August 18, 2025 • 37 mins
What if the most extraordinary claim in human history—that a man died and rose from the grave—was actually true? And what if we could examine the evidence for this claim the same way we evaluate any other historical document?
The Gospels stand at the center of Christianity's most profound assertion: Jesus of Nazareth conquered death. But in our skeptical age, can thoughtful people actually trust these ancient accounts? This episode dives deep into the historical reliability of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, examining them not just as religious texts but as historical documents.
We explore the remarkably specific geographical, cultural, and linguistic details that anchor these writings firmly in first-century Palestine. From the Kidron Valley to Gehenna, from uniquely Palestinian farming practices to period-specific naming patterns, the Gospels demonstrate an intimate familiarity with their setting that would be nearly impossible to fabricate decades later.
Perhaps most compelling is what the Gospel writers included that no myth-maker would: Jesus's family thinking he was insane, his healings sometimes requiring multiple attempts, disciples consistently misunderstanding him, and most shockingly, a crucified Messiah—a concept deeply shameful in the ancient world. These aren't the polished narratives of legend but the messy details of actual events.
The disciples who witnessed these events gained nothing for their testimony except persecution and brutal deaths. Yet none ever recanted. As one observer noted, twelve modern men can rarely maintain a shared story for three days without someone breaking ranks, yet these disciples maintained their testimony until death.
If the resurrection is true, it changes everything about how we understand existence. It means our deepest spiritual longings point to something real, that injustice won't have the final word, and most profoundly, that death isn't the end. What greater hope could there be than that?
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey man, thank you, Richard.
We're going to pray just aminute.
But you ever have one of thoseweekends where you have just a
weird weekend and maybe thingsdon't go as you'd planned or as
you would want it, or just youkind of had an off weekend and
then you got to go to work onMonday and you have to show up
and do it anyway.
That's kind of like me today.
So I just want to be honest.
I had a really kind of an oddweekend.
A number of things happenedthat were not how I planned them
(00:22):
, and so the only difference is,when I go to work on Monday, I
have to be in front of all youon Sunday morning, and so it's a
bit trickier.
But I'm okay being here and I'mokay just so you don't have to
come grab me after the serviceand really, you know, and mom,
I'm fine, I'm going to be fine,mom, but yeah.
So anyway, just want you toknow that I have bad days too,
(00:46):
or bad weekends, but we're goingto be okay.
So we're going to pray, andhere's also what I would say.
You know, we can show up in thismoment, in this space, with all
kinds of, in all kinds of ways,many people, many of you kind
of came from a weird morning.
Maybe you were at home and youhad to rush here, you were late,
or maybe you flew in at two inthe morning from Washington DC
or wherever you guys came from,or maybe you had an argument
with your spouse or your kids oryou yelled at the dog before
you got here.
Whatever the case is, maybe youcame here and you walked
(01:07):
leisurely and you enjoyed themorning and birds were singing.
That's great too.
But whatever the case is, herewe are and so we can approach
this next 40 minutes or whateverwhatever 30 minutes with our
eyes wide open and being hereand like in this sacred moment.
Or we can just sort of skate byand just sort of wait till it's
over and leave and go havelunch somewhere.
But and this is kind of howlife is we can show up in life,
(01:30):
we can be open, with our eyesopen, and be present and with
each other and with God and withyourself, and hopefully
something deep and meaningfulwill happen.
Or you can skate through lifeand just kind of go from one day
to the next, and myencouragement is it's always
better to kind of have your eyesopen, I think, and so I would
encourage us this morning.
Whatever we can do.
I want to invite us to kind ofhave our hearts and our minds
and our eyes open this morningas we engage for the next 30
(01:51):
minutes anyway and just see whatGod might do.
Does that sound all right?
Let's pray, god.
We give you thanks this morningfor your presence here and for
your word to us.
Thank you for these beautifulstories that we find in the
Gospels and this story of theresurrection, and I ask God that
you would bless us this morningwhen these stories come alive
in new and fresh ways that wehaven't seen before.
And I ask that you wouldencourage us in the ways that we
(02:13):
need it so badly, and anybodyhere who's kind of coming out of
just I don't know, a weird timeor weekend or year or half of
life, whatever the case is, god,would you minister to us in
deep ways that we need it sobadly and would you fill us with
hope this morning.
And may this story ofresurrection give us hope where
we need it badly.
In Jesus' name, amen, amen, youcan be seated.
(02:37):
So we're in the middle of ouryou Pick series, and the you
Pick series is that people canwrite in, and they have written
in questions that they want usto just sort of talk about and
kind of address and respond to,and we've got many good ones.
I think last week I alreadyforgot what, oh last week was
Teen Challenge, so the weekprior was the Trinity talking
about the Trinity, so that was a.
We had to blaze right throughthat in 40 minutes or whatever.
(02:58):
And then that was the first one.
I think this is the second one.
I know Ben is on for nextweekend and there was a great
question about a passage fromEphesians that we talked about.
But this morning I want to talkabout the Gospels and the
question was can we trust theGospels?
And, as you heard that, can wego back to the Scripture Sam?
I'll be quick, but the ApostlePaul didn't follow Jesus
(03:26):
directly.
He has this incredible epiphanywith Jesus while he's on a
horse going to Damascus and hehas this encounter with the
risen Christ and he begins tosort of like learn this story in
a deeply profound way and itchanges his life.
And basically he says in thisscripture that we heard read if
Jesus didn't raise from the dead, then nothing really matters.
It's all kind of in vain in ourfaith and all the stories we've
told about Jesus, they're,they're, they're sort of like
we're we're misrepresenting Godand we've gotten it all wrong.
(03:47):
And so it's like if he wasn'traised from the dead, then you
and I aren't raised from thedead either, so we can just turn
the lights off and go home andwe'll see you.
Well, we won't see you.
You know, that's kind of theend and it's a sermon slides
Thanks Sam when Paul basicallysays if Jesus didn't raise from
the dead, then it changeseverything, which the converse
(04:08):
is also then, true.
If Jesus did raise from thedead and I believe there's good
reason to think that he did, ifhe did then that changes
everything.
It really does, and it changesus today, 2000 years later.
If he really rose from the dead, if the stories in the gospels
are true, it changes everything,including how we frame the
(04:29):
world.
So the sermon title is thismorning it's the resurrection of
the dead, and why I believe wecan trust the gospels.
See Steve Jobs, who was thefounder of Apple.
You guys have maybe heard ofSteve Jobs, one of the greatest
companies of all time Apple.
Okay, it was not a professingChristian.
Here's what he said WalterIsaacson, I think was his name,
(04:51):
wrote a book about Steve Jobsand in the interview Steve Jobs
says this.
He says I like to think thatsomething survives after you die
.
It's strange to think that youaccumulate all this experience
and maybe a little wisdom and itjust goes away when you die.
So I really want to believethat something survives, that
maybe your consciousness endures.
Maybe many of you have feltlike that too.
(05:13):
I hope something lives on.
But on the other hand, he saysperhaps it's like an on-off
switch Click and then you'regone.
Maybe that's why I never liketo put on-off switches on my
Apple devices.
Yeah, how do we frame the world?
How do we think about the worldthat we live in?
It's a mysterious, wonderfullybeautiful and painful and odd
thing.
We're hurtling through space atmillions of miles an hour on
(05:35):
this rock with a bunch ofstrangers.
I'm like what do we make ofthis and who are you and what
are you doing here?
And how do you understandexistence and human
consciousness and these thingsthat we have living inside of us
, that are sort of out ofnowhere?
And this world is full ofbeauty and wonder and awe, and
also pain and suffering anddeath and dying.
Is the world just a cold, dark,hard place that death has the
(05:57):
final say you turn the lightsoff and that's kind of it, and
just like that click, it's doneand over with and any moments of
goodness that you experienceare just blips on the radar,
sort of these interruptions inan otherwise meaningless
existence.
Is that kind of what life is?
Is that how we frame life?
And what do we make of thesehuman longings?
I would argue we all have.
I don't know if you know this ormaybe you felt it, but, or
listen to enough pop culture tokind of understand that if you
(06:19):
listen to music or watch moviesor read books or hear your
neighbor talk, you'll hear a lotof longings in their soul for
deep things.
Where does that come from?
We have a longing, all of us,for justice.
We have the sense that thingsaren't always where they should
be and we want them to be putback to rights, to be fixed.
So we long for justice.
We don't like things that areunfair.
My friend always says oh, thefair only comes once a year
(06:41):
though, ryan.
By the way, I had to find apicture that didn't sort of
connote or communicate any kindof like political, ideological
stance or agenda, and it washard to do because even this
word, justice, has been co-optedin today's culture.
But justice is a deeply, deeplydivine thing, I would argue,
comes from God and as old asexistence itself and us.
(07:04):
We long for justice.
We long for things to be rightand just and fair.
We long for it.
We also long for what I wouldcall enchantment or spirituality
, or to be connected to thedivine or something bigger than
ourselves.
We're like is there anythingelse besides this material world
that I can see and taste andtouch?
Is there something else?
And you heard Steve Jobs sortof echo this.
This is why you have like yogastudios and these other things.
(07:25):
People long for a spiritualkind of experience prayer,
meditation.
People do these and they'vedone it for centuries and
millennia, intuitively.
We also long for relationships.
We long for family, forneighbors, for friendships.
Even you introverts you do it,just comes out differently.
We long to be known and to beknown to other people and to be
in a partisan, you know even acommunity that's bigger than
(07:46):
ourselves, and friendships.
I think you know maybe sometimeswe men have a hard time with
this, but I know for a fact thatthis is mostly, I've heard, in
male stories but I'm sure infemale.
But there's a guy namedSebastian Younger who wrote a
book called Tribe and he wroteabout his time he was in
Restrepo in Afghanistan and thecamaraderie he felt with his
military brothers.
(08:07):
It's this deeply profoundconnection where these guys
would die for each other.
In the moment I've heard a lotof guys in the military talk
about this kind of brotherhoodand I'm sure with the women too.
But I just have read thesestories about these men and I
didn't serve.
But it's like a profoundconnection because there's this
unbelievable relationshipbetween men and women.
I'm sure as well.
But in places like that, in theculture, like the military,
(08:28):
because we long for a connectionand those guys would have died
for each other at the drop of ahat.
It's unbelievably somethingunique and mysterious that's
going on there.
Lastly, we long for beauty.
We long for beauty and we havethis like we stand in awe and
wonder and we're stirred bycreativity and wonderful things
and beautiful things and thingslike flowers and gardens.
And now, men, maybe your thingisn't gardens and flowers a bit
(08:52):
too girly for you, I get thatand maybe, like I'm not, I'm too
tough and manly for beauty,wrong Because of this here.
Yeah, every man knows what I'mtalking about.
You mow that grass and you juststand back.
That is amazing.
That is a divine work of artand like something in you like
this is like I'm living in tunewith the divine creative forces
(09:12):
of the universe when I mow thesestraight lines like that.
And your neighbors know theywalk by like lawn's looking good
, ryan, thank you.
Or you know, this is why we liketo do things like go out at
five in the morning and sit on aboat and throw a line in the
water and catch a fish.
I know it's kind of funny, butwe talk about the beauty of the
fish while we're catching.
I get like beautiful.
(09:33):
We understand like, hey, fishare like these incredibly.
You know, like let me just forexample this 21 inch smallmouth
bass that I caught just recently.
Yes, this is a shameless plugfor a fish.
I caught Biggest fish I evercaught in my life 21-inch
smallie.
It was 21 and a quarter, butthen, because the tape measure
was met, you know it's.
(09:55):
Yeah, we long for these thingsand where does that come from?
And how do you frame the worldand what do we do with things
like suffering and injustice,and to me the answer is Jesus.
Jesus addresses and meets allof these things in us, these
longings that we have to put theworld back to right, to be
connected to the spiritual, thetranscendent, to have our
(10:18):
relationships fixed and forbeauty.
And the gospels tell thestories of Jesus.
That's all we have really isthese gospel stories, or mostly
what we have.
And the gospels then tellstories about Jesus's birth and
how one day he turned water intowine at a wedding in Cana.
It's this incredible story.
And we read about how he raiseda guy called Lazarus, one of
his closest friends, from thedead, and how he cried when he
saw him dead.
And how Jesus gathereddisciples and how he also spoke
(10:39):
and taught crowds, massivecrowds, thousands of people
sometimes.
He taught these crowds we readabout in the gospels.
He took care of people,especially those on the outside,
the fringes, the margins, thosewho were forgotten, which, by
the way, becomes a uniquelyChristian idea, this ethic of
taking care of those in themargins.
In the Greco-Roman world thatdidn't exist, but Jesus sort of
introduces a new way of being ahuman and taking care of people.
(11:00):
He begins a revolution thatupsets the imperial power and
presence in the Roman empire,and even the Jewish leadership.
Nobody liked him.
Well, not nobody.
A bunch of folks in powerdidn't like what he was doing
because it was a revolution.
In many ways it was arevolution.
He's arrested, tried andconvicted and killed, even
though he was an innocent man,and you can read these stories
in the gospels about how he wasresurrected from the dead.
The gospels tell us theseaccounts.
(11:21):
Now, when I was younger, I tooka class I was an undergraduate
at Red Rocks Community Collegein Colorado and I was like I
wanted to.
It was English two class and Icould write about anything I
wanted to write about.
I'm like I'm gonna write about,I'm gonna write about the
historical validity of thegospels, because that's what,
(11:43):
that's what early pastoral nerdsdo, which I obviously that's
fair, because in academia youdon't.
You can't I mean, unless you'rein a theology class, you can't
like write, you can't like usethe Bible to kind of prove
things.
It's like a circular reasoning.
You know argument, I go, that'sfine, she goes.
You can't use the Bible becauseI don't, she goes because I
don't give a bleep what theBible says.
Okay, fair enough.
Thank you for telling me, butcan we trust the gospels, like I
(12:09):
know that we all, many of us,are Christians and maybe you
grew up reading them like andfair enough, and so you just
maybe believe in them becauseyou.
It's circular reasoning, likewell, I was told to, and they're
the Bible, of course I you know.
But like, what about rational,reasonable people who didn't
grow up in this?
Can we reasonably trust thegospels as another piece of
literature, as a piece ofhistory?
Can we trust what the gospelssay about Jesus and about the
(12:30):
disciples and about him raisingfrom the dead?
If not, then, like Paul said,it's all a waste.
Let's just go home and havesome Chipotle.
If so, it changes everything.
It changes everything.
The gospels many people thinkwere written around 70 AD.
By the way, you got some notes.
You got a packet of notes.
Okay, if you didn't, would youraise your hand, we'll give you
some notes.
Let me not get the notes thatthey want.
(12:51):
You can follow along.
Okay, good, take notesthroughout.
There on the back page there'sa big, whole page of notes.
Also, on the third page we's abunch of resources.
If you want to like, read somemore scholarly works about.
Can you trust the gospels?
There's an intro level,secondary level, like a deep
(13:12):
dive level.
You can get some of those books.
I've got a couple of them hereIf you want to look at them.
I've got them, they're great.
I only have 20 minutes so I'mgoing to try to boogie through
it, but follow along.
So so the Gospels were probablywritten around.
Some scholars believe they werewritten around 70 AD and they
think that because in 70, acataclysmic event happened in
Jewish history and in this partof first century Palestine the
(13:33):
temple, which is this monolithicbuilding that was the center
and hub of all religiousactivity in the Jewish religion,
it is destroyed.
It was like a everybody knew,you know it was like this
unbelievably, you know, shockingthing that happened and it was
in 70.
Jesus in Mark 13, allegedlybefore 70 AD, predicts the fall
(13:55):
of the temple.
So scholars are like well, itmust've happened, they must've
written these things down around70.
The first gospel, I believe,was Mark.
Like what must've?
Mark must've written around 70or later, because how else would
he have known about the templebeing destroyed.
So he wrote it in 70, after thetemple was destroyed, and just
put the words into Jesus' mouththat, oh, he predicted the
(14:16):
future, but he really didn't.
Other scholars are like, no, no, it's okay that Jesus knew the
temple would be destroyedbecause you could see the
writing on the wall, or perhapsthe spirit told him.
So others put the gospelsearlier than 70 AD.
Here's why it's important,because the closer to the actual
events some scholars believethen the more trustworthy they
are.
So if they were written in 70or even 100 or later, it's like
(14:37):
well, how trustworthy can theybe?
There's a lot of time inbetween what actually happened,
what they wrote down.
Other scholars are like, well,no, the closer they are which we
believe that you know he couldhave predicted the fall of the
temple then the more accuratethey would be.
But either way, it probablydoesn't really matter.
This is the stance I take,because the people that wrote
the Bible we don't have dates ofthe Gospels.
We have Matthew, mark, luke andJohn.
(14:58):
We have names, not dates.
Two of them were not actualfollowers of Jesus, mark and
Luke.
They were companions of Paul,but John and Matthew were, you
know, were followers of Jesusand so.
But either way, the writers ofthese four accounts had, like an
incredible familiarity with theland and the geography and the
(15:19):
names of the people and thelocations and even like Aramaic
idioms.
So remember, in that time, inthe first century, these people
spoke a lot of Aramaic.
Not really beyond thistimeframe or area did they speak
Aramaic.
Most people spoke Greek.
It was a Greco-Roman cultureand so they spoke Aramaic.
There's Aramaic in the gospels.
There's all kinds of things inthe gospels, when you read them,
that suggest that whoever wroteit, whenever they wrote it,
(15:40):
they were familiar and intimatewith that time and place, which
lends them credibility, by theway.
So it'd be like if I wrote adiary and was like hey, then
Tuesday morning I woke up earlyand left School Street and
walked down 169, you knowHighway 169, all the way to the
Elk River Landfill, you'd all belike, oh, of course, of course
you know.
But like, 100 years from nownobody will probably know what
(16:01):
the Elk River Landfill was.
Well, maybe they will, butmaybe a thousand years no one
will know.
But you're like oh, that guywrote like he was in, that he
was like intimately connected tothat time and place.
So the writers either wrotebecause they knew it firsthand
or they were interviewing peoplethat were like firsthand
connected to this time and place.
Here's some examples, by theway, of this familiarity.
(16:27):
So in John John talks about theKidron Valley.
Jesus walked down the KidronValley over across to this
garden.
I've been to the Kidron Valley,by the way.
It's a very specific and uniquevalley in this area of
Palestine and John talks aboutit.
It's like, oh yeah, of coursethat was there.
He wasn't talking about somemade up mystical forest.
He mentions the Kidron Valley.
He also mentions a place calledGehenna.
Many times this is mentioned ina bunch of the gospels and
Gehenna was this dump outside ofJerusalem I've actually been
(16:50):
there, by the way and they wouldburn garbage and garbage would
burn incessantly.
It would just be garbageburning and fires and there'd be
dogs and the dogs would fightover the food.
It would gnash their teeth.
So Jesus, of course, uses thisas a metaphor for what he calls
hell, and so you can tell yourfriends that your pastor's been
to hell and back.
I went through Gehenna, but hetalked about Gehenna.
(17:10):
It's a very specific.
The word is esoteric.
Not many other folks would knowthis language of this place
because they weren't from thisarea.
So historically it lends allkinds of credibility to the
gospel writers.
They're using locations andgeography that are specific to
this time and place, as thoughthey're writing.
They were like I knew theKidron Valley, I knew the
(17:30):
Gehenna.
Then there's this part too.
I love it.
There's this sense of like inthis place in time that all
these specific animals or likeplants or this practice.
So in the parable of the sower,the sower goes out and he sows
seed amongst rocky ground.
There's thorny ground and it'slike this unplowed ground.
This was a uniquely Palestinianpractice In this time and place
.
In the Roman Empire it was theonly place that didn't plow
(17:52):
their ground before they plantedseeds.
So everywhere else in theempire they would plow the
ground, then plant seeds Nothere.
And in this parable that's whatit reads like Like oh, this
person knew that this is whatwas happening in this time and
place, so it probably wasn'twritten, like you know, decades
or hundreds of years later.
It was written right then andthere they knew that this was
(18:12):
what it was like, a uniquelyPalestinian thing.
Also, there were lots of namesused.
Matthew 10 is a great example,names specific to this time and
place.
I mean, for example, if I namedmy kid Gertrude, you'd all be
like Gertrude, like anybody knowa Gertrude.
They're not usually youngerthan 50, right, and in this time
in the ancient world, names andthe popularity of them changed
(18:33):
within years.
Like every year, there would bedifferent names and they would
change in their popularity andtheir usage.
And in Matthew you find all thenames actually in all the
gospels, but in Matthew 10, thatwere specific to this time and
place.
So names like Simon and Judasand John I dropped my prop,
don't panic, rumi.
Okay, there we go.
You know what I'm going to sitdown, that's good.
(18:56):
James Thaddeus, any Thaddeusesout and about today?
Okay, bartholomew and Philip,yeah, and even the qualifiers or
the nicknames given to thesepeople were very specific to
this time and place, sort ofsuggesting that the writers knew
all the trends that were goingon.
They were very, very close towhatever was happening.
So it isn't as though thesewriters wrote from like miles
(19:19):
and miles and miles away, yearsand years apart.
They were writing as very closeeyewitnesses to these accounts.
Now here's how it happened,though they didn't get written
down right away, because rightthen and there, no one thought
to themselves like when Jesusshowed up, oh, this will change
the course of human history, weshould write this down.
No, no one knew what was goingon when Jesus was there.
That's why they don't, when yougo to Israel, they don't have
(19:39):
like a temple to all thesedifferent sites where Jesus was,
because at the time no onethought it was any big deal.
Then it became a big deal, sothey started writing it down.
But for a long time the storiessurvived though, through the
oral tradition, which is a veryJewish way of telling history.
Somebody would tell the storyand they would pass it on and
pass it on, and pass it on, andthen finally Mark, we think, is
the first one, wrote it down,and that's your first gospel,
(20:02):
the Gospel of Mark.
So the argument is well, thisoral tradition, though, it can't
be trusted because over thecourse of time things might have
morphed and changed.
You know like, over the courseof time, like a bad game of
telephone, things would havechanged and maybe they would
embellish it or they would addthings, they would invent things
.
You know like, remember,telephone, the game of telephone
.
So you know it's like Jesus inthe text Jesus fed 5,000 with
(20:23):
fish and loaves.
Then, over like maybe five, 10years, it changed and morphed
into Jesus fed 5,000 with fish,tacos, and then I'll try again.
And then it changed over maybe10 more years, you know, and
Jesus invented the first everChipotle.
Okay, or maybe, you know, maybethe text would have gone like
(20:44):
this like you know, the firstoriginal thing that happened,
the angel appeared and saiddon't be afraid.
Then it changed over time andkind of morphed over decades to
like, hey, it's going to be fine, just relax.
To then maybe more decades like, hey, just chill, bro.
I should have done the Chipotleone second.
That's what I should have done.
You get the idea, though, right, like maybe it could have
(21:05):
changed over time.
But here's the deal.
Jesus and his followers, whowere the ones who were like the
originators of these stories,were Jewish.
Did you know this?
They were Jewish men, and hehad women followers too.
They were Jews, and there wasthis tradition in the Jewish
culture of the rabbi and thestudent.
The rabbi was like the teacher,you know, he would.
He would bring hisinterpretation of the law, he
(21:26):
would instruct them, they wouldfollow him everywhere and they
would.
This was an esteemed position.
So whatever the teachings were,whatever he said, whatever the
rabbi did, they would intimatelyknow it and they would actually
memorize a lot of it Because itwas so important for them,
their teachings were soimportant they would never have
changed it or altered it in anyway, because the teaching itself
(21:47):
is highly valuable and valuedin this culture.
It was a sacred thing.
Just want to say the teacher,his information was so valuable,
it was sacred.
They would memorize all thethings he said.
I'm just saying Most of youcan't remember what I said last
Sunday, let alone.
Hey, that sermon was reallygood.
(22:10):
What did the preacher say?
Something about fish, tacos andChipotle.
I don't remember.
But the Jewish, the students ofthe rabbi, would.
They would like, in fact therabbi would give instruction or
teaching in like a mnemonicdevice to help them memorize it.
Jews memorized everything theyhad, the whole Old Testament.
Many of them memorized.
It was so important to them sothey valued it.
(22:32):
Wasn't like they would havejust allowed it to morph over
time and change over decades.
They wouldn't have let it dothat.
It was too sacred to them toembellish it.
Another argument is that theearly church so, decades later,
that they wrote the gospels as atheological, not historical
document, but a theologicaldocument, and they wrote it to
address certain theological youknow conflicts or to strengthen
their faith that these weren'treally like firsthand neutral
(22:55):
reports.
They were biased, you know,altered, changed writings to
address conflict or give themmoral guidance or strengthen
their faith or to answerpredominant questions in the in
the church.
But here's the thing there'smany questions that the first
church, the early church, hadthat go unanswered.
For example, these arequestions that the church had
(23:16):
never addressed in the gospels,which would make me think they
were not written years and yearsand years, like by the church.
Were written way before that,like things like well, should
the gentiles be circumcised?
Paul writes about this a lot,like we all.
Now this church is like blownopen and now there's Jews and
Gentiles.
Should we circumcise Gentiles?
And all the Gentile men werewaiting with bated breath on
(23:37):
this answer.
All the men know what's up.
How should churches beorganized?
They don't address it.
The gospels never talk about it.
Even the theology of the cross,it's never really mentioned.
Like, how do you make sense ofthe cross?
Doesn't really talk, it justtells you what happened.
Uh, what roles do women play?
(23:58):
Doesn't really get addressed inthe bible, although the women
are the first ones that find thetomb empty.
So the first preacher is women,the women Way to go, women.
But like it's like these andalso there's all kinds of
irrelevant information in thegospels that the church wouldn't
even care about.
They're in your notes so youcan look them up.
So what else is it?
I mean, maybe it's not just youknow.
Well, a lot of folks thinkmaybe it was that these stories
(24:20):
were legend, like they grow overtime into this legend.
You know what I mean.
This is for Peter Legend.
Okay, fine, myth.
Any myth fans in here.
Myths are great, by the way.
Anyone know this one.
Yeah, somebody said it, icarus.
Yeah, is that what the gospelsare?
Here's the problem.
I'll just answer it right away.
They don't read like a legendor a myth.
(24:41):
They really don't.
There's also this other kind ofgenre called hagiography.
It's like a.
It's a genre about writingabout saints, and when you write
about a saint they often getlike portrayed as this, like as
a saint.
So they leave out all theembarrassing, you know, negative
details.
They only tell the good things.
It's like a funeral, likemodern day funerals.
You never hear the bad stuff.
(25:02):
They call it hagiography and thegospels don't read like that,
as though they're justvenerating jesus and they only
tell the good things.
They tell the gospels tell allkinds of stuff.
It's like negative,embarrassing, like, for example
I love this is so funny to mejesus's own family questioned
his sanity.
So in Mark's gospel it sayswhen his family heard things he
was saying, they go and theygrab him and they're like hey
(25:23):
look, jesus is out of his mind.
That's funny.
And also, if you're here andyour family has ever thought you
were out of your mind, youmight be in good company because
you're with Jesus.
They thought he was out of hismind.
His own family, they thought itwas out of his mind.
His own family Like they didn't.
They didn't like oh Jesus, he'sgone crazy.
Just better get him out.
Get him out.
He didn't get himself introuble.
I love that.
It's so funny.
You would never have includedthis in a legend or a myth, you
(25:44):
would have just taken it out.
How about this one?
His healings weren't alwaysinstant.
So he's healing this blind guyand he spits in his eyes.
He's like hey, can you seeanything?
And the guy's like well, I kindof I can see people.
They look like trees, though.
And the disciples are likeuh-oh, what am I supposed to do
on that?
Jesus is like don't worry, I'lldo it again.
And then John's like should wewrite this down.
(26:07):
Should we write it down?
Write it down, write it down.
He's done it.
Come on, I love this too.
The disciples are really abunch of idiots.
They're knuckleheads.
There was too many examples tolist, in fact, I had to just
narrow it down to one.
There's a ton of them.
Peter gets called the Satan,like one of Jesus' right-hand
guys gets called the Satan, likewhat?
(26:28):
That's a bad legend.
But in Mark 14, it says then,in his moment of deepest need,
Everyone deserts him and theyflee because they're a bunch of
chickens.
The original text doesn't saythat, but I added that, yeah,
that's like not how you want tobe remembered as a legend.
That's not legendary.
What's the opposite oflegendary?
(26:48):
It's that.
And then, lastly, jesus was acrucified Messiah.
Now we don't really understandthis as a first century or as
21st century, whatever we're in21st Westerners.
But to die on a cross wasshameful.
Only cursed people died oncrosses.
Romans were.
It was illegal to kill a Romanon a cross because it was so
shameful and horrible.
(27:08):
The Romans were too good forthat so they would never let a
Roman die on the cross.
So only like scoundrels andlike shameful people died on
cross, and Jesus dies a curseddeath on a tree.
If you're writing a legend ormyth, you would never have the
hero die or die on a cross ordie at the hands of the enemy
the Roman Empire Maybe theJewish military, but not the
(27:28):
Roman Empire.
Like what are we doing?
Whoever's writing this, this isa terrible idea, but let's go
with it.
So why would they?
It's probably not a legend or amyth.
There's all these embarrassingthings and also there's this the
disciples gained nothing fromthis.
It wasn't like they got aTikTok deal or an influencer
deal.
They didn't get a clothing line, they didn't get a book deal.
(27:49):
They got nothing.
They got embarrassed, they gotshamed.
In fact, many of them gotkilled.
Most of them died horrificdeaths.
I'm going to show you.
So Peter was crucified, andrewcrucified, james beheaded, john
died of natural causes.
Okay, there you go, philipmartyred in Heropolis.
(28:09):
By the way, philip would walkto the gate of Heropolis.
When you walked under the gateof Heropolis, there was a
Domitian gate.
When you walk under it, youwould say Domitian is Lord, he
was the emperor at the time, andPhilip's like I'm not walking
underneath that, I'm going towalk around it.
And if you do that you getkilled and his family's like,
according to legend, hey, if youdo that, you're going to get
killed and he's like I don'tcare.
I saw my rabbi feed 5,000people.
(28:30):
I got him killed.
He was killed.
Bartholomew flayed, beheaded orcrucified.
Either one, take your pick.
Would you rather be flayed?
Just kidding, I feel like we'vehad enough distance from then
until now.
I can make some kind of jokes.
Matthew, likely martyred by thesword.
(28:52):
Thomas speared to death inIndia.
Did you know?
Thomas ended up in India.
That's crazy.
James thrown from the templepinnacle.
Thaddeus clubbed to death orcrucified.
Simon the Zealot, crucified orsawed in half or died peacefully
in Edessa.
We don't know.
Matthias, who replaced Judas,was stoned and beheaded.
(29:14):
These men lost everything andnone of them reneged.
No one ever said hey, we madeit all up, we were just joking,
don't kill me, we were justmessing around.
It's a legend, just forget.
We said anything and they allagreed on what they saw.
I had a guy from the firstgathering, paul Mesa.
He goes Ryan.
I tell people 12 men in thisday and age.
They all agreed on what theysaw and then nobody relented.
(29:36):
You know the Nixon scandal.
He said yeah, yeah, he goes,those men, was there six of
those men Within three days.
They all turned on each otherand said we made it all up.
Yeah, I mean, it's not nothing,that 12 guys all went to their
deaths proclaiming that whatJesus said and did was true,
that he really rose from thedead.
Now there are thesediscrepancies in the scriptures,
like how many angels were atthe tomb.
(29:58):
You know, how did Judas reallydie and did the turning of the
temple or the turning of thetables in the temple?
Did that happen at thebeginning of the ministry of
Jesus or the end of his ministry?
So there's some discrepancies.
So when you read them, don't beshocked, like how many women
were at the tomb, and there'sall these like minor kinds of
things.
But here's the deal If you weregoing to write a legendary
(30:19):
script and make it all up, youwould scrub the record of any of
those discrepancies.
You wouldn't have them.
So some scholars are like no,the fact that there's these
minor discrepancies actuallyshows it's probably pretty
authentic, because that's whatwould happen is you'd have these
minor little things and theydidn't erase them, they left
them in there.
Have known about thesediscrepancies since the second
century.
These aren't like newdiscoveries Like we didn't know.
(30:40):
They've known about thesediscrepancies since the
beginning of the second centuryand they've had all kinds of
ways of thinking about it.
One of the ones I love the mostis that if you were going to
have four people write anaccount of Jesus, they would
look a little bit differently.
So what you have in the gospelis really four accounts, like
four portraits of the sameperson from different angles,
(31:04):
and each gospel writer writeswhat they're seeing and watching
from their own viewpoint andvantage point and including
their own flavor, their ownthings that they want to pull
out of it, and they're likehighlighting certain things.
And so it's what you wouldexpect when you see four
different gospels from theancient world.
It lends only more so to thecredibility of the gospels.
In fact, I'll end with a couplemore things here.
But uh, there's a guy namedWolfgang Schottewald and he was
(31:24):
a philologist and a literary uh,literary scholar.
Philology is a study of likeliterary texts and development
of language over time.
And this is a secular scholarwho says the reason I believe
the gospels and this is not aChristian guy, he's not
affirming the theology, but justas a piece of literature,
because what you find in them.
(31:44):
He calls it experientialvividness that you find these
incredibly vivid scenes thatpull you in, and they include
all kinds of miniscule details,like on the boat.
In the boat with Jesus, he's ona cushion why would you include
the cushion part?
Or they talk about the grass onthe hill of the feeding of the
5,000.
Or, my favorite, when John andPeter are running to the tomb,
(32:04):
john says I got there firstBecause of course he was.
It reads like these guys werelike these knuckleheaded dudes
writing this stuff down as ithappened.
There's this vivid, the emotion, the expression.
It doesn't read like somedisconnected sort of theological
construct or something likethat.
It's this incredibly concretestory about what really actually
happened.
It's beautiful.
So, rather than just some sortof like theology book that was
(32:28):
made up by the church with allthese, it's like this vivid,
incredibly powerful, impactfulstory that reads like history
and this is what he says aboutit and it compresses a ton into
a small amount of space.
There's action, dialogue,character, insight, setting,
meaning, and these things don'thappen in myth stories.
It reads like an actualfirsthand account of what
happened and what you would havethought if you were there.
(32:49):
But also there's this thestories of Jesus and the men and
women that surrounded it andthat began to grow into a church
.
It changed the course of humanhistory Like it just did.
It changed history A number ofthings.
It elevated human dignity.
(33:10):
This is a new thing in theancient world, like elevating
every human as dignified, as ahuman.
Because of the image of God,that person has value.
We're going to honor it.
This comes out of the teachingof Jesus A radical ethic of love
, loving your neighbor, turningtheir cheek Again.
It was an extremelyunprecedented moral teaching.
In the ancient Greco-Romanworld they didn't care about
(33:30):
those kinds of things.
But Jesus brings it and itchanges history.
They begin to value themarginalized.
Jesus is the progenitor, is theword of the golden rule that
came from Jesus.
They built hospitals andschools.
Christians did Charities.
Our laws are mostly founded onJewish and Judeo-Christian
(33:51):
values.
Most abolition movements werestarted by Christians because of
the teachings of Jesus.
Art, music, all impacted byJesus and his teachings and his
life.
It changed the world and many ofyou know maybe yourself
included know somebody who metJesus and it changed their life.
You met Richard last week.
Last week Richard told how hewas a drug addict, an alcoholic.
(34:14):
He was abused as a child,sexually and otherwise, and he
grows up not caring aboutanything.
He's an atheist.
And then he gets confrontedwith the gospel and Jesus and he
meets Jesus and it changes hislife.
And this same guy beginsMinnesota Adult and Teen
Challenge, which now servesthousands upon thousands of
(34:34):
alcoholics, addicts and abusevictims and he's helping set
people free.
It changed his life.
I don't know what to make ofthat.
I know my prophet at communitycollege that doesn't give a
bleep what the Bible says.
I'm like man I don't know.
There's some stuff in therethat's like.
I don't know what to do withthis.
Maybe your life has beenchanged radically because of
Jesus.
What do you make of this?
(34:54):
And if the resurrection is true,if it's true, then it makes
sense of all the things in theworld, like things aren't as
they should be.
And if there's no hope forresurrection, then what are we
doing?
Like, let's just go home.
Who cares?
But if he really rose from thedead, it changes everything,
because he promises not just toraise you or him or him from
(35:16):
there, but he promises to raiseyou and me from the dead, which
means your life isn't over yetand death isn't the end and your
illness, your sickness, yourfear, your pain, your brokenness
, it can be healed because Godresurrects the dead.
And if it's true, it changeseverything.
(35:36):
Would you please stand?
Here's where I want to end.
I want to reread that Paulinepassage, but we're going to read
it.
You know he says if he didn'tdie, then this but I'm going to
I rewrote it in the affirmativethat just declares in faith that
he did raise from the dead.
Because sometimes you wake upand I don't know what to think.
I kind of feel like I'm notmyself today, or I need hope, or
(35:57):
I need faith, and so you got tojust declare it out loud as a
way of like ah no, it's in faith.
I declare these things andbelieve in the resurrection, and
so when there are days when youdon't that's why we have each
other like I'll lean on youtoday and you lean on me, and so
this morning we're going toread this together.
And here's what I want to ask ifJesus rose from the dead, it
(36:20):
changes everything and it's thebest news I've ever heard.
So when we read this, let'sread it like it's actually good
news.
Okay, not like you stumbled inhere at 11 o'clock in the
morning and haven't had coffeeyet and it kind of.
Let's read it with some vigor.
Are you with me?
Okay, let's pray this prayer.
Let's read the scripturetogether this morning.
We'll read it.
No, me, okay, let's pray thisprayer.
(36:42):
Let's read the scripturetogether this morning.
We'll read it.
No, we'll sing a song.
Okay, oh, I got the clicker.
Sorry, let me click over here.
Oh, I'm going to skip that.
Help me out, sam, there we go.
Okay, you're ready?
All right, let's read together.
Since it is preached that Christhas been raised from the dead,
we proclaim with confidence thatthere is indeed a resurrection
(37:05):
of the dead.
Because there's a resurrectionof the dead, christ has truly
been raised.
And because Christ has beenraised, our preaching is full of
power and your faith is full oflife.
More than that, we are truewitnesses about God, for we have
testified that he raised Christfrom the dead.
He has indeed raised him,proving that the dead will also
(37:28):
be raised, because the dead willbe raised.
Christ has been raised and yourfaith is strong.
You are no longer in your sins.
Those who have fallen asleep inChrist are not lost, but alive
in him, and because our hope inChrist reaches beyond this life
into eternity.
We are, of all people, to bemost envied For.
(37:51):
We share in the victory of hisresurrection, Amen.
Hey man, thank you, Richard.
We're going to pray just aminute.
But you ever have one of thoseweekends where you have just a
weird weekend and maybe thingsdon't go as you'd planned or as
you would want it, or just youkind of had an off weekend and
then you got to go to work onMonday and you have to show up
and do it anyway.
That's kind of like me today.
So I just want to be honest.
I had a really kind of an oddweekend.
A number of things happenedthat were not how I planned them
(00:22):
, and so the only difference is,when I go to work on Monday, I
have to be in front of all youon Sunday morning, and so it's a
bit trickier.
But I'm okay being here and I'mokay just so you don't have to
come grab me after the serviceand really, you know, and mom,
I'm fine, I'm going to be fine,mom, but yeah.
So anyway, just want you toknow that I have bad days too,
(00:46):
or bad weekends, but we're goingto be okay.
So we're going to pray, andhere's also what I would say.
You know, we can show up in thismoment, in this space, with all
kinds of, in all kinds of ways,many people, many of you kind
of came from a weird morning.
Maybe you were at home and youhad to rush here, you were late,
or maybe you flew in at two inthe morning from Washington DC
or wherever you guys came from,or maybe you had an argument
with your spouse or your kids oryou yelled at the dog before
you got here.
Whatever the case is, maybe youcame here and you walked
(01:07):
leisurely and you enjoyed themorning and birds were singing.
That's great too.
But whatever the case is, herewe are and so we can approach
this next 40 minutes or whateverwhatever 30 minutes with our
eyes wide open and being hereand like in this sacred moment.
Or we can just sort of skate byand just sort of wait till it's
over and leave and go havelunch somewhere.
But and this is kind of howlife is we can show up in life,
(01:30):
we can be open, with our eyesopen, and be present and with
each other and with God and withyourself, and hopefully
something deep and meaningfulwill happen.
Or you can skate through lifeand just kind of go from one day
to the next, and myencouragement is it's always
better to kind of have your eyesopen, I think, and so I would
encourage us this morning.
Whatever we can do.
I want to invite us to kind ofhave our hearts and our minds
and our eyes open this morningas we engage for the next 30
(01:51):
minutes anyway and just see whatGod might do.
Does that sound all right?
Let's pray, god.
We give you thanks this morningfor your presence here and for
your word to us.
Thank you for these beautifulstories that we find in the
Gospels and this story of theresurrection, and I ask God that
you would bless us this morningwhen these stories come alive
in new and fresh ways that wehaven't seen before.
And I ask that you wouldencourage us in the ways that we
(02:13):
need it so badly, and anybodyhere who's kind of coming out of
just I don't know, a weird timeor weekend or year or half of
life, whatever the case is, god,would you minister to us in
deep ways that we need it sobadly and would you fill us with
hope this morning.
And may this story ofresurrection give us hope where
we need it badly.
In Jesus' name, amen, amen, youcan be seated.
(02:37):
So we're in the middle of ouryou Pick series, and the you
Pick series is that people canwrite in, and they have written
in questions that they want usto just sort of talk about and
kind of address and respond to,and we've got many good ones.
I think last week I alreadyforgot what, oh last week was
Teen Challenge, so the weekprior was the Trinity talking
about the Trinity, so that was a.
We had to blaze right throughthat in 40 minutes or whatever.
(02:58):
And then that was the first one.
I think this is the second one.
I know Ben is on for nextweekend and there was a great
question about a passage fromEphesians that we talked about.
But this morning I want to talkabout the Gospels and the
question was can we trust theGospels?
And, as you heard that, can wego back to the Scripture Sam?
I'll be quick, but the ApostlePaul didn't follow Jesus
(03:26):
directly.
He has this incredible epiphanywith Jesus while he's on a
horse going to Damascus and hehas this encounter with the
risen Christ and he begins tosort of like learn this story in
a deeply profound way and itchanges his life.
And basically he says in thisscripture that we heard read if
Jesus didn't raise from the dead, then nothing really matters.
It's all kind of in vain in ourfaith and all the stories we've
told about Jesus, they're,they're, they're sort of like
we're we're misrepresenting Godand we've gotten it all wrong.
(03:47):
And so it's like if he wasn'traised from the dead, then you
and I aren't raised from thedead either, so we can just turn
the lights off and go home andwe'll see you.
Well, we won't see you.
You know, that's kind of theend and it's a sermon slides
Thanks Sam when Paul basicallysays if Jesus didn't raise from
the dead, then it changeseverything, which the converse
(04:08):
is also then, true.
If Jesus did raise from thedead and I believe there's good
reason to think that he did, ifhe did then that changes
everything.
It really does, and it changesus today, 2000 years later.
If he really rose from the dead, if the stories in the gospels
are true, it changes everything,including how we frame the
(04:29):
world.
So the sermon title is thismorning it's the resurrection of
the dead, and why I believe wecan trust the gospels.
See Steve Jobs, who was thefounder of Apple.
You guys have maybe heard ofSteve Jobs, one of the greatest
companies of all time Apple.
Okay, it was not a professingChristian.
Here's what he said WalterIsaacson, I think was his name,
(04:51):
wrote a book about Steve Jobsand in the interview Steve Jobs
says this.
He says I like to think thatsomething survives after you die
.
It's strange to think that youaccumulate all this experience
and maybe a little wisdom and itjust goes away when you die.
So I really want to believethat something survives, that
maybe your consciousness endures.
Maybe many of you have feltlike that too.
(05:13):
I hope something lives on.
But on the other hand, he saysperhaps it's like an on-off
switch Click and then you'regone.
Maybe that's why I never liketo put on-off switches on my
Apple devices.
Yeah, how do we frame the world?
How do we think about the worldthat we live in?
It's a mysterious, wonderfullybeautiful and painful and odd
thing.
We're hurtling through space atmillions of miles an hour on
(05:35):
this rock with a bunch ofstrangers.
I'm like what do we make ofthis and who are you and what
are you doing here?
And how do you understandexistence and human
consciousness and these thingsthat we have living inside of us
, that are sort of out ofnowhere?
And this world is full ofbeauty and wonder and awe, and
also pain and suffering anddeath and dying.
Is the world just a cold, dark,hard place that death has the
(05:57):
final say you turn the lightsoff and that's kind of it, and
just like that click, it's doneand over with and any moments of
goodness that you experienceare just blips on the radar,
sort of these interruptions inan otherwise meaningless
existence.
Is that kind of what life is?
Is that how we frame life?
And what do we make of thesehuman longings?
I would argue we all have.
I don't know if you know this ormaybe you felt it, but, or
listen to enough pop culture tokind of understand that if you
(06:19):
listen to music or watch moviesor read books or hear your
neighbor talk, you'll hear a lotof longings in their soul for
deep things.
Where does that come from?
We have a longing, all of us,for justice.
We have the sense that thingsaren't always where they should
be and we want them to be putback to rights, to be fixed.
So we long for justice.
We don't like things that areunfair.
My friend always says oh, thefair only comes once a year
(06:41):
though, ryan.
By the way, I had to find apicture that didn't sort of
connote or communicate any kindof like political, ideological
stance or agenda, and it washard to do because even this
word, justice, has been co-optedin today's culture.
But justice is a deeply, deeplydivine thing, I would argue,
comes from God and as old asexistence itself and us.
(07:04):
We long for justice.
We long for things to be rightand just and fair.
We long for it.
We also long for what I wouldcall enchantment or spirituality
, or to be connected to thedivine or something bigger than
ourselves.
We're like is there anythingelse besides this material world
that I can see and taste andtouch?
Is there something else?
And you heard Steve Jobs sortof echo this.
This is why you have like yogastudios and these other things.
(07:25):
People long for a spiritualkind of experience prayer,
meditation.
People do these and they'vedone it for centuries and
millennia, intuitively.
We also long for relationships.
We long for family, forneighbors, for friendships.
Even you introverts you do it,just comes out differently.
We long to be known and to beknown to other people and to be
in a partisan, you know even acommunity that's bigger than
(07:46):
ourselves, and friendships.
I think you know maybe sometimeswe men have a hard time with
this, but I know for a fact thatthis is mostly, I've heard, in
male stories but I'm sure infemale.
But there's a guy namedSebastian Younger who wrote a
book called Tribe and he wroteabout his time he was in
Restrepo in Afghanistan and thecamaraderie he felt with his
military brothers.
(08:07):
It's this deeply profoundconnection where these guys
would die for each other.
In the moment I've heard a lotof guys in the military talk
about this kind of brotherhoodand I'm sure with the women too.
But I just have read thesestories about these men and I
didn't serve.
But it's like a profoundconnection because there's this
unbelievable relationshipbetween men and women.
I'm sure as well.
But in places like that, in theculture, like the military,
(08:28):
because we long for a connectionand those guys would have died
for each other at the drop of ahat.
It's unbelievably somethingunique and mysterious that's
going on there.
Lastly, we long for beauty.
We long for beauty and we havethis like we stand in awe and
wonder and we're stirred bycreativity and wonderful things
and beautiful things and thingslike flowers and gardens.
And now, men, maybe your thingisn't gardens and flowers a bit
(08:52):
too girly for you, I get thatand maybe, like I'm not, I'm too
tough and manly for beauty,wrong Because of this here.
Yeah, every man knows what I'mtalking about.
You mow that grass and you juststand back.
That is amazing.
That is a divine work of artand like something in you like
this is like I'm living in tunewith the divine creative forces
(09:12):
of the universe when I mow thesestraight lines like that.
And your neighbors know theywalk by like lawn's looking good
, ryan, thank you.
Or you know, this is why we liketo do things like go out at
five in the morning and sit on aboat and throw a line in the
water and catch a fish.
I know it's kind of funny, butwe talk about the beauty of the
fish while we're catching.
I get like beautiful.
(09:33):
We understand like, hey, fishare like these incredibly.
You know, like let me just forexample this 21 inch smallmouth
bass that I caught just recently.
Yes, this is a shameless plugfor a fish.
I caught Biggest fish I evercaught in my life 21-inch
smallie.
It was 21 and a quarter, butthen, because the tape measure
was met, you know it's.
(09:55):
Yeah, we long for these thingsand where does that come from?
And how do you frame the worldand what do we do with things
like suffering and injustice,and to me the answer is Jesus.
Jesus addresses and meets allof these things in us, these
longings that we have to put theworld back to right, to be
connected to the spiritual, thetranscendent, to have our
(10:18):
relationships fixed and forbeauty.
And the gospels tell thestories of Jesus.
That's all we have really isthese gospel stories, or mostly
what we have.
And the gospels then tellstories about Jesus's birth and
how one day he turned water intowine at a wedding in Cana.
It's this incredible story.
And we read about how he raiseda guy called Lazarus, one of
his closest friends, from thedead, and how he cried when he
saw him dead.
And how Jesus gathereddisciples and how he also spoke
(10:39):
and taught crowds, massivecrowds, thousands of people
sometimes.
He taught these crowds we readabout in the gospels.
He took care of people,especially those on the outside,
the fringes, the margins, thosewho were forgotten, which, by
the way, becomes a uniquelyChristian idea, this ethic of
taking care of those in themargins.
In the Greco-Roman world thatdidn't exist, but Jesus sort of
introduces a new way of being ahuman and taking care of people.
(11:00):
He begins a revolution thatupsets the imperial power and
presence in the Roman empire,and even the Jewish leadership.
Nobody liked him.
Well, not nobody.
A bunch of folks in powerdidn't like what he was doing
because it was a revolution.
In many ways it was arevolution.
He's arrested, tried andconvicted and killed, even
though he was an innocent man,and you can read these stories
in the gospels about how he wasresurrected from the dead.
The gospels tell us theseaccounts.
(11:21):
Now, when I was younger, I tooka class I was an undergraduate
at Red Rocks Community Collegein Colorado and I was like I
wanted to.
It was English two class and Icould write about anything I
wanted to write about.
I'm like I'm gonna write about,I'm gonna write about the
historical validity of thegospels, because that's what,
(11:43):
that's what early pastoral nerdsdo, which I obviously that's
fair, because in academia youdon't.
You can't I mean, unless you'rein a theology class, you can't
like write, you can't like usethe Bible to kind of prove
things.
It's like a circular reasoning.
You know argument, I go, that'sfine, she goes.
You can't use the Bible becauseI don't, she goes because I
don't give a bleep what theBible says.
Okay, fair enough.
Thank you for telling me, butcan we trust the gospels, like I
(12:09):
know that we all, many of us,are Christians and maybe you
grew up reading them like andfair enough, and so you just
maybe believe in them becauseyou.
It's circular reasoning, likewell, I was told to, and they're
the Bible, of course I you know.
But like, what about rational,reasonable people who didn't
grow up in this?
Can we reasonably trust thegospels as another piece of
literature, as a piece ofhistory?
Can we trust what the gospelssay about Jesus and about the
(12:30):
disciples and about him raisingfrom the dead?
If not, then, like Paul said,it's all a waste.
Let's just go home and havesome Chipotle.
If so, it changes everything.
It changes everything.
The gospels many people thinkwere written around 70 AD.
By the way, you got some notes.
You got a packet of notes.
Okay, if you didn't, would youraise your hand, we'll give you
some notes.
Let me not get the notes thatthey want.
(12:51):
You can follow along.
Okay, good, take notesthroughout.
There on the back page there'sa big, whole page of notes.
Also, on the third page we's abunch of resources.
If you want to like, read somemore scholarly works about.
Can you trust the gospels?
There's an intro level,secondary level, like a deep
(13:12):
dive level.
You can get some of those books.
I've got a couple of them hereIf you want to look at them.
I've got them, they're great.
I only have 20 minutes so I'mgoing to try to boogie through
it, but follow along.
So so the Gospels were probablywritten around.
Some scholars believe they werewritten around 70 AD and they
think that because in 70, acataclysmic event happened in
Jewish history and in this partof first century Palestine the
(13:33):
temple, which is this monolithicbuilding that was the center
and hub of all religiousactivity in the Jewish religion,
it is destroyed.
It was like a everybody knew,you know it was like this
unbelievably, you know, shockingthing that happened and it was
in 70.
Jesus in Mark 13, allegedlybefore 70 AD, predicts the fall
(13:55):
of the temple.
So scholars are like well, itmust've happened, they must've
written these things down around70.
The first gospel, I believe,was Mark.
Like what must've?
Mark must've written around 70or later, because how else would
he have known about the templebeing destroyed.
So he wrote it in 70, after thetemple was destroyed, and just
put the words into Jesus' mouththat, oh, he predicted the
(14:16):
future, but he really didn't.
Other scholars are like, no, no, it's okay that Jesus knew the
temple would be destroyedbecause you could see the
writing on the wall, or perhapsthe spirit told him.
So others put the gospelsearlier than 70 AD.
Here's why it's important,because the closer to the actual
events some scholars believethen the more trustworthy they
are.
So if they were written in 70or even 100 or later, it's like
(14:37):
well, how trustworthy can theybe?
There's a lot of time inbetween what actually happened,
what they wrote down.
Other scholars are like, well,no, the closer they are which we
believe that you know he couldhave predicted the fall of the
temple then the more accuratethey would be.
But either way, it probablydoesn't really matter.
This is the stance I take,because the people that wrote
the Bible we don't have dates ofthe Gospels.
We have Matthew, mark, luke andJohn.
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We have names, not dates.
Two of them were not actualfollowers of Jesus, mark and
Luke.
They were companions of Paul,but John and Matthew were, you
know, were followers of Jesusand so.
But either way, the writers ofthese four accounts had, like an
incredible familiarity with theland and the geography and the
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names of the people and thelocations and even like Aramaic
idioms.
So remember, in that time, inthe first century, these people
spoke a lot of Aramaic.
Not really beyond thistimeframe or area did they speak
Aramaic.
Most people spoke Greek.
It was a Greco-Roman cultureand so they spoke Aramaic.
There's Aramaic in the gospels.
There's all kinds of things inthe gospels, when you read them,
that suggest that whoever wroteit, whenever they wrote it,
(15:40):
they were familiar and intimatewith that time and place, which
lends them credibility, by theway.
So it'd be like if I wrote adiary and was like hey, then
Tuesday morning I woke up earlyand left School Street and
walked down 169, you knowHighway 169, all the way to the
Elk River Landfill, you'd all belike, oh, of course, of course
you know.
But like, 100 years from nownobody will probably know what
(16:01):
the Elk River Landfill was.
Well, maybe they will, butmaybe a thousand years no one
will know.
But you're like oh, that guywrote like he was in, that he
was like intimately connected tothat time and place.
So the writers either wrotebecause they knew it firsthand
or they were interviewing peoplethat were like firsthand
connected to this time and place.
Here's some examples, by theway, of this familiarity.
(16:27):
So in John John talks about theKidron Valley.
Jesus walked down the KidronValley over across to this
garden.
I've been to the Kidron Valley,by the way.
It's a very specific and uniquevalley in this area of
Palestine and John talks aboutit.
It's like, oh yeah, of coursethat was there.
He wasn't talking about somemade up mystical forest.
He mentions the Kidron Valley.
He also mentions a place calledGehenna.
Many times this is mentioned ina bunch of the gospels and
Gehenna was this dump outside ofJerusalem I've actually been
(16:50):
there, by the way and they wouldburn garbage and garbage would
burn incessantly.
It would just be garbageburning and fires and there'd be
dogs and the dogs would fightover the food.
It would gnash their teeth.
So Jesus, of course, uses thisas a metaphor for what he calls
hell, and so you can tell yourfriends that your pastor's been
to hell and back.
I went through Gehenna, but hetalked about Gehenna.
(17:10):
It's a very specific.
The word is esoteric.
Not many other folks would knowthis language of this place
because they weren't from thisarea.
So historically it lends allkinds of credibility to the
gospel writers.
They're using locations andgeography that are specific to
this time and place, as thoughthey're writing.
They were like I knew theKidron Valley, I knew the
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Gehenna.
Then there's this part too.
I love it.
There's this sense of like inthis place in time that all
these specific animals or likeplants or this practice.
So in the parable of the sower,the sower goes out and he sows
seed amongst rocky ground.
There's thorny ground and it'slike this unplowed ground.
This was a uniquely Palestinianpractice In this time and place
.
In the Roman Empire it was theonly place that didn't plow
(17:52):
their ground before they plantedseeds.
So everywhere else in theempire they would plow the
ground, then plant seeds Nothere.
And in this parable that's whatit reads like Like oh, this
person knew that this is whatwas happening in this time and
place, so it probably wasn'twritten, like you know, decades
or hundreds of years later.
It was written right then andthere they knew that this was
(18:12):
what it was like, a uniquelyPalestinian thing.
Also, there were lots of namesused.
Matthew 10 is a great example,names specific to this time and
place.
I mean, for example, if I namedmy kid Gertrude, you'd all be
like Gertrude, like anybody knowa Gertrude.
They're not usually youngerthan 50, right, and in this time
in the ancient world, names andthe popularity of them changed
(18:33):
within years.
Like every year, there would bedifferent names and they would
change in their popularity andtheir usage.
And in Matthew you find all thenames actually in all the
gospels, but in Matthew 10, thatwere specific to this time and
place.
So names like Simon and Judasand John I dropped my prop,
don't panic, rumi.
Okay, there we go.
You know what I'm going to sitdown, that's good.
(18:56):
James Thaddeus, any Thaddeusesout and about today?
Okay, bartholomew and Philip,yeah, and even the qualifiers or
the nicknames given to thesepeople were very specific to
this time and place, sort ofsuggesting that the writers knew
all the trends that were goingon.
They were very, very close towhatever was happening.
So it isn't as though thesewriters wrote from like miles
(19:19):
and miles and miles away, yearsand years apart.
They were writing as very closeeyewitnesses to these accounts.
Now here's how it happened,though they didn't get written
down right away, because rightthen and there, no one thought
to themselves like when Jesusshowed up, oh, this will change
the course of human history, weshould write this down.
No, no one knew what was goingon when Jesus was there.
That's why they don't, when yougo to Israel, they don't have
(19:39):
like a temple to all thesedifferent sites where Jesus was,
because at the time no onethought it was any big deal.
Then it became a big deal, sothey started writing it down.
But for a long time the storiessurvived though, through the
oral tradition, which is a veryJewish way of telling history.
Somebody would tell the storyand they would pass it on and
pass it on, and pass it on, andthen finally Mark, we think, is
the first one, wrote it down,and that's your first gospel,
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the Gospel of Mark.
So the argument is well, thisoral tradition, though, it can't
be trusted because over thecourse of time things might have
morphed and changed.
You know like, over the courseof time, like a bad game of
telephone, things would havechanged and maybe they would
embellish it or they would addthings, they would invent things
.
You know like, remember,telephone, the game of telephone
.
So you know it's like Jesus inthe text Jesus fed 5,000 with
(20:23):
fish and loaves.
Then, over like maybe five, 10years, it changed and morphed
into Jesus fed 5,000 with fish,tacos, and then I'll try again.
And then it changed over maybe10 more years, you know, and
Jesus invented the first everChipotle.
Okay, or maybe, you know, maybethe text would have gone like
(20:44):
this like you know, the firstoriginal thing that happened,
the angel appeared and saiddon't be afraid.
Then it changed over time andkind of morphed over decades to
like, hey, it's going to be fine, just relax.
To then maybe more decades like, hey, just chill, bro.
I should have done the Chipotleone second.
That's what I should have done.
You get the idea, though, right, like maybe it could have
(21:05):
changed over time.
But here's the deal.
Jesus and his followers, whowere the ones who were like the
originators of these stories,were Jewish.
Did you know this?
They were Jewish men, and hehad women followers too.
They were Jews, and there wasthis tradition in the Jewish
culture of the rabbi and thestudent.
The rabbi was like the teacher,you know, he would.
He would bring hisinterpretation of the law, he
(21:26):
would instruct them, they wouldfollow him everywhere and they
would.
This was an esteemed position.
So whatever the teachings were,whatever he said, whatever the
rabbi did, they would intimatelyknow it and they would actually
memorize a lot of it Because itwas so important for them,
their teachings were soimportant they would never have
changed it or altered it in anyway, because the teaching itself
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is highly valuable and valuedin this culture.
It was a sacred thing.
Just want to say the teacher,his information was so valuable,
it was sacred.
They would memorize all thethings he said.
I'm just saying Most of youcan't remember what I said last
Sunday, let alone.
Hey, that sermon was reallygood.
(22:10):
What did the preacher say?
Something about fish, tacos andChipotle.
I don't remember.
But the Jewish, the students ofthe rabbi, would.
They would like, in fact therabbi would give instruction or
teaching in like a mnemonicdevice to help them memorize it.
Jews memorized everything theyhad, the whole Old Testament.
Many of them memorized.
It was so important to them sothey valued it.
(22:32):
Wasn't like they would havejust allowed it to morph over
time and change over decades.
They wouldn't have let it dothat.
It was too sacred to them toembellish it.
Another argument is that theearly church so, decades later,
that they wrote the gospels as atheological, not historical
document, but a theologicaldocument, and they wrote it to
address certain theological youknow conflicts or to strengthen
their faith that these weren'treally like firsthand neutral
(22:55):
reports.
They were biased, you know,altered, changed writings to
address conflict or give themmoral guidance or strengthen
their faith or to answerpredominant questions in the in
the church.
But here's the thing there'smany questions that the first
church, the early church, hadthat go unanswered.
For example, these arequestions that the church had
(23:16):
never addressed in the gospels,which would make me think they
were not written years and yearsand years, like by the church.
Were written way before that,like things like well, should
the gentiles be circumcised?
Paul writes about this a lot,like we all.
Now this church is like blownopen and now there's Jews and
Gentiles.
Should we circumcise Gentiles?
And all the Gentile men werewaiting with bated breath on
(23:37):
this answer.
All the men know what's up.
How should churches beorganized?
They don't address it.
The gospels never talk about it.
Even the theology of the cross,it's never really mentioned.
Like, how do you make sense ofthe cross?
Doesn't really talk, it justtells you what happened.
Uh, what roles do women play?
(23:58):
Doesn't really get addressed inthe bible, although the women
are the first ones that find thetomb empty.
So the first preacher is women,the women Way to go, women.
But like it's like these andalso there's all kinds of
irrelevant information in thegospels that the church wouldn't
even care about.
They're in your notes so youcan look them up.
So what else is it?
I mean, maybe it's not just youknow.
Well, a lot of folks thinkmaybe it was that these stories
(24:20):
were legend, like they grow overtime into this legend.
You know what I mean.
This is for Peter Legend.
Okay, fine, myth.
Any myth fans in here.
Myths are great, by the way.
Anyone know this one.
Yeah, somebody said it, icarus.
Yeah, is that what the gospelsare?
Here's the problem.
I'll just answer it right away.
They don't read like a legendor a myth.
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They really don't.
There's also this other kind ofgenre called hagiography.
It's like a.
It's a genre about writingabout saints, and when you write
about a saint they often getlike portrayed as this, like as
a saint.
So they leave out all theembarrassing, you know, negative
details.
They only tell the good things.
It's like a funeral, likemodern day funerals.
You never hear the bad stuff.
(25:02):
They call it hagiography and thegospels don't read like that,
as though they're justvenerating jesus and they only
tell the good things.
They tell the gospels tell allkinds of stuff.
It's like negative,embarrassing, like, for example
I love this is so funny to mejesus's own family questioned
his sanity.
So in Mark's gospel it sayswhen his family heard things he
was saying, they go and theygrab him and they're like hey
(25:23):
look, jesus is out of his mind.
That's funny.
And also, if you're here andyour family has ever thought you
were out of your mind, youmight be in good company because
you're with Jesus.
They thought he was out of hismind.
His own family, they thought itwas out of his mind.
His own family Like they didn't.
They didn't like oh Jesus, he'sgone crazy.
Just better get him out.
Get him out.
He didn't get himself introuble.
I love that.
It's so funny.
You would never have includedthis in a legend or a myth, you
(25:44):
would have just taken it out.
How about this one?
His healings weren't alwaysinstant.
So he's healing this blind guyand he spits in his eyes.
He's like hey, can you seeanything?
And the guy's like well, I kindof I can see people.
They look like trees, though.
And the disciples are likeuh-oh, what am I supposed to do
on that?
Jesus is like don't worry, I'lldo it again.
And then John's like should wewrite this down.
(26:07):
Should we write it down?
Write it down, write it down.
He's done it.
Come on, I love this too.
The disciples are really abunch of idiots.
They're knuckleheads.
There was too many examples tolist, in fact, I had to just
narrow it down to one.
There's a ton of them.
Peter gets called the Satan,like one of Jesus' right-hand
guys gets called the Satan, likewhat?
(26:28):
That's a bad legend.
But in Mark 14, it says then,in his moment of deepest need,
Everyone deserts him and theyflee because they're a bunch of
chickens.
The original text doesn't saythat, but I added that, yeah,
that's like not how you want tobe remembered as a legend.
That's not legendary.
What's the opposite oflegendary?
(26:48):
It's that.
And then, lastly, jesus was acrucified Messiah.
Now we don't really understandthis as a first century or as
21st century, whatever we're in21st Westerners.
But to die on a cross wasshameful.
Only cursed people died oncrosses.
Romans were.
It was illegal to kill a Romanon a cross because it was so
shameful and horrible.
(27:08):
The Romans were too good forthat so they would never let a
Roman die on the cross.
So only like scoundrels andlike shameful people died on
cross, and Jesus dies a curseddeath on a tree.
If you're writing a legend ormyth, you would never have the
hero die or die on a cross ordie at the hands of the enemy
the Roman Empire Maybe theJewish military, but not the
(27:28):
Roman Empire.
Like what are we doing?
Whoever's writing this, this isa terrible idea, but let's go
with it.
So why would they?
It's probably not a legend or amyth.
There's all these embarrassingthings and also there's this the
disciples gained nothing fromthis.
It wasn't like they got aTikTok deal or an influencer
deal.
They didn't get a clothing line, they didn't get a book deal.
(27:49):
They got nothing.
They got embarrassed, they gotshamed.
In fact, many of them gotkilled.
Most of them died horrificdeaths.
I'm going to show you.
So Peter was crucified, andrewcrucified, james beheaded, john
died of natural causes.
Okay, there you go, philipmartyred in Heropolis.
(28:09):
By the way, philip would walkto the gate of Heropolis.
When you walked under the gateof Heropolis, there was a
Domitian gate.
When you walk under it, youwould say Domitian is Lord, he
was the emperor at the time, andPhilip's like I'm not walking
underneath that, I'm going towalk around it.
And if you do that you getkilled and his family's like,
according to legend, hey, if youdo that, you're going to get
killed and he's like I don'tcare.
I saw my rabbi feed 5,000people.
(28:30):
I got him killed.
He was killed.
Bartholomew flayed, beheaded orcrucified.
Either one, take your pick.
Would you rather be flayed?
Just kidding, I feel like we'vehad enough distance from then
until now.
I can make some kind of jokes.
Matthew, likely martyred by thesword.
(28:52):
Thomas speared to death inIndia.
Did you know?
Thomas ended up in India.
That's crazy.
James thrown from the templepinnacle.
Thaddeus clubbed to death orcrucified.
Simon the Zealot, crucified orsawed in half or died peacefully
in Edessa.
We don't know.
Matthias, who replaced Judas,was stoned and beheaded.
(29:14):
These men lost everything andnone of them reneged.
No one ever said hey, we madeit all up, we were just joking,
don't kill me, we were justmessing around.
It's a legend, just forget.
We said anything and they allagreed on what they saw.
I had a guy from the firstgathering, paul Mesa.
He goes Ryan.
I tell people 12 men in thisday and age.
They all agreed on what theysaw and then nobody relented.
(29:36):
You know the Nixon scandal.
He said yeah, yeah, he goes,those men, was there six of
those men Within three days.
They all turned on each otherand said we made it all up.
Yeah, I mean, it's not nothing,that 12 guys all went to their
deaths proclaiming that whatJesus said and did was true,
that he really rose from thedead.
Now there are thesediscrepancies in the scriptures,
like how many angels were atthe tomb.
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You know, how did Judas reallydie and did the turning of the
temple or the turning of thetables in the temple?
Did that happen at thebeginning of the ministry of
Jesus or the end of his ministry?
So there's some discrepancies.
So when you read them, don't beshocked, like how many women
were at the tomb, and there'sall these like minor kinds of
things.
But here's the deal If you weregoing to write a legendary
(30:19):
script and make it all up, youwould scrub the record of any of
those discrepancies.
You wouldn't have them.
So some scholars are like no,the fact that there's these
minor discrepancies actuallyshows it's probably pretty
authentic, because that's whatwould happen is you'd have these
minor little things and theydidn't erase them, they left
them in there.
Have known about thesediscrepancies since the second
century.
These aren't like newdiscoveries Like we didn't know.
(30:40):
They've known about thesediscrepancies since the
beginning of the second centuryand they've had all kinds of
ways of thinking about it.
One of the ones I love the mostis that if you were going to
have four people write anaccount of Jesus, they would
look a little bit differently.
So what you have in the gospelis really four accounts, like
four portraits of the sameperson from different angles,
(31:04):
and each gospel writer writeswhat they're seeing and watching
from their own viewpoint andvantage point and including
their own flavor, their ownthings that they want to pull
out of it, and they're likehighlighting certain things.
And so it's what you wouldexpect when you see four
different gospels from theancient world.
It lends only more so to thecredibility of the gospels.
In fact, I'll end with a couplemore things here.
But uh, there's a guy namedWolfgang Schottewald and he was
(31:24):
a philologist and a literary uh,literary scholar.
Philology is a study of likeliterary texts and development
of language over time.
And this is a secular scholarwho says the reason I believe
the gospels and this is not aChristian guy, he's not
affirming the theology, but justas a piece of literature,
because what you find in them.
(31:44):
He calls it experientialvividness that you find these
incredibly vivid scenes thatpull you in, and they include
all kinds of miniscule details,like on the boat.
In the boat with Jesus, he's ona cushion why would you include
the cushion part?
Or they talk about the grass onthe hill of the feeding of the
5,000.
Or, my favorite, when John andPeter are running to the tomb,
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john says I got there firstBecause of course he was.
It reads like these guys werelike these knuckleheaded dudes
writing this stuff down as ithappened.
There's this vivid, the emotion, the expression.
It doesn't read like somedisconnected sort of theological
construct or something likethat.
It's this incredibly concretestory about what really actually
happened.
It's beautiful.
So, rather than just some sortof like theology book that was
(32:28):
made up by the church with allthese, it's like this vivid,
incredibly powerful, impactfulstory that reads like history
and this is what he says aboutit and it compresses a ton into
a small amount of space.
There's action, dialogue,character, insight, setting,
meaning, and these things don'thappen in myth stories.
It reads like an actualfirsthand account of what
happened and what you would havethought if you were there.
(32:49):
But also there's this thestories of Jesus and the men and
women that surrounded it andthat began to grow into a church
.
It changed the course of humanhistory Like it just did.
It changed history A number ofthings.
It elevated human dignity.
(33:10):
This is a new thing in theancient world, like elevating
every human as dignified, as ahuman.
Because of the image of God,that person has value.
We're going to honor it.
This comes out of the teachingof Jesus A radical ethic of love
, loving your neighbor, turningtheir cheek Again.
It was an extremelyunprecedented moral teaching.
In the ancient Greco-Romanworld they didn't care about
(33:30):
those kinds of things.
But Jesus brings it and itchanges history.
They begin to value themarginalized.
Jesus is the progenitor, is theword of the golden rule that
came from Jesus.
They built hospitals andschools.
Christians did Charities.
Our laws are mostly founded onJewish and Judeo-Christian
(33:51):
values.
Most abolition movements werestarted by Christians because of
the teachings of Jesus.
Art, music, all impacted byJesus and his teachings and his
life.
It changed the world and many ofyou know maybe yourself
included know somebody who metJesus and it changed their life.
You met Richard last week.
Last week Richard told how hewas a drug addict, an alcoholic.
(34:14):
He was abused as a child,sexually and otherwise, and he
grows up not caring aboutanything.
He's an atheist.
And then he gets confrontedwith the gospel and Jesus and he
meets Jesus and it changes hislife.
And this same guy beginsMinnesota Adult and Teen
Challenge, which now servesthousands upon thousands of
(34:34):
alcoholics, addicts and abusevictims and he's helping set
people free.
It changed his life.
I don't know what to make ofthat.
I know my prophet at communitycollege that doesn't give a
bleep what the Bible says.
I'm like man I don't know.
There's some stuff in therethat's like.
I don't know what to do withthis.
Maybe your life has beenchanged radically because of
Jesus.
What do you make of this?
(34:54):
And if the resurrection is true,if it's true, then it makes
sense of all the things in theworld, like things aren't as
they should be.
And if there's no hope forresurrection, then what are we
doing?
Like, let's just go home.
Who cares?
But if he really rose from thedead, it changes everything,
because he promises not just toraise you or him or him from
(35:16):
there, but he promises to raiseyou and me from the dead, which
means your life isn't over yetand death isn't the end and your
illness, your sickness, yourfear, your pain, your brokenness
, it can be healed because Godresurrects the dead.
And if it's true, it changeseverything.
(35:36):
Would you please stand?
Here's where I want to end.
I want to reread that Paulinepassage, but we're going to read
it.
You know he says if he didn'tdie, then this but I'm going to
I rewrote it in the affirmativethat just declares in faith that
he did raise from the dead.
Because sometimes you wake upand I don't know what to think.
I kind of feel like I'm notmyself today, or I need hope, or
(35:57):
I need faith, and so you got tojust declare it out loud as a
way of like ah no, it's in faith.
I declare these things andbelieve in the resurrection, and
so when there are days when youdon't that's why we have each
other like I'll lean on youtoday and you lean on me, and so
this morning we're going toread this together.
And here's what I want to ask ifJesus rose from the dead, it
(36:20):
changes everything and it's thebest news I've ever heard.
So when we read this, let'sread it like it's actually good
news.
Okay, not like you stumbled inhere at 11 o'clock in the
morning and haven't had coffeeyet and it kind of.
Let's read it with some vigor.
Are you with me?
Okay, let's pray this prayer.
Let's read the scripturetogether this morning.
We'll read it.
No, me, okay, let's pray thisprayer.
(36:42):
Let's read the scripturetogether this morning.
We'll read it.
No, we'll sing a song.
Okay, oh, I got the clicker.
Sorry, let me click over here.
Oh, I'm going to skip that.
Help me out, sam, there we go.
Okay, you're ready?
All right, let's read together.
Since it is preached that Christhas been raised from the dead,
we proclaim with confidence thatthere is indeed a resurrection
(37:05):
of the dead.
Because there's a resurrectionof the dead, christ has truly
been raised.
And because Christ has beenraised, our preaching is full of
power and your faith is full oflife.
More than that, we are truewitnesses about God, for we have
testified that he raised Christfrom the dead.
He has indeed raised him,proving that the dead will also
(37:28):
be raised, because the dead willbe raised.
Christ has been raised and yourfaith is strong.
You are no longer in your sins.
Those who have fallen asleep inChrist are not lost, but alive
in him, and because our hope inChrist reaches beyond this life
into eternity.
We are, of all people, to bemost envied For.
(37:51):
We share in the victory of hisresurrection, Amen.
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