I’m getting the signal. I’m picking up what you’re putting down. All right. So, children, you’re welcome to go. Thank you for being with us.

My family and I just got back from Disneyland and, you know, we got to go on rides like roller coasters and spaceships and pay way too much for food and all that good stuff. But I got to tell you, it has been a wild ride in the best possible way. To see the ways that God has just sovereignly picked up our family and placed Grace Point. That that’s just an awesome thing. And and that’s all divine orchestration.

We can’t take credit for that. I can’t take credit for that. That’s something that God has just designed in his timing, his perfection, and just an awesome thing to be here on Easter Sunday and to start out this way. Well, we serve a big God. Amen.

And this is a big day for Christians. It’s Easter Sunday, resurrection Sunday. We celebrate the resurrected king, the fact that he defeated death for all time. And you know, it’s awesome to think about this that this day of rejoicing means that as Christians, no matter how hard life is, no matter how challenging your circumstances right now, and there could be something you could point to right now in your life, there’s something big that’s going on. No matter how challenging it is, because of Easter, we have great hope.

Amen. We have every reason to rejoice and celebrate because Jesus, our resurrected king, has conquered the grave. And this is a day if you’re new to church or maybe you’re still unsure about Jesus and Christianity, just so you know, this is a great day to get to know the risen Jesus. He is alive today. He loves you and he is able to meet you where you are at.

So, that’s an awesome thing. Here’s the big idea this morning. Jesus’s defeat of death and the empty tomb he left behind demands a response from each of us. It demands a response from each of us. Each of us has to respond to that empty tomb.

It’s it’s a fact of history that that tomb was empty on the third day. It’s still empty to this day. It is unoccupied. And so because of that, we have to make a decision. We have to decide how am I going to respond?

How am I going to live in light of the empty tomb? So, if you would, would you stand for the reading of God’s holy and perfect word from Luke chapter 24. Luke 24 is great passage where we see the author who’s Dr. Luke. He’s a historian and a doctor and he gives us the eyewitness testimony of that first account on the first Easter 2,000 years ago.

And we’re just standing together if you’re able to. This is from Luke chapter 24. It says, “But on the first day of the week at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared, and they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. But when they went in, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.” While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel.

And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead? He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified on the third day and excuse me, and be crucified and on the third day rise.” And they remembered his words. And returning from the tomb, they told all these things to the 11 and to all the rest.

Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idol tale, and they did not believe them. But Peter rose and ran to the tomb, stooping, and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves, and he went home marveling at what had happened. Thank you. You may be seated.

So before we get into this passage in chapter 24 of Luke, I want to give you a brief summation of the events up to this time on Easter Sunday. First of all, Jesus lived a incredible life, undeniably so. He lived with wisdom and power and love that was unmatched anybody in history. Yet he ca he claimed to be the because he claimed to be the the leaders. I’m going to switch to this mic over here.

All right. Can you hear me? Okay. All right. Because he claimed to be the son of God, the religious leaders at that time determined that they were going to condemn him for blasphemy.

And so because the Roman Empire was in power during that time, they had to take him to the Pontious Pilate, the Roman governor at that time. And they asked him, they said, “This man deserves to die.” And Pilate looked at Jesus and and even though they were saying he he should be killed for what he’s saying, Pilate said, “You know what? I’m not finding anything wrong with him. He’s innocent by my account.”

And so the crowds keep kept putting the pressure on him. It kept mounting. And so Pilate decided, you know what? Just to appease the crowds, I’m going to have Jesus flogged. That that will at least satisfy their blood lust.

And so what they would do is Roman soldiers would tie the hands of the victim to a post. And then they would proceed to take the whip and fogg Jesus’s back over and over and over. They would use a whip that had leather straps and attached to the ends were pieces of sheepbone. And the the idea was we want to cause excruciating pain even before the execution. And of course they were not happy just to see Jesus suffer.

They wanted to see Jesus die. And so they kept bringing the pressure and they shouted in unison, “Crucify him! Crucify him!” Until finally Pilate gave in. He said, “You know what?

You can have him.” He handed him over to be crucified. After that, they led him through the streets of the city. You see, in order to do a crucifixion, the idea wasn’t just to kill someone. They could do that any other way, but they decided they wanted to maximize the shame and the pain of their victim.

And so, they would make them carry their own instrument of death through the city so that people could see this is the bad example. This is what happens when you stand against Rome or the religious leaders at that time. And eventually he came to the place of execution. And then what they did is they they stripped the victim of all his clothing. They they put him down on the wood and then they drove the equivalent of railroad spikes through his wrists and his feet.

And then they would lift up the cross for everybody to mock and jeer at that victim. And they would say, “Look at this fool.” They would call it, they would call it the person who weeps should be embarrassed by. The one we should be ashamed of because he died in this way. Crucifixion was a horrendous way to die.

I still don’t think they’ve come up with a more diabolical way to kill someone. This is how they killed Jesus. And the whole point of crucifixion was again to not just execute someone. It was to maximize that shame. And so they would have people there who would intentionally be there to mock the victim.

And they even put a placard over his head, king of the Jews, as if to say he thought he was the king of the Jews. He claimed to be the king of the Jews. But look what happened to him. And even on the cross, the amazing thing is that Jesus showed extraordinary love to the very people who were mocking him, who were driving the nails into his body. Those very people Jesus prayed for.

He said, “Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.” You know those words must have haunted the centurion who later confessed this man was innocent. He he had just seen this all unfold. He had overseen the whole process and he later said you know what we just killed him but he did nothing wrong. Even the centurion knew Jesus was innocent.

Now there was a group of faithful women followers who had been from Galilee had been with Jesus for some time. They had followed him, listened to his teachings. They’d seen his miraculous power. They came from a long distance. They watched all this unfold.

They saw Jesus be crucified. And they watched him be taken down from the cross and then laid in this new tomb. And it was customary at this time that you would take ointment and spices and put it on the body. This was to honor your loved one, but also as a way of covering the stench that was sure to come. But the problem was is that this happened, this crucifixion happened right before the Sabbath.

And so as faithful Jewish women, they had to go home. They they said, “You know what? We’re going to prepare the spices, but we’re going to go home. We’re going to observe the Sabbath with our families, and then they agreed together, we’re going to come back the following Sunday morning, and we’re going to honor our Lord because he is our Lord.” At the very end of Luke chapter 23, we read this in verse 55.

The women who had come with him from Galilee followed and saw the tomb and how his body was laid. Then they returned and prepared spices and ointments. On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment. And then Luke says in chapter 24, “But on the first day of the week at early dawn, they went to the tomb taking the spices they had prepared.” Now, usually when we read the Easter story, we we like to skip ahead to see the risen Jesus, right?

Right? We we’re like, we want to see Jesus alive. We want to see him appearing to all the people. That’s what we look forward to. But I want us to slow down a bit here.

And the point of this passage at the beginning of Luke 24 is to sit with the fact of the empty tomb for a moment. To kind of put ourselves in the sandals of these women who were very devoted, very committed to Jesus, who were there. And on that Sunday morning, they would have been so distraught. Just think about what was going through their heads at this time. The Jesus whom they loved and adored, the one they had followed so faithfully for three years, their Jesus was dead.

This was not part of the plan. This was not what they expected. Now, here’s something interesting. All four gospels record women, only women, no men, coming to the empty tomb. Now, we read that and we we don’t think twice about it.

But the interesting thing is that in the first century Israel, women were not considered credible witnesses in court. Now, I realize that sounds super chauvinistic and and we would rightly be offended today, but back then that was the thinking. Women can’t speak in courts. We can’t trust their testimony. And so, just think about this.

If you were making up a story about a resurrection, the the last people you would pick to be the first eyewitnesses of the empty tomb would be women. And yet all four gospels say, “You know what? It wasn’t the men. It wasn’t Peter, James, and John. Those guys were actually hiding during this time.

It was the women. The women were there. The women were faithfully showing up when nobody else did.” That’s an testimony to the power and and also it’s a testimony to the view of women of the Bible that actually they’re they’re honored in the story. Now, keep in mind these women are coming with spices and ointments.

That means that they were expecting to honor the body of Jesus, the dead body, and his body really was dead. They they saw him killed on the cross. They saw him take his final breath and the oxygen you know all that going out of his body. They saw him die. They saw the soldiers take down his body, wrap him up and and place his lifeless cold body in a tomb.

They witnessed all of it. There was no mistaking. If there’s one thing Roman soldiers were experts at, it was killing someone and making sure the job got done. And so there was no mistake. Jesus was dead.

Now this was not what they expected. Remember they believed Jesus was the Messiah. They really believed that. But a Messiah was not supposed to die. The Messiah in their thinking, he was the one who was supposed to overthrow all their enemies.

He was the one who was supposed to establish the kingdom of God on earth. He was the one who was going to bring hope and life and joy. And yet he’s dead. He is dead, completely dead in that tomb. So, first in your outline, here’s what the women saw.

Verse two, and they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. Now, this would have been astonishing for the women. Now, when you go to a tomb like this, they would do this in in the first century. They would cover a tomb with a discshaped stone. And the Gospel of Mark says their only real concern was how are we going to move this 1 and a half ton stone from the entrance of the tomb.

That was their big concern. But they went anyway because they were devoted to Jesus. They were going to find a way. And yet Luke points out the stone was already rolled away. And the emphasis in the Greek is that it was like totally out of there.

It was not at all in front of the entrance. I love this. It’s almost as if God in rolling this stone away was saying, “Everybody can take a look. He’s not there. You can have a look.

He is gone. He’s not in the tomb. God rolled the stone away.” That was the first miracle. And so, of course, they look inside, but Luke says they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

Nothing has been said yet about any resurrection at this point. All they know is the body is missing. Was it was it somebody tampering with the body? What would happen? Why is the body gone?

But look at what Luke says. He calls Jesus, he calls him the Lord Jesus. He’s very intentional about that. You should know that up until this point in the Gospel of Luke, the combination of Lord and Jesus has never been put together until now. Now, after Jesus is crucified and the tomb is empty, Luke says he is the Lord Jesus.

He’s the Lord. Because as the resurrection in in the book of Acts, the resurrection is God’s bold declaration that Jesus is Lord. It’s like God was putting his his stamp of approval on Jesus. I raised him from the dead. He is not just a mere pretender.

He is not just a wannabe king. He is Lord because he lives. Other religious movements throughout history were founded by someone. And every single one of those men or women are in a tomb. They’re dead.

But in Christianity, it’s completely different. There is nobody in Jesus’s tomb. It’s empty because our Lord lives. See, the resurrection changes everything. You and I have We live in a time where people say kind of silly things like you have your truth, I have my truth.

Christianity might work for you, but it doesn’t work for me. Right? And the mindset is, you know, we can kind of come up with truth that fits our liking. We can kind of make up what works and and we can decide what’s right for ourselves. We really like to tell ourselves what’s right and what’s true.

And basically the one cardinal sin in this relativistic culture is to say something like Jesus and Jesus alone is the way, the truth, and the life. No one can come to the father except through him. Well, that’s intolerant. That’s so judgmental. That’s so narrow, right?

Narrow. The truth is narrow, isn’t it? It would be too narrow if the truth is something we get to decide. But see what the Christians in the first century were claiming is something about objective reality. They weren’t saying, you know, Jesus, he’s alive in my heart, you know, like in some spiritual sense, Jesus is living on in a in this wonderful way.

We no he he’s still in the tomb, but it’s just a mystical living on. They didn’t say that. They said the tomb is empty. Jesus is alive and because he’s alive, he’s Lord. And that’s how the church got started.

See, either Jesus is the son of God or he isn’t. But we don’t get to decide the truth. We don’t we don’t get to make up truth that fits our preferences. We have to deal with the facts. And the fact is the tomb is empty and nobody can change that fact.

And notice that the body was missing. That again points to the physicality. This was a bodily resurrection. That word anastasis in the Greek, it had nothing to do with going to heaven when you die or, you know, living on in people’s memories. Anastasis, resurrection meant literally standing up.

That’s how physical this resurrection was. Jesus actually stood up. He left the tomb that he had occupied. So think about how amazing this is. Every other religious founder out there has a tomb.

And people can go to these tombs. You can you can visit them. You can pay your respects. If you want to visit Muhammad’s tomb, you can travel to Saudi Arabia. Right now, there’s this very ornate green dome where you can see where Muhammad is buried.

If you want to see where Abraham is buried, you can travel to Hebron. You can see the cave of the patriarchs. You can see the bones where you can see where Abraham’s bones are laid. Same is true for Buddha and the same is true for every other religious founder out there. But not Jesus because Jesus is alive.

But the empty tomb isn’t all the women saw. They find two shining men who turn out to be angels standing outside the tomb. This is what it says in verse four, Luke 24. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?

He is not here, but has risen.” Now, whenever angels show up in the Bible, it’s always a terrifying experience. We’re not talking about little babies with wings here, okay? These these are like mighty warriors of heaven, supernaturally bright. You see them and you fall down like a dead person usually.

So now let’s consider what the angels said in your outline there. They basically tell the women, “You’re looking for Jesus, but you’re looking in the wrong place. Look, you’ve come to a tomb. A tomb is where you keep dead people, but Jesus isn’t dead. So what are you doing here?

You’re in the wrong place.” That’s what they tell them. This last week on the way back from California, my parents visited the graves of my mom’s parents, my grandparents, and they they did that to pay their respects. Now, it would be really odd if I told you that my grandparents are actually still living in Fresno. That wouldn’t make sense, right?

Because we know that if you go to a funeral or you go to a grave and you pay your respects to a loved one, the whole point is, you know, they’re no longer with you. That’s why you’re saying goodbye. That’s why you’re going to the grave. And so the angels are basically saying, why are you here? Why here?

You should know. It’s almost in their voice. You should know that Jesus is alive from the dead. And so the question is, how were these women to know that? How how could they possibly know?

Again, they saw Jesus killed. They saw Jesus taken down, wrapped up, buried. They witnessed all of it. How could they know that Jesus was alive? How can we know that?

Well, many Christian apologists, and an apologist is just a defender of the faith, many Christian apologists have given reasons, historical reasons for why we can believe the resurrection is true. One guy, a former atheist named Josh McDow, went on a quest to disprove Christianity. But he found the evidence for the resurrection and the empty tomb so compelling, he ended up giving his life to Jesus. And he wrote a book called Evidence that Demands a Verdict. He said, ‘Look, when you you actually do the research, it is undeniable Jesus did rise from the dead on that third day.

Another guy by the name of Gary Habbermass is in the middle of writing a four volume series. Now, get this, his first book is 1,000 pages long, full of evidences, and it’s five pounds in weight. I I bought two just to work out. Like these things are massive. So, I love that Christianity is backed by evidence.

I love that. I love looking into apologetics. But I want you to notice something about what the angel said. Verse six says, “Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee that the Son of Man must, important word there, must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified.” and on the third day rise.

Now notice the angels don’t present this massive evidential case for why you must believe the resurrection of Jesus. What do they say? They say remember what Jesus told you. Remember his words. See earlier in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus had said exactly what was going to happen to them.

They weren’t ready to hear it, but he told them in advance. It says in Lukeapter 9 21, “And Jesus strictly charged and commanded them to tell the son, saying, the son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised.” And that happens three more times. Jesus tells them over and over, look, this is what has to happen in fulfillment of Old Testament scripture. The Messiah, me, I must die.

I must suffer. I must die. And I must rise on the third day. See, Jesus had to rise on Sunday. He had to rise on the third day because he said, “I’m going to rise on the third day.”

That’s all the evidence we need. Jesus said it. He said it in advance. Matthew and John jump forward in time right away to the risen Jesus where he’s visible and he’s speaking to people in the garden. But Luke says, “Now just think about this.

It’s it’s like he’s putting us in the same place as these women and saying, think about the fact that at this moment they had not seen the risen Jesus. All they had was the empty tomb.” Just like today, if you were to travel to Jerusalem, you could see the tomb is empty. And yet, we haven’t seen them. We haven’t seen Jesus in the flesh.

But just like these women, we do have the word of the gospel. We have the gospel. We have the message delivered to us. 2,000 years later, we are still celebrating the resurrection because somebody proclaimed this message to us. Somebody passed the gospel on.

And notice how the angels say it must happen in this way. They say he must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified. It had to happen. It was the only way to atone for our sins. See, this is how it works.

When God created us, it meant that we were accountable to him. And when we sin, when we rebel against God, there is an accounting factor. There’s an there’s a penalty. The Bible says the wages of sin is death. And so the only way for us to be saved from that penalty, to be rescued from the judgment that we deserve, is if somebody steps in and takes that judgment for us.

That’s what Jesus did. He must die, said the angels. He had to suffer in our place in order to save us. Unlike all the other religious leaders out there, we don’t have to travel to Jesus’s tomb to pay our respects because he’s not there. This is why we don’t just focus on Jesus’s teachings alone.

We don’t just tell people you need to love your neighbor and do as Jesus did. Now listen, I want to be really clear here. That’s not the gospel. Telling people you need to live as Jesus did is not the gospel. Now, we should live as Jesus did.

Amen. We’re called to be like him. But that’s not the gospel. The gospel is you could never live as Jesus did. Jesus was perfect.

He fulfilled the law perfectly. We all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. The gospel is that he came on a rescue mission. He didn’t just say, “Come on, guys. Do as I did.”

He came and said, “I will do for you what you could not do for yourself. I will offer you salvation, eternal life, and forgiveness.” And it’s all by grace. And you receive it through faith, not through something you do. That’s the gospel.

The fact that Jesus is alive means we can know him today. You can have a relationship because he’s the resurrected king. You can actually know him today if you don’t yet know him. You can have a relationship with Jesus. Now, you can’t really have a relationship with a dead guy.

They tend to be pretty unresponsive. They’re not not great at listening to us. Jesus is alive. He can hear our prayers. He can respond.

He can actively move into your heart and life in a way that nobody else can. It’s because he’s alive. So, how did the women respond? It says in verse eight, they remembered his words and suddenly all the pieces start to fall together here for them. It’s as if they’re seeing everything in a new light.

Like when you come out of, you know, the cold, dead, gray winter and it like stepping through a wardrobe into a a beautiful spring day where everything is vibrantly colorful, everything’s in full bloom. They are seeing the world completely different because Jesus is alive. That changes everything. That’s how it is for you and me. Like these women, we too can be perplexed and confused by life.

Sometimes hard things happen, tragedies happen, suffering happens, and we can be confused. We can wonder why, God, just like these women did. Why would you allow this to happen? But you know what? Nothing gives more hope and clarity like coming back to the words of Jesus, stepping into his presence, knowing his healing touch.

That changes everything. He can do that because he’s alive. Lastly, we’re going to look at what the disciples did. Luke says that these women ran back. They they left the empty tomb.

They ran back into town and they went straight to the apostles and others there. And this is what it says in verse 11. They told them about the resurrection. But these words seemed to them an idol tale and they did not believe them. Isn’t that amazing?

I mean, you think about this. Luke included this detail for a reason. These are the guys who when you fast forward to the the book of Acts, which is the sequel to Luke, you see these same guys, these apostles and disciples are powerful evangelists. They’re going everywhere. They’re risking their life going all over the world saying, “Jesus has risen from the dead.

He is Lord. Come to him today.” But on that first Easter morning, they were unbelievers. They were skeptics. They did not believe in the resurrection.

I think that’s amazing because what it does is it it tells us the power of the resurrection, how it transforms lives and hearts. It it tells you that if you’ve been praying, maybe you’ve been praying for a skeptic, maybe for years now, someone who’s rejected Christianity, you know what? There’s hope because even Peter, James, and John were skeptics initially. What changed all that was seeing Jesus in the flesh. Now, people today sometimes say, well, you know, the miracles of the New Testament, they they were written before modern science.

You know, people in the ancient world, they were very gullible and naive. They just bought all these stories. But today, thanks to science, we know we now know that dead people stay dead. Well, let me tell you, I don’t think that we needed science to tell us that dead people stay dead. Everybody knows that dead people stay dead.

That these people knew it. These men knew that. That’s why the women’s story sounded like a fantasy. Oh, you you women want that to be true. You know, good for you.

You’re still wanting to be hopeful, but it’s ridiculous what you’re saying. That’s how they responded. They said it was an idol tale. Now, someone might say, “But didn’t Jewish people believe in the resurrection of the dead? Wasn’t that taught in the Old Testament somewhere?”

Well, yes, but Jewish people believed that there would be a great resurrection of everybody at the end of the age. The New Testament historian NT Wright said that no Jew at this time believed that one man would rise from the dead in the middle of history. What they believed is that everybody the resurrection of everybody happens at the end of history. So this did not fit their categories. This is not something that you could make up.

And furthermore, just think about this. No one could believe in a crucified Messiah. That was the one thing you couldn’t believe because in the Jewish law, it says that if you are hung on a tree, you’re crucified. That means you’re under God’s curse. You’re not the blessed Messiah.

You’re the cursed one. That’s how they thought about this. And so it did not make sense to look for a crucified Messiah. What you did, if if your guy got crucified, that means, well, we bet on the wrong guy. We better find a new Messiah.

That would be your mindset. Nobody wanted a Messiah crucified by Rome. They wanted a Messiah who conquered Rome. But the fact that Luke includes this detail about the sk apostles being skeptical gives us hope. Look at verse 12.

And this is I would say if you’re doubtful of the resurrection, let me just encourage you, keep seeking. This is too important to lay aside as oh that’s nice religious talk. No, this is reality. This is eternity. This is something you need to know.

And so what you should do is do exactly what Peter did. Remember, he was a skeptic. But look what he does in what he does in verse 12. But Peter rose and ran to the tomb, stooping and looking in. He saw the linen cloths by themselves.

And he went home marveling at what had happened. Peter didn’t believe at first. But you know what he did? He didn’t just sit there and complain. He ran to the tomb.

He investigated this claim. He went and saw for himself. Is there truth to this? Is is there anything to this? If if this is true, then this changes everything.

Remember, this is the fisherman who had denied Jesus. He did not even even knew Jesus two nights before this. And so, he’s thinking, if there’s even a glimmer of a chance that Jesus really is alive from the dead, I got to know this. I got to because I want hope. I want forgiveness.

I want new life. That’s only possible if Jesus rose from the dead. You know, the reason why these men and women transformed the world, as we see in the book of Acts, they turned the whole world upside down. They they didn’t bring down Rome by force. It wasn’t through strength of arms.

It was through the power of the gospel of a crucified king who had risen from the dead, defeated all their enemies, sin, death, and overcome hell and all those enemies and offered them new life. That’s why they transformed the world. You know who else was transformed today? We know him as the Apostle Paul or St. Paul.

Maybe Paul was originally an unbeliever. In fact, he wasn’t just an unbeliever. He was a religious terrorist. He was on a mission to destroy Christianity. You hear some of these people on YouTube or whatever, these skeptics who seem very anti-Christian.

Paul would have beaten all of them with his anti-Christianity. He wanted to snuff it completely out. He hated Christians until he met the risen Jesus. And that changed everything for him. He was transformed.

It says in Philippians 3, this is what Paul would later say, I want to know Christ. Yes, even the power of his resurrection. So, how does this happen? How do you take a religious terrorist and turn him into the most passionate missionary willing to lay down his life for Jesus? Or how do you how do you take a group of cowardly skeptics hiding in an upper room and transform them into bold preachers of the gospel?

It does not make sense apart from the empty tomb. It’s because they they didn’t go to the tomb to mourn a fallen hero. They didn’t go to pay their respects to a good guy who unfortunately met a tragic end and and said some good things, but now he’s gone. No, they went. The tomb was empty and then they eventually met Jesus in the flesh alive.

So this leads me to our final question. How will you respond to the empty tomb? I said at the beginning, everybody has to respond. Even to say, you know what, I’m going to ignore everything that pastor said, I’m going to ignore all of it. You still are responding because I’ve actually told you the truth about what happened.

Now, your your response is something on you. And here’s something you need to know. God is gracious towards those who have doubts. God is merciful to those who struggle with doubts. What he does is he calls us to keep seeking, to not put it aside, to not pretend.

It doesn’t matter. Because I’ll tell you, I want you to know Jesus. I want I’m not going to hide that fact. I want you to know him. I want you to know the freedom of having your sins forgiven and knowing where you will go when you die and knowing that your eternity is secured in Jesus.

And it all starts with knowing the resurrection and the power found in that. If you have any questions about any of the the things I’ve talked about or maybe any of the things that might be brought up as you study the New Testament, and I would encourage you to do that. Open up the New Testament, investigate this for yourself. I would be happy to talk with you afterwards or maybe set up a time to get coffee or lunch. I would love to talk more with you about this if you have questions.

And know that if you do have questions, you’re welcome. You’re welcome here. It’s not something to look down on. Everybody has questions. Let’s pray together.

Father God, I thank you that you sent Jesus to be our savior. I thank you that he is alive. That the tomb is empty. And God, because of all this, because of these facts of history, because of this truth we’ve been looking at from the Gospel of Luke, we recognize we have to make a response. And Jesus, because you are the living Lord, you can meet us right where we’re at.

You know the doubts that are circulating in the minds of some right now. You know that there’s pressure. And you know that even on top of all that there’s the consideration of what this might mean personally if I am to give my life to Jesus. You know that there’s a cost involved. There’s the fact that that would mean he’s the Lord of my life.

I’m no longer in the driver’s seat. And we recognize Lord that all of that the cost of following you is just so worth it. There is no comparison. And not just in eternity, but today. It is so worth it to put our trust in Jesus, to know his love, to be fr

Transcript machine-generated from the sermon audio, so it may contain errors. 6,396 words.