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[0:00] Good morning. Resurrection Sunday. Oh boy. So you can see it's Resurrection Sunday, not Easter Sunday.

[0:17] ! And the reason for that we call it, we use the words Easter Sunday because everybody knows what we mean when we say it. Whereas not everybody knows what you mean when you say Resurrection Sunday. However, in this room everybody should know that this is the day we celebrate the day that Jesus walked out of the tomb.

[0:35] And that has so many ramifications that I can only hope to scratch the surface this morning. And so really I'm tackling two things and devoting roughly half this morning's talk to each.

[0:50] The first is, why is it essential that we believe in the Resurrection? And the second is, how can we have confidence that it's true? So no big challenge there then.

[1:04] I am going to put notes out, just because I need to remind myself in case I get lost. But you know, this doctrine, the doctrine of the Resurrection, is a doctrine that brings ridicule to Christians.

[1:17] I've alluded to this once before, but typical of it is I heard a debate between Richard Dawkins and I think it was John Lennox.

[1:30] And John Lennox in his summing up referred to the Resurrection. And Richard Dawkins, when he got up to do his summing up, said, Well, there you go. He believes in a Resurrection.

[1:41] As if to say, how crass is that? And a typical thing that's thrown out is, I believe in science, I don't believe in all that stuff.

[1:54] I'm a scientist. Yeah, okay, you may be a scientist and there is no scientific explanation for the Resurrection. There's no process that we know that can raise someone who's properly dead.

[2:07] We can sometimes resurrect someone who hasn't finished dying yet, but someone who's been dead for a few days. There is no known scientific process where we can give life back to that body, whether it's the body of a human or a fish or a crab or whatever.

[2:25] Once it's dead, it's dead. There is no scientific explanation. But to that scientist, I would say, yeah, but I'm a historian.

[2:37] And historically, it happened. You may not be able to explain it, but it happened. And one of the points of this morning is to look at that.

[2:49] Did it really happen? Of course it did, yes. Thanks, Amanda. I need say no more. It happened. But it is, interestingly, it is the best attested historical event that there is.

[3:04] You know, all of the Caesars have very little actual historical support for their existence compared to Jesus and his resurrection. I mean, they do have support.

[3:16] But compared to Jesus and his resurrection, it's minuscule. There is a vast amount of historical support for the fact that this thing happened. I think it was a saying that came out in Sherlock Holmes.

[3:31] Why should I be quoting Sherlock Holmes in a sermon? I'm not sure. But what he said was, when he was talking to Watson, he said something along the lines of, when you have explored everything and there is nothing left to explore, you are left with the conclusion that however unlikely, whatever you're left with is the truth.

[3:56] So, what we have is something that is, in one sense, unbelievable, unbelievable, but we are required to believe it to be saved.

[4:10] And that's an interesting dilemma. In order to come to Christ, you have to believe the unbelievable. But the unbelievable, in this case, is backed by mountains of evidence.

[4:24] And that's the important thing. Everybody says, give me evidence, give me evidence. Well, we can give evidence. What we can't do is bring conviction, necessarily.

[4:35] And it's the conviction that makes people turn once they've reviewed the evidence and not found fault in it. So, let's hope we can do a little bit of a job on this this morning. We're going to start with a thought contained in Matthew 22.

[4:57] And we're going to read from verses 29, from verse 29 to verse 32.

[5:12] And this comes after a question that the Pharisees have asked. And they've asked this question in the preceding verses about this man whose brother died, so he took his wife, as the Jews were traditionally wants to do.

[5:31] And then that man died, and another brother took the wife. And so, in the end, they're saying, in the resurrection, whose wife will this be? And Jesus' response is, you don't understand the resurrection.

[5:47] And so he says this, you are mistaken, not understanding the scriptures, nor the power of God. So, first point for the morning. If you don't understand the scriptures, you will get nowhere with the resurrection, and you'll get nowhere with most of the doctrines of Jesus.

[6:05] He put them in his word, the scriptures. If you don't understand the scriptures, you are in a mess. You just, there is no way forward for you if you don't get your head around the scriptures.

[6:17] Verse 30, for in the resurrection, now keep in mind the resurrection is talking about a general resurrection of all people. This is not specifically referring to the resurrection of Jesus, but we will create the link as we go forward.

[6:34] For in the resurrection, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. But regarding the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was spoken to you by God?

[6:50] I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. The point that I want to draw out of this is Jesus was referring to these guys, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and saying, they're not dead.

[7:15] Now, their physical bodies died centuries before this occasion, and Jesus says he's not the God of the dead, he's the God of the living. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are still alive.

[7:29] Now, they may not have a body at the moment, that might yet be to come, and I'm not sure I'm going to go off on one about God's timescales on these things. But the point that God is making is that this is not the end.

[7:46] Life does not stop with this life that we are sitting in now, in these bodies that we're wearing now. He's the God of the living, eternally, not the God of the dead.

[8:01] So, he said this about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and I'm going to interfere with my own notes here. Turn to Daniel, because I think it fits better.

[8:13] Turn to Daniel chapter 12. We're going to read the first three verses of Daniel chapter 12, which say this.

[8:30] Now, at that time, Michael, the great prince who stands guard over the sons of your people, will arise. And there will be a time of distress such as never occurred since there was a nation until that time.

[8:47] And at that time, your people, everyone who was written, sorry, everyone who is found written in the book, will be rescued. Many of those who sleep in the dust of the ground will awake, these to everlasting life, but others to disgrace and everlasting contempt.

[9:07] So, the point that's made there, allied to the one that we've just read about Jesus making, which was he's not the God of the dead, he's the God of the living, is that resurrection is not just for the righteous and the saved, but resurrection is something for everyone.

[9:22] Nobody escapes resurrection. It's just a question of whether you're resurrected to life and blessing eternally, or whether you're raised to eternal contempt and damnation.

[9:39] So, if anybody's listening to this online, and if anybody in here doesn't have any kind of a relationship with Jesus, you need to get one, because you're going to be raised. And you don't want to spend eternity where you will be raised, if you don't have this relationship with Jesus, and if you don't believe in his resurrection.

[9:59] So, turn with me to Romans, chapter 10. Romans 10 and verse 9.

[10:18] We need to start with the preceding verse, because once again I'm in the middle of a sentence if I start at verse 9. But it says this, But what does it say?

[10:30] The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart. That is the word of faith which we are preaching. That if you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

[10:47] If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord, there is a tangent speakers sometimes go off at here, that goes into something called Lordship salvation.

[10:59] I'm not going to get into that now, but it needs to be avoided. What this scripture means simply, if you believe Jesus is Lord, simply means you do believe he is God, you do believe he is divine.

[11:12] He wasn't just a man. He was a man, all man, but he was also all God. And you have to believe that Jesus was God. And if he wasn't God, he had no authority to pay for your sins.

[11:27] So you need to believe that he was God. And according to Paul's teaching here to the Romans, you have to believe that God raised him from the dead. Now this, I had a chat with Ron a little while ago, who we had this discussion about, what does it mean believe in your heart?

[11:50] And you know, I've been pondering that ever since. Believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead. And I've come to this conclusion, and feel free to challenge my conclusions if you want to.

[12:04] But, what is your first, and almost unconsidered response, when someone says to you, was Jesus raised?

[12:18] And your heart says, yeah, of course he was raised. Now that's from the heart. You didn't sit and think that through. You've already been convinced, and it came straight from the heart. The ones I worry about, the ones I go, well, I don't know really.

[12:32] I mean, I don't know. Do I need to believe that? I mean, it's a lot to think, isn't it, that somebody might be raised. Now for me, there's no debate. I don't understand it, I don't know how.

[12:45] I just know it happened. And I know it happened by a mixture of things, one of which is a conviction in here, in the heart, but the other is, I've looked at the evidence.

[12:57] I used to work in the courts, and there's more evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, than for anything else I've ever looked at. If the resurrection of Jesus went to court today, they would find that he was raised.

[13:12] Assuming they followed the evidence, which is not fashionable very much anymore, to actually look at the evidence. So, but there is this requirement, you have to believe that Jesus was God, and you have to believe that he was raised.

[13:31] So what we need to look at, and I've lost myself now, I've put these two quotations up there. There was this guy called Reverend Harry Emerson Fosdick, and he was a liberal Baptist pastor, and he was quite an influential person, and he served in this Presbyterian church, and he viewed the resurrection, not as a bodily resurrection, but as a persistence in Christ's personality.

[14:02] So it kind of means that Christ came, and his personality sort of took over the church, and so his personality went forward, and that's what was meant by resurrection.

[14:16] If you hear stuff like this, it is utter tosh. Do not hang on to these things. The Bible requires us to believe that Jesus was resurrected bodily.

[14:28] Why is that important? Well, this is going to sound crazy the way I'm going to put this, but Thomas needed somewhere to put his hand.

[14:42] There needed to be a body, because Thomas said, I'm not going to believe this unless I could put my hand in his side. No body, no side to put a hand in. Now, if you take that analogy forward, we all need, in a sense, somewhere to put our hand.

[14:58] We need to know he was raised. We need a real body that ate. I mean, yeah, it walked through walls. I'm not sure what the point is of having walls, if you could just walk through them, but that's another discussion.

[15:13] But the point is, they had a body. They touched. They ate with him. This, he sat on the beach and did him a barbecue, for goodness sake. This was a bodily resurrection.

[15:28] The reason we need to have faith in a bodily resurrection is because we are destined to have a bodily resurrection as well. And the contrast we have is a bodily resurrection to torment, if we're not in Christ Jesus, which means a lot of pain and suffering.

[15:50] I use the word carefully, but torture. Or a bodily resurrection to being seated on a throne in heaven, living in a dwelling place in heaven, with the Lord Jesus Christ's body, which is in heaven, that he is our first fruits, as Joe read out to us earlier, he is the first fruits of the resurrection.

[16:20] He's already done this. He's already been there. And he goes ahead of us. A very, very quick word about the first fruit. The first fruit is a feast that follows on from Passover.

[16:33] And they took the first sheaf of the barley harvest, the first of the harvest, and they waved it before the Lord. And it was saying to the Lord, please bless this sheaf.

[16:45] And by blessing this sheaf, you are blessing the whole harvest. Now the sheaf was a representation of Jesus. And so when he presented himself before the Lord as the first fruits, as the first sheaf, he was saying, please bless me, this sheaf, who's paid for the sins of the rest of the harvest, and through me, bless the rest of the harvest.

[17:12] And what was true of the first sheaf was true of every sheaf of the harvest. And so the very kind of resurrection that Jesus had is the very kind of resurrection we can expect.

[17:29] So, can you see that it is so essential for us to understand why Jesus did what he did and why he had the resurrection he had to tell us to be faithful so that we can have the same resurrection.

[17:55] There are lots of scriptures. I've left them in the notes. You'll get them. But let's start with Matthew 12, verse 40. I'm not going to go through all the ones on the list just enough to make the point.

[18:09] The other reason we need to believe in the resurrection is that Jesus himself spoke about it at length.

[18:21] He devoted probably more time to his own resurrection than he did to anything else prophetically that he said. Matthew 12, and verse 40.

[18:36] Start at verse 39. They just asked him for a sign. And he answered and said to them, An evil and adulterous generation craves for a sign, and yet no sign will be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet.

[18:54] For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the sea monster, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. So there's a prophetic word from Jesus about his own resurrection.

[19:07] Turn to Matthew 16, and verse 21. From that time, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and be raised up on the third day.

[19:35] This is something that Jesus has been putting about, and I'll leave you to go through the other list in your own time because I'm going to run out this morning if I'm not careful. But Jesus spoke of his own resurrection many times and said, I'm going to die and three days later I will be raised.

[19:52] So if there was no resurrection, Jesus was a liar or was deluded or some such. And that means our faith is a complete and utter waste of time because if he wasn't raised, I can't be raised.

[20:06] And if he wasn't raised having paid for my sin, then my sin remains unpaid for. So belief in a resurrection is essential.

[20:17] And it is, of course, prophesied in the Old Testament. Turn to Isaiah 53. One of many places you could turn. Oh, come on.

[20:46] And I'd love to have time to read the whole passage, but what it says in verse 10 is, But the Lord was pleased to crush him, putting him to grief. If he would render himself as a guilt offering, he will see his offspring, he will prolong his days, and the good pleasure of the Lord will prosper in his hand.

[21:08] So what verse 10 says is he is going to be punished, he is going to be crushed for your sins, but because of that, the Lord's going to prolong his days.

[21:20] That means he's going to prolong his days after death. So it's a prophecy of the resurrection, and there are quite a few of them. If you turn, I mean, there's a list there, but try Psalm 16.

[21:33] Psalm 16. Psalm 16. Psalm 16. Psalm 16. Psalm 16. Psalm 16.

[21:45] Psalm 16. Psalm 16. Psalm 16. The Messianic Psalm. And we're just going to read verses 8 to 10, which says, I have set the Lord continually before me.

[22:05] Because he is at my right hand, I will not be shaken. Therefore, my heart is glad and my glory rejoices. My flesh also will dwell securely.

[22:16] For you will not abandon my soul to Sheol, to hell, nor will you allow your Holy One to undergo decay. David wrote that Psalm.

[22:29] Peter alludes to it in his early sermons. And he points out that this couldn't have been referring to David because David's tomb we already have and we know his body's still in there. This was David referring to another body of David's line who would not be subject eternally to hell.

[22:49] And who, what does it say? You will not abandon my soul to Sheol, nor will you allow your Holy One to undergo decay.

[23:03] So it's another prophetic word about resurrection. There's not going to be decay in the life of Messiah. And there are others you can look at.

[23:15] So, it's prophesied in the Old Testament, prophesied by Jesus. If it didn't happen, not only was Jesus telling fibs, but the Bible itself is wrong. The Bible has been shown again and again and again and again and again and again and again that it is not wrong.

[23:35] It's never been wrong and it will never be wrong in its original autographs. We have a few problems with dodgy translators here and there, but in its original autographs it is perfect.

[23:50] So, we need to believe in a resurrection to be saved because actually the faithfulness of Jesus is tied up with resurrection.

[24:03] If he wasn't raised, he told us lies and his word is not true. But his word is true. We'll look more at that in a moment. But it's because of resurrection that certain things can happen.

[24:20] See, Jesus died and his body carrying our sin as a sin offering went into judgment. and he was raised out of that incorruptible.

[24:34] He was raised out of that in glory and righteousness because he had never sinned. But he left our sin in the pit and he was raised righteous and incorruptible. Now, if he's our first fruit, our destiny is to be raised incorruptible.

[24:50] Which, of course, can't happen if he didn't ever get raised. So we're left in this loop that says he had to be raised so that we could be raised and he was raised incorruptible so that we could be raised incorruptible.

[25:03] So, let's take a short route and go to 1 Corinthians 15. 1 Corinthians 15.

[25:23] So, Paul's teaching is based on everything and more that we have just talked about. So, it says this and we're starting at the first verse.

[25:36] Now, I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you which also you received in which also you stand by which also you are saved if you hold fast the word which I preached to you unless you believed in vain.

[25:51] For I, Paul's saying if everything I preached to you is true this is this is what I've got to say about it and if it's not true you've believed in vain.

[26:03] He's making the point right at the start that if what we're now going to go through didn't happen you may as well start a fresh you may as well go out, get drunk, eat, sleep, be merry because there is no future for you.

[26:19] Verse 3, for I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures.

[26:32] and he appeared to Cephas then to the twelve after that he appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time most of whom remain until now but some have fallen asleep then he appeared to James then to all the apostles and last of all as to one untimely born he appeared to me also.

[26:56] So piece of evidence number one which we'll come back to he appeared to an awful lot of people at different times in different places some in groups some as individuals there was no sort of mass hypnosis thing going on here this was a unique occurrence where Jesus appeared to everybody he needed to.

[27:15] and then we go on and it says Paul says for I am the least of the apostles and not fit to be called an apostle because I persecuted the church of God but by the grace of God I am what I am and his grace toward me did not prove vain but I laboured even more than all of them yet not I but the grace of God with me.

[27:42] whether then it was I or they so we preach and so you believed. So he's simply saying you know what we've been preaching and we've all preached it and Paul makes no claims to fame himself says I don't even deserve to do this but by the grace of God I am doing it.

[28:03] Verse 12 now if Christ is preached that he has been raised from the dead how do some among you say that there is no resurrection? of the dead. But if there is no resurrection of the dead not even Christ has been raised and we would say the same the scientists say I don't believe in resurrection well ok but we do and if there is no resurrection then Christ hasn't been raised.

[28:33] You see that he's making an overarching point that if you can't embrace the idea of a resurrection you're lost because it means Jesus wasn't raised. and if Christ has not been raised then our preaching is in vain and your faith also is in vain moreover we are even found to be false witnesses in other words liars false witnesses of God because we testified against God that he raised Christ whom he did not raise and in fact the dead are not raised.

[29:02] so he's kind of making a very obvious point and I love this about the scriptures they put you in this corner where you have nowhere to go you've either got to go I'm not going to believe that or you're given every reason to believe it so let's see what Paul carries on and says if Christ has not been raised verse 17 your faith is worthless and you are still in your sins then those also who have been fallen asleep in Christ have perished everyone that's gone before us who was a believer gone in the dust never to be seen again if we have hoped in Christ in this life only we are of all men most to be pitied now the point that's been made all along is the point we started with God is the God of the living not the dead is that there is life to come either in heaven or in hell we're all to be raised and we can only be raised to blessing if Christ's sacrifice was effective and if he was resurrected as our first fruits if that was effective so then that becomes our destiny to follow him am I making sense verse 20 but now Christ has been raised from the dead the first fruits of those who are asleep for since by man came death by a man also came the resurrection of the dead for as in Adam all die so also in Christ all will be made alive but each in his own order

[30:45] Christ the first fruits after that those who are Christ at his coming then comes the end when he hands over the kingdom of God and sorry he hands over the kingdom to the God and Father when he has abolished all rule and all power and authority for he must reign until he has put all enemies under his feet the last enemy that will be abolished is death the reason I'm going to die is because I was a sinner the only way I can escape death is if he lifts the burden of sin off me but he has done that so bless God I can live in spite of what I am not because I'm so brilliant but because he's so brilliant he's raised us all to life there's an interesting how am I doing for time

[31:50] Sharon sorry oh right I need to I need to move on otherwise we'll miss a very very good bit at the end a very quick reference in verse 29 otherwise what will those do who are baptised for the dead now many people want to know then is there a reason to baptise people for the dead no there isn't Paul wasn't supporting baptising people for the dead it had become a practice among some religious Jews that if somebody died and they were pretty sinful and rotten just in case they never made it to heaven somebody would be baptised for them and this is not supported by scripture at all but what Paul the point Paul is making here is we don't believe in the resurrection what on earth is the point of being baptised for the dead because the dead are lost anyway now I want to jump to verse 50 now I say this brethren that flesh and blood cannot enter sorry cannot inherit the kingdom of God nor does the perishable inherit imperishable behold I tell you a mystery we will not all sleep but we will all be changed in a moment in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet for the trumpet will sound and the dead will be raised imperishable and will be changed praise God that when I'm raised

[33:21] I won't be the same man struggling with sin that I am now I will be raised imperishable the new me won't struggle with sin and because of that because I'm raised imperishable or incorrupt I can also be raised immortal because God could not raise me immortally and put me in heaven if I was still carrying sin or even the propensity to sin I need to be not just forgiven and walking a life that is forgiven the reason I'm righteous right now is only because it's been imputed to me in spite of my bad character but when I am raised on that resurrection day I will be like him I will be sinless and not even tempted to sin

[34:26] I will be confirmed in righteousness and therefore I can also put on immortality and enter heaven I'm going to I haven't a clue where I am in this but let's have a look right here we go I am going to suggest quite a few things and I'm going to trolley through them quite quickly I'm going to suggest several things that give us evidence that the resurrection as an event actually happened the first is Jesus after his death walked about in the community surrounded by eyewitnesses and we just read it in 1 Corinthians 15 he appeared to 500 at one time he appeared to the apostles and so on he appeared to Peter and James Thomas stuck his hand in his side there were eyewitness reports the best evidence you can ever produce in a court is an eyewitness report and because of these eyewitness reports not just of the people who were saved but because of the the community were aware of it when Paul was talking to Agrippa in Acts 26 verse 26 and Agrippa was trying to push away

[35:40] Paul's arguments he said this has not been done in a corner I know that you know this took place that's one example there'll be more in a moment but there are lots of places in the New Testament where they said to the people who were alive at the time you know this is true you were there you saw it with your own eyes or you know someone who did the first witnesses were women the only please don't think I disparage women I don't but that community did and a woman as a witness was not valued she wasn't even allowed to give testimony in court because she was deemed to be unreliable so if you were going to invent a resurrection story you would not have women as witnesses you would have not only men but you would have local dignitaries who had everybody's respect and people would say oh so Fred says it's true then oh it must be true then if you were the only reason you've got witnesses to this who were women it's because it was true because if you were inventing a story you would never have used women as witnesses!

[36:58] the empty tomb you can go to the tomb of Buddha you can go to the tomb of Muhammad they're still there their bones are still incarcerated and everybody knows they were never raised from the dead the only religious leader who has an empty tomb is Jesus allied to point three they set a Roman guard to watch over the tomb who were left afterwards embarrassed and had to invent a story to explain the lack of a corpse now if the Jews could have produced a corpse they would have done because the last thing they wanted was for the church to succeed so if they'd been a corpse they'd have produced it and they couldn't and the Roman guards had to invent this story as to why the body was missing which unintentionally admits that the body's missing absence of a denial if you pick up the Jewish writings of the day the Avodah Zerah and other bits and pieces you will find that there is never a denial of the resurrection they don't deny that they haven't got a body they didn't deny that it happened they do question the power by which it happened but they don't deny that it happened once again if they could have produced a corpse the church would have never got off the ground and they could have said they're a load of liars look here he is the meteoric rise of the church phenomenal despite persecution men went from hiding as we've already read once

[38:42] I think Joe read it out during his reading they were all hiding in fear of the Jews almost overnight they went from that to stridently preaching the gospel and facing persecution and death for doing so and they would not recant it would have taken a resurrection to make fearful men do that there is this very short time span between the events and the reports there's this New Testament scholar James D.G.

[39:19] Dunn he says this tradition the one of Jesus' resurrection and appearances we can by entirely confident was formulated as a tradition within months of Jesus' death and thought to be committed to writing after between one and eight years there was no time for legendary embellishments of the story if you think of the stories of St George and the dragon there was a literal St George there are many who believe there was a literal dragon I'm not going to get into dragons today but that story became legendary over many decades and perhaps even centuries before the legendary portrayals became the norm this was so quick the first writings were within months of Jesus' resurrection so there wasn't time for embellishments or developments also to write about it at all you were asking to be martyred so you wouldn't bother to write anything if you weren't going to write the truth the changed lives and characters of the disciples they went as we've said from hiding to fearlessly preach in the gospel and they would be unlikely to be willing to die for something that wasn't true emm the conversion of the apostle

[40:49] James James was the brother of Jesus and he did not believe until after the resurrection and after the resurrection he became a church leader and a convicted believer and he faced this appalling martyrdom where they said you will recant or we're going to throw you off they took him up to the high point on the temple and they said we're going to throw you off if you don't recant and he said I will not recant so they threw him off and he landed with a lot of broken bones at the bottom but still alive and they went down and said now will you recant and he said no and they beat him to death with clubs now it's an awful martyrdom but at the same time what brings that kind of conviction upon a man the apostle Thomas the doubter I need to have somewhere to put my hand right so he sticks his hand in Jesus side and he's so convicted that he becomes the founder of the church in India and there are churches raised up to his name all across

[41:56] India the church of St Thomas he was the apostle who took the gospel to India the conversion of Saul of Tarsus an enemy of the church persecuting the church by his own admission he was a high flying Jew he was embittered against Christians and in many ways upon his conversion he lost everything because he lost all of his status with the Jews he then went on to be beheaded as a martyr because of his belief in Jesus and his resurrection so a complete turnaround from bitter enemy to staunchest ally and wrote about a third of the New Testament in the process a strange one but the emergence of Sundays as the traditional day of worship in the Christian church for millennia the Jews had worshipped on a

[42:58] Saturday and suddenly they changed the day to Sunday now when you run even a small church like this and you make a major change to the arrangements it often takes years to get people to come to grips with it but seemingly overnight they embrace this change because instead of worshipping the Lord on the Saturday they wanted to worship the risen Lord on the day that he was risen last but not least these events played out in Jerusalem over Passover a time when Jerusalem was rammed full of people Jerusalem used to swell in number by about 2 million at Passover and to get away with anything would have been impossible if you lied about this you would never have gotten away with it it was just in fact

[43:59] Peter and Paul both used this very fact to bring credibility to their accounts and we'll finish with just a couple of looks at this if we turn to Acts 26 I've already alluded to this but we will see it in writing Acts 26 and verse 26 I'm going to start at verse 24 while Paul was saying this in his defence Festus said in a loud voice Paul you are out of your mind your great learning is driving you mad but Paul said I am not out of my mind most excellent Festus but I utter words of sober truth for the king knows about these matters and I speak to him also with confidence since I am persuaded that none of these things escape his notice for this has not been done in a corner

[45:07] I'm not mad the king knows exactly what I'm talking about because he knows it happened because it wasn't done in a corner it was there for everyone to see Acts 2 turn back a bit and we're going to look at verses 6 and 22 and 32 so verse 6 Peter's preaching here and I've got the wrong sorry verse 22 not 2 Acts 2 verse 22 which says men of Israel listen to these words Jesus the Nazarene a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through him in your midst as you yourself know you were there you know this is true then verse 32 the same chapter says this

[46:22] Jesus God raised up again to which we are all witnesses witnesses Jesus Jesus was raised and you were all witnesses you were all there and Acts 3 verse 15 start with verse 14 but you disowned the holy and righteous one and asked for a murderer to be granted to you but put to death the prince of life the one whom God raised from the dead a fact to which we are all witnesses now these Peter couldn't have stood before that crowd and said that it wasn't true that they were all witnesses so I'm hoping that that's given everybody a bit of ammunition as to how you can confirm to those who don't believe it that the resurrection was a true historic event and there's a lot of stuff to defend it and we haven't even gone into the unbiblical or extra biblical proofs of the resurrection and they're about as well if you want to look for them

[47:35] Father we thank you we thank you that you were raised so we could be raised that you took our sin for us and you dumped it in hell and you were raised in righteousness so that we could be raised in righteousness raised incorruptible and we thank you that though we don't deserve this outcome it's one that you have given us and we bless you for that and we are so grateful for that Father this doctrine of the resurrection is one that is most put down by people outside the faith but Lord give us the opportunity to show people that your resurrection from the dead on our behalf firstly was a real event and secondly releases all those who believe to a resurrection to eternal blessing and righteousness in Jesus name

[48:41]  Amen