Jesus is Alive

By Pastor Greg Byman
April 8, 2018
St Joe Community Church

​What is basic Christianity? Last week, Pastor Greg Byman preached that Christianity is based on the historical clam that Jesus Christ literally rose from the dead and proved that his claims were true. Today, Pastor Byman dives deeper into the present reality that Jesus is alive and the relevance for his followers. Pastor Greg Byman delivered “Jesus is Alive” on April 8, 2018 at St. Joe Community Church. 

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Pastor's Notes

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Jesus is Alive, by Pastor Greg Byman
April 8, 2018
St. Joe Community Church
 
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So if you'll turn in your Bibles police to Acts chapter one. And then we're going to flip over to First Corinthians Chapter fifteen which is where Becky read We're going to read a different part of that chapter we're going to look at the Coptic Jesus the life Jesus is alive. And so we're going to look at that this morning April is full of things this this year. It just happens to have collided into all kinds of activities one particular thing is our cookout community cookout our training that's going to be going on but we're actually also going to start a series on the twenty second of April that April Sunday the twenty second called Why am I here why on earth am I here what is God's purpose for my life and in concert with that we're going to start Bible studies and all of our small groups our connection groups that we're going to actually study that topic and then as I'm preaching on Sunday morning you'll have an opportunity to study more in depth of it during the week and we have a it's a bible study that our church has done many times before once before a while back good while back good while back and we're going to review that kind of a renewed Bible study material same material but it's renewed it's revised and so we're going to go through that together as a church family because our church is kind of we kind of. Fall together in unity around five basic purposes and those purposes are what give us real meaning and purpose for how we live our lives and why we're here why on earth God has put us here in the first place and so we're going to talk about that last week oh and one more thing on Sun April is we're going to have a an evening worship time together the following Sunday evening the twenty ninth the last Sunday of the Month fifth son. The month and divine providence Baptist church and Bible Life Community Church are going to be with us in worship together right here be about I think it's five o'clock service we're going to be here in the in the worship house together and honor his word and I don't know who's going to get to preach I think we're going to arm wrestle and I'll lose that probably but that's OK But Michael Griffin is going to be here and Zeke will be here and so I'll just be the mellow side of all three of them to put together so but that we're looking forward to that it was kind of initiated by I said hey look we've not done this we've talked about it since divine providence started as a church that we would join worship together and so I said let's make this happen and so Mike said How about April twenty ninth and what a busy month you know what forget it there will be no easy month to do it so we're just going to make it happen and then we're hoping to we have at least one person and I'm still working to make sure that he can be here for that but we have one person be baptized that night and if Divine Providence has anybody to be baptized that night we're going to try to do that all together and have a joint worship and baptism service so we're praying that Bible life will have a few people that divine providence and that will have at least one maybe more as we move through the month of people that are ready to commit their lives to Christ in public baptism and so we'll have that together as well so what an exciting night that will be all of this by the way and I'll get off of all the announcements sorry about this all of this can be found on our website Facebook we've been. Pumping it big time and thanks to Chris Mann and and the others that work on on our bulletin and on our our scheduling and putting things on our calendar you can find all of this online and I hope that you'll go there like our Facebook page so that you can get updates when we put things on there the sermons are on there now you can get to the slides that you see are online you can kind of go along with that and. In a review and think through. Questions that you have by the way today is going to be a we're going to talk about the resurrection of Jesus Christ and we really believe that as a church family we believe Jesus alive well you know that's something that is actually debated among people who call themselves Christians in America it's estimated that three fourths of all Great Britain citizens do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ but only a quarter of people that live in England believe in Christ that was a two thousand and fourteen poll that was taken to sixteen actually poll that was taken and a continual slide down of people that say they believe in Jesus but they don't believe he came back to life they believe that he was a good person they don't believe he was powerful enough to save himself from death they they want to believe that he did he had good moral principles but they just are are ready to believe their own mind and their own thoughts about supernatural rather than to have any kind of faith at all in a God who can do whatever he wants to do however he wants to do it and I am I'm not I'm. Intellectually I get the questions and that's why I say take these notes home go think about it for yourself formulates if you have questions write them down e-mail me text me whatever however you can get a hold of me Facebook message me I'm on my messenger I'm not that popular to be hidden from there any coming come at me with with questions that you have you may ask something I don't know the answer to guess what I'll say I'll get back with you that's my favorite answer by the way I get back with you I don't know but I'll find out I'll go somewhere I'll research I'll think through it because I don't want you to think that everything I say up here you just have to believe it that says it go home but. Say of great Byman because the Lord said it right no I want you to know what God says and I'm just trying to explain what God says so that you can start a faith journey towards believing in the God of the universe who sent his Son to die for our sins came back to life three days later as send it into heaven and will come back to be with us and take us home to be with himself someday and I put my entire eternity at stake my entire turn to be is staked on the fact that Jesus is alive. And I put my whole hope in that I put my hope of my future generation of children and their children and their children's children however Lord does maybe nobody will come out of my kids I don't know but if they do I'm praying that they will find the same hope in Christ and he's changed my life he's changing my life he gives me a hope beyond the circumstances that I've ever faced before and I've watched him work in countless lives around me and I remember that when I went to college remember hearing some say I don't care what the pastor says What do you believe and I hope that when somebody asks you that question that you don't just spout off something I told you but you've studied it and you've learned it and you've explained it to yourself and you've heard you've prayed and talk to God about it and you've let him convince your heart not me. That what is true is true and so that's what I wanted to follow up last week we talked about was a resurrection Sunday this is Resurrection Sunday week two right because every Sunday is Resurrection Sunday celebration that's why we celebrate and worship on the first day of the week because that's when Jesus came back to life he came back to life on the first day of the week so every Sunday is Easter Sunday for a Christian. Every Sunday and then the lilies will probably fade. But our faith doesn't because we have put our hope in Jesus who was alive on the first day of the week back two thousand years ago and he still alive today our church really does believe this our statement of faith you can see it online on our website but I was going to read a portion of it he was raised from the dead with a glorified body and appeared to His disciples as the person who was with them before his crucifixion. We believe that statement. That he really was there and I'm going to share what the Scripture says about his his resurrected body and what was but what was testified about that truth. It's an essential belief that unites our church family. Now how many of you I want to ask my Rosa hands but I bet there's people in this room that believe that aliens exist on other planets. How many are brave enough to tell me you think that might be true. I don't care if they are or not I mean I just I'm I'm OK if they do I mean you know I don't know if I believe it or not and I don't care if you believe it or not because that's not essential for us to be united in our faith OK because first of all the Bible is completely silent about that. Heavenly bodies and things I mean talks about the stars and all that who knows if he did it would be kind of cool if it was true and maybe you someday will will figure that out but that's not essential for our faith and uniting together as a church family but the resurrection of Christ is essential it's a make or break moment that if you join our church says well I want to join St Joe I want to be a part of the membership of St Joe I want to belong I want to be if I want of full card carrying member of St Joe commune whatever that means with cards by the way. You have you could pick would play euchre now I'm just kidding. We don't. But I don't believe in the resurrection I think Jesus died it was some mystery that they saw they saw Mr reform it was a hallucination we believe that they believe he was alive but we don't believe he was alive that's actually the new catch phrase in modern biblical studies and secular universities we believe that they believe he was alive but we don't believe he was alive when he was just a big hallucination. Well you can a church and believe that and say well that's dogmatic not I just we just we just are firmly convinced and convicted that we believe God's word to be true and we believe that God's word says he's alive and our lives have been marked by a living Savior who has changed and is continuing to change us from who we were before we found him. And we are so convinced of that that we're is no will die for that. We will we will hold true to that statement of fact because we believe it to be true and that is an essential belief that unites our church family. Again we expose the invite anyone to come and explore their faith with us to walk alongside with us to ask questions to poke holes in our arguments and our arguments our debate of conversation I mean like combatting arguments but combative us we aren't we aren't sitting here saying that we want you to just conform to us. We want you to ask questions we want you to challenge our faith who want you to help us get stronger and able to share what we believe in why we believe it and be more clear in the way we say it. And you know what we want to make sure we want to make sure that you have every freedom to ask those questions as you walk along with us you know the statistics say the Barna Research Group does statistics all the way and in April one two thousand and fifteen article. Found out that they shared the facts that most Americans do believe that Jesus was a real person. Younger generations are increasingly less likely to believe Jesus was God that he even has claimed to be God that they reject his claim that he was God about half of Americans believe that Jesus was senseless and that interesting half of Americans believe that he was senseless and most Americans say they've made America a commitment to Jesus Christ most Americans say they've made a commitment to Jesus Christ so you think about it a lot of people are believing in a Jesus they don't really believe much about Orient That's like saying you know I made a commitment to. A political figure or I made a I made a commitment to Michael Jordan you know a great guy. I made a commitment to. And you can just put a human person in there that you think was a stellar person in your lifetime existence or maybe in the past. But but at the same time that they say they've put their faith and committed their life to Jesus Christ. There isn't there's kind of a disconnect between and again I'm just it's just. Somebody says Are you judging No I'm just inspecting fruit I'm just a fruit inspector there's no fruit in our country that shows that people are really following Christ. Eighty percent of people in our region Indiana good ole Hoosier state. Have no conviction to belong to any faith movement under the name of Jesus Christ anywhere they say by word of mouth that they're interested and they have they're not hostile at all they're there there are firming Jesus but they have no personal commitment to follow him word or to live up to you know say OK I believe in Jesus Jesus said obey my commandments Can you name one commandment Jesus gave us well I can name Love one another don't judge lest you be judged that's about as far as it gets most people we said a whole lot more about how to live our lives so have you have you studied the part about you know if you start at your heart it's the same thing as if you did it and you should and so have you ever have you ever committed adultery no where have you ever thought about committing adultery or doing our lust toward some somebody else and as well yeah well Jesus said not to do he did. But but if you say you're follow Jesus you would have known that So in other words. There is a disconnect between people who say they're believing in Jesus but they really aren't following Jesus in their lifestyle or their plan to get better or to grow and their understanding of what it means to follow Jesus and it's like my kids say well I believe my dad is my dad and I trust him I believe in him he's going to he's going to take care of me but I'm going to do whatever I want. I'm a come in whatever I want to come in I'm going to fact I'm going to take whatever money I get from dad and I'm a spend it however I want to whenever I want to spend it I don't really want any rules I want to raid the refrigerator whenever I want to. And boy and fi go off on some addictive pattern he is supposed to support me in that because he just needs to affirm that I'm a good person. Well how many parent would stand for that we wouldn't. That's how we treat Jesus when we say we've committed us ourselves to him and we're not doing anything about it in our life. By the way I'm growing in my understanding of what it means to follow Christ myself. And I'm working on that day by day and I appreciate your prayers on my behalf well this problem is also true of academic professors. They say things I say well we believe it we believe they believe it happened but we don't really believe ourselves that it happened and what they're doing is they're taking their own mind and their own self rule. And they're letting themselves be an authority over everything else around them. And then they gather enough people in a situation where in many modern universities a person who really believes in the resurrected Jesus Christ would never be allowed to have tenure in that school they would never be allowed to hold a position very long in that school they would have any kind of security because the moment they started to say I really believe that Jesus is alive they say well you're a nut case we all know that's not true today and there is case after case after case a philosophy degree today in any secular university from any any particular place and I've talked to guys that are trying to get their philosophy degree to teach philosophy in secular campuses if you're an evangelical fear follower of Jesus Christ and you believe the Bible to be the Bible most professors will not take on a doctoral student who has that faith and if one does and he had a pair and this particular gentleman did he had a particular professor take him because you have to be you have to have another professor to affirm your work as you're doing your doctoral thesis and all of the other professors said we're going to start censoring you and we're going to start keeping you from moving forward in your career if you continue to work with this student that wants to be a Dr of Philosophy. And you need to drop him because you're no longer you because he is an unacceptable Caddick candidate for our doctoral program simply because he would never been and from his belief in the Bible being the Bible and Jesus being the resurrected savior intolerant good ole US of A This is a very common practice I'm not here to rail against and I'm not here to make you mad about that I'm just telling you how it is that's why my son who is studying in college right now in Harvard. He has a protein that's praying for him constantly and he asks for them to pray for him to. Because he knows he's in a group of but he's among a large consortium of people that many of them do not have a belief in Jesus Christ now thankfully we were there to see him last week and there is a Veritas which is truth they were word for truth they have worked for him and they actually had a lady that was a member of the sexual predator from Michigan State and the lady that was the whistleblower that was the gymnast that's now a lot she's a lawyer living raising three kids and one on the way with her husband in Louisville Kentucky she spoke on campus Thursday night we got to watch her lecture and she shared her personal faith and belief in Jesus Christ as a rector acted Savior and the one that could help reconcile justice and forgiveness while justice needs to be served against this man that probably probably sexually molested over a thousand girls in his lifetime as a medical doctor for gymnast's and at least two hundred fifty confirmed cases of people who spoke out against him and now he's serving consecutive life sentences for what he did she said I can reconcile that he needs to serve justice but I believe the same Jesus that died for my sins died for him and if he would just repent of his sins he would find faith in Christ and he would be forgiven and spend eternity in Heaven with Christ just design going to because I have put my faith in Jesus Christ and on a secular one of the most prestigious campuses in the world she shared her faith openly and with the largest lecture halls in America and on that campus and it was just encouraging to see that and then she got a question from some of the audience Well I'm an atheist talk and I do that how can I reconcile faith and justice and forgiveness and justice and how can I do how can I have a baseline for doing that like you do and she just said Lot watching. You can't. An atheist has no construct for truth because truth is whatever you make truth to be or whatever the society says truth is the normal of the of the majority of people and whatever you say it is truth truth light that is never going to release you from your pain and misery in the suffering in the struggle but when you believe in a God who is above you and he is the one who has the standard of truth. Then you can see through him there is a flow of justice and also a flow of ready forgiveness if only will trust Him for that hope. So another lecture Thanks for listening but it was encouraging to see that she was there invited by the other Christian groups on campus to share and a lecture hall full of people young and old people of all types of religious backgrounds listening to a clear testimony about Jesus Christ that was encouraging. But what's discouraging is that that is more and more not something that would be affirmed by any secular versity today even when I was in college back in one nine hundred eighty S. And ninety one when I graduated my trust and faith in Jesus Christ was routinely dismissed and sometimes highly ridiculed by some of my co students and by professors in my academic studies is just a fact. Well. Even though that is true. Jesus said. And we hear him saying it in the scriptures and we know the scripture is valid statement of what he said based on all kinds of historical evidence I am the resurrection and the life. And we either believe that he said that because it's true. Or we believe that he lied when he said that and he was just trying to pass something off on us like David Koresh did or like Jim Jones did or like the net case on a street corner in most US cities that says on the messiah who's going to follow that guy. If we really don't believe that Jesus is the resurrected Savior then we have to take what he said to be a lie and I don't like following liars to you. It's either true or it's not true you can't say well I really want to trust in Jesus I really want to commit my life to him but I think he lied when he said he was going to come back to life we cannot believe in Jesus and reject this claim. A church that refuses to accept the founder Jesus Christ that he never rose from the dead is just a religious social club a litmus test that you could ask any church before you ever think to join it belong to it go to it is ask the question Do you believe that Jesus is alive is it important for this church to trust that Jesus came back to life literally that he bodily rose from the dead do you have a hope in life after death because Jesus rose from his death to life and if they say. Then you can go. Don't go near there because that's just a social club and there are a bunch of do gooders and you might have a good moral lifestyle and you might get good accountability to get away from some habits in your life and you might get some food or some resources that you might need to take care of your life and you can be a part of some volunteer ism that can really be astounding but you'll have no hope for your eternity and your family will be in grave jeopardy of hearing lies and things that the Bible never claimed to be true because if they can reject that they can reject everything else in the Bible piece by piece by piece and then what you're left with is what man thinks instead of what God thinks so this morning I want to turn to Acts chapter one. Let's stand one more time and I like for us to read just a few verses from Acts chapter one to close up what we're going to say today about the resurrection of Jesus Christ in verse three it says after he had suffered he also presented himself alive to them by many convincing proofs appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the Kingdom of God and then I'm going to turn here to first Corinthians fifteen if you hold your finger to that and go to chapter fifteen of First Corinthians and I'm going to read. Verses fourteen through nineteen. And if Christ has not been raised then our preaching is without foundation and so is your faith in addition we are found to be false witnesses about God because we've tested by and about God and how he raised up Christ who we did not whom he did not raise up if he in fact the dead are not raised for if the dead are not raised Christ has not been raised and of Christ has not been raised your faith is worthless you are still in your sense therefore those who have fallen asleep in Christ have also perished if we have placed our hope and Christ for this life only we should be pitied more than anyone and we pray that God will add his blessing to the reading of His Word and God may you honor this time and help me to explain carefully what you have said to us through this word in Jesus name I pray Amen you may be seated. So what does the Bible say this passage in Book of Acts was written by Luke Luke wrote his first account and now he's writing a second account probably most likely in fact we know that it was. Financed his research his efforts and his journey to collect all of the stories of Jesus was financed by a guy named The awfulness that's a name for a kid Theo Theo wrote or gave him the money probably a rich believer in God have the resources for Luke to be able to collect the stories and under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit God gave us the Book of Luke or the gospel the good news according to Luke and then we now have Chapter two of Luke's memoirs of his stories not memorials but the stories of and it's called The Book of Acts and the antiquity time it was called the acts of the Apostles but I love to say the acts of the Holy Spirit. Acts of God as He established the brand new church that we now enjoy today even here fifteen years later as we started St Joe Community Church as God birthed the new local community of this church which started through the acts that he worked through the apostles by the power of the Holy Spirit to bring onto the map the most powerful force ever known to man that has influence more people than any other organization organism other whatever you want to call it and it's still alive today and even though great entities great nations a communist system has tried to snuff out. Has never done a good enough job because soon as they do so OK we'll have house churches and China their churches probably flourishing far more than even American churches today and all the freedoms that we have there are probably more devout more faithful More on fire for Jesus and their tiny little hidden places so they don't go to jail. Then we are in America that we have the freedom to worship God as we choose. In fact some people in those persecuted countries are not praying for their persecution to disappear they're praying that God will do something to shake the Western world in their freedom. Have a life coach that works with me every month and he asked me this question every so often fact every time we meet are you preparing your church for the catacombs are you preparing your church for a day when our government decides that we're no longer allowed to have public buildings we're no longer allowed to worship God in an open public forums are you ready for a day when even the country we live in will turn against the One True God most every other country has in history when. Our turn I pray to never happens I pray Jesus comes back for all that calamity happens but are we prepared to live for Christ even if our freedom to do so publicly legally is taken away well Jesus. Luke is sharing this story and he's saying look this story happened this really happened and I'm going to tell you a little bit more what happened and he continues on in verse three he talks about how he suffered he presented himself alive to them after he suffered and he had many proofs during the forty days and he kept talking to them and speaking with them and hanging out with them talking to them about the Kingdom of God First of all we see here this word he was seen Jesus was eyeballed for forty days that's literally what it means people saw him with their own eyes that he was alive we know that Inge Luke Chapter twenty four thirty nine to forty and John Chapter twenty verses twenty and thirty seven that Jesus showed them his wounds. He allowed them I don't know if they did but he said if you want you can even touch where the sword went through the side you can even touch the Thomas look and believe. It's really me I'm really here he was eyeballed he was saying by all of the Apostles all of the followers and in Paul Paul's account in First Corinthians fifteen first six over five hundred people saw him some that were even alive even twenty years later when Paul was writing this letter to the Corinthians so if this wasn't true it could have been refuted very quickly. But was one of those things that the church early on knew that all these people had seen Jesus alive and they accepted it is true because these eye witnesses kept popping up all over you know when people see things that aren't really there and so I say well I had a visitation from Grandma last night OK maybe maybe. I'd say not but when five hundred people. Actually sit down and talk with somebody is that a hallucination or is that something that really happened and then it says that he spoke with them he taught them about the Kingdom of God and more. That they actually remembered the things that he said. Remember he was on the he was on the shoreline with Peter and he said via love me in Peter so yeah I love you and he kept doing that three times that kind of bring Peter back in and say Peter you're still love you're still valuable I still want to use you and Peter became one of the greatest spokesman for the Church of Jesus Christ. Jesus was with them he talked with them any A with them a list of nations do not eat food and it disappears the host nations like doesn't move the food. Hallucinations like if they were to put it in their mouth it's going to drop to the ground because there's nothing there to hold the food in them. He said you have something to eat in one of the passages and it's implied in Geoffrey twenty one verse fifteen that they ate on the shore line together the fish that Jesus had cooked up while they were out fishing the house a hose a nation cook up food there was already a fire there was food. This is the greatest conspiracy hoax of all and some of you still believe in you know Area fifty nine or fifty want to whatever that is up there in there if you know Nevada or Arizona or somewhere that that place and you know I understand the conspiracy theories but you know how many people would have to collude together to make this happen including helping buying off people who had no money had no political clout or authority had to buy off the Roman government so that nobody would know that they moved the body because there was a Roman seal on top of that tomb that upon death if that soon was tomb was unspoken that they that all those guards could have been put to death because they kept something from being guarded well they were bought off it says later they were bribed to say that his body was stolen how could three How could a legion army of the best well trained people in the world at that time be overcome by fearful running for their lives poor peasant oppressed Jews who had believed in Jesus again it would had been a tremendous conspiracy. Acceptor one says it and it says he ate with them it says it as they were with them in that same passage appeared to them and speaking he was with them. Means that basically the same idea that they were eating together they were fellas for being the responding time together and eating. First Corinthians Chapter fifteen again let's go to a more passage of Scripture you see basically Paul is saying if there is no resurrection we have a worthless faith if Jesus go backwards what if Jesus isn't alive then we have a worthless faith no the resurrection worthless faith if we have placed our hoping Christ for this life only we should be pitied more than anyone. See if Jesus died he said he came to die for the sins of the world. Then what he did didn't solve our problem if he didn't come back to life then I have no hope in the resurrection of my own body. I do I'm I'm toast we're done if if my hope is only in living a good moral life and then I turn to dust and it's all over at the end. I still have this knowing sense that what I've done wrong has never been fixed and I can't solve it for myself I can't fix justice. If justice is never served that was the one testimony of this lady's life is how she said even when for fourteen years I lived with the understanding that this powerful Dr and Michigan State University who had four or five cases already openly testified against him but the university refused to do anything about it because he was so important and they refused to move forward in any legal way because they felt like they would just be squashed and they would be ostracized they'd be torn apart in fact her life is really a living hell on earth right now because so many people are still sending her hate mail death threats and all kinds of things because she spoke up against this pedophile they were they circled the wagons around this guy and she said for fourteen years she wondered if she'd ever see justice. Against a man that had done so many wrongs to her body and to her life. But her hope was that she lived for God and she trusted in a God of the circumstances. That at some point in time his promises that justice would be served. And that in his love he would bring just things about it even if this earthly system refused to do so and its corruption her hope was in a higher power than any government could give her then any society norm could give her she had to realize that her worth and hope and her her hope for an existence in the future was not dependent on fourteen jurors to convict him her hope was in the living Savior who died for her sins rose from the dead gave her life that she could have life even if others tried to take that life from her mentally emotionally physically if there is no resurrection from the dead of Jesus Christ then all of what I just explained is a fairy tale in a meth and there really is no hope beyond this life why else would you say Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we shall die. Live it up now who cares about tomorrow because there is no tomorrow worth living for. I believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And that change that that conviction has been a north pole a calibration moment for me in any moment of my life. Because that living Christ has so naturally changed me day by day and his working in my life and through my life and in the Deep Dark Souls of the night and hours of the night I'm able to say you know what. The world may be caving in there may be things going on I can't control there's things that give me great heartache there's rebellion going on among children our church families that suffered greatly over the things that their kids are going through our grandkids are suffering there is injustice going on to sit and talk with somebody about being they've you know I've talked with young girls who have been. Abused have been raped or molested and nothing is going to be ever done probably about their case because it's a he said she said and they're just moving on and the justice system has failed them miserably and the only hope I have in that circumstances say there is a hope beyond that and there is a forgiveness that God can grant you the ability and power to give even if you never have somebody ask you for it because Jesus is more powerful than the circumstance that this world throws at us. And of story. Billy Graham. Who we honor to memorialized in his death a month or so ago in one thousand nine hundred eighty nine things weren't going so well for him. He had had some miserable failures in Crusade's in Pennsylvania and he was out in California mulling around in his brain words that one of his good friend named Chuck who is a Princeton graduate now said you don't believe that Bible do you you don't believe that Jesus to be true the supernatural things that the Bible says there's no way you could believe in that and Billy Graham was torn he really was he wanted to believe the Bible but he didn't understand some of the Bible he wanted to believe the Bible was true but he had a hard time in his physical brain reconciling what he thought to be true and what science was saying and the supernatural realities that the Bible was claiming to be true. And he wrestled with it for a long time and he was led out to a camp out in California and it was called Forest home and out on a stump he took his Bible and he laid it down on that stump and in that was August of one thousand nine hundred nine and he said he fell to his knees and he said oh God there are many things in this book I don't understand there are many problems with it for which I have no solution there are many seeming contradictions there are some areas that don't even seem to correlate with modern science I can answer some of the philosophical and psychological questions that my friend checks and others are raising but then he fell to his knees and he said Father I'm going to accept this is your word by faith I'm going to allow faith to go beyond my intellectual questions and doubts and I will believe this to be your inspired word and he wrote in his autobiography just as I am that as he stood up with his eyes stung with tears he felt the power of the presence of God in a way he hadn't in months a major bridge had been crossed he said and that. Resulting change did not go on notice The next day he spoke at Forest home about four hundred people made a commitment to Christ he preached with authority renewed authority that not been seen in him since before that time and a few weeks later Billy Graham will go on to hold a historic one nine hundred forty nine Los Angeles crusade in the tent erected on the corner of Washington and Hill streets that outreach was scheduled to last three weeks and into going for eight weeks as people packed the canvas cathedral and media outlets nationwide began talking about this upstart evangelist who would soon become our nation's president. Pastor our nation's pastor and a pastor to every president up to and to even the present one this man put his faith in Jesus Christ and said I am believing that your word is what it says it is and Ali I'll believe it even if I don't fully understand it. And as he put his commitment not in some illogical fashion but in some combat in saying convicting the way say Lord even if I don't believe understand all of it I'm going to believe you to be true and that your word is true. So this morning when you think about the resurrection of Christ we have several options the first offer is that you are totally opposed to it and then you do everything you can to stop people from believing that it's true. You can join the ranks of the communists you can join the ranks of many dictators worldwide they're doing everything they can to stop people from talking about Jesus Christ being the resurrected savior. You say well I don't I don't know that I would be in that case and I would Gary dare say there's probably nobody in this room that lives in that camp but if you do I welcome you to keep talking to us and oppose it to me personally instead of doing it you know pot shots outside of my presence Let's talk about it let's work forward and then there's people who just refuse to believe I reject it I reject it but I'm willing to live alongside other people I think it's stupid that you believe in the resurrection of Christ I think it's the wrong is thing that you could ever do and I don't think intellectually you're you've I really think you're very inferior to me Election Day for believing that but you know what live and let live kind of a libertarian. And then there's the indifference maybe that's even more libertarian I don't care if a believes or not I don't know if I believe it or not I'm indifferent to it whether he did or didn't it makes no difference to me I will live my life and I haven't accepted it as true but I'm just kind of indifferent to the fact of whether it did you know I still like Jesus is still a cool guy you know he's he's a good guy you've seen that picture on Facebook some of you that's the dumbest picture I've ever seen of Jesus we're going to you know it's just our mock him a little bit you know just because it's funny you just laughed a little bit right there you know I think he's he's a cool little symbol of religion that I'll put around my neck I'm work cross once I walk in this kind of fashionable kind of cool you know I put electric chair there once a while to this because I like to have like have death chamber kind of stuff in my towel around my chest and different. I'm trying to get here. And then there is the person who says I really believe it's true I believe it God said it I believe the witnesses I believe the testimony the Bible and I put my faith in Jesus is the truth now some of you many of you some of you in this some of you in this room are of one of the three categories we fort but guess what you're all the same category of disbelief and the only time that you can get to a point of having the hope that Jesus offers through his resurrected body is if you have belief in him and other words the cross divides all three others from belief and if you're on the one side of the Cross that says I don't believe yet you don't have hope that your sins have been forgiven you don't have the assurance that if you were to die tonight and you were to stand before God and he were to ask you How will how why should I let you into my heaven what would your answer be and if your answer is is well I've done good things and I'm hoping that the balance of scales the Bible doesn't give us that option the Bible says that we all come through putting our faith in Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord by trusting that what he did on the cross and Paul said it we are a foundation of preaching and our foundation of faith is the resurrection of Jesus Christ I'm not saying that to be I'm going to say it dogmatically I'll say it emphatically I'm saying that with a pleading heart and a pleading voice turn to Christ and find the hope that only he can give us the team's going to come and sing one last song this morning. The question is do you believe this to be true. If you're willing to continue the journey of true what it means to follow Christ I encourage you to keep coming back I care to keep coming back and listening and thinking through and then asking questions during the find a Bible study to go to a small group to attend use this card to communicate with us something that we can do to say how we can help you figure out the questions that you might have and if you're willing to put your faith in Jesus Christ today don't wait eternity is too long for you to be wrong eternity is too long for you to wait any longer to miss out on the hope that only Jesus can give you today let's stand to our feet.