The King Lives
Pastor Glenn Newton
March 27, 2005
JN 11:25 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; 26 and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"
Phil. 3:10 “I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, 11 and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead.”
Text : Luke 24:1-8
LK 24:1 On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. 5 In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead? 6 He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7 `The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ " 8 Then they remembered his words.
This morning we celebrate the single most important fact of the Christian Faith. Without the fact of the Resurrection our Faith, my preaching would be of no value…. You see… without the resurrection, without the empty tomb, without the knowledge that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples and met with them, ate with them, gave them many convincing proofs of his resurrection… without all those things.. Are faith would be without hope.. And of no value.
But today, Praise God… He Is Risen! (He is Risen Indeed) Do you realize that this creed, this tradition is one of the oldest traditions in the Church… do you know why? Because it’s true! And His people, there was no doubt in there mind… they knew the truth and that truth made them free and fearless to share the news…. He Is Risen! (He is Risen Indeed)
The King Lives…. Don’t you just want to shout that this morning? Repeat it after me… The King Lives…
For the last couple of weeks I’ve been reading various books that provide compelling evidence that backs up our Christian beliefs to the point that there is no question that what our Bible teaches… it’s true.
Lee Strobel writes in his book, “The Case for Christ” “Without question, the amount of testimony and corroboration of Jesus’ post-Resurrection appearances is staggering. To put it into perspective, if you were to call each one of the witnesses to a court of law to be cross-examined for just 15 minutes each, and you went around the clock without a break, it would take you from breakfast on Monday until dinner on Friday to hear them all. After listening to 129 strait hours of eyewitness testimony, who could possibly walk away unconvinced?”
In 1963 the body of 14 year old Addie Mae Collins, one of four African-American girls tragically murdered in an infamous church bombing by white racists, was buried in Birmingham, Alabama. For years family members kept returning to the grave to pray and leave flowers. In 1998 they made the decision to move the deceased for reburial at another cemetery.
When the workers were sent to dig up the body, however, they returned with a shocking discovery: The grave was empty. Of coarse, family members were terribly distraught. Hampered by poorly kept records, cemetery officials scrambled to figure out what had happened. Several possibilities were raised, the primary one being that her tombstone had been erected in the wrong place.
In the midst of determining what happened, one explanation was never proposed: Nobody suggested that young Addie May had been resurrected to walk the earth again. Why? Because by itself an empty grave does not a resurrection make. (The Case for Christ, pg. 225)
Friends, the facts are, we don’t just have a empty tomb… We don’t just have a nice little story that we all are hoping is true.. We don’t just have some tradition that is based on heresay and myths…. What we do have is Truth, based on Facts.
Your Christian Faith is not Flimsy… You do not have to put away common sense to believe in what the Bible teaches, because it’s basis is the Truth, and that Truth is backed up with just as much, if not more evidence than any other single act in all of history… you don’t believe me… you do the research… discover for yourself what so many scholars have discovered…. The King Lives. You can believe it… He’s alive today because He rose from the Dead and He is with the Father this morning… Do you believe?
Dr. Gary Habermas, one of the most respected Biblical scholars of our time said this about the resurrection, “The Resurrection was undoubtedly the central proclamation of the early church from the very beginning. The earliest Christians didn’t just endorse Jesus’ teachings; they were convinced they had seen him alive after his crucifixion. That’s what changed their lives and started the church. Certainly, since this was their centermost conviction, they would have made absolutely sure that it was true.” (The Case for Christ, pg. 235)
Will you think this through with me for just a moment.
These men and women, they are ordinary people like me and you. They were fisherman, general labor’s… they would have worked at Tyson or Wal-Mart. These people had followed Christ for a couple of years… listened to Him, watched Him, saw the miracles, saw the sick healed, saw Lazarus raised from the dead just a few weeks ago.
But then something that they couldn’t have expected happened… it really was the farthest thing from their imagination, even though Jesus had tried to tell them it was coming… Jesus was arrested, unfairly judged, beaten horribly and then hung on a cross until he died an excruciating death….
What do you think his followers felt like? The man who was going to lead them to freedom… He’s dead… they saw him die… What were they going to do now, and would they be next? They were scared, they were confused… was everything they had heard, was it true or did it die with the one who taught it?
What would you feel like? Would you feel like that maybe, just maybe you had been fooled.. Maybe just maybe, he wasn’t who he claimed to be? I’m guessing that was probably what many of the disciples would have been feeling. A little lost… definetly not in any mood to go out and share… what was there to share… their leader was dead.
If you look at the life of these men and women… something changed them… something happened to them that literally gave them a Hope, that made them so bold in their Faith, in their belief in Jesus that they literally were willing to lay down their lives to share what they had found out.
Friends, there is only one answer… Only one thing could have happened that would have so changed there mind, that changed their view, that changed their heartache to hearts that overflowed…. Jesus Christ appeared to them.. He was alive
All of his teachings, all of his miracles, all of his sermons… everything he had ever said took on a whole new perspective… the Son of the Living God had lived with them, ate with them, loved them, taught them, knew them personally, trained them, and now commissioned them to go and preach the Good News…. And that’s exactly what they did.
JN 11:25 Jesus said to her, "I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; 26 and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?"
What do you believe? Can I tell you something this morning? What you really believe will show up in your life. It did with those early disciples.. Once they knew the truth.. You couldn’t stop them… the church was born with this central belief that Christ Lives, and the church continues to grow and reach lost people with the message… Christ Lives today. Amen?
In the last two weeks we have seen the Living Christ at work in our midst…. He’s always at work within His people, but we have had the privilege of witnessing 7 people come to a saving knowledge that Jesus Christ Lives and now lives in their heart and life… He is a life changer… when you truly believe in Him and put your Faith in Him… your life will never be the same… Is that true church?
Can I bring it close to home? I want to make sure that you understand that there is a difference in saying “I believe in God.” and actually “having a personal relationship with Him.” There are many good moral, non Christians today who would say, “I believe in God.” In fact, there are many, many church attending people today that would proclaim loud and clear, “I believe in God, I believe in the Bible.”
Please hear me correctly this morning… just saying that you believe in God and His Word does not make you a Christian. Millions of Muslims this morning would claim the same thing, they believe in God also… they just have a different name for their god.
The Bible tells us that the demons of hell believe in God… there’s no doubt in their mind that He is real either.
The true test is do you know Jesus Christ as your Personal Savior? Have you experienced the Life Changing power of salvation? Do you know this morning without any doubt that when you die that you will be with the Lord? A personal relationship with Jesus will give you that assurance… you don’t have to wonder… just like are brothers and sisters right after the resurrection… you can know that He Lives, and that He lives in your heart.
The King lives…. Does He have a place in your life?
This morning, this Easter morning as we celebrate our Risen Savior, there would be no better time to make for sure your own Salvation than today. Is He living in your heart today?
There’s hope for you today…. Jesus Christ came and lived and died for you.. Why? Because He loves you.. And that love hasn’t changed… it doesn’t matter where you’ve been, what you have done… there is nothing that can’t be forgiven, there is nothing that can’t be cleansed, washed away by the blood of Jesus… will you pray to the living Lord today?
It’s this easy. Step out by faith this morning, come and tell God that your sorry for your sins, ask Him to forgive you, tell Him that believe that Jesus Christ died for you and you put your faith and trust in Him…. If you will do that… you can know this Resurrection power in your own life… and God will change your life for eternity.
Come… Music The King Lives today… Does He live in your heart?
