Luke Chapter 24, and I'm going to read from
the first verse. I'm actually going to read all the way through—not
the whole chapter. “On the first day of the week, very early
in the morning, the woman took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. They found the stone rolled away from the
tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, suddenly
two men in clothes that gleamed like lightening stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with
their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among
the dead? He's not here. He has risen. Remember how he told you while he was still
with you in Galilee, the son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be
crucified and on the third day be raised again." Then they remembered his words. When the came back from the tomb they told
all these things to the eleven and to all the others. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the Mother
of James and the others with them who told this to the Apostles, but they did not believe
the women because their words seemed to them like nonsense. Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over he saw the strips of linen lying
by themselves and he went away wondering to himself what had had happened. Now that same day, two of them were going
to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything
that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things
with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them, but they were kept
from recognizing him. He asked them, "What are you discussing together
as you walk along?" They stood still, their faces downcast, one
of them named Cleopas asked him, "Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know
the things that have happened there in these days?" "What things?" He asked. "About Jesus of Nazareth." They replied. "He was a prophet. Powerful in word and deed before God and all
the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him
over to be sentenced to death and they crucified him, but we had hoped that he was the one
who was going to redeem Israel, and what is more, it is the third day since all this took
place. In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning,
but didn't find his body. They came and told us that they'd seen a vision
of angels who said he was alive. Then some of our companions went to the tomb
and found it just as the women had said, but him, they did not see." He said to them, "How foolish you are and
how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken? Did not the Christ have to suffer these things
and then enter his glory?" And beginning with Moses and all the prophets
he explained to them what was said in all the scriptures concerning himself.” Amen. We'll leave it there. Let's just pause and pray once again. Gracious God, what we know not, teach us. What we are not, make us. What we have not, give us. For your Son's sake. Amen. I'm not sure how many of you will remember
this lyric. It will date you somewhat, and if you know
the person who made it a hit, you'll probably be even more embarrassed to identify yourself
with it. The lyric goes as follows, "It's all over
now. Nothing left to say, just my dreams and the
orchestra playing." Sung by Engelbert Humperdinck. Made him very rich, but this is a talk on
the resurrection, why did you start here? Well, because I'm smitten with a disease. When I read all the time, I read about people,
and I imagine them listening to songs, and so when I look at these two story characters
making their way the seven mile journey to Emmaus, I imagine them actually saying to
one another, "Hey, it's all over now. Nothing left to say. Just our dreams and the orchestra playing." Because everything had come to a crashing
halt. That's what Luke tells us. They were speaking in the past tense. They were immediately referring to the things
that had happened in Jerusalem. It's possible that it's a husband and wife. Cleopas is one of them. He had a wife called Mary. Maybe she was with him. Only Cleopas is mentioned, but this couple,
along with the others had had entertained high hopes about Jesus. They had every reason to do so. Everything had been pointing in the direction
of His Messiahship. All of His miracles, the mastery of His words. The impact of His teaching and the transformation
of the lives that followed in His wake. In fact, when Jesus draws near to them, as
Luke recounts it for us, they actually describe Jesus in these terms. "We were thinking of Jesus of Nazareth who
was a prophet powerful in word and deed before God and all the people." Because the Jewish people had every expectation
as a result of reading their Bibles that eventually somebody would come who would out-king all
the kings they'd ever had. Eventually somebody would come who would out-prophet,
all the prophets they'd ever had. A prophet who would come and oust their ignorance. A king who would come and subdue all the rebellions. A priest who would come and bear away their
sins, and so when Jesus of Nazareth had stood on the stage of history after John the Baptist
has been put in jail, and he said, "The kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe the good news," that sent
all kinds of shock waves running through their minds. Now they had the anticipation that if the
Messiah was actually here, the oppressors would be overthrown. The temple would be rebuilt and God's justice
would be established, but now, instead of that happening, instead of there being a great
finale, a great culmination of these expectations in the triumph of Jesus, in fact everything
has gone so badly wrong, at least from their perspective. When you look at these two characters, as
Luke describes them for us here, it makes me think of another song. I think of them “up there in the spotlight
losing their religion.” As the spotlight turns on them, as they make
their way down the road, they can only speak in the past tense, because their hopes have
collapsed. Their dream has been extinguished and that
as a result of the crucifixion of their cherished leader and teacher, and we're told that the
events in Jerusalem in the early hours of the day had been absolutely peculiar. In fact, as they tried to put the pieces of
the puzzle together it just became more and more complex. They were not only amazed. They were confused, and you will see that
they've very honest about it. They say in verse 22, “Some of our women
amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning,
but they didn't find his body.” They came and told us and so on. Some of our companions went to the tomb, they
found it just as the women had said, but him they didn't see. The amazement of the women, the confusion
of the men. Not a lot has changed, but the thing that
we need to understand is, that the downcast faces of these characters, be they two males,
or a male and a female, “they stood still,” verse 17, “their faces downcast.” They illustrate the fact that for a first
century Jew the crucifixion of a Messiah did not say that He was true, and that the kingdom
had come. It actually said the opposite and they had
made the deduction, He therefore cannot be, and therefore it hasn't come. As a result, their speaking as you know it,
in the past tense. Verse 21, “We had hoped.” This had been our expectation. We were hoping that he was the one who was
going to set Israel free. That was the expectation. That the Messiah would come and everything
would be set to rights. What has happened for these individuals is
that their big picture has actually collapsed. The plot line of their story has disintegrated. They once again find themselves back at the
beginning. With a beginning, but no end to their story. They are thoroughly demoralized. Their road to freedom. Their road to fulfillment has actually turned
out to be a cul-de-sac. As we rehearse the events, we discover just
exactly what had happened. Let me point it out to you, just very simply. First of all, in the beginning of the chapter
the women have a very sad task. In verse one, “On the first day of the week
very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and they went
to the tomb.” What is obvious is that these women did not
set their alarms and get up early in the morning, in order that they might go and witness the
resurrection. They weren't going to see a risen Jesus. If they were, there would have been no reason
for them to take the spices for the embalming of the body. Their expectations were completely curtailed,
constrained by the events that had taken place just hours before in the death of Jesus, so
they went to perform a sad task. They were in for a big shock. Their big concern, according to Mark's gospel,
is what they were going to do with this stone. After all, they did not have within themselves
presumably the strength in order to roll it away, but they were unprepared for what they
found, or if you like, what they didn't find, because what they expected to find they didn't
find, and they went in and they entered, but they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. Then their confronted by a strange question,
and the strange question is there just in a sentence in verse five. One of these bright shining characters says,
"Why do you look for the living among the dead?" It's a funny question isn't it? They weren't looking for the living. "Why do you look for the living among the
dead?" No, the spices that they both held in their
hands were a testament to the fact that they weren't looking for the living. What were you going to do with the spices? This wasn't two bottles of cologne. This wasn't aftershave. This was after death. This was embalming material and they both
stood there and the character says, "Why are you looking for the living?" They must have said to each other just instantaneously,
"The living? You mean somebody's living?" And then you will notice they're given a brief
explanation. Verse six, “He's not here? He's risen.” Don't you remember what he told you? Well, clearly, no. They hadn't. If they had they would have come with different
expectations. What they are given here in a succinct fashion
is what later on these two characters are given by Jesus in verse 27, when remarkably
having engaged in this very ironic dialogue which is masterfully recorded for us by Luke,
Jesus does not all of a sudden say, "Shazam, it's me. Look here I am." No, he turns them to the Scriptures, and he
takes them back through, if you like, the high points of the Old Testament narrative
in order that they might understand that the things that he had been conveying to His disciples,
how I must go up to Jerusalem and suffer at the hands of cruel man, and be crucified and
on the third day rise again, and again and again and again. It says they just didn't get the plot. Now, He takes the time to take them through
this material. In turn, they presumably began to take the
others through it otherwise it would be hard to see how Peter managed to come up with the
sermon that he came up with on the day of Pentecost, and so they reported this. That is the ladies reported this to the Eleven,
and the Eleven were just quite masterful. What a group to put together as the future
of the church. Here they are, all sitting around just waiting
for the news of the resurrection, so they can run out and tell Jerusalem about it. No, they're all hiding away like a bunch of
scared cats. Only the ladies are brave enough to go. Big Peter, he eventually stirs himself off
the couch and goes running off, but when he comes away, he can only wonder to himself
what had happened. What a bunch. They didn't meet with enthusiasm. They didn't even meet with belief. In fact, we're told by Luke that they didn't
believe. They thought it was nonsense, and someone
says, "Well, somebody ought to go and check it out at least." And so Peter said, "Well, okay, I'll go." And he ran in and had a look at things, but
that didn't really work out so well. Things had gone horribly wrong hadn't they? By any standards, the whole thing had collapsed. The disciples were either going to have to
find themselves another Messiah, or they were going to have to give up the dream completely,
because that's exactly where they were. Now what I want to do, having set that up,
is just fast forward a few weeks. I want to fast forward. I'm not going to expound this passage, but
I want to just take us to it so we have it clearly in our minds. There we are with the circumstances. The women that go with the spices. The men that are hiding. The bewilderment, the amazement, the confusion,
the disappointment, and so on. Now, you go to Acts chapter 2, to Luke's second
volume and what do you discover? That here is this same Peter, who had gone
into see the tomb come home bewildered giving a quite masterful treatment of what has happened
in the whole story of redemptive history. I would suggest to you that he reaches his
high point when he gets to around verse 29, "I can tell you confidently," he says, "that
the patriarch David died and was buried and his tomb is here to this day. But he was a prophet and he knew that God
had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on this throne." Of course they knew that. The great David's greater Son, and seeing
what was ahead, he, that is David, spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah. That he was not abandoned to the grave, nor
did his body see decay. Then listen to the triumph in Peter's words. "God has raised this Jesus to life and we
are all witnesses of the fact Jesus he says, is alive from the dead. Exalted to the right hand of God and he has
received from the Father the promised Holy Spirit and has poured out what you now see
and hear." And then he goes on, "For David did not ascend
into heaven,” of course, but Jesus has done so. What has actually happened is that the fulfillment
of God's promise has come in the giving of the Spirit, the promise of Jesus to His followers
that the Holy Spirit would lead them and guide them into all the truth they needed, has now
actually transpired and the dramatic transformation in not simply Peter, but in the entire contingency
is traced to one historic fact. Namely, the fact of the resurrection. Now, I don't know if any of my colleagues
are going to tamper with this stuff, but I've planned not to, and that is just to meander
around in all of the alternative explanations to the resurrection. It's so well known by most of us, that it
needs no consideration. If you don't know about it, then just go get
a book in the bookstore. You go down the stairs, remember we've been
told, and there will be plenty there to help you. I'm not going to deal with that at all. Peter had denied Jesus, and the same Peter
who had denied Him is now confronting the crowd in Jerusalem, not with a philosophy,
not with a program, but with a person risen from the dead. It's only a matter of some seven weeks since
all of them have run away and hid and now Peter, the one who had denied him so vociferously
is now making this dramatic statement. Here is the fundamental question. How do we account for such a radical change? The disciples were totally demoralized on
Good Friday. They were thoroughly bewildered on what we
refer to as Easter Sunday, but within a matter of a few short weeks, we find them on the
streets of Jerusalem and their cowardice has been replaced with an amazing courage. The answer that the Bible gives to us for
this dramatic change is that Jesus is alive from the dead. It is because Peter and the others were totally
convinced of that case, that they then went out to do what they did. It is because they went out and did what they
did that eventually the gospel writers recorded it. For if you think about it, when Mark wrote
his gospel and someone came to him and said, "What are you doing this afternoon?" And Mark said, "I'm writing a gospel." The person would have said, "A what? What is a gospel?" For there was no gospel. No one had written a gospel. Mark would have said, "Well I'm writing about
the birth and the life and the death, and the resurrection, and the ascension of Jesus. This is good news. In other words, I am reporting the historical
facts concerning Jesus of Nazareth. “
Absent this conviction, it is hard to imagine there ever being a thing called Christianity. Absent the resurrection, there would be no
Christianity. F.F. Bruce put it succinctly. He said, "If Jesus had not risen from the
dead, we should probably never have heard of him." If you think about that, a Galilean carpenter
in His day. Long days gone in a small province of a remote
part of the world, going around doing things. He would have just been one of many strange
people that had roamed around and eventually His candle had burned out, and He was buried,
and He was gone, and His followers would have dissipated were it not for the fact of the
resurrection. The interesting thing to me is, that when
you then go to the Scriptures, you do not find that the Apostles are arguing in defense
of the resurrection. The closest apologetic we really have for
it is more of an extrapolation, then an explanation. In 1 Corinthians 15, where Paul so masterfully
works through that material, but the Apostles don't provide us with theories. They don't provide us with proofs. They don't provide us with explanations, because
they themselves were the evidence. They were the evidence. What they provide us with in the biblical
record is the story of lives that have been changed completely and entirely by contact
with the risen Lord Jesus and give to us then the opportunity to affirm three facts. Number one, that the material that is given
to us in relationship to the resurrection is first of all, historical. Historical. Christianity is a historical faith. The impact of Jesus of Nazareth we date from
the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Peter, when he writes about this says we didn't
follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. This wasn't something that we had stuffed
together. John, when he writes about it says, "These
are the things that we heard, and that we saw, and that we were able to touch. There was a tactile element to the whole thing." They had looked into the gaze of Jesus. They had been thoroughly crushed by the death
of Jesus, and they had been amazingly energized in the awareness of the fact that his Jesus
had triumphed over death and the grave. What Peter provides when he finally gets on
his feet to preach in Jerusalem. It's not a flowery tale. It's not the offering of a story of some impersonal
God. He is actually declaring what happened. What happened. "This is what I'm telling you about," he says. "This is how it went down. This is where we were. This is what we ..." And finally he said,
"We got the Sriptures clear in our minds and we're able to tell you today. This is what happened. Jesus has been raised to life and we are all
witnesses." There's no sense in which he gave to them
some problem or some easy story to swallow. He didn't spoon feed it to them. No, it was really a pretty tough story that
he told them, and he didn't miss any of the tough parts either. “This man was handed over to you by God's
set purpose and foreknowledge and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by
nailing him to the cross.” Their culpability. Nobody was going to say, "Oh no, he wasn't
nailed to the cross." Everybody in Jerusalem knew he was nailed
to the cross. That was history, and then he says, "But God,
but God raised him from the death. Freeing him from the agony of death because
it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him." Incidentally, parenthetically, that is why
when we are in Christ, it is impossible for us as believers to be vanquished by death. It is if you like ontologically impossible
because we are placed into Christ, He who is the resurrection and the life, and we are
united with Him and one day, even though they may place us in the ground, still it will
not be possible for death to keep its hold upon us because we are in Christ. Now it's the very historicity of this which
is pulsating through the New Testament. Again, Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15, "If Christ
has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith." In the same chapter, referring to the resurrection
appearances, he tells us that this Jesus “appeared to more than 500 people at one time.” and
then he adds, “and most of whom are still alive.” In other words, reminding us of the fact,
that they who are still alive would be able either to refute or to reinforce the claims. If I told you, for example, that I was just
writing a new book on the Beatles, and there are seven of them, and they came from the
North of Scotland and two of them were girls, and they had three of them play the drums,
how well do you think that story would go over? How many people would buy the book? Not many at all because it would all shout
out, "Absolute hogwash. We were around. We saw those characters. We know there's only four. We know they came from Liverpool, and we know
there's only two of them left." It would be impossible because it's happened
in our lifetime. That's the implication. Here he says, "I'm telling you these things
and there are people that you will meet when you go to the shops who will be able to confirm
or to deny what I'm saying." The historicity of it is fundamental because
Roman and Jewish historians affirm the facts. It's trendy at the moment for people to tell
us, this is a fabrication. It was invented by the church in the third
century and read back into it. Jesus of Nazareth was an interesting character
obviously, but He is an invention of people who lived later on. Well, that doesn't even stand up to the test
of intellectual accuracy, because those who had no ax to grind concerning Jesus of Nazareth,
both Romans and Jews, affirmed the fact that the followers of Jesus, worshiped Him as God,
declared Him to be Messiah and that He was executed in Judea when Pontius Pilate was
the governor at that time. When we give this careful consideration, we're
left with no middle ground. This, of course, is not very acceptable in
our day, because today the great search is for the middle ground. We can compromise everything, but there is
no middle ground here. Listen to me carefully. Either in Jesus, either in Jesus God entered
into time, lived a perfect life, died the death that we as sinners deserve and rose
again on the third day, or the New Testament is the record of a lie. It is a monumental fabrication. It is the most elaborate hoax foisted in the
totality of humanity. Either one or the other, because Christianity
is not like any of the other religions. Buddhism can get on fine without Buddha. "Christianity does not," says Karl Barth,
"exist for a moment or in any respect apart from Christ." If Christ is not alive, I suggest we go out
into the mountains and just enjoy the beauty of our evolved world and embrace the brilliance
of Bertrand Russell and have his thoughts printed on t-shirts and just roam around. “Only on the firm foundation of unyielding
despair can the souls habitation be built.” Then on the back. “Have a nice day.” There's a reason, I'm sure, why Francis Shaffer
in the 1960s always led with the resurrection. Always started with the resurrection. He built his entire apologetic out of the
resurrection. He refused to be drawn into all the rabbit
tales of every other kind of debate until he had forced his people who were talking
with him to consider the historicity of the New Testament documents and of Jesus. What is it that has brought about the change? Well, there is the fact of the resurrection,
it is historical. Secondly, it is rational. It is rational. It is historical. It actually happened. It is rational. It actually makes sense. It makes sense. Our friends and neighbors may reject it, but
not on account of its irrationality, and yet it is dismissed almost cursorily at every
point. In Richard Dawkin’s book The God Delusion,
which rambles on for some significant time, passes over the issue of the resurrection
without ever engaging the evidence. I suggest, he does so because he daren't. He may monkey around with molecular structure
back in the deep darkness of who knows what and fiddle around with DNA, but if he has
to come face-to-face with the person of Jesus of Nazareth and bring his intellect to bear
upon these issues, he must know that this is something you ought to leave alone. In fact, in his book, this is as much you
get from him on the resurrection of Jesus and Jesus. "Jesus probably existed," he says, "but the
idea that he came back to life after being dead is absurd." Well, thank you very much, Mr. Dawkins, and
on what do you base this? What is your explanation? Well, I bet he doesn't have one. No, you see this is where we need to be strengthened
and encouraged as believers so as we're not forced back into the corner by our friends
and our neighbors who are imbibing all kinds of notions from all kinds of places, so that
we're able to say that the New Testament Easter story, the resurrection, actually makes sense
of the big picture of life. It makes sense of a view of the world. People may reject it, but at least there is
a rationality to it, so that we're able to go to our Bibles and we're able to say to
him, "It goes like this. There's the good. There's the bad. There's the new. There's the perfect." In other words, God made the world, and he
made it good, and he made us, and he made us for a relationship with Him. We're not molecules held in suspension. We're not an accident. We were purposefully created. That's the story of the Bible. God knows you. God made you. He fashioned you according to His purposes. That's good news. The bad news is that man has turned His back
on this, and as a result of the fall, we have replaced God with all kinds of substitutes. Substitute gods, gods that we hope will satisfy
our inbuilt desire to worship, so success, or stuff, or self. In that badness, the story is of a whole newness. That God in Jesus provides a whole new beginning. A life transformed. Forgiveness. The freedom from our sins. All of his righteousness reckoned to us. Not all of it enjoyed in all of its fullness
at the moment, because we're still awaiting the perfect. When, finally, the purposes of God for a creation
that presently groans in travail waiting for the redemption of the sons of God, will finally
come to fruition in a new heaven and in a new earth. When you think that out, and I hope you will,
and when you ponder it, and when you go back to your Bible and think it through, you realize
why it is that someone has said that the resurrection is the center of the center of Christianity,
because the resurrection, in its rationality, affirms these truths. One, it is a revolutionary revelation of the
transformation, or if you like, of the reality of immortality. Now, I'm a working pastor, I did a funeral
yesterday and a vast majority of the people present at this funeral had no thought at
all of God or of Jesus or of the resurrection at all, and so it was the same bourgeoisie
nonsense that you have all of the time. Silly poems and little jokes and anecdotes. A royal tragedy. In fact, the apex of it was a poem that was
read about this dear lady and it said, "You know and I went through the fields and I came
to the weeping willow tree, and there under the willow tree I found the religious man. A holy man and the holy man told me, 'Her
eyes will be as olives. Her arms will be the wings of doves.'" I said, "What a load of hogwash this is." Why do I have to listen to this? That's nonsense. I want to stand up in a funeral and go, "No,
you can't have that." Within a matter of weeks she will be a rotting
corpse. She will stink so you mustn't believe this
stuff. It makes you feel good for a moment, but it
will not answer your deepest longings. Her eyes are not coming back as olives. Who wants olives for eyes in any case? Only someone who's read too much English literature
can come up with that kind of stuff. No, you said that on one side and then you
said on the other side, "If Christ be not risen, then our faith is in vain and our preaching
is futile.” It's in the resurrection, we have the reality
of immortality. We do not believe simply in the continuity
of the soul, but in the resurrection of the body. Also, the resurrection is a demonstration
of the truth of all Christ's claims and the trustworthiness of all Christ's promises. The resurrection gives to us the affirmation,
if you like, the large exclamation mark that says, this Jesus may be trusted in every detail. Not only has He brought life and immortality
to light, but every promise that He has made and every claim that He has declared is verified,
is granted veracity as a result of His resurrection. Also, it is a reminder to us of the assurance,
the assurance of the perfection of the saving work of Jesus. The resurrection says all that stuff about
Him being a Savior for our sins, you may rely on entirely. You may trust it explicitly and implicitly,
and some of you perhaps read Spurgeon in the morning and evening. Tonight, his evening reading, in part, goes
as follows, "Who shall bring any charge against God's elect? Not God" says Spurgeon, "for he has justified. Not Christ, for he has died. Yes, he has risen again." My hope lives, not because I am not a sinner,
but because I am a sinner, for whom Christ died. My trust is not that I am holy, but that being
unholy, He is my righteousness. My faith rests not upon what I am, or shall
be, or feel, or know, but in what Christ is, in what he has done, and in what He is now
doing for me. The resurrection is a pledge of our own resurrection,
and the resurrection means that we have a story to tell. A story to tell. It is historical, it actually happened. It is rational. It really makes sense of the material, and
it is empirical. It stands up to the test both in affirming
the truths that we lay hold of in believing the Bible, and also in providing an answer
the cries of the human heart. I don't want to
run through a whole list of felt needs of people, but the resurrection answers the cry
for meaning. "All the world's a stage," said Shakespeare,
"and all the men and women are merely players. They have their exits and their entrances
and one in his time plays many parts." Diddly de, diddly do, diddly da, da, da. He also said, you know, “Out, out, brief
candle! Life is a poor player who struts and frets
his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more, is a tale told by an idiot, full
of sound and fury and signifying absolutely nothing.” You don't think Shakespeare believed in the
resurrection and wrote that stuff, do you? Hemingway said the same thing. He said, "Life is a dirty trick, a short journey
from nothingness to nothingness." Here, we are in the capital of the grunge
scene of the earlier decades. Here, we are with the band Nirvana. Nirvana, of all names, and dear poor Kurt
Cobain. In 1994, when they gathered up his belongings
and they found his journals and his diaries, and they took his sorry body to the mortuary,
they found amongst his writings, "I am a stain. I am so ugly. I hate myself. I want to die." We have a story to tell people. The resurrection answers the cry for meaning. It answers the cry for freedom because it
says Jesus really does set people free. All of the other illusions are simply illusions,
but if the resurrected Son makes you free, you'll be free indeed. It answers the cry for forgiveness, for love,
for hope, for God. It is this story that we are called upon to
take out to the world. You see, if you think about it, in the dramatic
contrast, in reading for example, Sartre, which some of us had to do when we were younger. Now, we only do it if we want to, but Sartre
writes in his credo, "Here we are all of us, eating and drinking to preserve our precious
existence and there is nothing, nothing, absolutely no reason for existing." C.S. Lewis, in contrast, says, "I believe
in Christianity as I believe in the rising of the sun. Not just because I can see it, but because
by it, I can see everything else." The world around us, here in this amazing
city, is a world which lives with the suffocating distress of being separated from God. What I want us to affirm in this first session,
and with this, I will draw to a close, is simply this: that not one line of the New
Testament, not one line of the New Testament, apart from the conviction that Jesus had defeated
death and was alive forever. The symbol of Christianity is not the dead
figure of a crucifix. The symbol of Christianity is the triumphant
Christ with the cross broken beneath His feet. He is risen, and so He is not 2,000 years
away. He's really here, and men and women may call
out to Him, and discover Him as a Savior and as a friend. Now, something dramatic happened to change
those characters and when they went out to tell the world, they said, this is history. It really happened. This is rational. It actually makes sense. This is empirical. You can put this stuff to the test. Father, thank you for the Bible. Thank you that you've given us the privilege
in these hours to begin to open the pages and think about the immensity of what's conveyed
concerning the fact that the incarnate Christ rose triumphant over death and hell and sits
at your right hand from whence He will come to judge the living and the dead. Seal all that is of yourself to us, banish
everything that is extraneous from us and guide our minds and our hearts through these
afternoon and evening hours, we pray, so that we might be caught up again in the wonder
of the fact that Jesus is alive from the dead. For it's in His name we pray. Amen.
