Telling the Truth for Women

Jill Briscoe: Now I'd like you to turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 15. This might seem a real strange place to start a talk on the resurrection. You might have thought, well, Jill will turn to the Gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. All of the Gospels have information, lots of information about the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And it might seem strange to you that we start in 1 Corinthians 15, but there are some fascinating facts about the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15.

Guest (Male): What I received I passed on to you as of first importance: Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, he was buried, he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. He appeared to Peter, then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.

Jill Briscoe: He meant that he was born out of due time. He was the last born, or born in an untimely manner, but Jesus Christ appeared to him as well. So here in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, in the whole chapter which is to do with the resurrection, Paul begins talking about a list of people who have seen the Lord Jesus alive.

Now then, we have been thinking about the heartbeat of Jesus and specifically pulling some verses out or some comments that Jesus himself made that might help us to understand a little bit about what made him tick and the motivation for his whole life and ministry. And the heartbeat of Jesus obviously that we're going to be thinking about today is the heartbeat of his exodus from this earth and his return in a sense that he might be with us always. "Lo, I am with you always." He could not have said that, he could not have promised that to us if it was not for the resurrection, obviously. He came, he was about his Father's business, which was to procure for us our salvation. And without the resurrection, that would be absolutely a non-event. We would not be going to heaven if Jesus Christ had not risen from the dead.

Years ago, a man called Frank Morrison decided to disprove the resurrection. He was obviously not a believer. He set out to write a book about it, and he began to collect the historical facts of the resurrection from the Gospels and from extra material that people of the time had written, historians had written. And he wanted to make this book absolute disputing the resurrection and helping Christians to realize that we'd all been duped, that it was all a hoax.

However, as he began his research, honestly, as a good historian would, and sifted the evidence firsthand, he had an incredible revolution in his thinking. And he became overwhelmed with the evidence for the resurrection. So instead of writing a book against it, he was totally and thoroughly converted to Jesus Christ and wrote a book for it. That book was called Who Moved the Stone? It has been a bestseller in Europe, I'm sure it's here as well, for over 50 years. And it's a very interesting book. I read it when I was first converted because it attacks the thing from a historical point of view.

We have a friend who is our lawyer back in England, our lawyer friend, his name is Val Grieves. He is a very prominent lawyer and a very prominent evangelical. However, when he was a brilliant young student at Oxford University, he was that brilliant that he won the chess championship. And you have to be pretty bright to play chess, but he won it at Oxford. He was a bright, bright guy. He was an agnostic, actually he was an atheist. He began the same search to examine the facts as a lawyer would in a court of law for the resurrection. And through that and other things, Val Grieves was thoroughly converted. He too wrote a book. As a historian, as a lawyer, as people that really look at the facts of the resurrection, we have a case. We have a case that we can go out into the world and say, "Listen, this would stand up in a court of law."

Val said there's absolutely no question in his mind that if this case for the resurrection had been tried in a British court of law in the highest place, the Supreme Court, the evidence would lend itself totally to convincing a jury that Jesus Christ was alive and risen from the dead.

Guest (Male): As evening approached, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who had himself become a disciple of Jesus. Going to Pilate, he asked for Jesus' body. Pilate ordered that it be given him. So he took the body, wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, placed it in his own new tomb that he cut out of the rock. He rolled a big stone in front of the entrance to the tomb and went away. Mary Magdalene and the other Mary, that's the Mary, the mother of James and Joseph, James and John, were sitting there across from the tomb.

Jill Briscoe: So this man, Joseph of Arimathea, is an interesting man. All the other Gospels tell you different things about him. It's not all here in Matthew. He was a counselor of an honorable estate. That means he was a member of the Sanhedrin. He was looking for the kingdom of God. He was a good man, he was a righteous man who had not consented to the leader's counsel and deed. He and Nicodemus would be the two men in the highest court that did not consent to what was happening where the crucifixion of Jesus was concerned. Matthew tells us he was rich. He also, Matthew said, was Jesus' disciple. John adds, "but secretly for fear of the Jews." He was distinguished, he was earnest, and now after Jesus had been crucified, he did what he never did in Jesus' life. He flew in the face of his leaders, which was an extremely brave thing to do at that point, and he took as his ally Nicodemus. And they went to Pilate and they asked for the body of Jesus, which surprised Pilate, the Scriptures say, because he was dead already.

Remember, men could hang on a cross for days and not die, and so Pilate was very surprised. And so Pilate verifies the death certificate. He brings in the commander and he says, "Is this man really dead?" The commander says, "He is dead. I am telling you, this man is dead." Pilate, satisfied that the man is dead, having verified it with the commander who supervised the crucifixion, releases the body into the hands of Joseph of Arimathea. Nicodemus and he take the body. They take, or Nicodemus, another Gospel tells us, brought 75 pounds of spices. These spices were soft. They were mixed ready for a burial or a mummifying of the body. As they went into the cloth, they hardened so that the cloth became hard. But that took a period, it took probably two or three days before they began to gel. So at this point, Nicodemus quickly prepared some burial spices, 75 pounds, that's a lot of spices and oils. And he and Nicodemus wrapped the body of Jesus. Then Matthew tells us Joseph of Arimathea laid the body in his own tomb. He's the only one that tells us it was Joseph's tomb. Wherever man had not yet laid. In other words, it was a new tomb that it says Joseph had dug out of the rock. He had prepared his own burial site and burial tomb, and it was in a garden. And this is where Joseph of Arimathea laid Jesus.

When we put on the Easter play, I put this on the stage with Joseph and Nicodemus coming to the cross and having this little conversation. Nicodemus saying, "Well, I came to him by night, but I never really publicly acknowledged that I believed he was the Christ even though I am convinced." And Joseph of Arimathea saying, "I was a secret disciple too, secretly for fear of the Jews." And then I have Joseph sing that wonderful song: "His love endured the cross, despised all the shame. That afternoon when midnight fell, his suffering cleared my name. And this sin-swept field became the open door to paradise, for he paid too high a price. You paid much too high a price for me. Your tears, your blood, your pain. To have my soul so stirred at times, yet never truly changed. You deserve a fiery love that won't ignore your sacrifice, because you paid too high a price."

In his death, Nicodemus took his courage that he had never been able to corral while Jesus lived. And he did what he could and buried the man he really believed was the Messiah, the Messiah that his leaders, his people, the leaders of the Jews, had actually murdered. Now I want you to notice something at this point. Nobody but nobody is expecting a resurrection, okay? This is very important to present as part of the evidence. Ironically, the only persons that were expecting it, if anybody was, were the leaders who had killed him. They were the ones that set the guard at the tomb.

Guest (Male): The next day, the one after Preparation Day for the Sabbath, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. "Sir," they said, "we remember," they were the only ones that did. Isn't that strange? The angel had to remind the woman. Jesus had predicted it, as we'll see in a moment, but the only ones that remembered the predictions of the third day that Jesus would rise, and he told them over and over again, were the ones that had killed him. "We remember that while he was still alive, that deceiver said, 'After three days I will rise again.' So give the orders for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people he's been raised from the dead. And this last deception will be worse than the first." "Well, take a guard," Pilate answered, "go make the tomb as secure as you know how." So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard.

Jill Briscoe: You see, some of those leaders had been standing outside the tomb of Lazarus not too many days before. And they had seen a man dead three days by the power of the word of this man they had just crucified, come out of the tomb. Incidentally, when you go down into Lazarus' tomb in Bethany, which you can visit and it's a pretty authentic site, there are three stones, not one stone, that would be put across the burial tomb. You go down about three small stories into the earth. It's dug down into the earth. And the body would be laid there and a mini-stone put over it, and then two or three steps and another stone, and then two or three steps and the big stone. And when Jesus said, "Lazarus, come forth," he came forth like Jesus was about to come forth, even though the outside stone only had been rolled away. The power of Jesus.

Now some of the leaders had seen Lazarus raised from the dead. In fact, the Bible says that's why they had to get rid of him. Incredible. Having seen somebody perform a miracle like that, their hearts were so hardened that even though some must have begun to have a sneaky suspicion, could this possibly be the Christ? Who else could raise the dead? But now, you see, they're running scared. Could it not be possible that a man who'd had the power to raise the dead could somehow by this, they thought demonic power, come back to life again? So they wanted to make sure this didn't happen. And they also wanted to make sure that the disciples didn't steal the body.

So the only people that might have been thinking about resurrection were the leaders. Certainly not the people around Jesus. And one of the big things that people that are against proving the facts of the resurrection historically are always saying to us is, "Well, when they knew he'd been crucified, all his followers decided, 'Well, it's a good sort of philosophy of religion anyway. Let's perpetuate it. Let's pretend he's risen.' So let's go there and pretend we see him." And they concoct all these ideas. But nobody was thinking about resurrection. Jesus' family certainly weren't thinking about it. The women were getting ready for a funeral. They were not coming to the tomb to think, "Now, how can we pretend we've seen him?" They had in their hands burial oil. The men were not even there at that point. They were behind a locked door, quivering with fear, waiting to be carted off and crucified themselves. And so nobody was expecting anything to happen. And so the guards made it as sure as they could.

There had been three main occasions that Jesus had predicted his resurrection. After Peter's confession, he began to teach them the Son of Man must suffer many things, be rejected by the elders, the chief priest, and the scribes, be killed, and after three days rise again. Matthew 8. After the Transfiguration, as they came down the mountain, Jesus charged Peter, James, and John that had gone up there with him that they should tell no man what they'd seen until when the Son of Man should have risen from the dead. Mark 9. It says that the disciples at that point began to have a little discussion, just the three of them. "What do you think the rising from the dead means?" John said to James, and James said to Peter, "I don't know. Do you know what he's talking about?" And apparently, they had a discussion. It said they didn't understand what he was talking about.

The third time Jesus talked about rising from the dead was as they literally went up to Jerusalem, the ascent up to Jerusalem for all of these events to start and happen, the Calvary and the resurrection. He tells them again that he is going to be mistreated, be killed, and be crucified, and the third day rise again. This time it's met with total silence. Not one of the disciples, and he told them all at that point, could figure it out. They had not understood it then, they certainly were not thinking about it now.

But this interesting little "third day" keeps cropping up. Have you noticed? The third day, the third day, the third day. Have you ever wondered why and what was the importance? Why did Jesus rise on the third day? Well, some of this definitely had to do with the day of preparation and all of that. But basically, ancient thought believed that not until the third day could you really be sure somebody was dead. The Chinese believed that the spirit left the body and it was three days before preparation was even made in case the spirit came back into the body again. That was one of the ancient people's beliefs. The Parsis believed the consciousness of a man sits three nights outside the body before relinquishing it. Plato said we must give three days to distinguish between real and apparent death. And the Jews believed that the soul hovered above the grave until the third day, desiring to return to the body, but when it sees the appearance of the body change, rigor mortis set in, it leaves the body altogether.

And you see, Jesus, apart from other reasons of rising on the third day, wanted his people to be absolutely sure that he was dead. To be absolutely sure that he was dead. So Pilate verified it, he rose on the third day. There had been plenty of time for a man as mistreated as Jesus, treated like that, to be thoroughly dead. And yet you know there have been books written and even theologians have tried to prove that he wasn't really dead. The swoon theory became very, very prevalent. Just listen to this. This is from this German scholar named Paulus in 1828. He published a life of Christ in which he explained the resurrection of Jesus in terms of his non-death. He pointed out that crucifixion was usually a slow, protracted dying. Cases are on record of victims who were crucified, were taken down from the cross alive, and survived. He says Jesus died in an amazingly short time, which is suspicious. The loud cry he uttered shortly before his death shows his strength was far from exhausted. His death was only a death-like trance.

The thrust of the spear in Jesus' side was no more than a surface wound. However, Jesus appeared to have expired and so was taken down from the cross and laid in the tomb. The cool grave and the spices contributed to the process of resuscitation. And finally, the storm and the earthquake roused Jesus to full consciousness. The earthquake also had the effect of rolling the stone away from the entrance to the tomb. Jesus stripped off his grave clothes, put on a gardener's outfit he managed to procure somehow, and that was why Mary mistook him for the gardener. Isn't that amazing? I think that's more amazing than what happened. And yet this and other books began to come in and Christendom began to wonder, was he really, really dead?

Well, we believe that Jesus was really, really dead. Remember that they wrapped him in cloth and spices around his face. And I don't know how much a man who had perhaps even swooned could manage to breathe through 75 pounds of spices and linen cloth for very long at all, even if that had one little item of sense to it. So then the skeptics begin and say, "Well, okay, somebody stole the body." As indeed the guards were given money to spread that theory around and people still believe it today. Who had the body? Well, some say Mary Magdalene, she had the body. She was the first woman to go to the tomb, she was the first woman the Bible says to see Jesus.

Now if the story of the resurrection has been invented by the founders of Christianity to continue a philosophy of religion, why did they choose a woman to testify to it? Because a woman's testimony was not allowed in law. If this had been all a clever invention that is written down in our Scripture here, then they would have used a man to see Jesus' first resurrection appearance and not a woman. Because Mary Magdalene's testimony would have had absolutely no holding at all in that day and age. She comes to the tomb, the body is gone, she runs to tell Peter and John. She says they've taken away the body, where have they laid it? She thinks she's talking to the gardener, if you remember, and she says, "Sir, if you've carried him away, tell me where you've put him and I will get him." So people say, "There you are! She did meet the gardener. The gardener told her where the body was. She went and got the body and she kept it."

Well, I don't know what she did with it, I don't know how she carried it away, and why would she keep it anyway? It doesn't gel with what happened next. She hears her name. How would the gardener know her name if it was the gardener? Some people really think that everybody mistook the gardener for the risen Christ. That's another theory that people have suggested. There's a wonderful quote on the gardener theory by Tertullian, an early writer for the Christian faith. He said people don't have the same hallucination. You know, if you know anything about hallucinations, people can hallucinate, especially if they're crazed with grief. She could have believed she actually saw Jesus, the state she was in. But you don't all have the same hallucination. And remember what I read you from Paul's account, that in Galilee, probably in a big open place, above 500 people saw Jesus in one appearance. Did they all have the same hallucination at the same moment? Doctors tell us that's impossible. They might have all had different hallucinations, but they wouldn't have all seen the same thing.

And so, a hallucination means seeing something else and mistaking it for what you're looking for. But in the New Testament record of the resurrection appearances, you get the very opposite of that. Mary did not see the gardener near the tomb and think he was Jesus. She saw Jesus and thought he was the gardener. The two on the road to Emmaus did not see a stranger and think he was Jesus. They saw Jesus and thought he was a stranger. The apostles in the upper room did not see a ghost and think it was Jesus. They saw Jesus and thought he was a ghost. And so this theory of hallucination would certainly not stand up in a court of law.

So the women, they are the first witnesses. "We saw him, we touched him, we held him." In fact, the other women that came to the tomb were running away after seeing the angel, confused, not knowing what to think. Jesus met them and said, "Go and tell my disciples. They haven't believed Mary, maybe they'll believe you." It says they held him by the feet and worshipped him. Mary had already touched him, even though Jesus said, "Touch me not," after she touched him, "I'm not yet ascended to the Father." But he allowed the other women to hold his feet and to touch him. And so the women began to say, as Mary did, "I've seen the Lord. I've seen the Lord."

Well, say other people, maybe the disciples had the body. I mean, that's the story. Then if they had the body or the corpse with them in the upper room, hardly would they have died in the manner that they did, each one a martyr, knowing he was dead. You know, not too many people will go to martyrdom for a lie, a lie that they know to be a lie. And the behavior of the disciples from this little group of frightened men after the resurrection, after they'd been convinced that Jesus was indeed alive, led them to such totally different, brave behavior that witnesses in a court would certainly say something had to happen to those men to convince them that Jesus Christ was indeed alive. Well, maybe the leaders had it. Well, why didn't they produce it when all these rumors started getting around? All they had to do was produce a smoldering corpse with the marks of crucifixion all over it and the gaping wound in the side, and Christianity would have been dead.

No, everybody knew the body had disappeared. The big question for the human race is, by human action or divine action, who had the body? And yet the empty tomb itself is not proof of the resurrection. Then you begin to add the testimony of the appearances of Jesus. Christians affirm and believe that people saw him after he had risen. In fact, the Scripture says he showed himself alive for 40 days. We only have some of those accounts of his appearances to some of the people. But for 40 days before his ascension, he showed himself alive. It says with many infallible proofs.

Guest (Male): While these two men were still telling about their experience, still talking about this Jesus, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, "Peace be with you." They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. He said to them, "Why are you troubled? Why do doubts arise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It's I myself. Touch me and see. A ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see me have." Well, he said this and showed them his hands and his feet, but they still did not believe because of joy and amazement. So he asked them, "Do you have anything to eat here?" Can you imagine? I wonder who it was that picked off the fish off the table and gave it to this resurrected man. And can you see Jesus eating it in front of them? "See, I'm eating a piece of fish just like you're eating a piece of fish." They gave him a piece of broiled fish. He took it and ate it in their presence. And he said, "This is what I told you while I was still with you: everything must be fulfilled that's written in the Law and the Prophets and the Psalms." Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He said, "This is what was written: the Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day."

Jill Briscoe: And so here we have one of the most dramatic pieces of evidence. Again, the disciples are not willing to be convinced. Not willing to be convinced. But he was visible, they touched him, he showed them his wounds. Thomas wasn't with them on that occasion. Again, a week later he comes back. Thomas is there. He says to Thomas, who won't believe all the testimony of the others, "So you don't believe, Thomas? Feel my hand. So you don't believe, Thomas? Put your hand into this gaping hole in my side." Thomas doesn't do that. He falls at his feet and says, "My Lord and my God," and he believes. Seeing is believing. There are sightings, convincing men that needed to be convinced. Men that you wouldn't think needed to be convinced, sightings that convinced them that Jesus Christ is back from the dead.

And yet there's something strange. He isn't an apparition, he's not a ghost, and yet he's come into the room without bothering to open the door. He feeds the disciples on the shore of Galilee later. There are two lots of sightings, some in Judea and Jerusalem and the others in Galilee. He feeds them fish and nobody dares ask him, "Who art thou?" knowing it was the Lord. What a funny thing. They walk on the road to Emmaus and they don't recognize who they're walking with. He's not a ghost, but there's something about his body that's different. The body has definitely undergone a radical resurrection change. No question about it. The resurrection is not a standing up of corpses. A revival of dead bodies to spiritual life. Rather, the body is certainly recognizable, yet there are unrecognizable qualities about it. It chooses to appear or disappear at will. It chooses to manifest itself physically if it wishes. It's able to manifest itself spiritually in a physical way, somebody has said, or manifest itself within the realm of sense.

You see, it was the Master's desire to emphasize the unearthly yet heavenly character of the life that he had entered. Something had happened to the body of Jesus giving it new and marvelous powers, unusual faculties. Jesus proved his body in tangible, visible form, yet not the same composition as it had had for 30 years. In other words, it was the same but different. One of the most interesting appearances of Jesus was this one that I've just given you, the eleven apostles eating behind the locked doors, etc. They realize this was indeed their Lord and Savior. This was his wounded body, yet something was strange and different, made the disciples gasp at first in frightened incomprehension.

Well, what was this body? Was it the real Jesus? It could appear or disappear as I've said at will. But the superiority of this new condition, these new capabilities, did not belong to ordinary terrestrial life. They were shown or manifested to the disciples over and over and over again. Paul describes the resurrection body as a spiritual body, not a spiritual spirit, a spiritual body. And you'll have to read about that in 1 Corinthians 15. The whole chapter's about the resurrection body if you're interested in that. But here we see Jesus' resurrection body, which Paul says is the firstfruits. And that means the harvest, you and I, are coming. The harvest of souls and bodies is on the way. Jesus was the firstfruits. He was the first to rise from the dead. The harvest of saved souls is coming. That's what Paul teaches in 1 Corinthians chapter 15.

So this importance of the resurrection, this evidence begins to pile up. But why is it so important to believe in the resurrection? Paul tells us that in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. He says if Christ isn't risen, our preaching is useless, your faith is futile. What's the point of us being tortured and martyred? And what happens to the people that have died that we love, we'll never see them again? If Christ has not risen, then is our faith vain. It's awfully important to see the connection between our salvation and our assured hope in heaven and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

There was a very famous professor in England called Professor Joad. He was Professor of Philosophy at London University. He wasn't a Christian. He was asked once, "If you could meet any person of the past and ask one question, what question would you ask and who would you ask it of?" His answer was, "I would meet Jesus Christ and ask him the most important question in the whole world: did you or did you not rise from the dead?" It's a thinking man. If Jesus had convinced him he did, he would have become a Christian.

And so it's incredibly important that we believe. The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Ramsey, said, "The Gospel without the resurrection was not merely a Gospel without a final chapter, it was not a Gospel at all." Gospel meaning good news. There is no good news if we do not believe in the resurrection. For our hope is of another world, another world order, and a new body to live there. A body able to move around in that environment as this body has been perfect for this environment. It's a bit like a tulip. You know what the bulb looks like of a tulip. The bulb is buried and dies and the flower grows. That's a picture of what our resurrection body will be like. The bulb you know is a daffodil bulb. The flower you know is a daffodil. But look how different they are. And look how superior the flower is to the bulb. So the bulb dies and the flower grows. And our resurrection body will be just like that. The bulb is buried in the ground as it were, the body, the earthly body that we have. And God will put together a resurrection body for us. We will be recognizable to each other. They recognized him the same but different. But this body will have parts and abilities that we cannot possibly understand.

My friend Val Grieves, I told you about, wrote this little book. He has a chapter called direct evidence. Remember he's a top-class lawyer. He says this:

Guest (Male): One Easter Sunday morning, I was speaking at a family church service with just about every age present from 8 to 80. I began my talk by telling the congregation they were going to see something they'd probably never seen before. This certainly got their interest. Then much to the amazement of all, I took a daffodil out of a vase and ate it. When the congregation had recovered, along with myself, I asked the question, "Suppose after this service you saw a policeman and you told him that the preacher had just eaten a daffodil, would he believe you?" Immediately a boy put up his hand and said, "He would have to because there's lots of us here and we saw it for ourselves."

Jill Briscoe: Now the impact of the eyewitness is what the Bible is trying to give us as evidence. Here we have hundreds of people that say, "I saw him alive after he had been crucified." And so there are sightings. Jesus met them, Matthew 28. They saw him. "I have seen the Lord," said Mary.

So what is the application of all this? When the women walked towards the tomb, they had one question: who's going to move the stone? Who will move the stone? Who will move the stone? They worried, they worried, they worried. When they got there, the stone was rolled away. And you know, there isn't a bigger stone that we face as human beings than the stone that's in front of our grave that speaks of death. There isn't a bigger one. We might spend millions of dollars trying to put off the evil day and stay healthy and live longer, but in the end, every single one of us knows the only certainty in life is death. And so that great big stone is there, or should be, in all of our thinking. Who will move away the stone? It's moved, it's gone. And if you're a believer, when you get to the tomb, to your own tomb, you can hear the assurance of the Scriptures: Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. He is the firstfruits and we are the harvest. The stone has gone.

And I would like to say that if that's the biggest stone and it's rolled away for the Christian, then all the other little stones that we face are really nothing much in comparison. If he dealt with the big stone, God can deal with the little stones in our lives. At the Ascension in Matthew 28, after 40 days of showing himself, of showing the evidence that he was truly alive, he gathers the eleven disciples in Galilee. And some worshipped and some doubted. Of the eleven! And the word "doubted" means stood divided. They had still divided lives. They had still divided loves. They had still divided loyalty. And he said to them, "Well, you've got to go and make disciples of all nations. Baptize them in the name of Jesus Christ. Teach them to obey everything I've commanded you. Surely, I will be with you always even to the end of the age." But there were some out of the eleven. Some believed and some doubted. Some stood divided. Do you have a divided life? Do you have a divided love? Do you have a divided loyalty? It took Pentecost to deal with that. It took Pentecost to give them the power to go into all the world and tell people, "Why seek ye the living among the dead? He's risen."

And you need to realize that Christianity is the only religion in the world that has a living founder. Yes, he died, like all the other founders of the great religions of the world, but he came back to life again. And that's what makes Christianity totally, utterly unique. Because if he came back to life again, he's God. He's God. And if he's God, then he has made a way through his cross and resurrection for us to spend eternity with him. Let's pray together.

Dear Lord, we would like to thank you for Easter morning. So glad the cross is over for you and the crucifixion is beyond and we can look at the cross through the empty tomb and be glad. And Lord, most of us here would like to say I believe. I believe that Jesus Christ was crucified, dead, and buried, and on the third day rose again from the dead and is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, and from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead. We believe, we affirm our belief.

And we thank you that that has huge repercussions for the biggest stone we face is the one that is over the tomb of a loved one. And yet we can hear the angel's words as we stand at the graveside: "Why seek ye the living among the dead? They're not here." You promised because Christ rose, you would provide us with a resurrection body like unto your glorious body, and that we too would live in this new world that you've prepared for us. And we thank you for our salvation and the hope of it and the confidence that we have in it. And we pray for people specifically that are mourning, absent from the body, present with the Lord. And one day in our glorious bodies we will be with him and with each other. And Lord, may we have indeed a Gospel of good news, good news for people that are scared of death, good news for people that don't know where they're going when they die because we believe. We believe. We believe. Amen.