try to keep them all happy. The only hope they have is maybe they can come back to the earth and have a little bit better situation than they had the previous time. Keep doing it over and over and over again until they get it right. Well, that's pretty depressing.

But that's not what the Bible says. The Bible says God will give us a peace that lasts for all of eternity because it's a peace with God. And it's also the peace of God. He gives it to us. It's his, he gives it to us. We can have peace with him, through him, by him, and because of him, and it can affect every area of our lives.

He can give us peace when the bad news comes from the doctor and when they're wheeling you into the operating room. He can give us peace that we can feel like we're going to see the light at the end of the tunnel here. So many other so-called religions in the world are at war with their God, or they're just trying to keep him happy. Or I guess maybe a better way to say it is their God is at war with them, and they're trying to keep him happy by jumping around, doing the right things.

And God says here, "I want to have peace with you." And look, this is a common theme in the New Testament. It's all over the place. It's at the beginning of so many of Paul's writings: "Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." This is so important that Paul thought it necessary to put it at the front of just about every letter that he wrote: "Grace and peace to you." Not from him—we don't have any peace that we can give someone else—but from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. And that's where that peace comes from.

And what's the result of Jesus standing there and saying "Peace be with you"? They are terrified. Now this all happened kind of fast, so he stood there, and they were probably terrified even before he started talking. They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. Also, like we said, terrified and frightened.

Look, you would be terrified and frightened also if he appeared in the room. Say you buried your friend, your longtime friend who was your good friend for many years, and you went to the cemetery and you even went out to lunch with the family afterward, and a couple of days later your friend shows up at your house. What are you going to think?

Especially if the door's closed and locked, and you're sitting in there by yourself or with your friends. Maybe the first thing you think is you're dreaming. You better pinch yourself, see if you wake up. And if you're not dreaming, maybe you think, "Hey, I'm hallucinating. Did somebody put anything in my food?" Or maybe it's a vision. Maybe it's a ghost or a spirit or something. "I hope he didn't come back from the dead to tell me they're calling me."

It's just one of those times when you don't know what to think or what to do, and you're terrified and frightened. Maybe that's another reason why Jesus said, "Peace be with you." In the short term, you guys can relax. In the long term, God's peace is with us, allowing us to live forever. In the short term, you don't have to be terrified. You don't have to be frightened.

These guys know Jesus died. People today say, "Well, he didn't really die. He really was just on the cross for a few hours. He was kind of weak and everything, but they laid him in that tomb, and it was kind of cool in there, and he revived. He wasn't quite dead." Look, these guys knew that Jesus died. If they thought he was alive, they would have gotten him out of the tomb already. They didn't have any doubt that he was dead. And they were there. How can we say otherwise today?

We see some people today that think they know it all and they know more than the people who were there when it happened. So they figure this must be a ghost. Maybe some of them were thinking, "Well, he said he's coming back, but since nobody ever comes back from the dead, he must have meant he's coming back as a ghost or something."

And he observed their fear and terror here. "Why are you troubled?" he said. "And why do doubts rise in your mind?" Well, maybe it's because we never saw one come back from the dead before. So he asks these two questions here: "Why are you troubled? Weren't you expecting me? Didn't I tell you I was coming back again? Look, I only told it to you guys like 453 times in the last three years. What's the matter? And you've been my friends for a long while here. Don't you believe me?

"And if you did believe me, and I'm your friend, why do you look so scared? Have I ever harmed you before? Is there any reason for you to be scared in my presence?" He always kept his word, Jesus did, and he was always good for all of his promises. And he never sinned, and he was completely perfect in every way.

Look, most people believe that. I was with a friend of mine this week, and he has another friend who's a pastor in some large denomination which I won't mention. And his friend, who's born again, was in this large denomination, and they were interviewing candidates to be pastors, people who had graduated from some theology divinity school or something.

This woman came in. She was trained and was going to be a pastor in their denomination, and he asked her, "Well, what do you think the three biggest sins are in the world today?" And she said, "Sexism, racism, and some other 'ism'." So this guy said to her, "So sexism—is that a sin?" "Oh, yeah. That's a big sin in the world today." He said, "Well, Jesus had 12 apostles, and they were all men. Do you think Jesus was a sexist?"

"Well, I guess he was," she said. And this guy said to her, "Well, now you said sexism was a sin, right?" "Oh, yeah." "So what you're saying is Jesus was a sinner?" "Well, I guess you're right. I never looked at it that way before, but yes, I guess he was a sinner." And he led her down this path, just following logic. She was following the logic; she just began with the wrong assumptions.

He never sinned. He was completely perfect in every way. So why are they afraid? And perhaps even more troubling, why do they have doubts? Now, I think it's interesting here the NIV says "minds"; some other translations say "hearts." "Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your mind?" Some places, "Why do doubts rise in your heart?"

We saw back in verse 25, it's with the heart you believe. So if we're having trouble believing, that's got to be a problem in our heart, right? But I think it's interesting they mention mind here in the NIV because I wonder if maybe it's the mind that's working against the heart. The heart wants to believe; the mind doesn't want to. We believe in our heart, but our mind is saying, "Hey, not so fast on that."

Our mind is connected to our five senses by what Mike and I would call an internal wiring harness. And so all the parts are feeding information in there, and the mind is taking in whatever it sees, and it's processing it, and it's acting accordingly, like a computer, almost. Smarter than any computer any man has ever made.

And in this case, I think that their minds couldn't process all this information fast enough. They were seeing it. I don't know if there was anything to smell. The air was electric in the room. Their sixth sense was going off, maybe. And the program up here runs through all of its examples and all the things it's ever experienced before, and it says, "That doesn't compute. I don't have any prior experience like this. No one ever came back from the dead. Never heard about it happening. Don't know anything about that. There's just nothing that resembles this.

"We see him here. We know he died. So what's going on? What am I missing? What's this all about?" And I think their mind here is working one way, their heart—they want to believe—and their mind is saying, "I better turn on the fear subsystem here, the fear and trembling, because the input doesn't add up here." When you don't know what's happening, it's time to be concerned.

"Why are you troubled?" he said. "And why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I, myself. Touch me and see. A ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have." Some people say they didn't recognize him. He didn't look like himself. But that had to be the case because he said, "It is I, myself."

He didn't say his name. He didn't say, "Hey, it's me, Jesus. Don't you remember me? I was just with you a couple of days ago; we had dinner the other night." He said, "It is I, myself," so they obviously recognize him. And then he offers to show them the holes in his hands and the holes in his feet. He offers them the ability to touch him.

He says, "A ghost doesn't have flesh and bones." And this is very interesting because it doesn't say "flesh and blood." And you could do another whole study here on this. But First Corinthians 15:50 says flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. And way back in Genesis 9, the life is in the blood—the old life, the human life. And it would seem like the new body doesn't have blood, which is just fine for those of us that don't like to see the sight of blood.

It seems to be a different kind of life form. Blood's not needed anymore in that whole arrangement here. And there's just a bit of a clue here about this heavenly body, able to pass through walls and doors and maybe materialize in a certain place, maybe going through a different dimension even.

It's fun to think about that stuff. Physicists today say, in addition to the four dimensions we're aware of—length, width, height, and time—physicists today say there's a whole bunch of other dimensions. They can mathematically postulate their existence, but nobody knows about them. And in this dimension, to get to my house, you make a left here and a right and then another left and another left in this dimensions that we're familiar with. But maybe in some other dimension, there's a shortcut around the corner that we're unaware of.

And it's fun to think about that kind of stuff. I know when we get these heavenly bodies, it's going to be the 2.0 model. We're going to be able to do all kinds of neat things. There's going to be no more scraped knees or bloody noses or anything like that because there's not going to be any blood. Blood is the old way, and the blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God. His blood was shed, almost as if he didn't take it with him, and he has this new body now.

And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. So he offered out. "Check it out for yourself, guys. Here I am. I look the same. I'm not Jesus's twin brother that you never met before. Look, here are the holes. You can see through them." I saw—I think it was that little video we showed on Easter had a quick shot of the hand, and you could see through stuff on the other side. It kind of grossed me out a little bit.

I wouldn't want to be the one looking at all these holes—the hole in his side and whatever. But he says, "Check it out for yourself. It's me myself." And yet they still had a problem. While they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, "Do you have anything here to eat?"

So after all this, they're still confused. And we can make fun of these guys and say how silly they were and don't they get it and what's taking them so long and they should have read the book first. Didn't they ever see a movie about Easter? If they had known, they would have known about it. But they didn't know anything. They actually knew a lot; it just didn't come to their mind at this point.

And he asks for some food. And whatever the food is, whether it was fish or a honeycomb, look, he took it and ate in their presence. So this new body does have the ability to eat food. Look, I don't think he ate because he had to eat, because he was hungry. "Oh man, my Father wouldn't give me any food yesterday when I was in the ground. I need to get something today." I don't think so.

He was here, he was with them, and he wanted to show them he was real. And in addition to allowing to touch them, show them the hands and whatever, in addition to all that stuff, he said, "Look, let's have some food." Ghosts don't eat food. They just pass through—if you ever saw a cartoon, they can't pick anything up; it just falls right through them. They can walk through walls. I don't know why they don't fall through the floor into the basement, even. Of course, in cartoons, they always make it just the way they want it to be.

He said to them, "This is what I told you while I was still with you. Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms." Look, we won't spend a lot of time here because he said essentially the same thing to the guys as they walked along the road to Emmaus.

What's happening is what I told you would happen. It's being fulfilled according to the way I told you. And it's being fulfilled according to what's written in the Bible. When he says the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms, he's referring to the Jewish Old Testament, which is the same as our Old Testament—what we call the Old Testament. You wouldn't want to tell them it's the Old Testament because "old" implies "new." They haven't caught on to the new idea yet. But he's referring to the Jewish scriptures here.

Everything had to be fulfilled that was written about me. And all these things that I've been telling you for the last three years all had to happen, and they all had to happen this way. It wasn't that I just felt like doing them that way; it was because this was God's plan from the beginning of time—that it would happen this way. And God planned it that way, and it had to be done that way. And the whole Old Testament was written about the coming of these events, and they had to unfold the way it said they were going to unfold.

Then he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures. Boy, you could do another whole study just on this one verse. Spiritual things are spiritually discerned by the power of God through the Holy Spirit living in your life. That's how you can understand what's in this book—by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Guest (Male): That was Pastor Bill Luebkemann on the need for the Holy Spirit's help to understand God's word. And in just a few moments, Pastor Bill returns with more Hope From the Word.

You have a few options if you'd like to hear this again. Either go to ccmarlton.org, where we archive our radio programs, or listen to us through the Hope FM app. Maybe you've been thinking about visiting Calvary Chapel of Marlton where Bill serves as pastor. Our service time is on Sunday mornings at 10:00, and we also meet in the middle of the week on Wednesdays at 7:00 PM.

You can also livestream from home or wherever you may be when you visit our YouTube channel at Calvary Chapel of Marlton. For more information, go to ccmarlton.org, and we hope to see you soon. Before the day is done, we'd like to connect with you. Share a praise report, prayer request, or what you're getting out of this present series. Email is easy to do at our website, ccmarlton.org, or just call us at 856-983-1662.

Here's Pastor Bill once again on how to ask Jesus into your life.

Bill Luebkemann: If you don't know him, you've never asked Jesus into your life, you're wondering how to go about that. Well, we saw earlier, belief comes from your heart. It's with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.

There are only two things you need to know to get into heaven. You need to believe in your heart, and you need to say so with your mouth. That's it. You don't need to join a church, take a class, go through any kind of procedure or process. Nobody can deny this to you, and nobody can tell you any other way to get there.

And you don't need to go through any intermediary. You don't need my permission. You don't need the permission of any pastor, reverend, rabbi, priest, or anybody else. You need to go to the Lord and say, "Lord, forgive my sins. Come into my life. I believe in you, and I want you to be my Lord and my Savior."

Guest (Male): This is Hope From the Word. Thanks for listening and join us tomorrow as we wrap up our Easter series with Pastor Bill Luebkemann.