- Hello, Alex Sasser here
hosting another episode of Touching Lives with
Dr. James Merritt. We are so glad
you tuned in today and want to make you aware
of some great resources available from this ministry. The free Touching
Lives app is available on both Apple and
Android smartphones and through the Amazon app
store, Roku and Apple TV. Go to touchinglives.org/apps
to learn more. Next, start your day
in the word of God using the daily devotional
email from Touching Lives. You can register right now at
touchinglives.org/devotionals to begin receiving
your daily email. And finally, be sure to sign up for Dr. Merritt's monthly
Bible teaching letter. This letter is
delivered for free in print right to your
mailbox each month. Go to our
website@touchinglives.org/letter to register today. Thank you again for joining us. And now, here is today's
sermon from Dr. James Merritt. - Well, good morning. First of all, those
of you who know me know that if you ever
see me dressed like this, one of three things is true. Somebody is getting buried,
somebody is getting married or it's Easter Sunday, okay? So I want you to know this
is not normal attire for me, but it's kind of fun to do it. I want to welcome those
that are overflow. We've got people who couldn't
even get in here today and so I'm grateful for
those of you in the overflow, for those who are at Mill
Creek, those watching on TV, those watching online. Thank you for being here and know the big crowd
does not get to my head 'cause I realize if
I was being hanged, the crowd would be twice as big. So I'm not really
all that enamored. But, approximately 108.2
billion people have been born since the beginning of time but only one person's
birthday is celebrated around the world. I mean, but people
even believe in him, we don't even follow him.
You know his name is Jesus. In fact, his birthday is
the most celebrated birthday in the history of this planet. Over 100 billion people have
died since the world began, but only one death
is commemorated every year by
billions of people, and that is the death of Jesus. Matter of fact, we even have
a name for the day he died. We call it Good Friday. So it's incredible to me
that billions of people around the world will stop
everything they're doing and celebrate the
birthday of one man and the death day of one man
out of 108 billion people. So the question is, why? Why would anybody's
birth be so universally and popularly celebrated,
much less somebody's death. And we we've even been trying
to answer that question over the last three
weeks in our church because we've been doing a
series called "Why Jesus". As a matter of fact, we
kind of narrowed it down and really ask the
question, why only Jesus? Because of the 4,200
religions in the world, why would a guy
like me get up here and say to a person like you, the only faith that will get
you to God is faith in Jesus. No other faith
will get you there, no other faith will work. Well, three things separate
Jesus from every other person who's ever been born. One is the life that he lived. Because as of this
day, this year, of all the 108 billion
people who've lived, he is the only one who had
the audacious boldness to say, "I've never sinned. "I don't have any faults. "I don't have any failures." No blots, no blemishes. And oh, by the way, when he
died, his family didn't deny it, his foes didn't deny it,
his friends didn't deny it. By all accounts, he lived
an absolutely perfect life. But then, there's not just
the life that he lived, there's the death that he died. He was, of course we know,
crucified on a cross. But it doesn't
matter how you die, 100 billion people have died. Except, his death was different. Of all the 100 billion
people who have died, he is still the
only one who said, "By the way, I'm not dying
for me. I'm dying for you. "I don't have any
sense to die for, "I'm dying for your sins." And then to kind of cap it off, there are clinchers that believe that physically and permanently,
he rose from the dead. Now, if those three
things are true, and I'm going to
make that assumption, then you have to agree that
Jesus lived and unequaled life, he died a unique death and he experienced an
unmatched resurrection. Why is that a big deal? Because every other
religion in the world can point to a founder
who lived and died. Many of them can even
point to the grave or the monument where
their founder is today. We're the only faith, Christians are the only people
who point to an empty tomb and say, "Our founder is alive." So, if that be true
when it comes to Jesus, it's not enough to stop what
you're doing in December, sing a few carols and
exchange some gifts. It's not enough to
stop every now and then and go to what we
call the Lord's supper and commemorate his death. Because at the end of the day, there's one thing you can't
do when it comes to Jesus. You can't bypass
the resurrection. You can't get around
the resurrection. You can't ignore
the resurrection. You can't pretend the
resurrection didn't happen. You can't say, "Well, I'm just going to
kind of stop right there." As a matter of fact, in the debate over every
other religious faith and every other religious
leader in the world, nothing outweighs or
compares to the battle that was fought
and has been fought over a little small plot
of real estate in Jerusalem where death moved in
on a Friday afternoon and life came out the front door on a Sunday morning. So today, I want us
to listen to a man who lived 2000 years ago. He wrote over half
of the New Testament. But what makes this
man so amazing is, there was a time in his life
when he absolutely hated the name of Jesus. As a matter of fact, he
made it his life's work to stamp out Christianity and
stop it dead in its tracks. But something happened, and it was so powerful that
to the day that he died, to the day that he had
his head chopped off, he would not deny that
he had met Jesus alive. He had met the risen Lord and he became the
all time champion of answering the
question, why Jesus? If you brought a
copy of God's word, I'm in the book of
Acts chapter 13, it's one book past
the four gospels. I'm in Acts chapter 13. This man we're talking
about, his name was Paul. He's talking about Jesus
to some people in an era where people were first
called Christians, and he's telling them why he
believed in the resurrection, why they ought to believe
in the resurrection, and oh, by the way,
why we ought to believe in the resurrection. So, we're going to
go quickly today. I want to tell
you three reasons. Number one, Paul said
we have an empty tomb. We have an empty tomb. Now, something happened,
nobody denies this. Something happened
2000 years ago. It was so dramatic,
so transformational. It was so life changing that 11 men's lives
were so different, that every one of them died
a violent martyr's death. Except one who was exiled on
a pile and to starve to death, every one of them died a death because they would not
deny that Jesus was alive. Something happened that
was so unbelievable that four men sat down
and wrote four gospels about the life and the
death of this one man. Something happened
that was so unreal that a movement began in a
little town called Jerusalem, and it began to spread
in concentric circles until it encircled the entire
world over and over and over. And when you put all
of that together, that's what makes this
statement so amazing. Because remember, the man
that's about to tell you what he's about to tell you, detested the very name of Jesus. He despised the movement
called Christianity, he devoted his life to
destroying the church that we're in right now,
and this is what he said. When they had carried out all
that was written about him, that is, he's tomb
after crucifixion. They took him down from the
cross, laid him in a tomb, but God raised
him from the dead. Now, Paul's referring
to an empty tomb. Now, let me just say something. If you're here today and
you are at Mill Creek, or you're at the overflow room, you're watching by
computer, whatever, you're not a believer. You're not a Christian. You're
honest enough to admit it. I'm just not into
all this Jesus stuff. Let's just understand one
thing for absolute certain. There's one thing
nobody would dispute. If that tomb where Jesus was
buried had not been empty, we wouldn't be
celebrating today. I wouldn't be doing what
I'm doing right now. You wouldn't be sitting where
you're sitting right now. I'd be doing something else,
you'd be doing something else. As a matter of
fact, this building would still be a hollowed
out missile factory with kudzu climbing the walls. Because the one thing that
would have stopped Christianity dead in its tracks, the one thing that would
have absolutely made sure it never got off the ground, that would have crashed and
burned before it ever took off would have been
in an empty tomb. So let me give you a
universal illustration. I want you to imagine
you're on trial, and you're on trial for murder. And you have pled innocent. You've said, "I didn't
murder this man. "You said I've murdered,
I know you've accused me. "I don't care what the
evidence tells you, "I did not murder this
man. I am innocent." So, the trial begins and the
prosecutor attorney lays out all these circumstantial facts about why you
committed this murder. The problem is
there's no dead body. Nobody's produced
the body of this man and you still maintained
your innocence. Let's imagine the
prosecution, Wrestler case, the defense attorney
is about to get up and all of a sudden, the
door to the courtroom opens and the man that you
are accused of murdering walks in that door. Guess what? The trial is over. Case dismissed. There is no way you can murder
a man that is still alive. Now, to be sure, the empty tomb, let me make sure you hear this. The empty tomb
alone does not prove that Jesus rose from the dead. Okay, I get that. However, for 11 men who denied Jesus and ran
away from Jesus out of fear the one time he
needed them the most. For 11 men who spent the
next two days, three days in hiding out of fear, they would be killed
for following Jesus. For those 11 men,
three days later to go out into the
streets of Jerusalem and begin to preach
and to proclaim to anybody that would listen, that Jesus had been
raised from the dead. If they had done that while
he was still in that tomb, that would have been suicidal,
it would have been foolish, it would have been stupid. So, in other words, if
like every other grave and every other tomb the
body was still there, then for anybody to talk
about a resurrection would be just preposterous. However, if the tomb is empty,
you have to at least say, "Well, his resurrection
is possible." But then when you
examine the evidence, you say, "You know,
it's maybe plausible." And then you examine the
evidence and you say, "You know, it looks like
the best explanation "for the empty tomb, is he
was raised from the dead." And I'll tell you why. Any serious student of whatever
happened 2000 years ago doesn't deny two things. If you don't believe
in Jesus, that's fine. You don't believe he
was the son of God, you don't believe
he was the Messiah, you don't believe he's
resurrected, that's fine. You won't find any
historian anywhere, you won't find anybody who
knows that stuff anywhere that will deny two things
happen 2000 years ago. There was a man named
Jesus who died on a cross and there was a man named
Jesus that was buried. Nobody denies those things. I haven't found anybody
yet that really, if they examine they ever say, "You know, no that
really didn't happen." So, if Jesus died and
if Jesus was buried but the tomb was empty, then there are only
two possibilities. He rose from the or
somebody took the body. Well, let's just lay aside
the resurrection for a moment. Let's kind of do our
forensic analysis. Okay, somebody must
have stolen the body. Well, there's only
two groups of people that could have
done that, right? His foes or his friends. But then when you examine
the evidence you say, "Okay, his foes
wouldn't have taken it "and his friends
couldn't have taken it." Let me tell you why,
think about this. To make sure that nobody
would steal that body, to make sure that
wouldn't happen, the moment Jesus'
body had been brought and been put in the tomb, the Pharisees go to the
Romans, the guys in charge. They said, "Look,
we want to make sure "nobody steals the
body, can you help us?" They said, "Oh yeah, we
got this thing covered." Number one, we're
going to give you what would be in the day,
we'd call them the Navy Seals, the Army Rangers,
the Green Berets. They gave them a crack Roman
battalion to guard that tomb. Then they rolled
this big heavy stone across the entrance
to seal that tomb. Well, let's suppose the
Pharisees changed their minds, say Saturday night. And they said, "You know,
we got a better idea. "To make sure they
don't take the body, "we'll take the body." So let's just kind of save,
just play along with me. Okay, the Pharisees
took the body. Then all they had to do
was stop Christianity. They could just
produce the body. They wouldn't have
gone to the trouble of arresting the
disciples, which they did. They wouldn't have gone
to the trouble of flogging and beating and
torturing the disciples, which they did. They wouldn't go to the trouble of having the disciples
killed, which they did. All they had to do to bring
this Christianity business to a fatal end, was
just produce the body. Well, since they didn't
produce the body, there can only be one reason why they didn't
produce the body, okay? They didn't have the body. Because if they
had had the body, they would have
produced the body, but they didn't produce the body and they couldn't
produce the body because they didn't
have the body. So we got to put them aside. Well, what about his friends? Maybe his friends took the body. With all kinds of
reasons to prove that they couldn't have done
it even if they wanted to. But the one thing
it's telling is this: Every one of these 11 disciples
not only were willing to die for their belief in
the resurrection, they did die because they
believe in the resurrection. I've lived a long time and
I will tell you something, people will die for convictions. They won't die for concoctions. People will die for what
they believe is true. Nobody will die for
what they know is a lie unless they're trying to
protect someone that they love. And oh, by the way, you know
it was kind of interesting when you go back
and read the gospels and you read about
that Sunday morning, do you realize that there
was not one disciple, there was not one
follower of Jesus that was expecting Jesus to
come back out of that tomb? Nobody camped out
on Sunday morning. Nobody camped out
on Saturday night. They weren't cooking hot
dogs and marshmallows saying "Man, can't wait. It's
about time to come out." No, no. They were hiding out. They were not expecting him. They were not expecting him
to come out anywhere at all. Well, why weren't they? Because nobody believed he
was coming back from the dead. As a matter of fact,
back in that day, neither the Jews nor the Greeks
nor the Romans ever believed in anybody being raised from
the dead as one individual. Now, the Jews and all fairness,
believed at the end of time, God would raise
all the people up that were righteous together
to live with him forever. But nobody believed that right
in the middle of history, God would raise one single
person from the dead. So when they put
Jesus in that tomb, Peter, James, John, Andrew,
Bartholomew, Mary, his brothers, they said, "He's gone. "Stick a fork in him, he's done. "We will never see him
again on this earth." But the empty tomb
changed everything. So William Wand, a former
professor at Oxford University put it this way, "All the strictly historical
evidence that we have "is in favor of the empty tomb. "And those scholars who
reject it ought to recognize "that they do so on some
other ground than that "of scientific history." So, here is what he was saying, and I want to just kind
of say it with him. You may not believe in
the resurrection of Jesus. You may not believe in
the virgin birth of Jesus. You may not believe in
the sinless life of Jesus, but there's one thing
you cannot deny. Sunday morning,
that tomb was empty. So we have an empty tomb. But Paul said, "We have a
stronger case than that." Because we not only
have an empty tomb, we have eyewitness testimonies. Now, there are two
bookings to the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. Yeah, you've got the empty tomb, but you've also got
eyewitness testimonies. See, there are two facts that form a resurrection
shaped dent in history. And this is what Paul is
referring to when he says this: And for many days,
he was seen by those who had traveled with him
from Galilee to Jerusalem. They are now his
witnesses to our people. My son is an attorney. My son will tell you that
if you're an attorney and you're trying a case, the best truimph cards you
can have in your pocket, the ace in the hole
you can have your hand is if you've got good
solid eyewitness testimony and the more the better. The more credible
witnesses you have and the more they corroborate
each other's story, the stronger proof
that you have. Well, when you
combine the empty tomb with eyewitness testimonies, even skeptics try to say,
they kind of call a time out and say, "You know what? "We need to take a look and
kind of see what happens." What did really happen? Because again, no
one disputes the fact that there were significant
numbers of men and women who claimed to be our
witnesses to the risen Jesus. By the way, which is attested to by every single one of the 27
books of the new Testament. Two gospels, Matthew and
John were written by two men who were disciples who live
with Jesus for three years. They claimed to have
seen the risen Lord and they died for that belief, and they died for that
conviction incidentally. It is not the four gospels that
explained the resurrection, it is the resurrection that
explains the four gospels. Because if Jesus Christ had
not been raised from the dead, listen to this, we
don't have Christmas. We don't have Easter. We don't have the Lord supper. We don't have a church. We don't have the New Testament. Everything rises and falls
on the new Testament. As matter of fact,
it's the resurrection that explains, not
the four gospels, but the entire new Testament. If you take the birth of Jesus, if you took that away, it only affect two books in
the Bible, Matthew and Luke. They are the only ones
that refer to his birth. But if you take away the
resurrection of Jesus, you will take away the
entire New Testament. Let me tell you this, this
really gets even better. One of my favorite
books in the Bible is a book called James.
It's in the New Testament. The reason why I love that book is because it has a great
name to that book, okay? It's just one of God's
coincidence is okay, but James wrote a
book in the Bible, really is one of
my favorite books. Now, you probably don't
know this about James, but let me clue you in. James was the brother of Jesus. And you might say, "Well, of course he wrote one
of the books in the Bible. "He was one of his brothers." Oh no, wait a minute. He didn't believe in Jesus
when Jesus was alive. He didn't buy into all
this stuff about Jesus being the son of God. He grew up with him. He went to school with him, probably slept in the
same bunk bed with him. He said, "I don't believe it." As a matter of fact, none of Jesus's brothers
bought into it. Nobody. If later on, John said this
about Jesus' own brothers. He said, "For even
his own brothers did
not believe in him." Now, let me just stop. How many of you have a brother? Okay, you can kind of
sympathize with this, right? I mean, really,
you got a brother? So, you're eight years old,
your brother is 12 years old and your brother comes
to you one day and says, "Hey, don't don't
tell mom and dad, "but I'm the son of God." So you're thinking, "Okay, you've had
too much Capri Sun, "and you've been
sniffing some glue." They didn't buy it. They didn't believe it. Lived with Jesus for 30
years, never bought into it. Hey, have you
thought about this? Jesus had 12 disciples, not
one brother was a disciple. Not one. Not his own brother. They didn't buy it.
They didn't believe it. Listen, it's worse than that. His family thought he was crazy. I'm not making this up. His family thought he was nuts because Jesus is walking around claiming these
incredible things. I'm the Messiah.
I'm the son of God. I'm God in the flesh.
I came from heaven. I'm going to die for
the sins of the world. I'm going to be
raised from the dead. And they absolutely thought
he had lost his mind. Mark tells us about it. When his family
heard about this, they went to take charge
of him for they said, "He's out of his mind." His family says, "Get the
white coat. Call the doctor. "Get him down to
this institution.
This boy needs help." And yet just 40 days
after his crucifixion, there's a hundred
people up in a room. And you know what they're doing? They are worshiping Jesus
and they're praising Jesus and they are glorifying Jesus
and they're exalting Jesus. Take a guess who's in that room. They all joined together
constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary, the mother of
Jesus, and with his brothers. You've had a brother,
so you know this. Weren't it sweet when Jesus
looked at them and said, "I told you." "Tried to tell you guys. "Mom, I tried to tell you." And oh, by the way,
the apostle Paul, remember who's
speaking these words? He had a very unique
experience with Jesus. All these other witnesses
to the resurrection, they saw Jesus when he
was physically alive. They saw Jesus when he
was on planet earth. They saw Jesus before he
ever went to the cross. Paul, he's the only one
who ever encountered Jesus after he had physically
left this planet. He never saw Jesus
perform a miracle. He never saw Jesus
walk on water. He never heard Jesus preach
the Sermon on the Mount. He never saw Jesus crucified. He never even laid
eyes on the empty tomb. And oh, by the way, everyone
else that believed in Jesus, well, they loved Jesus. They respected Jesus. They revered Jesus.
They admire Jesus. They wanted Jesus to come
back from the dead, not Paul. He hated Jesus. He was hostile to
the name Jesus. He absolutely
despised the church. He wouldn't even consider the
possibility of a resurrection. And yet something happened
that was so unbelievable in his life that he sat
down in a Roman prison knowing he was going to die. He wrote over half
of the New Testament and died by beheading saying,
"Jesus Christ is Lord." So, no other religious leader, no other philosophical leader of any of the world's
religions or philosophies have ever been proclaimed
as a risen savior. None of them. Now, every other religion
speaks of a leader who was alive but is now dead. The New Testament doesn't
talk about a Christ who was alive and now dead. The New Testament and
these eyewitnesses talk about a Christ who
was dead but is now alive. And they not only
wrote that down, they not only told
anybody that would listen, they sealed it with
their own blood. So except for Christianity, every religious or
philosophical belief is either based on
somebody's personality or somebody's philosophy
who is still dead. So let's just kind of
bring it down to earth. Let's take the three of
the four major religions. Let's take Judaism. Judaism's founder is Abraham. Every Jew will tell you Abraham
died and Abraham's dead. Buddhism. The founder of Buddhism
was Buddha, Gautama Buddha. We know when he was born,
we know when he died. Every Buddhist will tell you. Buddha died, Buddha is dead. Let's take Islam. Muslims say that the
founder of their religion is the prophet Mohammed. They will all tell you Mohammed
died, Mohammed is dead. Christianity is the only
belief in the world, it's not based on
somebody's personality, it's not even based on
somebody's teachings, it is based on the historical
fact of a resurrection evidenced by an empty tomb
and eyewitness testimony. And listen, the
evidence is compelling. The evidence is overwhelming and I want you to
take my word for it. If you're an attorney,
you'll appreciate this. As a matter of fact,
if you're an attorney, you may know on my who
I'm about to talk about. There was an Englishman, his
name was John Singleton Copley, better known as Lord Lyndhurst. If you go to England
today, go to any lawyer, go to any judge and
ask them this question. Who is the greatest legal mind in the history of great Britain? They'll tell you
universally, Lord Lyndhurst. He is an icon. He is the only guy
on the Mount Rushmore of legal judicial experts
in all of great Britain. He was at one time
the Solicitor General of the British government, the Attorney general
of Great Britain, the High Chancellor of England, and the High Steward of the
University of Cambridge. So in one lifetime, this man held the highest
offices ever conferred on any judge or any attorney in the history of Great Britain. The guy knows his stuff. And here's what he said: "I know pretty well what
evidence is, well, do tell. "And I tell you such evidence "as that for the
resurrection of Jesus Christ "has never broken down yet." So, let me tell you
how certain I am. You're not a believer.
You're a skeptic. You're not buying what
I'm trying to give away. I'm not even try to sell it, I'm just trying to give it away. Just now, I'm not
buying it. Okay. I'll defy you. I will buy your lunch,
I'll buy your dinner as long as we go to McDonald's. You give me a better
explanation for that empty tomb. You give me a better explanation of those are
witness testimonies. You give me a better explanation of why there are billions of
people and I'm one of them. There's a lot that
I won't die for, but I'll tell you one
thing I'll die for. I will die before I'll deny
that Jesus Christ is alive. So, but there's one last thing. It's kind of like the capstone, it's is kinda like, you
know, the coup de grâce. Paul says, "Look, we not
only have an empty tomb, "you can't deny the
tomb was empty." And we got these
eyewitness testimonies, not just one or two. We've got hundreds
of them who said, "I saw the guy. I felt the guy. "I touched the guy.
I heard the guy." He said, "We have an
eternal transformation." You've got all these
changed lives, all of them. So Paul concludes
with these words: "But the one whom God
raised from the dead "did not see decay." There's a reason he says that. "Therefore, my friends, "I want you to know
that through Jesus, "the forgiveness of sins
is proclaimed to you. "Through him,
everyone who believes "is set free from every sin, "a justification you
are not able to obtain "under the law of Moses." Now, let me tell you
what Paul is saying. The resurrection is
unique in two ways. Remember he says here, "The one that God raised
did not see decay." Why did he say that? Because he knew
there would be people who knew their Old Testament
and knew their Bible and they knew some things
they had heard, just like you. And they would be saying, "Well, now, wait a minute. "Yeah, Jesus was
raised from the dead "but he's not the only guy
that was raised from the dead." As matter of fact, if you
don't know your Bible, there was a famous man
that we know who he is now because Jesus
raised him the dead. We know about him,
what was his name? Yeah, Lazarus. So we know that well, Lazarus was raised
from the dead, yeah? And you go to the Old Testament and there was a son of a widow who Elijah raised from the dead. So you may say,
"Well, wait a minute. "So what is so unique about
the resurrection of Jesus?" It's real simple.
Here's the difference. Everybody else who was raised
from the dead, guess what? They had the die all over again. Had to do it all over
again, same thing, right? So, in other words,
they were raised with the same body they died
with, same old decaying body. Lazarus was raised
from the dead. You know where
Lazarus is right now? I don't know where,
but I know what, just a bunch of ashes. But Jesus, when he was
raised from the dead, he was given a
different kind of body. A new kind of body. A body one day we will have. A body that's
impervious to disease and death and decay. But Jesus' resurrection
also gives us two things that nothing else and
no one else can give us. These are two
things, by the way, we need more than anything else. I'm gonna tell you
what that is too. I don't have to know your name, I don't have to
know who you are, I don't know where you're from, I don't have to know one
thing about your life. But I'm going to tell
you the two things you need more than
anything else in this life and you need it before
you leave this life, whether you realize
you need it or not. We all need forgiveness of sins and we all need freedom
from guilt. All of us. We all need forgiveness of sins, we all need freedom from guilt. I'll show you how this
works. We really know this. If you're a parent,
you have a small child or go back to when you
were a small child, every parent teaches their
children very early in life to learn to say two words. I'm sorry. You tell your sister you're
sorry you pulled her hair. And now you tell your
brother you're sorry you hit him in the
head with a bat because he pulled your hair. We've all done that, right? And even as a little child,
nobody has to tell us. We start wondering,
what's wrong with me? Why do I do things I
know I shouldn't do? Why don't I do things
I know I should do? Why don't I always mind my mama? Why don't always mind my daddy? And the Bible calls that sin. It's an old fashioned word,
but it's still a good word. And if your conscious is
healthy, even as a child, when you do things wrong,
you feel bad about it. You know, you just
feel so guilty. And you know you
need to be forgiven. But then you get
a little bit older and then you learn an even
greater, more painful lesson. And here's what you learn. You learn that you do
something wrong and yeah, you can be told you're forgiven and you can be assured
that you're forgiven, but you still feel guilty. I hit this so often. I'm not picking on
divorced people, but I just want
to use an example I have to solve
with divorce people. I talk to divorce
people so often and they feel so bad
that they got divorced. They regret they got divorced. They just feel like a failure their marriage didn't work out. And they regret that
it ever happened. Now they're forgiven. Divorce is not an
unpardonable sin. God moves on, you move
on, life moves on. But so many people
like that, they say, "I know that, but I
just feel so guilty." And so, we learn in life that
there are times we do things and we want to be forgiven,
and we need to be forgiven but even when we're
told we're forgiven, we still need to be
freed from guilt. That's why the resurrection
we're talking about this morning is not just a
theological doctrine
that Christians believe, it is extremely
relevant to your life. Because I'm going to make
the most dogmatic statement other than Jesus is love,
I'm going to make today. You will never find
full final forgiveness for your sins, ever. And you will never totally ever
find freedom from guilt ever until you meet the risen Jesus. You try anything
else you want to try. Yeah, give the Lord a hand. You can try church,
you can try baptism. You can try penance. You can go to your pastor,
you can go to your priest. You can go to the Pope, but you will never find complete
forgiveness of your sins. You will never find
the freedom from guilt that you're looking for
until you find the only one that can completely,
totally transform your life, that can totally
cleanse your heart, that can totally get rid of all
the skeletons in your closet and that is the risen Jesus. So hopefully, we'll find how
all of this now fits together, 'cause it really does. Jesus lived a sinless life. Because he lived a sinless
life, he could die for our sins. And then to prove that
he lived a perfect life and to prove that he
died for our sins, he came back from the dead. So, Jesus died on the
cross to pay for our sins, and the empty tomb is proof
that God cashed the check. When God brought Jesus
back out of that tomb, he said to all of us, "Don't
worry about your sin debt. "It's canceled." Paid in full. Set free. No more guilt. So I want to wrap up with this. If you know the gospel story, you know that when
the women went to the tomb on that
Sunday morning, there was an angel
sitting by the tomb. And the angel said, "Ladies, sorry. He's
not here, he's risen." And he left a note, he
rolled away the stone. Now, I've read that for
years and years and years, never paid any attention to it. And I mean, I bet you've never
thought about this before, but one day it hit me. Why does the Bible say the
angel rolled away the stone? And why did the angel roll
away the stone to begin with? I mean, I think you'll
agree with this. I think if Jesus
can walk on water and feed 5,000 people with
a few loaves and a few fish, I think he can handle a rock. I think he don't
need anybody to, I don't think Jesus on
Sunday morning was going, "Let me out!" In fact, Jesus could have
walked through that stone. So if you have
thought about this, so why does it tell us that the
angel rolled away the stone? - [Ghostly voice]
So we can see the - This will be worth coming for. He didn't roll away the
stone to let Jesus out. He rolled away the stone
to let unbelievers in so they could see for
themselves he is alive. So, where does that
leave us today? Well, I'm going to
leave you with this and then we're going to
pray and we'll be done. So we live in this world where there is this
religious buffet. And you got 4,200
choices before you. You can choose one of them, you can choose none of them. You can choose one,
leave all the rest. But you remember your choice. So when you come to
the end of your road, which you will and I will, and you come to the
end of your life, which you will and I will, and when the clock ticks
its last time for you, and one day it will. Just remember, you will have
made one of two choices, cause there's only two. You are either going
to follow the dead or you're going
to follow the one who came back from the dead. Jesus is the only person who physically came
back from the dead, who will physically
come back to earth to bring all who believe in him physically back from the dead to live with him forever more, and what an Easter
that's going to be. So, Jesus lived, so do we. Jesus died, so will we. But you have only one hope. You have only one shot. You have only one chance
to come back from the dead. And that is to believe
in the only one who did. - We are so glad
you tuned in here on the Touching
Lives digital channel and we hope you enjoyed
the sermon today. Be sure to click
and follow this page and feel free to leave
any comments below. We would love to hear your
thoughts from today's message. Look for a new
episode to be posted on this channel each Sunday, and in the meantime feel free
to call us at 1-800-413-1131 or email us at
info@touchinglives.org with prayer needs or questions. Thank you so much
for watching today. I'll see you right here next
time for another episode of Touching Lives with
Dr. James Merritt. Touching Lives, teaching
people everywhere who Jesus is and
why they need him. This program is sponsored
by Touching Lives Ministries and is made possible
by the grace of God and your faithful
prayers and gifts.
