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00:00 skit and heard in the testimony. Such a wonderful truth that God loves us
00:06 so much that Jesus was willing to give his life to die for us so that we could have
00:14 salvation, forgiveness, and new life with him. And every time we hear the story about
00:20 the crucifixion and the resurrection, it moves us as we think of God's deep
00:26 love for us. But sometimes I think especially if
00:32 we've been Christians for several years and we've heard the gospel message many
00:37 times and perhaps you've even been trained to share the gospel.
00:42 It's almost as like we can talk about the crucifixion and not really feel any
00:49 pain or we can talk about the resurrection and not feel any excitement.
00:56 Oh yes, this morning we do because today is Easter. But what about the rest of the year?
01:02 I've taught courses on salvation. I've taught courses on theology.
01:07 And at least from my perspective, I need to be careful because it's easy for me just to start rattling off the facts
01:14 and then they just stay as facts. And I wonder if that might be true with some of the rest of us, too. We know the
01:22 truth from scripture that Christ died for our sins according to the scripture. He was buried. He was raised on the
01:30 third day in accordance with the scripture. And he appeared to many witnesses.
01:35 But there's a danger, I'm afraid, that if we're not careful, it becomes just more of an academic exercise.
01:43 We know it's true. We believe it's true. But does it affect our life day in and
01:49 day out? 365 days of the year.
01:54 I'm sure you want the story to impact your life. We want not only to celebrate this
02:02 historical fact, but we want this to be a reality in each one of our lives.
02:09 Well, the resurrection can transform our lives. We heard one great example this
02:14 morning of a transformed life from the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus.
02:22 This morning for us to get the full impact of the resurrection, I'd like us to try to put ourselves into
02:29 the shoes or the sandals of the early disciples and try to go with them these
02:36 last few days. How did they experience these events?
02:42 What did they think? How did they feel? Try to understand their thoughts as they
02:49 see Jesus hanging on the cross, laid in the tomb.
02:55 Empathize with their feelings as they go to the tomb and nobody's there. What
02:60 happened? And then when they finally see Jesus,
03:06 we think today of Easter as a time of celebration. We greet each other with blessed Easter
03:14 or he is risen. Oftenimes we associate Easter with a joyful sunrise service.
03:21 Sometimes with beautiful flowers. We think of the empty tomb and it's always
03:26 pretty like this with flowers and everything neat. No bad odors, no smells.
03:32 But the way that we think of Easter with our joyous celebration was not the way
03:37 the disciples experienced that first Easter morning. That first Easter morning, what was still on their mind
03:44 was the crucifixion. They did not know yet that Jesus had died.
03:51 This is the thought that was going through their mind on Easter morning. They were not thinking he is risen. They
03:57 were thinking he's dead. He's in the tomb. To really understand and
04:03 experience the effect of Easter in our life, we need to understand and let the
04:09 cross experience our lives. As we try to put ourselves into the place of these
04:15 early disciples, let's remember they had not yet read the New Testament. They
04:20 didn't know the rest of the story. When I read Luke 23 about the crucifixion,
04:27 I know two days later he rises from the dead. They didn't know that. They had
04:33 experienced Palm Sunday where there were shouts of hosana. Large crowds cheering.
04:40 And the disciples were fully expecting that we're now going to have a time of
04:46 glory and grandeur, prestige, power. And when Jesus sets up his kingdom, hey, I'm
04:52 going to be second in command. And we see the disciples arguing with each other who's going to be the greatest.
04:59 And of course, we know who the finance minister was. He already had that job secured. Everybody's wanting an
05:05 important place in this kingdom Jesus is setting up. And all the cheers of the people and think how the disciples must
05:11 have felt, man, we're with the right guy now. We have made it. We've arrived. We're with the new government. We've got
05:17 the power. We've got the success. Just a few days later though, the crowds
05:24 that had been cheering him began to jeer.
05:29 And the cheers and the shouts of hosana turned to jeers and curses as the crowds were crying, "Crucify him!"
05:37 And the hopes of the disciples were dashed as they saw Jesus arrested,
05:45 treated like a common ordinary prisoner, beaten severely,
05:52 led out to be crucified, taken down from the cross, laid in the
05:59 grave. Their hopes, their dreams were dashed.
06:05 They were also disappointed in themselves. They had promised Jesus, "Yes, we will be true to the end, but
06:12 they had no idea what was getting ready to happen." And they fled or at least kept a distance. So here these disciples
06:19 on that first Easter morning, they were not celebrating. They had lost one of their best friends.
06:26 Their leader was gone. And so tragic. He was so young.
06:33 We expect people that are older than us to die, but somebody that young in the
06:38 prime of life, that makes the sorrow, the agony even greater.
06:44 And you expect a rebel, a traitor possibly to be executed. But Jesus,
06:53 a young, healthy, well-liked teacher, the worst thing he did was heal somebody
07:01 on the Sabbath day. He showed people God's love. He performed miracles to
07:06 help people. He taught them about God, gave them hope, gave them encouragement,
07:12 and yet he is tragically killed.
07:18 So try to feel what these early disciples would have felt on that first Easter morning. Dejected, hopeless,
07:24 depressed. Some of you have possibly experienced
07:30 the untimely death of a loved one, yanked out in the prime of life. And so
07:37 you can empathize more deeply with what the disciples would have been feeling on
07:42 that first Easter as this one with so much promise was suddenly gone.
07:49 We heard in the story about the ladies going to the tomb. They were full of grief because they had
07:57 seen Jesus as he had been beaten. They had seen him as the nails were driven into his hands. They had seen as a
08:04 soldier drove a spear in his side to make sure he was dead. And they had seen
08:10 where the body had been laid in the tomb. And now in the text we just heard, the ladies are going to prepare the body
08:17 for a decent for a proper burial. They had not had time to do that earlier because of the Sabbath day. So they're
08:24 bringing spices and when they approach the tomb, they're fully expecting to
08:29 find a dead body there. And the spices are helped to make the smell a little
08:35 bit less, keep the body from decomposing quite so bad. But this is what they're expecting. And when they get there,
08:44 not only is the stone gone, but the tomb is empty. And they don't immediately
08:50 think, "Oh, resurrection. We should have known that." No, no, no. They're thinking, "What a cruel joke for
08:57 somebody to pull. I This just adds insult to injury. Our grief was deep enough." And now we can't even give him
09:03 a decent burial. Who was so cruel to come and steal his body, take the body
09:10 away? And the text says
09:17 that as they saw this empty tomb, they were perplexed.
09:22 They were puzzled. They were confused. They had no clue what had happened to
09:28 Jesus. They were wondering where is the body? Who took it?
09:36 They didn't understand the empty tomb at all. And so as they're sitting there not
09:43 understanding what's going on, totally perplexed, we see that two men in glowing raignments, angels appear to
09:51 them and they just ask a simple question. Why are you looking for the living among the dead? He's not here. He
09:57 is risen. And then they ask an interesting question. Remember how he told you?
10:04 Well, of course they didn't remember. If they had remembered, they wouldn't have been so perplexed. They wouldn't have
10:10 been grieving so much. These ladies, even though they had spent time in the
10:16 teaching, in the company of Jesus, they did not remember.
10:22 For some reason, they just did not understand. We don't know why they don't remember,
10:28 but possibly they just weren't listening real carefully when Jesus was teaching. Or maybe, like some of us, we listen to
10:36 the part we want to hear, and then the part that's kind of uncomfortable,
10:41 that's the part we're able to shut out of our mind and ignore. And it was a difficult message to
10:47 understand. I mean, after all, Jesus is the Messiah. How is the promised anointed king coming from God going to
10:53 die on a cross? They just did not understand the empty tomb. They had not
11:00 understood anything that had happened that week. They had not understood Palm Sunday.
11:07 They had not understood the crucifixion. And now the empty tomb, they did not understand. So the angels reminded them,
11:15 remember how he told you that the son of man must be delivered into the hands of
11:20 sinful men and be crucified on the third day.
11:27 And then the text says after the angel reminded them, then they began
11:34 to remember the words that Jesus had spoken. And we don't know if they really
11:41 came to a faith in the resurrection yet or not. But at least they're making progress. They're moving in the right
11:47 direction. They realize there's something in the teaching I've missed out on. And now I understand
11:54 Jesus had said he would die. He had said he would be raised again. And so when
11:60 they heard this message, their life was transformed. And they went back in a
12:05 hurry to talk to the other disciples and told them everything that they had seen
12:10 and everything that they had heard. The resurrection had made an impact on
12:15 their lives and they wanted to share what they had seen and heard. But what
12:20 was the response of the others? Well, the others said just a bunch of
12:26 emotional, irrational women. You can't believe anything these ladies
12:32 say. Old wives tale, fable, fairy tale, just
12:39 a bunch of women, can't put any faith in anything they say.
12:44 Or can we? And evidently, Peter, even though he was dismissing what they said
12:50 as an old wives tale, something was beginning to turn in his brain and in
12:56 his heart. And we see his curiosity was aroused enough that he thought, "At
13:01 least I'm going to go check out and see if this story is true." So, we see that Peter rose and he ran to the tomb. He's
13:09 curious enough. He wants to takes that next step to investigate. Is there something to this? So, he stoops and he
13:16 looks in and he sees the linen cloths by themselves. It says he went home
13:22 marveling at what had happened. marveling at what he saw.
13:28 He was amazed, almost convinced, not quite, but almost convinced that
13:36 Jesus was alive. Well, I want us to look at more character. So, we're going to continue
13:42 in the story. Later that day, there were two
13:47 disciples, not one of the 12, but two other followers of Jesus that were walking down a road towards a little
13:53 village of Emmas, which was 11 kilometers away from Jerusalem.
13:58 And they were walking probably pretty slow. We know that they were grieving and they
14:04 were talking among themselves about what had happened.
14:10 And as they're speaking, Jesus comes up to them, but they don't recognize him.
14:16 And so Jesus speaks to them and says, "What were y'all talking about?"
14:22 And rather than answering immediately, it says they just stood still and they look sad,
14:29 gloomy, dejected in deep sorrow. They too had lost a close friend and a
14:35 companion. And so then after Jesus answered them and they
14:42 waited a bit, asked them, then they waited a bit, then they replied, "Are you the only one that's been in
14:48 Jerusalem and does not know what has happened? Everybody that's been in town knows
14:54 what's happened." This was not done in secret. The cries of the crowd were loud enough to be heard for a long distance.
15:00 The mob going out to the crucifixion place. Everybody knows what's happened. Are you
15:07 the only one in Jerusalem who does not know that? And Jesus just asked them, "What things
15:14 are you talking about?" And so this is their reply. They said, "Well, concerning Jesus of Nazareth, a
15:22 man who was a prophet, mighty in deed and word before God and all the people,
15:27 and how our chief priests and rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him."
15:36 But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.
15:43 Interesting. We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel.
15:51 What kind of redemption were they hoping for? What had Jesus done? Jesus had
15:57 indeed redeemed Israel. They were just not aware of it. They had hoped that
16:02 Jesus would redeem Israel from the oppression of the Romans. They were
16:08 hoping for political redemption, hoping for economic redemption.
16:14 They were not even expecting that the redemption that Jesus would give would be for something even more important
16:22 than politics and money. But he would be giving redemption
16:27 from sin, victory over death, something with eternal lasting value. We
16:36 had hoped he would redeem Israel, and yet that's exactly what he did. But then
16:42 they continued, "Yes, and besides this, it's now the third day since these things happened.
16:49 Moreover, some of our women, they amazed us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his
16:55 body, they came back saying that they had even seen a vision of angels, who said that he was alive."
17:02 Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had seen, but him they did not see. It's
17:10 interesting these two men on their way to Emmas. They knew just about all of
17:15 the facts that a person needs to be saved. They knew about Jesus and the mighty works,
17:22 the miracles that he did showing that God's hand and God's power was upon him.
17:28 They knew about the crucifixion. They had heard about the resurrection,
17:34 but they were still perplexed. They still did not understand. They didn't
17:40 believe. They were confused. And the reason for their lack of disbel
17:45 for their lack of belief, the reason for their perplexity here was because of the
17:50 false expectations that they had had. Their world view was wrong.
17:57 Their religious background, even though it was a Jewish religious background, for some reason they had received some
18:02 faulty teaching or faulty understanding along the way. And because of their wrong expectations
18:09 and their wrong faulty religious viewpoints, they had missed the meaning of what had
18:15 just happened. But this was getting ready to change because Jesus did not leave them there.
18:22 He spoke to them, not too complimentary to begin with, but he said to them, "Oh,
18:27 foolish ones and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have
18:33 spoken." Foolish ones, not too bright, are you? In other words,
18:40 is what Jesus is saying. You don't understand. You're not thinking clearly. But it's not just your thinking that's
18:47 not quite right. It's your heart. It's a heart problem. You're slow of heart to
18:54 believe. Not just believe what you want to hear, but you're slow of heart to believe all
18:60 that the prophets have said. Now, he didn't go into detail, but remember the prophet Isaiah also spoke about the
19:06 coming of the Messiah. And the prophet Isaiah talked about a suffering servant
19:12 who would be beaten, who would die, but who would see life again.
19:19 not too bright, not thinking clearly, slow of heart, not wanting to believe
19:25 the entire message of scripture. And so Jesus went on to explain to them
19:31 what the message of scripture was they needed to believe. Was it not necessary that the Christ should suffer these
19:37 things and enter into his glory? And then Jesus began with Moses and all the prophets, and he interpreted to them in
19:44 all the scriptures the things concerning himself.
19:50 He's looking at the Old Testament scriptures. And here he's taking the entire Old Testament and pointing out
19:55 there are things in the law of Moses. There are things in the prophets. There's things in the rest of the Old
20:01 Testament scriptures that are pointing to me. and not only pointing to me as the coming king, they're also pointing
20:08 to the plan of salvation that God has had from the beginning of time to pay
20:14 the penalty of sin through my death on the cross with victory sealed by my
20:20 resurrection from the dead. So he talked with them about the scriptures and
20:25 explained to them. And as they continued walking, they got
20:31 close to the village where they were wanting to go to 11 kilometers from Jerusalem. Jesus was going to keep on
20:37 going. But the other two disciples said, not realizing it was Jesus yet, just
20:42 saying, "Well, we're getting ready to stop for the evening. It's late. It's almost dark. Come in, have a meal with
20:49 us, and you can spend the evening with us." So they go into a house
20:54 and as they are eating Jesus breaks bread
21:01 and they recognize in that moment that it's Jesus
21:09 and it says their eyes were opened and when they recognized him then Jesus
21:14 vanished from their sight and then they said to each other did not
21:20 our hearts burn within us while he talked to us on the road while he opened
21:26 to us the scriptures. I like that phrase. Did not our hearts burn within
21:31 us? I read one translation that says, "Were not our hearts warmed?" Not a good
21:37 translation. The word talks about fire, kindling a fire, lighting a spark. Not
21:44 just a warm fuzzy feeling that you get from being in nice fellowship, but a
21:49 fire lit in your heart because you have had an encounter with Jesus. You've heard the scriptures. You've understood
21:56 the scriptures for the first time and your heart comes a flame. Your life
22:02 is transformed. The resurrection makes a major impact on the life on your life
22:09 when you truly understand the meaning of the resurrection and the meaning of the
22:14 cross. Their lives were transformed and even though it was night,
22:20 even though they were tired, even though they'd already walked 11 kilometers, we see that very hour they get up and
22:27 hightail it back to Jerusalem. And my guess is they got to Jerusalem quicker than they had arrived coming to the
22:34 city. It was dark, dangerous time to travel, but they had met Jesus. They had
22:41 understood the scriptures. Their lives had been transformed and they could not wait to go and share with the others.
22:48 So, it's interesting. They get to where the other disciples were meeting and they go in wanting to tell what has
22:54 happened. But in the meantime, Jesus has already appeared personally to Peter.
22:60 And so before these two can report what they had just seen, the other disciples
23:05 meet them and say, "The Lord is risen and he has appeared even to Peter." The
23:11 one who had denied Jesus three times just a couple of days before. He's appeared to Peter. And so then the ones
23:18 that had gone to Emmas, they start explaining what had happened to them and they're so excited talking about how
23:23 wonderful it is that Jesus is risen. And then Jesus comes and stands in the
23:30 midst of them and says, "Peace to you."
23:36 And you'd think they'd be so excited. Jesus has appeared to all of us. But
23:42 strange, that's not their reaction. They were startled. They were
23:47 frightened. They thought they saw a spirit.
23:52 I can understand this. Jesus had not knocked on the door. He had not even walked through the door. He was just
23:59 there. And that's not the way he had done earlier. He'd usually come through the door before that. So, you can
24:05 understand that they were wondering what is going on.
24:10 But rather than greeting Jesus and being so happy that he's there, they're
24:15 frightened. Jesus then responds to them, "Why are you so troubled? Why do doubts arise in
24:24 your heart?" Jesus is good at seeing our heart, isn't he? These people who have just been
24:29 talking about the fact that Jesus is alive, he can see that some of them
24:35 still have doubts.
24:40 And then Jesus tries to convince them, hey, I'm not a ghost. I'm a real person.
24:46 Give me something to eat. But the disciples are still
24:51 disbelieving. Now, it's for joy. Good reason. I mean, joy, that's great to have so much joy, but they're still
24:57 haven't really come to that faith. They're still disbelieving for joy, and they're marveling. And so when Jesus
25:04 eats and shows them that, hey, I put the fish in my mouth and when it goes down, you can't see it go down. That shows I'm
25:10 not a spirit. I've got a real body. Then he begins to talk to them.
25:16 And what he tells them is very similar to what he told the two disciples on the road to Emmas.
25:22 These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you. Remember, I told you this earlier. You weren't
25:28 listening. Remember, this is what I said when I was still with you. that everything that has been written about
25:34 me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms, it must be fulfilled.
25:42 And then he opened their minds to understand the scriptures. Now when we see the law of Moses and the prophets
25:48 and the psalms, we need to realize Jesus is saying by saying that he's saying the entire Old Testament because the Hebrews
25:56 divided their Bible differently than we do and they only had three sections. the law of Moses, the first five books, just
26:03 like we would say the law. And then the prophets, that would include what we would consider our books of history,
26:08 basically Joshua through 2 Kings. And then the and also then the prophets that we would consider prophets, Isaiah
26:14 through Malachi. And then the third section was the writings which and the
26:20 main book in that would have been the Psalms as well as Job, Proverbs, a few others. But he's basically saying all
26:27 three sections, the entire Old Testament is pointing to me. The entire Old
26:33 Testament, the reason it is written is to show you God's plan of salvation.
26:38 The te Old Testament shows how God has created us, but how we have rebelled
26:44 against God. We are living separated from God because of our sin. But the Old
26:50 Testament is showing how God loves you despite your sin. and he wants to
26:55 provide forgiveness. And so we see through the Old Testament sacrifices, the shedding of blood being made for
27:02 forgiveness of sin, but yet realizing the blood of an animal will never truly
27:08 forgive sin. But these are pointing to Jesus. Each section of the scripture is
27:15 pointing to the fact that God has a wonderful plan to bring forgiveness, to bring salvation.
27:22 Look at the scripture. check it. Listen to all that they say. And he opened their minds to understand the scripture.
27:31 Man, I'd like to been at that Bible study. Probably the best Bible study there ever was from the greatest Bible
27:37 scholar, the greatest Bible teacher. But can you imagine just going through the Old Testament and having Jesus point out
27:43 here, look at this. This is what it means. This is what it's saying about me. Look at this. Don't you see now more
27:49 clearly the meaning of what God has been trying to say to you through the scripture?
27:55 But he continues, "What is in the scripture is that Christ
28:00 should suffer and on the third day rise and that repentance and forgiveness of
28:07 sin should be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem."
28:14 God's plan from the beginning of time was to bring salvation through Jesus.
28:19 But God's plan is even bigger than that. God's plan was not just for the Hebrew
28:24 people. God's plan is not just for the Chinese who are believers here in Malaysia.
28:32 God's plan is not just for Americans who happen to be believers. God's plan of
28:37 salvation is for all nations, all ethnic groups, all people groups. And this is
28:45 borne witness to even in the Old Testament scriptures where we see the Jewish people having a special role. But
28:52 that role is to be a light to the Gentiles. And God's plan from the beginning is
28:58 that all races, all ethnic groups, people from all religious backgrounds, all cultural backgrounds, all ethnic
29:05 backgrounds, all language groups, that they have a chance to hear the clear
29:10 teaching of the gospel that Christ should suffer and rise on the third day. And that when
29:18 we repent, turn to God in faith, turn away from idols, turn away from false
29:23 religion, turn away from a self-centered existence, when we repent and turn to
29:28 God in faith, then we'll receive forgiveness of sin.
29:34 The life, the lives of these early disciples was now really transformed at
29:40 this moment. The sadness they had had was gone, replaced with joy. The
29:46 disillusionment was no longer there. They had new hope. They had been
29:52 pursuing meaningless goals with false expectations.
29:57 That was now gone. They had new purpose, new meaning as they were now going to be
30:03 involved in the most important, most meaningful endeavor in human history,
30:08 that of proclaiming repentance and forgiveness of sin to all people. that
30:14 this is possible through what Jesus has done for us on Good Friday and on Easter.
30:22 And then Jesus said to them, "You are witnesses of these things." I think he
30:28 meant two things. One, you're eyewitnesses. You were with me. You heard me teaching
30:34 for three years. You saw my arrest. Some of you that weren't too much of a
30:40 coward, you saw, at least from a distance, me hanging on the cross. And now you have seen my resurrected
30:46 body. You're eyewitnesses. But he means more than just that. He
30:52 also means because you're eyewitnesses because you have personally experienced
30:57 the transforming power of the resurrection in your life, you're witnesses to go tell other people, all
31:05 peoples of the world. And then he went on to say he would give them the power through the Holy Spirit to do this. But
31:13 your witnesses, not only of what you have personally seen, but now your witnesses as you go and share. And their
31:20 lives were transformed as they took seriously this role of being a witness,
31:26 sharing Christ with so many other people and explaining to them what God had done
31:32 for them. What's a wonderful story when we read all of Luke chapter 24 and we see so
31:39 many different characters and we're impressed once again with this greatest event in human history, the resurrection
31:46 of Jesus Christ. And we have seen the great impact that it had on the lives of
31:52 the different characters that were involved. But it's not just a story from history.
31:58 It's a story that has meaning today. The resurrection can affect each of our
32:06 lives today. You might ask yourself, how can the resurrection affect my life?
32:12 Well, think once again about the characters. Some of you might find yourself in similar situations to some of the
32:19 characters in the story that we just read and talked about. Some of you might be like
32:25 the disciples grieving, experience sorrow.
32:31 Bring these sorrows to the Lord. Experience his comfort. Some of you may
32:36 have lost hope, disillusioned,
32:41 no meaningful goal. We saw the transformation the disciples
32:46 had. We can experience something similar as Jesus gives us a meaningful purpose
32:52 in life. We see how some of them had failed expectations.
32:59 God had not worked exactly the way they had wanted him to, not the way they thought he should have, and they were
33:06 quite disappointed about that. Some of us may be in a situation like that again today.
33:15 And in relation to our spiritual life, our relationship to God,
33:22 some of us might be a lot like those ladies that went into the tomb that were perplexed.
33:27 And when Jesus says, 'Don't you remember this? And obviously, no, they didn't. They didn't really have a clue. And some
33:35 of you may have come this morning not really knowing what Easter was about. Maybe a friend invited you. Okay, it's
33:41 Easter Sunday. It's a holiday. I'll come celebrate. But don't really know what it's about.
33:47 My wife this past week was talking with a group of children. And she was explaining to them about the
33:53 resurrection of Jesus. And a couple of children never heard of the resurrection. And so she goes on and
33:58 talks to them and says, "Well, the resurrection is why we celebrate Easter." And one of the boys said, "I
34:04 thought it was because of the Easter Bunny."
34:10 So many people in our society today, the only thing they know about Easter is the
34:16 Easter Bunny. They don't understand. Well, if you're here today, you
34:22 understand more than that because you have heard from God's word. But there might be still some of you that would
34:27 say,"I still don't fully understand the gospel and I don't fully understand how that can affect my life."
34:35 And if that's the case, you can be transformed today. At the end of the service, there'll be a time where you
34:41 can come down. There'll be leaders of the church here. And we would encourage you to talk with one of the leaders of
34:47 the church. They'd be willing to pray with you or the person that you came with, ask them, talk with them. There's
34:55 no need to leave here perplexed, not understanding.
35:01 But when you leave here, we can leave like the ladies did who had heard the story and now knew
35:10 that Jesus had risen. Some of you might be a little bit further along. You're not totally not
35:17 understanding, but you're still somewhat doubtful. Kind of like Peter in the story. Remember,
35:23 Peter heard the lady's testimony, just a bunch of emotional women.
35:29 But maybe there is something and he was willing to take that next step. And maybe you're like that this
35:36 morning. You're not real sure about the Christian gospel. Maybe you've got another type of religious background,
35:43 maybe no religious background, and you think there might be something to this and you want to check it out
35:49 more, but you're just not quite there yet. Well, today your life too can be
35:54 transformed. And we would encourage you to come and talk with the leaders of the
35:59 church and they can help you take even the next step of placing your faith in
36:04 Jesus. Today you too can have an encounter with Jesus, hear his words,
36:10 the testimony of the scripture and through the testimony of the faith of others then receive Christ in your life.
36:19 Others of you might be like the disciples on the road to Emmas
36:25 who have these unexpected I mean unfulfilled expectations.
36:30 You thought that God was there to serve you. You thought it was God's job to do what
36:37 you want him to do and he hasn't always performed.
36:42 That's backwards. God's not there to serve me. I'm on this earth to serve him.
36:49 And God's not there to do what I want him to do, but my job is to find his will and do that. And unfortunately, in
36:57 some of the churches in the world today, we hear false gospels where they teach
37:03 if you have enough faith, you'll always be wealthy. If you have enough faith, you'll always be healthy. If you have
37:09 enough faith, you'll always be successful. And of course, the key is always to send those people money. But
37:16 we get these wrong expectations of the gospel and we see that guy getting rich,
37:22 the guy we're sending our money to, but it hasn't happened to me yet. Why isn't God working? Well, if you have wrong
37:28 expectations, God's not going to fulfill those expectations.
37:34 But your life can be transformed as you've heard this morning that Jesus did come to redeem us from sin, from death,
37:42 from the most important longlasting things of life.
37:48 And some of you this morning might be like the believers in that upper room that evening as Jesus appeared to them.
37:55 Man, they're having a great time of fellowship together. They know that Jesus has risen. even talking about it
38:01 among themselves, but they're totally bowled over when Jesus shows up.
38:07 Sometimes I think that's the way it is in some of our lives. We know the facts about Jesus, but we really don't expect
38:14 him to show up and make a difference in our lives.
38:20 We enjoy being with other Christians. We know the facts, but we're not really
38:27 expecting that personal encounter where Jesus is then going to place the demands on our life that we repent, we turn to
38:36 him in faith, we serve him, and share the gospel
38:44 rather than being like the people we've just mentioned. Would you not rather be
38:49 like those disciples on the road to Emmas after they'd encountered Jesus and their
38:56 hearts burned within them? Wouldn't you like that to be your experience this
39:01 morning? That because of an encounter with Jesus, because of a fresh understanding of God speaking to you,
39:08 now your heart's a flame. And the good news is the resurrection can affect your life in that way. Jesus
39:15 wants to light a fire in your life. Light a new love for him, a new desire
39:22 to serve him, a new desire to turn from things that have kept us from being
39:27 loyal to him, and a new desire to share him with others.
39:33 Their hearts burned and we too can experience that.
39:38 As we come to the end of our time, I want to have a time of prayer. And as we pray, just think,
39:45 am I like those ladies and don't understand? Am I like Peter, ready to take the next step, but still not quite
39:51 there? Do I have false expectations?
39:57 Do I know the facts, but I still don't really want a personal encounter with Jesus?
40:02 Or do you really want your heart to burn? Let's pray and ask God to move in our hearts.
40:11 Father, as we celebrate this wonderful time, we realize that it's really quite easy
40:17 to experience the emotion of the moment and it's quite easy to celebrate today
40:25 and it's quite easy to have an experience today.
40:31 But Father, the other 364 days of the year, sometimes our hearts are not burning on fire with
40:37 the news of what you have done for us. And father, you know the hearts of each person here. You know those who have not
40:45 come to yet to you in faith and repentance. Pray that you would move in their hearts today that they would be
40:52 willing to take that step. And you know those who maybe are just along for the
40:57 fellowship and the good times and the good teaching but are not really expecting you to show up in their lives.
41:05 But father, my prayer is for me, my prayer is for the people here that our hearts would truly be set a
41:11 fire and that your resurrection would make a difference in our life, not only today,
41:18 but every day of our lives. In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
