On The Third Day

We are in a series called Planted, and the idea of this series is that we get foundationally grounded in why we believe what we believe. I felt this year we needed to really just get down to the bare bones, the bare minimum, do a little more teaching about why we believe what we believe. It's nice to know what we believe, but we don't know why we believe it. And some of us don't even know what we believe. We just call ourselves Christians, and then we're out kind of running here and there with other theologies and other ideologies.

And it's very important that we know that we are true followers of Christ. And if we are true followers of Christ, we have this thing called the Apostles' Creed, which the church universally, the church of followers of Jesus Christ, we follow this creed. And it has the essence and the essentials of our faith. And we've been kind of walking through this creed and hitting on the important points. By the way, just kind of pulling off just for a second.

In a couple of weeks, we are going to steer away from this series just for a day because it will be the weekend before Valentine's Day. And I do feel that relationships and marriages are under attack. I can't tell you how many times a week I talk to people who are struggling in relationships, struggling with marriage. And my wife and I are going to come up and do a message together. And that's going to be fun.

And here's what I want you to do. I want you to do some homework. I want you to write down some questions. And I want you to send them in at info at saltchurch.org.

Or you can write them on that blue card. Or if you want to IM us in our Facebook page or Facebook or Instagram person. And give us some tough questions to answer for you, okay? And we would love to help you, whether it's practical questions or whatever. We want to really help marriages and we want to help relationships.

So that happens in a couple weeks. So the essential organs, or let me say it like this. Every organ in our body, every part of our body is essential in our bodies operating and functioning well. Every part is important. But there are parts that are more essential than others, right?

I mean, think about it. We can live with a lot. A lot of people live without certain components to their body. Some people are missing arms. Some people are missing legs.

And you still get through life, right? You can operate. You can continue to do what you're capable of living. Some people, they go with one kidney. Some people have, you know, one lung.

And they're able to function in life, although it might, you know, disable them a little bit. In fact, some people with extreme disabilities, I've seen them do better things than I can do, you know? It's amazing what the human can do without certain parts of their body or certain organs and things like that. But there are a few things that are essential. That's why I watch the edge of the floor for the head.

I've seen them in the next one. I've seen them in the north. If we don't have a brain and we don't have a heart, then it's lights out, right? Those are essentials, and the Apostles' Creed is a lot like that. The essentials, we have these essentials.

Every one of them are extremely important. We can't have one without the other. However, there is an essential to the essentials. The heart and the brain that makes everything function, and without the heart and brain, there's no sense in even continuing to teach and do what we do. And that is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So we're at the point in the Creed where we are dealing with the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The essential organ. And the Creed says this, on the third day he rose again. On the third day. Short statement, but very, very significant important statement.

That he rose from the dead. Because if he did not rise from the dead, then the rest of this sermon series is weak. We should have stopped last week at the cross, and we would have had a nice ending there. He died on the cross for our sins, and this and that. But without this side of it, we can't talk about anything else.

What is the cross for if there isn't a resurrection? Will there ever be a resurrection of the body? Will there ever be a heaven if we don't believe in resurrection? So everything, this is the essential of the essentials. And if you're with me today, 1 Corinthians 15, 1 through 8.

If you'll turn with me there, you can go to your Bible app. You can go to your paper Bible. All you paper Bible people, praise God, amen for you. And let's follow along, verse 1. And this is Paul speaking.

He says, Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you were saved, if you hold firmly to the words I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I receive, I pass on to you as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to Scripture, that He was buried and He was raised on the third date according to Scripture, and that He appeared to Cephas and then to the Twelve, and after that He appeared to more than 500 of our brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then He appeared to James, the brother of Jesus, that is, then to all the apostles, and last of all He appeared to me also, Paul, that is, as to one abnormally born.

The stuff that legends are made of, we've all heard that phrase, the stuff that legends are made of. What is a legend? All of us have heard a legend. Here's the definition of legend. A traditional story says, Sometimes popularly regarded as historical, but unauthenticated.

So, it comes across as something that's told and perhaps believed, but there's no evidence behind it. There's no authenticity behind it. When you do the research, it's not really there. Although it's been told over and over again, and it's believed by many people, maybe one of those stories is the lost city of Atlantis, right? The lost city of Atlantis.

We've got movies about it. We've got stories about it. And for some people, it's believed to be a true city that was actually lost, but it was a story that was passed through time. But we have no evidence of anything that there ever was a city of Atlantis. We just don't have that evidence in front of us.

Or Billy the Kid. Everybody knows Billy the Kid. And we learned a lot from young guns, right? We know all about Billy the Kid. But in fact, Billy the Kid was actually in history.

It was written down in history. But we don't know a lot about him. And we don't know that he was a fast gun in the West. We don't know that he did all those things we saw in the movies and in the stories. We have no evidence of that.

We just know him as somebody who existed. There's a lot of legend in understanding him. How about King Arthur? You know, the sword and the stone, right? That's one of those stories that we hold on tightly to, right?

It's just a nice story. But that's basically what it is, a nice story that we can hold on to. Or Ponce de Leon and the Fountain of Youth. As he was voyaging and exploring, he found Florida in search for the Fountain of Youth. You know, we hear that story all the time.

But is there a Fountain of Youth? And did Ponce de Leon actually search for a Fountain of Youth? There's no evidence in any historical context of him actually exploring for that reason. A legend. There's legend out there.

And we can go on and on. Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, all these things. These legends that are out there. And maybe that's controversial for some of you because you might believe those things. But there's no evidence of those things existing.

So we call them legends. And many would put Jesus' resurrection on the same shelf as these particular legends. That it's a nice story. It's good and inspiring. And we can hope to be all of that.

But it's just a nice fairy tale. It's a good fairy tale. I actually had somebody tell me that one time. You know, yeah, that's a good fairy tale. It's a good fairy tale.

It's good. And a lot of people would say, you know, even if it's a legend, it doesn't really matter. I mean, it's really given us some kind of inspiration. And it's helping us get to a certain place. But here's what I want to say.

The point of this message is to help you see this unequivotedly. That the documents that form the New Testament are reliable and historical. They're reliable and historical. They're not just some legends that they are... They are absolutely not what legends are made of.

They hold none of the stuff that legends are made of. They are, in fact, historical, and they're reliable, and they're full of detail. So I want to give you some information here to help you understand why we believe this. What gives us this unction to say, you know, I believe what I believe, right? First of all, they detail it specifically.

It's detailed specifically. The Bible is detailed specifically and almost too specifically, much more than a lot of historical documents. In fact, we have Luke, a doctor, who was financed by a wealthy benefactor to be able to put together evidence, to put together a document or a book or a historical document to verify that this is, in fact, true. So he does everything he can to pull everything. So he goes and talks to the apostles.

He talks to people that were with Jesus' ministry, who witnessed it. He wanted to know. They wanted to know. He was funded for that. And in Luke 3, 1, we see this.

It starts out the scripture in Luke 3, verse 1. It says, Okay, we got Tiberius. Most people can go back and look up Tiberius, Caesar Tiberius. When Pontius Pilate was governor of Judah, we know him as the fifth prefect of Judah, Herod, Tatriarch of Galilee, and his brother Philip, Tatriarch of Eteria, and Traconitus, yeah, I practice that, by the way, okay? Traconitus.

And who else? Leonidas, Lysanias, the Tatriarch of Abilene. I promise you I practiced those and I had them down. But when you get in front of people and try to pronounce names like that, it's a little bit hard. So I should have just said that name and that name and that name, and that would have been better, right?

Thank you for your laughter, Alex. So you have all these crazy names here of different places and Tatriarchs, which are basically rulers of regions and things like that. And all of this very detailed, just to introduce this man named John who ate bugs and had camel fur covering his body. I mean, all of this so that they can articulate that this ministry was starting. They could have started right there.

There was John the Baptist, one crying in the wilderness, yada, yada, yada, and we would head into the story. But they were carefully detailing exactly where it is, what's happening, so that it wouldn't just be a fairy tale. It's not just a fairy tale. It's historical and it's accurate. And you can go to Israel and look at all these.

You can go to King Herod. You can put that they found artifacts of King Herod and where his palace was. You can actually go to the spot where his palace is. You can see the places where Pontius Pilate went in and out of Galilee as he governed Galilee. You can go to these places.

You can take trips to these places. If you don't believe, go and look at the artifacts, look at the evidence, look at all the stuff there that is available to us in order to understand. And in fact, over 30 characters in the Bible are evidenced by historical resources outside the Bible. Extra-biblical resources show us that people were actually people in history. These people were actually people in history.

It's not only based on manuscript evidence, as we learned last week, you know, all the evidence manuscript-wise, but the Bible is a perfect historical document. It's perfect in every way. So we believe the detail leads us to see that this is, in fact, a true, authentic event that happened. It's not just a legend. The second thing is it's believed and communicated instantly.

It's believed and communicated instantly. They didn't wait 100 or 200 years for it to kind of work out and put the story together and figure out all the ins and outs. They begin to communicate this. They begin to write it down. They begin to put it together instantly.

1 Corinthians, our verse today, was written by Paul. And Paul, we could argue on some books, like Hebrews, whether he wrote that or not. Some believe he did and some believe he didn't. And he wrote 13 books in the New Testament that we are pretty sure of. But this right here, nobody argues the authorship of 1 Corinthians.

We know that it was Paul. We know that he wrote this and penned this down to the Church of Corinth. We know that. And it was written around the year 54 A.D.

, 54, 55 A.D., somewhere in there. And Jesus was born around 3 B.C.

, and he died around 30 A.D. So this document was written down about 25 years after Christ's resurrection. So it was a very short period of time when he was actually writing this. But that's not it.

In the document, if you look at the Scripture, you see that he says, I'm telling you the same thing I told you before. Meaning that he said this before, and I don't know how many times he said this before. Perhaps many, many times where he visited the Church, he planted the Church. It could have gone back even closer than 25 years. We're not sure how far it goes back.

But based on what we understand about teachings in that day, we can say it went pretty far back. And Paul is saying the same thing I told you before, I'm telling you again. And he's teaching about the resurrection. Now, the Bible was put together. The entire Bible, the entire Scripture was compiled and put together.

Put together within 70 years. 70 years. That's impressive, okay? That documents so consistent and precise and cohesive are put together within 70 years. Now, some of you would be like, well, that's a long time, Pastor.

I mean, a lot could happen. A lot can be skewed. Stories can be shared. But you don't feel that way about anything else in history, do you? Think about it.

George Washington. How do you know about George Washington? It was written down. It wasn't just a movie that you saw or, you know, with Mel Gibson in it. Mel Gibson told me about George Washington, right?

The Patriot. No, it's not, you know, you know it because it was written down and how long ago was that? Just put that in perspective and we believe that. Let me take you to another example. Alexander the Great.

Everybody's familiar with Alexander the Great. Nobody really argues about this historical context of where he came from. He conquered the known Western world, conquered everything by 30 years old, wept because he had nothing else to do. He died at 32, was put in a vet of honey. We know that he's named 70 cities after him.

One of them, Bucifilus after his horse, which is kind of interesting. We know all these little details and we get this from two people, Plutarch and Arian. Plutarch and Arian, they're historical resources. People wrote this down and it was written 400 years after Alexander the Great. But nobody's in class in a college environment trying to pick apart Alexander the Great in the story.

You know, it says he had elephants in his army, but maybe he had giraffes or something like that. You know, they're just arguing about things that really don't make sense. And people aren't arguing about those, but the Bible, the Bible is consistently critiqued, is consistently challenged. And in the New Testament Bible itself, over 500 copies, 70 years put together, 5,800, I believe, manuscripts is what we have right now, and 99% accurate and not diverging. One of the doctrinal issues that to attest the resurrection of Jesus Christ, it all consistently comes together and makes sense.

And these are rabbinical teachings in that day. It was very, very common to say things over and over again. That's why creeds were important back then, that people would say over and over again because literacy wasn't necessarily there. There was a lot of people who couldn't read. They didn't have access to manuscripts back then, so they would recite these things over and over again.

And it's almost like a song when you hear it in Scripture. Christ died, right. According to Scripture, he was buried and rose on the third day, according to Scripture. And then he met Cephas, according to Scripture, and then he met the others, according to Scripture. And you hear this over and over again.

And it's almost like your ABCs. You know, when you're learning your ABCs when you're a kid, what did you do? You recited a song over and over and over again so that you know your ABCs. It's a very, very common practice even today. And in that time, it was very common.

And Paul says, I received something myself, and I'm giving it to you. I'm giving to you what I received. I'm handing over to you what I once received. What does he mean by that? Galatians 1 and 2, we have the background story of Paul, right?

Paul was a hater of Jesus. He hated Christians. He hated it. And something happened. Jesus actually visited him on the road to Damascus.

And he went from hating Christ to being all in and loving Christ to death, right? And he wanted to know everything about Jesus. In fact, he went to the apostles, and he began to visit them. Peter, James, John, all of them. And he says, tell me everything you absolutely can about Jesus Christ.

He was completely changed. And he began to share this over and over again. They entrusted this beautiful creed, the idea that Christ died according to Scripture. He was buried, and he rose on the third day according to Scripture. And he went on and on and on, you know, sharing this with the church.

And also added in, he was seen by James according to Scripture, right? And we're talking about James, the brother of Jesus. Now, just stop right there for a second. Did you know James, he absolutely, positively did not think that Jesus was the Messiah before Jesus rose from the dead? The brother of Jesus.

Who would believe their brother was God, you know, if he said, oh, hey, James, I'm God. No, I grew up with you. I know, I know you, you know? I mean, imagine your sibling coming up to you and saying that, right? There was no way.

But yeah, something happened, and this was proof that he was resurrected because James ended up giving his life as a leader in the church. According to Scripture, Cephas and the apostles and James and over and over again. And then many were still living, even after 25 years, it says, and others are still alive. They're still alive. You can go talk to them.

You can go see them. Some have fallen asleep. Some have died. But many of them are still alive. You can actually go and talk to them.

You can actually get the information straight from them. They were there. They saw it. Some of the 500, they saw exactly what happened. There was plenty of evidence, and it was inviting them to go out and investigate what they believed.

And Luke's putting together this fascinating document. Paul's putting together this information, and they're all coming together to say, you know, this is what we believe. And this creed was possibly put in place as early six months to a year after Jesus is... Resurrection is what we believe, based on what we can understand from Scripture. That they immediately started sharing, communicating what they believed.

They didn't wait, they didn't invent fairy tales, they didn't put things in there that weren't there. They immediately started sharing what had happened. And this is not what legends are made of, okay? In fact, a study done by A.N.

Sherwin White on the rate of development of legends at Oxford University study, he said this, not even two generations is enough for this kind of mythology to develop. Not even 200 years would be enough. Instantly, no time gap, they begin to share what they believed. It's not myth, it's fact, it's historical. The third thing is, they presented it awkwardly, okay?

Now, if you're a legend person, when you hear a legend, you don't hear the awkward stuff usually, right? It's always a good story, it's always a powerful story, it's always a Superman story. But there's a lot of awkward stories in the Bible. Let's just admit that there's a lot of awkward stories in the Bible. I mean, Peter, he has all kinds of awkward stories where he denies Jesus, Jesus even called him the devil once.

It's just all kinds of things. I mean, who would put those in Scripture if we wanted to make a legend out of it? But they put them all in Scripture so that we could identify with these people. That we're like these people. It comforts me to know that, you know, Peter messed up, I messed up, you know, we all mess up, right?

Jesus is the only one that's perfect, and it helps me see it. And he died in an eye of Jesus. There is even a part, you know, Mark in his account, John Mark, you know, the book of Mark. He's writing down his account of Scripture. And did you know he actually wrote himself in the story of Jesus being arrested?

And he calls it this young person, this young gentleman who's there when Jesus is arrested, has nothing but a linen on, starts running away. Somebody steps on his linen, he runs away, he's streaking through the forest. I mean, who puts those in the story? Not legends, not legends. The women.

They saw Jesus, and they didn't recognize him at first. They didn't see him. And it was kind of an awkward moment. John and Peter are having a foot race to the tomb. I mean, my goodness, right?

I mean, and John puts it in there. I beat Peter, ha, ha, ha, you know? Look, I'm more athletic than he is. Read it. It's kind of funny.

Legends don't include those things, okay? It was presented awkwardly. It was adhered to, whoops, it was adhered to stubbornly, too. These people were stubborn with the message they had gotten. I mean, remember, Peter denied Jesus, but he experienced the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And this is what happened. Acts 2, 22. Fellow Israelites, listen to me. Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, by wonders, and signs, which God did among you through him, as you yourself know. So this man was handed over to you by God's deliberate plan and foreknowledge, and you with that.

The help of wicked man put him to death by nailing him on the cross. And then he ends with verse 34, But God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death. Amen? Because it was impossible for death to hold him back. Look at the power of resurrection.

And they held on to that story. I can't help it. Who do we know about Peter? What do we know about Peter? He was arrested, he was beaten, and they told him not to talk anymore.

And he says, I cannot hold back. What I have seen and what I have heard, I cannot hold back the message. I will continue to share. You'll have to put me to death. Eventually, he was put to death.

He was hung on a cross, this upside down, as tradition would say, because he was not worthy enough to be sacrificed like his Savior and his Lord. They're stubborn, stubborn. You even have to sacrifice me differently, okay? You know? That's how powerful this was.

And all of them suffered a martyr's deficit for John, who was boiled. But James, the brother of Jesus, his head was cut off. Thomas was pierced in India. Just all kinds of things took place, but they didn't quit. They didn't quit.

So some people say, well, they made it up, you know? They made it up. They made all this stuff up. Look, if they made it up. Okay, here's the thing about criminology.

If you study criminology, I was looking up some stuff about criminology, and it says this. Criminology says there are three reasons one commits a crime. Sex, money, and power. Sex, money, and power. You do not find any of these with the disciples.

Show me anything about them that went these threats. So, you know, if they're lying, obviously it's a criminal act. They had no reason. Why would they want? And some people say, well, a lot of people die for their religious beliefs.

I mean, they died. Lots of people have died. Not like these men. Usually, people of a movement that die for their religious beliefs, they realize they're in a situation where it's a lie, and they're always within a group of people. These men went out on their own.

They died on their own. And when one of them died, they kept going. The movement didn't stop. They were individually giving their lives, giving their hearts, sharing the message. When Thomas was killed in India, nobody backed down.

They kept going. They kept moving because they saw something. It's not legend because legends aren't stubborn, right? Stood up to scrutiny, too. It stood up to scrutiny.

When you dig into legend, it lacks authenticity, history, and evidence, right? The gospel has been scrutinized by skeptics for years and years and years. Billy Graham said this. If I were an enemy of Christianity, I would aim right at the resurrection because it is the heart of it. It's the heart of it.

Part of it, right? It's been tried, it's been tested, but it's lasted. No one has been able to disprove Christianity, but those who are skeptics have been changed to Christianity because they discovered that there was evidence that they couldn't deny. Many have been changed, or faith has been changed, by looking into the facts. And when you don't get to this place, like, about, oh, I can't believe this miraculous stuff.

The Bible is miraculous, okay? The story of Jesus is miraculous, and when we bring in our presuppositions and all of that, you find evidence that demands a verdict, as Josh McDowell would say. There's evidence there when you look and when you see the resurrection is powerful. And some would say this, there's a lot of Jesus Seminar people that's been going on for years, trying to debate us on our belief, our faith, that we believe this is authentic. They would say, he never really died, okay?

He was acting, he was faking it, right? Okay, first of all, this was crucifixion. He was pierced. They made sure he was dead, pierced his heart, right through his heart. It was common.

He was, he was, and some would say, well, he was put in the tomb, and then, like, some fresh air got in there, and some, you know, some of his spices that was on him, and it kind of woke him up, and it refreshed him, you know, the resurrection refreshing incense or essential oils, you know, he got that going on, and it just woke him up, and he went out, and, and, but, but none of this, this is unbelievably ignorant as it pertains to what this meant. Three doctors, including a doctor from the Mayo Clinic, a pathologist, they published a journal of the American Medical Association. It says, clearly the weight of historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead before the womb on his side was inflicted. Interpretations based on the assumption that Jesus did not die on the cross appear to be at odds with modern medical knowledge. Not only that, but the Roman soldiers would have been crucified themselves if they did not finish a crucifixion.

They were well trained. They, they knew exactly what they were doing. They had done hundreds of crucifixions. And even if he did live, imagine if he made it out of the tomb, if he got all those garments off of him, and by the way, he laid him calmly and, you know, carefully on the side, proving that, you know, you're going to take your time and fold up your garments, you know? I mean, the dude is, is, is, is, if he, if he's just barely escaping death, how are you going to do that first?

How are you going to have the strength to do that? And, and, and, and if you bat and then battle the two well-trained Roman soldiers that were guarding his tomb and then make it out to, to the apostles finally. And, and, and the first thing, you know, he was like, Hey guys, I have, I have risen. You know, and they're probably going to be like, you need a doctor. Get the one as quick as possible.

It just doesn't hold water. And then you have the hallucination theory, you know, that they all had one big massive dream. 500 people at the same time had the same dream. And that doesn't logically make sense, even if it was a vision or a hallucination. Yeah, we have people who hallucinate, but not 500 people at one time and people in different places having the same visitation by Christ.

I mean, you can't even remember the dream you had yesterday, much less an exact dream of 500 people. It doesn't make sense. It doesn't. And then you have the wrong tomb theory, you know. Oh, they went to the wrong tomb.

It was over there. And the gardener that was telling them, or the angel that is, or the person that they ran into, the women ran into, where he was trying to point over there, but they got away too quick because they were excited because he wasn't there. And they didn't hear the truth that he was in the other tomb. But that doesn't make sense because imagine the enemies of the cross, the enemies of Jesus, would they have not gone out of their way to find the body of Jesus to go to that other tomb if it was there? They didn't do that.

In fact, they claimed that the disciples had stole him. Stole him. Yeah, I mean, it doesn't add up. In fact, stealing Jesus's body doesn't make sense either because these guys were scared out of their wits. They were hidden away in a house.

They didn't want to get out. They didn't want to go anywhere. They were afraid for their life. They didn't even understand resurrection. They were waiting for the resurrection in the end.

Jesus told them over and over again he was going to be resurrected, but they didn't get it. They still didn't get it after his death until they witnessed him. So what would be their point? To go and death? Oh, yay, death.

Let's go steal the body so we can all die. There's no point. There's nothing in it for them. So that doesn't work because it's not based on myth. It's based on history.

It is. And all the evidence is there. And 1 Corinthians 15, 17, and 19 says it like this. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile. You are still in your sins.

Then those also who have fallen asleep, who have died in Christ, are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. So let's just go on and do what we need to do to survive this life, you know, to figure it all out on our own. There's no sense, but the good news is Jesus has died and risen. He just died and he buried and he rose from the dead on the third day.

And that's our hope. That's our life. That's what we live for. That's what gives us what, I mean, that's what gets us through the day, gets us through the weeks when we go through those challenges in life. Our hope that we too will be resurrected by virtue of Jesus Christ.

Who is the Resurrected One, who is the Son of God, who died, was buried, and resurrected, we have hope, we believe, we believe, because everything begins with resurrection. We can study Genesis and get a lot of cool things out of that. We can go through the Old Testament, we can go to other books in the Bible, but if it doesn't have resurrection in it, if resurrection isn't a part of it, if we're not thinking in terms of resurrection, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, then we don't get the rest of Scripture. We don't understand Scripture. We don't understand the story.

We don't even understand why we are here, why the Bride of Christ is here. We can't understand any of that. None of this makes sense. It's just a nice fairytale religious thing that people do, but without the resurrection of Jesus Christ. But it starts.

And when we know the resurrection, when we believe the resurrection, when we start at that place, that base point, everything else makes sense. And listen, you're going to be challenged. If you're in college, you know, young people, when you go off to college, they're going to try to convince you that, you know, Jonah and the great fish is a fable. How in the world do you get every animal in the world on the ark? You know, I don't understand all the mysteries either of how God does that.

But Jesus believed these things. And if Jesus believed it, I choose to believe it. Because he's the only one that rose from the dead. Amen. He believed them as historical facts.

He taught on them. I love how Andy Stanley put it. He said, My high school science teacher once told me that much of Genesis is false. But since my high school teacher did not prove he was God by raising from the dead, I'm going to believe Jesus instead. So we believe in Jesus.

Amen. Amen. Amen. I believe that he rose from the dead. Third day, he rose from the dead.

Amen. Father, we pray to a God who is, in fact, alive. He is alive today. He's not only resurrecting things around us, but he resurrects our hearts. He resurrects our lives.

He resurrects our family. He resurrects everything. But more importantly, our spirits are resurrected when we put our faith and hope and trust in resurrection. And you're resurrecting all things back to yourself. You're bringing them all back to yourself.

Lord, your word is so powerful. It brings all things together. We choose to believe because not, not because we just think it's some kind of nice story or inspiring idea. But Lord, we, we truly, truly, truly believe that everything with evidence, but because the evidence is that you are risen and our lives are examples of that, that we. We live today with hope and life because of your resurrection.

For some people here today with all heads bowed and all eyes closed, maybe you haven't experienced this resurrection power that we find in placing our salvation and hope and trust in Jesus today. Maybe you once were a follower of Christ, but you feel like you've kind of drifted away, or maybe you've just never, ever, ever understood the story of Jesus Christ, that he did in fact die on the cross for your sin. He was the ultimate lamb that was slain for you because he was perfect. You needed a perfect, you needed somebody to cover your sin because we were sinful beings. The Bible says we are of all sin and fallen short of God's glory, right?

It says that. But by trusting in the Lamb of God, trusting in Jesus Christ, he makes us right with the Father. The Father gave his Son so that we could have eternal life with him. And Jesus gave his life so that you can have eternal life with the Father. And he proved that he was God by resurrecting from the dead.

And it's proven and there's evidence there. So if that's you today, won't you pray this with me? Just receive him into your heart. Receive him into your life. Father, I believe that you're the Son of God, that you died on the cross for my sin.

I give my life to you. I surrender it to you. I no longer want to live my way. I want to live your way, Lord. I want to follow you.

So I give my life to you. Thank you for coming into my heart. Thank you for finding me here today in this place. Thank you for leading me here today so that I can discover you. We ask that in your name.

Hallelujah. Join us next week as we dig into more on the back half of this. Amen. Thank you again, everyone, for being here online in person. Thank you for continuing to support us with your prayers and your presence.

As you know, we don't pass around buckets or anything, but you are welcome to support Salt Church and our ministries here, locally, around the country, and around the world. If you would like to do that, there's a couple variety of ways that we can show you how. You can just look up on the screen, and they'll give you just kidding. I'm sure it will be up on the screen in just a moment. But I will just tell you from my lips how you can.

You can put something in the box before you leave. You can mail something in to our PO box. You can text the amount you want to give to 84321. You can also sign up to give securely via Planning Center, and you can probably just scan this little code and get all of those details sent right to you. If you are brand new and a visitor, please don't feel pressured or compelled to give.

We're just excited that you gave us your presence today. Thank you so much for being here. We love you. We will see you again next week. Have a wonderful week in the Lord Jesus.

We love you. We love you. We love you. We love you. One week's Last week.

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