Facts Still Matter

Father in heaven, what a joy to worship. We pray now as we come to your Word that we might not only be hearers but doers, so give us the heart of faith and ears to hear in Jesus’ name. Amen

Our text this morning comes from Matthew chapter 28 verses 11 through 15. For several weeks we’ve been looking at parables before Easter, looking at those parables Jesus gives in Jerusalem during Holy Week, Teaching Tuesday we called it, and then last week the resurrection, now we’ll finish up with this short series in the book of Matthew by rounding out the rest of Matthew 28. And here we have this paragraph which I don’t believe I’ve ever preached on before. The next paragraph next week, The Great Commission, probably you’ve heard more sermons on that text than any other text and I’ve preached on it a number of times, but never on this curious paragraph. Follow along as I read.

While they were going, I think the they there is the women, behold some of the guard went into the city, so the women are going their way and the guard went into the city, and told the chief priest all that had taken place and when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sufficient sum of money to the solders and said, “Tell people His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep. And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So they took the money and did as they were directed and this story has been spread among the Jews to this day. 

I began last week’s sermon by mentioning the 250th anniversary of the Battles of Lexington and Concord, wherever Jaunty Rhodes is, trigger warning here, sorry, you let us win I’m sure. But those two battles, the unofficial start of the Revolutionary War took place on April 19, 1775, so there was some noise about that last weekend and that’s a historical fact. Those two battles took place 250 years ago, April 19, 1775. If you’ve ever thought about how do you know that that is a fact. Maybe you just think, well I grew up here and I learned that all throughout my life or I could go to Wikipedia right now and get it, or I could pull a history textbook off the shelf or some other book, there’s all sorts of places I can go to tell me that is a fact. Okay, well let’s go one step back. How do you know that that information is true? As Abraham Lincoln once said, not everything on the internet can be trusted. There’s no video footage of these two battles, there’s no audio recording, there are no still photographs, that hadn’t been invented yet, how do we know what happened, how do we know who was involved, what time it took place, how do we know which side won or who the officers were? Well maybe you read about it in somebody’s memoir, somebody’s biography, autobiography years later, or maybe you can go back and you can find now digitize the newspapers from the day or you can really uncover some letters that were written back home or in official military reports or in someone’s diary or maybe there were personal interviews with those who were there. Here are actually lots of ways we can know what happened, but all of them rely somewhere at the beginning of the food chain on eyewitness testimony. Somebody saw it, somebody was there, and then you can compare this various testimony, does it make sense, how does it relate to other testimony that people have given, does it fit the context, do you suddenly have rocket ships, well that doesn’t seem to fit 1775, is it reliable. That’s how we know facts about history and that’s how we know the story of Easter week. Yes, the Bible is more than that, the Bible is an inspired account. God, however, used human authors and human eyewitnesses. The fancy theological term is concursive operation. Concursive just meaning together, that human authors using their human intellect. We know that Luke says in order to give an orderly account of these things he complied documents and talked to people to give an orderly historical account. So, they used their human personality, their human brain, and at the same time the Holy Spirit superintended the process so everything that they wrote down was true. How that’s important so you remember this revelation was not given to some monk in a cave somewhere on the other side of the world about something that was happening on the planet Mars. It was here and people saw it. We are talking about eyewitness testimony. People were there at His death, Joseph of Arimathea buried Him in the tomb, there was an angelic announcement to see, an empty tomb, and a risen Christ. 

When I was putting the preaching schedule together I debated whether to just do these last two sections all at one fell swoop because there’s a lot to talk about in the great commission and I wasn’t sure exactly what I was gonna do with this paragraph, but hopefully you’ve learned by now, when you get to a part that looks like I don’t know what pastor’s gonna get from here, those are the fun ones. What we have in this paragraph more than teaching us about our faith, which it does, it’s obviously about the resurrection, this paragraph says a lot about what kind of faith we have, about our faith as Christians, or if you’re here and you’re not a Christian, what it means to be a Christian. Let me give you four statements this morning. Number one, first the Christian faith is historical. This may seem obvious, most of the Bible is narrative about things that happened in the past, but in saying that Christianity is irreducibly rooted in historical fact you have to realize that Christianity is being set apart from most other religions and certainly the dominant religious impulse in the first century in the Roman Empire. To say that Christianity stands or falls on historical fact means Christianity is not based on myth, it’s not based on fables, have nothing to do with irreverent silly myths, 1 Timothy 4:7. There’s all sorts of Greco Roman myths and maybe you learned about them in school, and people weren’t concerned whether they were true or not, they just were a story that had some deeper meaning or helped to kind of explain why things were the way that they were. It would be like if all of us read or see the movies The Lord of the Rings and you talk about it and you maybe find some inspiration, no one, not even Presbyterian pastors think that the stories are true. New flash, they’re not quite true. It’s a myth. May be truth in it, but it’s not history. Christianity is not mere philosophy. Like stoicism it’s not just a way of thinking right or getting your expectations under control. It’s not mere moralism, just about becoming a better person, a better version of yourself. It’s not rooted, first of all, in ecstatic experience. This was very dominant in the Roman world, sometimes even psychedelic, often sexual experience, that’s what religion was, a dominating ecstatic experience. It’s not a secret club, they also had lots of those, mystery religions they were sometimes called. It isn’t like a club where you have certain initiation rites and once you’re on the inside you can know, and if you’re on the outside you can’t know. I’m always very nervous when there are clubs like that. And this is not about mere civic cohesion though it’s true that any nation is going to struggle without some dominating religious principle and virtue. Christianity is how we get virtue, but in the Roman world it was about emperor worship and about being a good Roman, that you needed to believe certain things, that was really the concern. Romans were not doctrinal, that is they weren’t concerned about a statement of fate. When the Christians come along and we just read and recited the Apostle’s Creed which grew out of early baptismal formulas with the Nicene Creed from the fourth century. This was something unique that Christianity, unique among Roman religions said what you believe really matters and what happened in history matters. Christianity was different from all of this in asserting emphatically that its claims would stand or fall based on history, that to be a Christian is not first of all about what you do or about what you feel or about what your group is or whether it works, but did it happen. All those other things are important, but that’s the beginning, did it happen. 

History, second, so we see in this paragraph because this is an apologetic for the resurrection how important it is that this happened in history. Similarly, second statement, the Christian faith is rational. Now you probably got the first one, history, you’ve heard that before, but I want you to think about this lest you misunderstand. This is really important. Christianity, to be a Christian we believe some things that are suprarational, not super, but supra, meaning above or beyond, that is to say there are certainly things we believe that are ultimately beyond total human comprehension. One God and three persons, one person and two natures with Christ, or how complete divine sovereignty, also human responsibility. There are many things that will definitely total complete human comprehension. That’s what we mean, suprarational, you will get to some questions at the end of yourself and you’ll say, I guess God is God and I’m not and so I can’t fully understand all of this, but that is very different from saying that Christianity insists on things are irrational. Suprarational, above our ability to comprehend yes, not irrational. Christianity doesn’t come along and tell you that triangles have four sides or 2+2 is 5, Christianity is not fideistic. I don’t know if you’ve ever heard that word, fideistic. Fides, Latin word for faith, yes, we believe ultimately faith is really, really important, there’s almost nothing more important than faith. We believe we are justified by faith alone. But that word, fideistic is variously defined, but I’m using it to mean a kind of Christian faith that pits faith and reason against each other and says, you know what, you just believe things, there’s no good reasons, in fact you have lots of reasons not to believe it, but just by summoning up willpower you just decide, okay I’ll just take a leap of faith and I’ll believe. Some Christians think that their honoring faith to describe it in those terms. Fideistic, it’s just faith with no good reason. Now listen carefully, we don’t move from some supposedly neutral foundation of reason and we start with reason and we bracket everything else and then we climb our way up to faith, reason is not the final arbiter of truth claims, but Christian faith is not contrary to reason. We are intent on showing that our account of history, our account of meaning in life, our account of human nature, our account of reality taught in the Bible makes sense. It’s compelling. At a practical level this means that the Gospel is not a message that requires you to believe things contrary to or apart from any reasonable evidence. Or let me put that positively, when you believe as a Christian, I hope you realize you are believing, it is faith, yet, but you are believing based on reasonable evidence. 

Acts 19:9, for two years Paul reasoned daily in the Hall of Tyrannus. Acts 25:25 says Paul reasoned with Felix about righteousness, self-control in the coming judgement. In Acts 26:25 Paul says to Festus, I am not out of my mind, but I am speaking true and rational words. When Paul was sharing his faith and he was called to testify to the resurrection and to what he believed now as this converted Jew and now a Christian Jew, he was at great pains to say I am reasoning, I am telling you things that are rational. I am giving you evidence. This thing, the death of Christ and the resurrection did not happen in a corner. We’re meant to think this through and see that there are good reasons for what we believe as Christians. 

Now I read this text from chapter 28 and I want you to go back and look at the paragraph in chapter 27 because it goes with this one, two halves, look at 27 beginning at verse 62. The next day, that is after the day of preparation, the chief priest and the Pharisees gathered before Pilot and said, “Sir, we remember how that imposter said while He was still alive, after three days I will rise, therefore order the tomb to be made secure until the third day least his disciples go and steal Him away and tell the people He has risen from the dead, and the last fraud will be worse than the first.” Pilot said to them, “You have a guard of soldiers, go make it as secure as you can.” So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard. I want you to think about that and I want you to think about the second half of the story in chapter 28. I want you to reason this through. What does this mean? Well one thing that we know from this conversation with the chief priest and with Pilot is that they were expecting a bodily resurrection. Now they weren’t expecting it to happen, but they understood that that’s what Jesus taught. Jesus taught this three times in private, but word must have gotten out or when He said that He would tear down the temple in three days, He would raise it back up again, people understood, He is talking about Himself, His body. Now why is this important? Because lest we come with any nonsense that says, well you know at the resurrection it was really a spiritual resurrection or is it just about His soul was gonna be raised up to some immortal plane. No, that’s not how they understood it, they understood talking about flesh and blood body that Jesus had predicted that He would die and that His body would be raised and therefore we have to seal the tomb, we have to get guards. This is very likely temple guards, not Roman soldiers. That’s why in chapter 28 they come back and they talk to the elders rather than to the governor because these were probably temple guards and Pilot says, okay go ahead take some of those and go station them at the tomb. But think about what else we know from this story. Even if you are coming to the Bible very skeptical and you said, well yeah, you’re just making an argument pastor based on the Bible, you already agreed that the Bible is true, well the Bible is God’s Word, but let’s just for the sake of argument say even if you were cynical about this account of the resurrection you have to acknowledge that the fact that this is in here means that some people were saying the disciples stole the body because there’s no way that the apostles would make up, say you’re very skeptical, I think the resurrection is all made up, the apostles just put that in there. Well, the apostles are not going to put in a story into people’s minds. You know what’s one explanation for the empty tomb, that we stole His body. So, they’re not gonna make that up, so that must have been happening, people must have been saying the disciples stole the body. So that’s a fact.

Second, if people were saying the disciples stole the body, and they must have been saying that because the disciples aren’t gonna suggest that to people if it’s not already out in the air. So, if people were saying the disciples stole the body, then that leads to an even more important fact, namely, that people had to give an account for the empty tomb. Nobody starts that story; the disciples stole the body. If everyone knows you went into the tomb and there was the body. Nobody starts that explanation, if everyone could say, ya know what, I saw Jesus dead, I saw it with my own eyes. No, the body was missing, the tomb was empty, so we have really incontrovertible fact that the tomb was empty and therefore they had to give an account for this empty tomb and their explanation is, I want you to go, we’re gonna give you some money and you’re gonna say you fell asleep and that someone came in, His disciples, and they stole it. The best explanation for them is the stolen body explanation originating in bribery and deception. And Matthew records that this story, verse 15, has been spread among the Jews to this day and we can see evidence of it even in the centuries to come. Here’s an example. 

I’m gonna give you two examples this morning, you’re gonna get some early church fathers, here’s the first one, Justin Martyr, that wasn’t his given last name, that’s a bit of a downer, but we call him Justin Martyr. This is in one of his books, this is from around 160 A.D. So, this is say, maybe 100 years after the Gospel of Matthew and he’s one of the early church theologians, apologists. This is in a book called, Dialogue with Trypho, who was a Jew, maybe based on a real person or maybe a composite of various Jewish objections, but here’s Justin Martyr writing to this Jew to the objections that Jews would have to Christianity writing in the middle of the second century. Listen, “And though all the men of your nation knew the incidents in the life of Jonah and though Christ said among you that He would give the sign of Jonah exhorting you to repent of your wicked deeds, at least after He rose again from the dead, and to morn before God as did the Ninevites, in order that your nation and city might not be taken and destroyed as they have been destroyed, yet you not only have not repented after you learned that He rose from the dead, but as I said before you have sent chosen and ordained men throughout all the world to proclaim that a Godless and lawless heresy had sprung from one Jesus, a Galilean deceiver.” Now note the continuity with that we read in Matthew’s Gospel where they say this imposter, He’s a fraud. So, they were taking the famous, of course they don’t have C.S. Lewis yet, but if they’re looking at the liar, lunatic, or lord, famous C.S. Lewis trilemma, they are definitely latching on liar. His first fraud was that He said He was messiah and then His last fraud as they understand it is that He had been raised from the dead. So, they’re saying very early on their explanation is He’s a liar. Well here a century later same thing, a Galilean deceiver whom we crucified, but His disciples stole Him by night from the tomb. So, this explanation is still going on, where he was laid when unfastened from the cross, and now deceived men by asserting that He has risen from the dead and ascended to heaven. Moreover, you accuse Him of having taught those Godless, lawless, and unholy doctrines which you mentioned to the condemnation of those who confess Him to be Christ and a teacher and the son of God. Besides this, even when your city is captured and your land ravaged yet you do not repent, but dare to utter imprecations on Him and all who believe in Him. I just want you to note this last sentence here from Justin, cuz he’s having a dialogue with a Jew and we have tragically seen the rise of anti-Semitism in our day, often from the left, sometimes though from the right. Now how do we argue for what is absolutely essential, Jesus Christ is the only way to be saved for Jews and Gentiles. So, listen to what Justin is saying and then here’s this last sentence as he is arguing very strenuously with this Jew as conversation partner. He says, “Yet we do not hate you or those who by your means have conceived prejudices against us, but we pray that even now all may repent and obtain mercy from God, the compassionate and longsuffering father of all. 

Justin was one of the best examples of the early church fathers who sing the universal claims of Christ for Jew and Gentile. The reason that this is here in verses 11 through 15 is first of all that it happened, but it is stated of all the things have happened that it might give an explanation for this rumor that had been circulating from the very beginning, it was already evident here a century later, why the empty tomb, where did the body go and the account of scripture, and we’ll come to apologetics in a little more detail in just 30 seconds here, but I want you to recognize that they are rooting their confidence in the resurrection on a faith that has reason, a faith that is rational, a faith based on evidence. These soldiers are taking money that they might lie and spread a deception and say, how do we get out of this predicament, I know, we’ll say the disciples stole the body and that line of thinking continued for a long time, but here we have the accounts, the eyewitness accounts to tell a different story. 

2 Peter 1:16, that verse with which we began the service says, “We do not follow cleverly devised myths or fables.” And here’s where I want you to note Christian, in your moments of doubt or even in moments of despair or perhaps when you’re facing death, you’re facing a diagnosis or you’re facing an unknown future, we all face an unknown future, but when you come to those moments and you have moments of doubt and almost all of us have moments of doubt, maybe it’s, can I trust the Bible or what if I just pick the wrong religion, if I were born somewhere else I would have picked some other religion, how do it know? Well, here’s one of the reasons why your faith rests on evidence. There was a man named Jesus Christ, everyone acknowledges that, even Bart Ehrman if you know him, the professor from Chapel Hill who has written all sorts of books trying to overturn orthodox Christian faith. Even Bart Ehrman says, look Jesus existed, and people said that He was the Christ and He was crucified everyone could see it. And what the Bible tells us, and we have good evidence to believe, is that he rose again from the dead. You come to those moments of despair; you’re not just hanging onto faith for the sake of faith. You believe in a real person, a real man, a God man who walked among us. You could touch Him and he died a real death and He came back to life with a glorified human body and Thomas put his fingers in it. That really happened, your faith is secure, it’s not based on myth or fable. 

Here’s a third point. Christianity is apologetic, not apologetic saying I’m sorry all the time, but in that sense of persuading. Christianity tries and takes seriously serious objections to the faith. Perhaps another word, besides apologetics, is persuasion. Christians want to persuade. I want to persuade you that this story in the Bible is true and you have good reason for believing it and now ultimately you will need the work of the Holy Spirit to trust your whole life in it, but I want you to see that it is reasonable. In Acts 26:28 Agrippa says to Paul, “In a short time would you persuade me to be a Christian?” That’s what Paul was doing with King Agrippa, I’m persuading you, I’m getting you to think about this evidence so I promised you to church fathers, you’re saying I know you promised, you didn’t need to follow through on that promise, but I promised you.

Here’s the second one. Origen, writing in the middle of the third centuries around 240s. Now Origen’s not completely trustworthy or reliable in every theological emphasis, but it was maybe the most brilliant of the early Apologists and he has a book called Contra that is against Celsus. Celsus wrote at the end of the second century, maybe he was even writing in response to the first guy I mentioned, Justin Martyr. Celsus authored the first known full blown religious philosophical critique of Christianity. The first full blown, here’s this guy Celsus, he has gone with guns a blazing, giving it everything he’s got, he’s a very smart guy, to explain why Christianity as he sees it is false and one of Origen’s books is Contra Celsus and he quotes at length, that’s how we know, we don’t have Celsus manuscript, but he quotes at length, and so here’s what Celsus, this early Christian critic says. Now he’s putting himself, he’s arguing a Jewish objection. “Come now let us grant to you”, here’s Celsus, “that the prediction was actually uttered.” The prediction Jesus said I’m going to die and be raised again. Yet, how many others are there who practiced such juggling tricks in order to deceive their simple hearers and who make gain by their deception. That’s his first argument. Lots of people have claimed to die and to come back and he lists some of these people, Zalmoxis, Pythagoras, Rhampsinitus, Proselytaeus, Hercules, Orpheus, and he says a little bit about them, and he says, “The question is whether anyone who was really dead ever rose with a veritable body.” Now Celsus answers, “No, no, you know all those are myths and your story about Jesus Christ is another one of those myths”, that’s what he’s arguing, “Or do you imagine the statements of others not only to be myths, but to have the appearance of such while you have discovered a becoming incredible termination to your drama in the voice from the cross when he breaths his last and in the earthquake in the darkness.” 

So Celsus knows the stories of the Bible, that while he was alive Jesus was of no assistance to himself, but that when dead he rose again and showed the marks of his punishment and how his hands were pierced with nails who beheld this. Listen to what Celsus says, this is one of the central arguments, who beheld this, who was the first eyewitness, a half frantic woman as you state and some other one perhaps of those who were engaged in the same system of delusion who had either dreamed so, owing to a peculiar state of mind, or under the influence of a wandering imagination had formed to himself an appearance. So, he says, “Who believed this, who were your eyewitnesses.” It was a stark raving mad woman of all people and, okay, other people that was just wish fulfillment or what is more probable one who desired to impress others with this portent and why by such a falsehood to furnish an occasion to imposters like himself. So that’s written likely at the end of the second century. So, these objections to Christianity, to the empty tomb had been around for a long time. Origen was a brilliant Apologist and he goes through and he responds to each of those objections. Well, there are many other stories of famous people going to the underworld and coming back. Origen says, “Yeah, but none of them suffered a public death.” Those other men, those supposed stories withdrew from public and then they appeared later and they said, ya know what, while I was gone, I was dead and I went to the underworld and I came back with this napkin to show you that I was there. That’s true, that’s true, that’s what Celsus says. Origen says, “Nobody died publicly before the whole nation to see he’s dead like Jesus.” Well, no one has ever been raised with a real body Celsus says. I remember Celsus here is saying, “I’m arguing like a Jew.” And so, Origen says, “Well if that’s a Jewish criticism that’s not a very good one because your own Jewish scriptures tell you that Elijah and Elijah raised people from the dead.” “Well, but he was no assistance to himself”, Celsus said. Now this argument Celsus is saying, “Some kind of God you have. He’s some powerful God, so powerful He can be raised back to life and have a new body and yet He couldn’t even do anything on the cross.” And Origen says, “Remember He went freely, voluntarily. He gave of Himself; He was not overpowered. He was attested by half crazy women”, Celsus said. Origen doesn’t make this point so much, but many other later Apologists will to say this is actually one of the reasons to trust the Gospel accounts because if you are making up a story and you want your story to be most persuasive to people here in the first century, you don’t make women the first witnesses because they were not considered credible witnesses, their testimony could not hold court in a court of law, that’s just the way it was in the first century, so if you just wanna make up a story that’s gonna win the day, you don’t do it this way. The only reason you record this is because this is how it happened.

 Now Origen goes on to say, “Well, one, they weren’t the only witnesses and two, you called them half crazy, we didn’t call them half crazy, so I’m not owning that. These women were not the only ones and they were in sound mind and body.” And then to Origen’s response to Celsus’ objection that it’s just wish fulfillment Origen says, “Wish fulfillment, really, what about Thomas, he was doubting, there was no sense that he was just giving to his mind what he really wanted to happen, in fact he was incredulous when he first saw Jesus. And what about Celsus’ final objection that well these are just frauds, like Jesus was a fraud. They’re imposters who want to get rich, who wanted to make a name for themselves and to impress other people.” And Origen says, “But the apostles did not get rich, they were not powerful as the world understands power, in fact they gave their lives for this fact.” Isn’t it amazing, and some of you I know love Apologetics and read and study this stuff, how these are the same objections and many of the same responses that we have and that we need almost 2000 years later and they were there in the second century from Celsus and Origen responded to them, Christianity has always been intent. Now you don’t throw pearls before swine, but if you have serious objections, we take them seriously and we want to persuade you with serious answers. Which leads to a final point.

Perhaps most important for us. The claims of Christianity push people in one of two directions, one of two directions. You have in chapter 28, the text we looked at last week, you have these guards, these temple guards likely, and you have the women. Both of them were witnesses to amazing things and we don’t know exactly when one group might have come or left, but we know enough to know that they both witnessed amazing things there. The guards saw an earthquake, they saw an angel that was so impressive to them they cowered in fear, they saw the stone was rolled back and think about it, if they had the stone rolled back, they at least had enough of a glimpse in there to see there wasn’t any Jesus in there. They knew the tomb was empty, they saw that. And then you have the women, they heard the angelic announcement, they had a personal inspection to go and see where he lay, both groups had the same news. It’s like you have people in your life, kids, your grandkids, maybe some people in this room, you have heard the same news. Some of you have heard it your whole life and this Christian news, there’s really only one of two ways to respond. The women run to go tell the disciples He has risen, go meet Him in Galilee. The guards run into the city to tell the elders and the chief priests all that had taken place. Both of them know something really, really big has happened and I’ve gotta share this with somebody. Both of them could have understood viscerally, instinctively something has changed and my life is not going to be the same. What do I do with what I have heard and seen, what do I do with eyewitness. One announces, rejoices, one takes a bribe, hides the truth. Why the different responses? These soldiers refuse to go against their perceived self-interest. Now they were in a tough spot, what do they do, they, this was the original you had one job meme, you had one job fellas, you’ve got a big huge rock, don’t let anybody pass through the rock. Easy. They didn’t do it. The one guy got out. So, what do they say, well they come up with what they think is the best of the bad options, uhm, we’ll say we slept. Now that’s not what you wanna do when you’re a guard, but better than dealing with the uncomfortable truth that there might be another explanation. So, to save their own skin and make some money in the meantime, they refused to consider anything other than the conclusion they had reached. This has been the same for 2000 years. This may be why you have a hard time becoming a true, I mean sold out follower or Christ. You do not want to accept a conclusion other than the one that you’ve already decided is the right conclusion. They already decided what was true, “He was a deceiver and an imposter”, they already had that. You can hear it in Matthew’s account and you hear that same language in Justin’s dialogue, you can hear it in the criticism from Celsus, that’s what we’re going with, liars. He claimed to be the messiah, not true. He claimed to come back from the dead, that won’t be true either, nananana, no, it cannot be true, and remember what these religious leaders had said on Good Friday, “Hey if you come down from the cross, we’ll believe in you,” Careful, He did, they didn’t mean it. They had already decided, maybe for some of you, you hold out all of these things, well if God would do this, if He would answer this prayer, if He would show Himself in this way…really, you think if God did each one of those things, then you would believe? They say, come down, yeah, we’ll believe in you. Not a chance, they had already decided He was a fraud, an imposter, and they didn’t want anything to do with Him, they wanted Him to disappear. One of the main reasons people do not believe is they do not want to believe; they do not want the Gospel to be true. Are you open to being surprised, are you open to being wrong, are you open to surprising good news?

We’re gonna end here. I know it’s late, but we had a lot of kids join the church. Have you ever seen the thought about the connection here with Daniel in the lion’s den? Most of us know the story of Daniel and the lion’s den, that’s a story of resurrection in a way. Listen to Daniel 6:17, whenever you read this now, you’ll see it if you haven’t before. Daniel 6:17, “And a stone was brought and laid on the mouth of the den.” Who’s in the den, the true prophet, the one who was lied about, the one who was schemed against, the one who had a shame trial and fake laws and was thrown into wild beasts that he might be devoured and destroyed and they rolled the stone and they sealed the tomb as it were at the mouth of the den, the prophet is in there to die. But do you remember what happens the next morning? The king who had unwittingly signed his death warrant comes and he runs, he says, “Daniel, did your God save you?” There’s, I think, a deliberate contrast, the chief priest, the elders, the scribes, the Pharisees are so much worse than this pagan king in Daniel’s day, for when the king went racing to the tomb like the women or the disciples came racing to the tomb, that pagan king came there hoping for good news might it be true, hoping against hope that maybe he was wrong and maybe the good news was true and maybe Daniel was alive. Be like that king in your doubts not like the religious leaders in Jerusalem, they knew, it doesn’t matter what we see, what happens, we will not believe Jesus cannot be alive. Two messages came racing away from the tomb on Easter Sunday morning, which one of those messages will your life be about because it’s gotta be one or the other because we know absolutely there was an empty tomb and people had to give an account for it. Will your life be a celebration and a defense of the message of these soldiers, a message of confusion and failure, what is the good news in the world, the body was stolen or will you give your life and live your life for this message of hope and victory that announces to the disciples and to the world, Jesus is alive. Let’s pray.

Father in heaven, we give thanks for your many blessings and pray that you would strengthen us to these things. Give us faith, faith that comes by your spirit, but a faith that has reason and we pray that we would live unto this end. In Jesus we pray. Amen.