Post-Resurrection Appearances of Jesus and Their Significance

nowhere does it say in any of the four gospels nowhere does it say anywhere in the Bible that Jesus walked out of the Tomb in fact the angel didn&#39;t roll away the stone so Jesus could get out uhuhuh the angel rolled the stone away so people could look inside and see that Jesus wasn&#39;t there the main reason and I love Easter because it&#39;s about the resurrection yeah so normally on Easter I preach a very short sermon not this morning but usually I preach a very short sermon on the resurrection but this morning I&#39;m going to do things a little bit different in fact I&#39;m going to do something that I&#39;ve never done before even though it&#39;s Easter I&#39;m going to start a series this morning and in this series we&#39;re going to cover all of the people that Jesus revealed himself to after he rose from the dead you see Jesus Jesus didn&#39;t just appear to a handful of people one or two times and then Ascend to heaven after he was resurrected oh no Jesus appeared to hundreds of people during the 40 days he was on this Earth after he was resurrected in fact turn with me if you would to the book of 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verses 1-8 and I want you to notice all of the people that Jesus revealed himself to after he rose from the dead notice what it says now I make known to you Brethren the gospel which I preach to you which also you receive D and which you also stand by which also you are saved if you hold fast the word which I preach to you unless you believed in vain for I delivered to you as of first importance what I received that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures now people that&#39;s the gospel but here&#39;s what&#39;s sad many of you have been saved for 30 or 40 years you consider yourself to be a Christian you&#39;ve been in church all of your life but if we were to do a pop a pop quiz this morning and I was to ask you to define the gospel many of you would know what to do what is the gospel well actually I&#39;m going to tell you this morning the gospel is found in First Corinthians chapter 15: 3 and 4 it&#39;s basically three things here&#39;s the gospel Christ died for our sins he was buried and on the third day he rose again that is the gospel that&#39;s the good news because Jesus died for our sins he was buried and he was resurrected we get to have eternal life that&#39;s the gospel now we refer to the first four go for the first four books of the New Testament as gospels and the reason we do is because those first four books Matthew Mark Luke and John they talk about the life of Jesus and the ministry of Jesus but they all conclude with Jesus death Buri bual and Resurrection they each tell us the story of his death burial and Resurrection so they&#39;re giving us the story of the Gospel so we refer to them as the gospels well let&#39;s keep reading it says and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day according the scriptures and he appeared to sephus anyone know who sephus is sephus is Peter in fact I used to have a cousin his name was Joe and we called him Josephus because his name was Jo of Peter and so we called him Josephus but sephus is actually an Aramaic term Jesus spoke an Aramaic and so when they were at uh the place where they were coming in and talking about the stone and Jesus said who do men say that I am well of course Peter answered and says you are the Christ the son of the Living God and he turned to him and he said in Greek we think he said it in Greek but he didn&#39;t he said it in Aramaic he said you are sephus now because the Bible is written in Greek it translated as Petros Peter and at that point he started calling him Peter but in Aramaic it&#39;s sephus when you when you transliterate that into Greek it&#39;s keos and so Paul would always refer to him as the stone or the rock so this is Peter and he appeared to Peter then to the 12 after that he appeared to more than 500 Brethren at one time most of whom remain until now but some have fallen asleep in other words when Paul wrote this he said the majority of people that he revealed himself to they&#39;re still alive you want to check it out go to Judea go to Jerusalem you&#39;ll meet the majority of the 500 because they&#39;re still alive some have fallen asleep but not the majority of them and then he goes further then he appeared to James then to all the apostles and last of all as a as it were to one untimely born he appeared to me also now this list isn&#39;t comprehensive because because it doesn&#39;t include the women that Jesus revealed himself to after he rose from the dead it only includes the men because of their culture but I don&#39;t have time to go into their culture I&#39;ll do that a little bit later and why women were not included but that&#39;s later that&#39;s in the next few weeks so we&#39;re talking about hundreds of people who saw Jesus after he rose from the dead and I don&#39;t mean sightings I&#39;m not talking about someone saying that they saw Elvis in Las Vegas it was a side no these weren&#39;t sightings I&#39;m talking about people who saw Jesus and talked with J Jesus and who touched him with their hands and they verified that he was flesh and Bone and he wasn&#39;t just some Spirit as John says in his first epistle in fact the resurrection of Jesus was confirmed by so many reliable witnesses that Josephus wrote about it 40 to 50 years later how many of you have the works of Josephus this is the works of Josephus in fact if you don&#39;t mind let me read from his work Jewish Antiquities book 18 chapter 3 paragraph 3 in fact if you want to come up after the service and want to read it for yourself I&#39;ve got it highlighted and I&#39;ll have it bookmarked but I&#39;m going to read to you exactly what Josephus said this is 50 years after the resurrection of Jesus he wrote this now there was about this time Jesus A wise man if it be lawful to call him a man why did he say that because Jesus was much more than a man Jesus was the god man Jesus was God incarnated he was one person two Natures a human nature and a divine nature and so Jes Josephus is saying I&#39;m not even sure it&#39;s lawful to call him a man and then he goes further for he was a doer of wonderful Works in other words Miracles a teacher of such men has received the truth with pleasure I don&#39;t know if you caught that but that&#39;s actually a jab at the Rel religious leaders who rejected Jesus and then he goes further he drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles he was the Christ now most of us think of Christ as a name because we refer to Jesus as Jesus Christ as if Jesus is his first name and Christ is his last name people Christ is not a name Christ is a title Christ is translated from the Greek word Christos and it literally means the anointed one which is the title of the Messiah so when we say Jesus Christ what we&#39;re really saying is Jesus the anointed one Jesus the Christ the Messiah now that&#39;s what Josephus is saying he&#39;s saying Jesus was the Christ in other words Jesus was the Messiah the one person the Jews were looking for to redeem Mankind and then he goes further and when pilate at the suggestion of the principal men Among Us had condemned him to the Cross those that loved him him at the first did not forsake Him for he appeared to them alive again on the third day do you see that Josephus wrote about this people this isn&#39;t the Bible this is extra biblical material and yet he&#39;s a historian he&#39;s saying Jesus rose on the third day and then he goes further as the Divine prophets had for told these and 10,000 other wonderful things concerning him and the tribe of Christians that&#39;s kind of interesting you know why he calls them the tribe of Christians because at that time Christianity was thought of as a sect of Judaism they weren&#39;t thought of as being separate from the Jews they were actually a sect of Judaism it&#39;s not until about 100 AD that there&#39;s actually a big split Jews go one way Christians go the other way because Christians were excommunicated out of the synagogue but you need to understand something in the beginning they were thought of as a sect and there&#39;s 12 tribes of Israel so they thought of Christians as being the Third third tribe so he refers to him as the tribe of Christians so named from him and they&#39;re not extinct at this day so even Jo Josephus acknowledged that Jesus rose from the grave in other words Josephus wrote this as a matter of fact because at that time it could be verified by numerous credible Witnesses so for Josephus there was no doubt about it Jesus was the Christ the son of the Living God who died for our sins and on the third day was resurrected yeah so what I want to do in this series is I want to go through the gospels and look at each event in which Jesus revealed himself after the resurrection but before I do that I need to explain something about the four gospels I&#39;m talking about the gospel of Matthew Mark Luke and John so you&#39;ll understand why I tend to jump from one gospel to another whenever I&#39;m preaching on an event that&#39;s recorded in the gospels because rarely do I ever stay in one gospel if I&#39;m talking about a certain event that&#39;s recorded one of the gospels normally I&#39;m going to pull in details from the other gospels yeah in fact in this series I&#39;m going to continually jump from one gospel to another as we look at each event in which Jesus revealed himself after he rose from the dead so let me explain why I do that and why it&#39;s necessary to do that the first three gospels Matthew Mark and Luke are referred to as the synoptic gospels because they see the Jes the ministry of Jesus and much the same way you see the word synoptic literally means to see the same in fact the word synoptic comes from the Greek prefix soon literally we we pronounce it sin but it it not s i n but s y n and it means the same and the Greek word optic which means to view now when you combine these two words together it literally means to see the same so the synoptic gospels see the ministry of Jesus much the same way however just because because Matthew Mark and Luke see Jesus Ministry in much the same way doesn&#39;t mean that they see it exactly the same they see it close to the same but not exactly the same in fact the differences in the stories they tell are based on their unique perspective and based on who their book was written to you see Matthew was written for a Jewish audience Mark was written for a Roman audience and Luke was written to a broader Gentile audience so what I&#39;m telling you is this Matthew Mark and L cover most of the same events in Jesus life and the Book of them are from jesus&#39; ministry in Galilee and they record those events and much the same order in fact 90% of the content in The Book of Mark is f found in the gospel of Matthew and about 50% of Mark&#39;s content appears in the Book of Luke so that&#39;s why the gospels Matthew Mark and Luke are referred to as the synoptic gospels it&#39;s because they include much of the same stories often in a similar sequence and in similar or sometimes identical wording now the reason John&#39;s gospel does not referred to as one of the synoptic gospels is because its content is comparatively distinct in other words it&#39;s different it leaves a lot of things out but it also includes a lot of things that the others don&#39;t and it emphasizes different things now whenever I study an event that&#39;s recorded in the gospels I want to study it from all four perspectives I want to study from Matthew&#39;s perspective from Mark&#39;s perspective and from Luke&#39;s perspective and from John&#39;s perspective if it&#39;s written in the Book of John so that I get a complete picture of that event in fact I want you to think of it like this each of the four gospels paints a picture of Jesus and his ministry but they&#39;re all a little bit different because they each have unique details that others don&#39;t have and the reason they have different details is because they each offer a unique perspective on the various events but when you take all of the details from each of the gospels and you bring them together you get a complete picture of Jesus and his ministry yeah see it on the back wall you get a complete picture when you combine all of the details taken from each of the gospels and that&#39;s why you study an event from all four gospels and not just one and you&#39;ll see what I&#39;m talking about as I go through this series and we look at each event in which Jes Jesus revealed himself after his resurrection now whenever I&#39;m studying an event recorded in the synoptic gospels I don&#39;t want to have to keep flipping back and forth between the Gospels in other words I don&#39;t want to have to turn to the Book of Matthew and read the event and then flip over to the Book of Mark and read the event and then turn to Luke and read the same event and then look to see if it&#39;s recorded in John and if it is read the event and then go back and forth comparing each gospel with the other three to see if one adds something that the others don&#39;t people that&#39;s way too much work I don&#39;t do that so what I do is I cheat anyone else cheat yeah I cheat and I look that up that event up in this book called The Harmony of the gospels because the harmony of the gospels arranges each event recorded in the gospels in parallel columns as an example the story of the women visiting jesus&#39; tomb on the day he was resurrected is recorded in all four gospels it&#39;s recorded in Matthew 28: 2-8 in Mark 16: 2-8 in Luke 24: 1-8 and also in the Book of John 20 ver number one and those passages of scripture are laid out side by side in parallel columns take a look on the back wall and you&#39;ll see what I&#39;m talking about this is on the back wall this is Pages 240 and 241 from the book Harmony of the gospels scanned and placed on the back wall in fact this is Page 240 and 241 that&#39;s what&#39;s scanned from these two pages now on your left you&#39;ll see the title in fact let me just read the title so before every event they come in and they title the event so you know what event you&#39;re talking about this is what I look like when I study by the way anyways here&#39;s the title of this event it&#39;s the visit of the women to the Tomb of Jesus about Sunrise Sunday morning and the message of the Angels about the empty tomb so on your left you see the title of this event on the right you see a subtitle and the subtitle here is gotha early Sunday morning and then you have each passage of scripture that deals with this event side by side in parallel columns in fact you can come up and read this and look at this afterwards but here&#39;s what&#39;s interesting in the First Column is The Book of Mark in the second column is Matthew in the third column is Luke and in the fourth column is John the reason Mark is in the First Column and not Matthew is because Mark was the very first go gospel that was ever written did you know that yeah that&#39;s a new little tip just give you that so anyways it&#39;s laid out Mark Matthew Luke and John so the harmony of the gospels makes it easy for me to compare what each one wrote with the other three I&#39;m not flipping back and forth I&#39;m actually reading them side by side I&#39;m looking at all the details in each one of the gospels and I can start taking notes on the different details that each one provides so that I can get a complete picture of that event is everyone with me good so let&#39;s get started this morning in our in our series and let&#39;s start by looking at the burial of Jesus not the resurrection let&#39;s start with his burial so turn with me if you would to the Book of John the Gospel of John chapter 19: 38-42 it says afterward Joseph of arthea who had been a secret disciple of Jesus because he feared the Jewish leaders asked pilate for permission to take down jesus&#39; body when pilate gave permission Joseph came and took the body away with him came Nicodemus the man who had come to Jesus at night he brought about 75 pounds of perfumed ointment made from myrrh and alows following Jew Jewish burial Customs they wrapped jesus&#39; body with the spices and L sheets of linen cloth the place of crucifixion was near a garden where there was a new Tomb never used before and so because it was the day of preparation for the Jewish Passover and since the tomb was Clos at hand they laid Jesus there now as you can see Joseph of arthea was a secret disciple of Jesus and the reason he was a secret disciple is because it would have been political suicide to be openly supportive of Jesus you see according to the gospel of Mark in the Gospel of Luke Joseph was a member of the Sanhedrin the Sanhedrin was the Supreme Court and the legislative assembly of Israel all rode into one it consisted of 71 members in fact if you want to get technical it was a Nazi and 70 members not German Nazi with a z but Hebrew Nazi which means president so you had a president of the Sanhedrin and then you had 70 members and these 70 members were known as counselors who had been selected to serve in the Sanhedrin based on their expertise on the Mosaic law but it was very very anti- Jesus so both Joseph of arthea and Nicodemus who were Believers had to keep their beliefs and their opinions about Jesus secret but that do doesn&#39;t mean that they went along with them in their plot to get rid of Jesus in fact Luke tells us that Joseph didn&#39;t consent to their plan to kill Jesus which means that he must have spoken out against it he must must have voted against it look with me if you would in the Book of Luke 23: number 50 and 51 here&#39;s what it says now there was a man named Joseph a member of the Council the Sanhedrin was referred to the by the Jews as the great Council and all the members of the Sanhedrin were referred to as counselors so he was a member of the council the Sanhedrin a good and upright man who had not consented to their decision and action to kill Jesus now you need to understand something about the Sanhedrin they had to vote on everything and every member had one vote so in their plot to crucify Jesus they had to vote on it and so when they went around voting when they came to Joseph of AR arthea he didn&#39;t consent to it and neither did he consent to the action so what it means is he voted against it and when they said let&#39;s take him to pilate let&#39;s accuse him of rebelling against Rome and having crucified he voted against that too that&#39;s what this is saying and then it goes further he came from the Judean town of arthea and he himself was awaiting the kingdom of God so even in the Sanhedrin Jesus had those who believed in him the only problem was they were the minority they weren&#39;t the majority and because there was so much animosity towards Jesus they had to be very careful about speaking out in support of him now under Roman law any person who was crucified for sedition as Jesus was was not allowed to be buried now most people don&#39;t realize this the crime that they accused Jesus of was being seditious trying to rebel against Rome in fact if you remember when he was crucified they had this little wooden piece with his crime written above it and what did it did it say king of the Jews and the chief priests and the Pharisees didn&#39;t like didn&#39;t like that they wanted to say he claimed to be the the uh King of the Jews but pilate said no no no what I said will go on there King of the Jews but that&#39;s why he was being crucified they accused him of being seditious even though he wasn&#39;t now under Roman law any person who was crucified for being seditious for rebelling against Rome was not allowed to be buried instead they hung on the cross until their corpse fell to the ground as a result of decomposition literally they would fall apart on the cross and then the dogs would drag their bones off now the reason they left them on the cross was to send a message to everyone that if you rebel against Rome this is what will happen to you but the Romans made an exception for the Jews because of their beliefs in fact let just say something about the Jews this is not anti-semitic if we had Jews here they would agree with this the Jews were a peculiar people and they still are and the reason the Jews were a peculiar people is because they had all of these religious customs and habits but more importantly they believed that God had given them 613 Commandments and they were supposed to live by those Commandments and so they were a very peculiar people and Rome was ruling over them but what they found out is that they broke their religious laws these people would Riot they&#39;re crazy so guess what the Jews would do even though they made no exception for other groups of people they always made exceptions for the Jews and their law so even though by their law if you were crucified for sedition you were not supposed to be brought down from that cross you literally rotted on the cross they made an exception for the Jews because the Jews believe something really interesting they believed in Deuteronomy chapter 21:23 notice what it says the body must not remain hanging from the tree overnight you must bury the body that same day for anyone who is hung is cursed in the sight of God in this way you will prevent the defilement of the land the Lord your God is giving you as a special possession so the Jews believe that if you hung overnight on a cross it would defile and pollute the land not only that it was a violation of one of God&#39;s direct commands therefore they didn&#39;t allow it so the Romans made an exception for the Jews and they allowed them to take down the body after the person had died but that&#39;s also why they broke the legs of the two thieves they needed to speed up their death so that they wouldn&#39;t be on the cross after the sunset the Jews didn&#39;t allow that and the Romans didn&#39;t allow them to come off the cross until they were dead so what did they do they came out with these big metal bars and they broke their legs so that they couldn&#39;t push off and be able to breathe no they broke their legs so that they had to just hang until they became too weak to even breathe and they would suffocate but when they came to Jesus they didn&#39;t break his legs why because he was already dead they didn&#39;t take his life he gave it up but here&#39;s what&#39;s interesting it fulfilled the prophecy that not one bone of his body would be broken now what pilate intended was to have the soldiers throw Jesus corpse into the valley of gehenna which is just south of Jerusalem that&#39;s where the Jews threw their trash in the bodies of criminals and of unclean animals and they would burn all of their trash in this Valley now the reason they burned their trash in the valley of gehenna is because the winds usually Blow from the Northwest to the southeast therefore it kept the stench out of the city but Joseph well fact let me go a little bit further anyone ever been to Jerusalem it&#39;s built on there&#39;s actually three valleys this there and that Southern Valley is called geh and it symbolizes hell and the reason it symbolizes hell is because it&#39;s where they put their trash and they would burn the trash and you&#39;d have these corpses that were criminals and these these unclean animals that were there and here&#39;s what Jesus said about gehenna he said it&#39;s where the worm dieth not and the fire is not crined because the fire never went out so it was a good picture of hell but anyways that&#39;s where they intended to throw jesus&#39; body but Joseph of arthea went to pilate and he asked for the body of Jesus Jesus and the reason that pilate agreed to see him was because he was a very rich man and he was a member of the Sanhedrin otherwise he would have never had an audience with pilate but he went to pilate and he asked for jesus&#39; body but before Pilate could release the body he first had to confirm that it was dead because Roman law said you couldn&#39;t come off the cross unless you were dead and after confirming it Mark chapter 15:44 says that pilate marveled that he was already dead but if you remember he died about 3:00 that afternoon in fact he died at the exact time that the high priest was killing the last Passover Lamb you see here&#39;s the way it worked if you were participating in Passover you brought your lamb after inspecting it for 4 days and you brought it to the priest and they would cut its throat well at 3:00 it had to end because the last passover was being slaughtered and that was the high priest so he would take his sacrificial lamb his pass over them and he would cut its throat he would allow that blood to come out and then when the lamb collapsed the high priest would take a step back he would throw his arms out and he would say it is finished and at the very time he was doing that Christ was on the cross and at 3:00 he has his arms nailed to the cross he bows up and Jesus yells it is finished the spirit leaves and he dies because he gave up his life now the reason the high priest did that when he stepped back and he held his arms out he said it is finished it&#39;s because it&#39;s a rehearsal but what he&#39;s telling the people is the last Passover Lamb has been slaughtered but you see that was just a rehearsal for the real deal when Jesus was on that cross he was our Passover Lamb and when he was getting ready to die he seals out it is finished symbolizing that he is the last Passover Lamb that will ever be slaughtered for man it&#39;s because of what Jesus did that the angel of death passes over us because of what he&#39;s done yeah so I got off on a little tangent I wasn&#39;t really teaching about that but here&#39;s what I want you to see pilate marveled that Jesus was already dead so he released the body to Joseph of arthea and he and Nicodemus took Jesus down from the cross they hurly cleaned the body and they wrapped it in a white clean linen cloth and they packed it with about 75 PBS of spices to stifle the odor of puic and they had to do it before the sun set so they didn&#39;t have much time look at John chapter 19: 39 and 40 he was accompanied by Nicodemus the man who earlier had visited Jesus At Night Nicodemus brought a mixture of myr and allows about 75 lbs taking taking Jesus body what does it mean taking his body taking it off of the Cross and carrying it to the tomb the two of them wrapped it with the spices and strips of linen this was in accordance with Jewish burial Customs now Matthew Mark and Luke all tell us that Mary Magdalene and several other women followed Jose uh Joseph and uh Nicodemus and they saw where Jesus was buried which will be important next week now the next day the chief priests and the Pharisees went to pilate with their own request look at Matthew 27: 62-66 the next day the chief priest and the Pharisees went to pilate sir they said we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said now the word deceiver is translated from the Greek word plos and it literally means impostor fraud someone who leads the people astray so they said while this deceiver was still alive we remember that he said after 3 days I will rise again so give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day otherwise his disciples may come and steal the body and tell people that he&#39;s been raised from the dead this last deception will be worse than the first take a guard pilate said go and make the tomb as secure as you know how so they went and they made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone now the word seal is translated from the Greek word sprago or yeah sprag sprag gido and literally what it means it refers to the impression made by a signant you would take either soft wax or soft clay and if it was a ring or maybe it was on a little Club you would push it into that wax you would push it into that soft clay and then it would Harden and you would have this imprint that was a seal and someone in power someone who had Authority would do this and basically what it said is that I&#39;m in control of this this is mine I own this or this is under my possession and no one can open this unless they&#39;re authorized to do so if they do it&#39;s punishable by death yeah and then they posted the guard now it&#39;s interesting that the chief priest and the Pharisees remembered Jesus prediction to rise again in fact this is the sole reason that they went to pilate they remembered that Jesus said that after three days he would rise again so they were going to use his words against him to prove that he was a fraud to prove Pro that he was a liar an impostor a deceiver notice what they asked pilate to do let&#39;s read that again verses 63 and 64 sir they said we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said after 3 days I will rise again so give the order for the tomb to be made secure until when the third day and of course pilate gave his approval and told them to take a guard and to seal the tomb which meant that they were supposed to take Pilot&#39;s orders to the commander at the Antonio Fortress now I don&#39;t know if you know anything about the Antonio Fortress but it was right next to the Temple Mount its job was to make sure there was never a riot on the Temple Mount and so there was a good working relationship between the chief priest and the Sanhedrin and the commander at the Antonio Fortress so they took this order from pilate they take it to the commander at the Antonio Fortress and it said that they were supposed to dispatch a group of soldiers to seal the tomb and to guard it for three days which usually meant four to six soldiers working 12-hour ships if you guarded something it was usually in in pairs of four sometimes it could go as much as eight but normally it was four to six guards these guards were responsible for what they were guarding if it was a possession and stolen they were put to death if it was a person and he escaped they were put to death they didn&#39;t have to watch for 72 hours they actually did it in shifts of 12 they could not leave until the next guards came to relieve them of their Duty now here&#39;s the way they sealed the tomb first they verified that Jesus was in the Tomb because if they&#39;re responsible for this person being in there they&#39;re going to make sure that he is so the first thing they did is they rolled the stone away they walk into the tomb they see jesus&#39; body laying there they take off the face plate they make sure that it&#39;s Jesus they put it back on they check to make sure there&#39;s no other way to get inside this tomb then they roll the stone back and then secondly they take soft clay and they put it between the stone and the walls of the Tomb all the way around the stone then they press the official seill of the Roman military into the soft clay then they take a rope and they attach it to the front of the stone with clay and to the wall of the Tomb with clay and again they take the signate and they impress the seal within that now the seal signified that the tomb could only be opened by a person authorized to do so by the Roman Commander or by someone of a higher rank than them in this case the person who was authorized to do so was the Nazi the president of the Sanhedrin or someone in that because pilate had given them the authority to place a guard and to seal the tomb so they had the authority to do it anyone else who opened the tomb who wasn&#39;t authorized to do so would be put to death and the Goman guards were there to make sure that no one did it now the whole reason the chief priest and the Pharisees wanted the tomb sealed and so that they could open it after the third day to prove that Jesus was a fraud because he said that he was going to rise again after the third day he told the Pharisees that as Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days and three nights so so shall the son of man be in the belly of the Earth for three days and three nights and as Jonah came out of the belly of the will after three days and three nights so shall the son of man come out of the belly of the earth after three days and three nights they understood what he was saying he was going to rise again not only that he told the Pharisees destroy this Temple and he was referring to his body and I will rebuild it in three days and they knew exactly what he was talking about you see Jesus didn&#39;t just tell his disciples I&#39;m going to be crucified and I&#39;m going to rise again he also told the Pharisees and the chief priest so they knew that he was predicted he was predicting to do that so what they wanted to do is they wanted to open his tomb after three days and prove that he was a liar that he was an impostor they were going to have every member of the Sanhedrin come to that tomb walk inside look there see that his body is corrupting and that&#39;s Jesus and then they were going to m bring all of the people that they could to come in and see it and say see the man was an impostor he predicted he would rise again but there&#39;s his stinking rotting corpse kind of tickles me because the plan backfired on let&#39;s see what happened three days later turn to Matthew chap 28: 1-6 early on Sunday morning as the new day was Dawning Mary Magdalene the other Mary went out to visit the tomb suddenly there was a great earthquake for an angel the Lord came down from heaven rode aside the stone and sat on it his face Shone like lightning and his clothing was as white as snow the guards shook with fear when they saw him and they fell into a dead faint then the angel spoke to the women don&#39;t be afraid he said I know you&#39;re looking for Jesus who was crucified he isn&#39;t here he is risen from the dead just as he said it would happen come see where his body was laying now just as the women were arriving at the tomb there was this great earthquake but the earthquake was caused by this Angel descending from heaven and rolling the stone aside look back at verse number two and I&#39;ll show you how we know that notice what it says suddenly there was a great earthquake four an angel of the Lord came down from heaven rode aside the stone and sat on it do you see that word four four is translated from the Greek word gar and it&#39;s a causal conjunction it&#39;s telling you what caused the earthquake in this case it was the angel when he came down and he took one arm and he pushed that he caused such a vibration the Earth there was a great earthquake now the Angel&#39;s face Shone like lightning in other words there was a beam of light that&#39;s what it means when it says that his face shown like lightning that word lightning is translated from the Greek word ASR in fact it comes from the root word Asar Asar means sun or star and it refers to a bright beam of light so when this angel came down from from heaven and he looks at the guards it&#39;s like lightning and then all of a sudden it dissipates and they can see his face and with one arm he rose that stone and his clothes were as white as snow now when the guards saw this it says they shook with fear yeah that word shook is translated from the Greek word SEO SE W but we would pronounce it o Sayo but we pronounce it in Greek SEO our English word seismic comes from this Greek word seismic refers to the vibrations of the earth and crust whenever there&#39;s an earthquake those those plates are moving actually there&#39;s a vibration that&#39;s what an earthquake is it&#39;s vibrations but we usually translate it as tremble but that&#39;s what the guards were doing when they saw this Angel and he rode this Stone they started vibrating we call it trembling and then they fell to the ground as if they were dead how many of you have ever had a dream where someone was after you and you were so scared and in the dream you were trying to get away from them but it&#39;s like you were frozen or if you couldn&#39;t move it&#39;s like you were in slow motion this is what happened to the guards they started trembling and then they fell to the ground and they were petrified they were so scared they couldn&#39;t move a dollar says they peed their pants and then the angel casually climbs up on the Rock and he sat down and he looked over the ladies who were also petrified they&#39;re frozen in shock and he said don&#39;t be afraid I know you&#39;re looking for Jesus who was crucified he isn&#39;t here he&#39;s risen from the dead just as he said he would come look inside the tomb you&#39;ll see that he&#39;s gone now here&#39;s what&#39;s interesting and probably none of you have ever thought about this nowhere does it say in any of the four gospels nowhere does it say anywhere in the Bible that Jesus walked out of the Tomb in fact the angel didn&#39;t roll away the stone so Jesus could get out uhuhuh the angel rode the stone away so people could look inside and see that Jesus wasn&#39;t there you see when Jesus was raised from the dead his new body was a resurrected body and it was an extradimensional body which meant that he could step from one dimension into another in other words Jesus could instantly appear and disappear he could go through walls and Stones just like Angels let me give you two examples and we&#39;re going to close with this look at John chapter 20: 19 that Sunday evening evening the disciples were meeting behind locked doors all the doors and windows were locked people because they&#39;re afraid notice what it says because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders suddenly Jesus was standing there among them and he said boo no no but it had the same effect he said peace be with you and it&#39;s like whoa where did you come from Jesus but he didn&#39;t just do this once he did this twice look at John chapter 20: 26 8 Days Later the disciples were together again and this time Thomas was with them the doors were locked but suddenly as before Jesus was standing among them peace be with you he said now I don&#39;t know about you but this would have scared the Jesus out of me I probably Jesus don&#39;t do that but my point is this the angel didn&#39;t roll the stone away so Jesus could walk out of the Tomb uh-uh he rode the stone away so people could look inside and see that Jesus wasn&#39;t there people Jesus was alive as he predicted and just as the prophets had proph prophesied and that&#39;s what we celebrate today that God has the authority over the Seal of death you see Jesus not only overcame sin but he also overcame the consequences of sin which is death we all look to Jesus for our salvation and we think that salvation means that when we die we get to go to heaven but that&#39;s only half of it people when I die my soul will go to be with Jesus but that&#39;s only half of the Salvation process what&#39;s the other half because Jesus was resurrected The Book of John tells us that we will have the same type of body on the day of Resurrection my body that&#39;s corrupting in that grave will be resurrected it will be joined and reunited with my soul and I will have a body like Jesus an extradimensional body in which I can step from this threedimensional world into another dimension but I can still come back to this earth during the Millennium and I can rule and reign with Jesus I won&#39;t just be a spirit I will be flesh and Bone like Jesus that&#39;s what salvation is and that&#39;s what the resurrection means we will live last week I did something that I&#39;ve never done before I started a series on Easter now I don&#39;t know if it was good idea or not you know sometimes I have these great ideas I sit out I do them and I find out later they weren&#39;t that great but after 30 years of doing the same thing every year I decided to do something different you see normally on Easter I preach a short simple sermon on the resurrection of Jesus Christ but I&#39;ve always felt like I&#39;m sure changing you because there&#39;s so much more to the story than just he&#39;s alive now don&#39;t get me wrong that&#39;s the most important thing in the world as Paul said if Christ not be not R risen from the dead we are still in our sins and that&#39;s true so the most important thing in the world is Jesus was resurrected and I&#39;m not making light of that but I also want you to realize that there&#39;s more to the story than just that so what I decided to do this year is to go a little bit deeper and to do that I had to turn it into a series now I&#39;ve entitled this series The Resurrection but the focus is on all of the people that Jesus revealed himself to after rose from the dead you see Jesus didn&#39;t just appear to a handful of people one or two times after his resurrection no Jesus appeared to hundreds of people during that time period of 40 days after he was resurrected and these weren&#39;t just sightings it wasn&#39;t like someone saw Elvis in the building no these weren&#39;t just sightings these were people who saw Jesus who talked with Jesus and who touched Jesus with their hands to verify that he was flesh and Bone and not just a spirit in fact the resurrection of Jesus was confirmed by so many reliable witnesses that Josephus wrote about the resurrection 50 to 60 years later so what I want to do in this series is I want to go through the gospels and I want to look at each incident in which Jesus appeared to someone after his resurrection and we&#39;re going to start with Mary Magdalene because she&#39;s the first person who saw Jesus after he rose from the dead so if you would turn with me in your Bible to the Book of John chap 20 and as you&#39;re turning there let me remind you that we can&#39;t just study this incident from John&#39;s perspective not if we want to get a complete picture of what happened on that Sunday morning you see the other gospels add little bitty details that John doesn&#39;t so to get the full story we&#39;re going to have to supplement John&#39;s account of what happened with details from the other gospels but people I&#39;m not making a jab at John I&#39;ve had people come up to me after I&#39;ve taught certain things and they would say Pastor Allan which of the gospels is your favorite and I I don&#39;t have a favorite well which one would you recommend I read and I said I can&#39;t really tell you that because they each are written to different audiences and they each add little details so when I make this comment about John I&#39;m not taking a jab at him I&#39;m not being um in in a sense deprecating towards him that&#39;s not what I want to do because we&#39;d have to do the very same thing regardless of which God goel we used people if we use Mark&#39;s account we would have to supplement it with details from John&#39;s version of what happened that morning and we would have to do the same thing with Matthew and Luke&#39;s version that&#39;s just the way it is now having said that let me explain why we&#39;re using John&#39;s account rather than one of the others first of all John&#39;s version of the story focuses on Mary Magdalene so he&#39;s going to go into much more detail than the other gospels in fact the the only reason we need the other gospels is because as I said they add little bitty details that are helpful in painting a complete picture secondly John&#39;s version shows us the emphasis that Jesus placed on women you see Matthew Mark and Luke combine all the women who went to the tomb that morning into one group and they simply give you a brief synopsis of what happened without really going into much depth because from their perspective they&#39;re just women and I&#39;m not being facius I&#39;m being honest about the way that women R viewed in their culture at that time in fact of the synoptic gospels only Mark mentions that Mary Magdalene was the first person to see Jesus after his resurrection and he just mentions it in passing look at Mark 16: 9-1 and I&#39;ll show you what I&#39;m talking about after Jesus rose from the dead early on Sunday morning the first person who saw him was Mary Magdalene the woman from whom he had cast out seven demons she went to the disciples who were grieving and weeping and told them what had happened but when she told them that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him they didn&#39;t believe her now you want to know why they didn&#39;t believe her they didn&#39;t believe her because she was a woman and I&#39;ll explain more about that in just a second now Matthew and Luke chose to combine Mary magdalene&#39;s personal Encounter With Jesus with jesus&#39; appearance to all the other women in that group you see even though they were two separate events they chose to group them together as if they were one of because they just wanted to present a brief synopsis of what happened why because from a Jewish perspective they&#39;re women and that&#39;s what you would expect in their culture you see in their culture women could not serve as Witnesses in fact according to Jewish law the Witnesses in a court of law had to be men never women because a woman&#39;s testimony was never considered to be valid yeah people that&#39;s why Paul doesn&#39;t mention women in his list of all the people who who saw Jesus after he rose from the dead if you go home today and you look in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 starting verse number one the first three to four verses or the gospel and then after that he list all of the people who saw Jesus not one of them is a woman why because they would not accept the testimony of women yeah that&#39;s why Paul didn&#39;t mention them it&#39;s because in their culture you didn&#39;t accept the testimony of women so Matthew and Luke didn&#39;t see any reason to go into great detail when it came to the women being used as witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus so they just put them all into one group and then mentioned that Jesus appeared unto them and Mark only mentions it in passing that Mary Magdalene was by herself when Jesus appeared to her now if their culture didn&#39;t accept the testimony of women why did Jesus appear to them before he did anyone else anyone know any guesses well first of all it&#39;s because God places just as much value on women than he does that he does men look at Galatians 3: 26- 28 says for you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus and all who have been United with Christ in baptism have put on Christ like putting on new clothes there is neither Jew nor Gentile slave nor free male nor female for you are all one in Christ now some people accuse Christianity as being discriminating against women but let me say this if it wasn&#39;t for Christianity women you would have never been liberated Christianity is what liberated you fall is what puts you under subjection or submission let me let me go a little bit further in fact let me just go off on a tangent how many of you mind if I go off on a tangent let&#39;s chase a rabbit just for a second if you would turn with me to Genesis 3 verse number 16 this isn&#39;t in the notes so I just decided I might do that this morning because I get tired of hearing about Christianity and and how uh it set women back I want you to understand something if it wasn&#39;t for Christianity women you would never be where you are today why is that because of of the of sin and what took place at the fall notice what it says in Genesis 3: number 16 he said unto the woman this is after the fall he said I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception and sorrow Thou shalt bring forth children and thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee now here&#39;s what&#39;s interesting most people don&#39;t understand what that means the scripture says that the women would shall have desire towards her husband but they don&#39;t understand what that means when it he says desire that word is used in Genesis 4 verse number 7 this is when Cain and Abel we having the little spat here and God speaks to Cain and he tells them that sin is at the door and it&#39;s desire desire is for you and what does he mean but that word desire it&#39;s the same word that&#39;s used in Genesis 3: number 16 it means he wants to control you he wants to rule you so what this is saying is after the fall women wanted to control their husbands women wanted to manipulate their husbands but then he goes further and he says but he shall rule over you and that saying the very same thing you know what men want to do they want to control their wives they want to rule over their wives but I want you to understand it wasn&#39;t like that before the fall before the fall men and women were equal Adam and Eve were co-s joint heirs with Jesus Christ they weren&#39;t one up here and one down here it wasn&#39;t like that at all it was because of the Fall that we have this and we need to understand this so when we&#39;re looking at this and we&#39;re talking about women we need to understand Christianity has put them forward it has brought them to the status that they&#39;re supposed to be which is walking side by side Not underneath and so we should never look at Christianity and think that it discriminates against women because that is not true that&#39;s not what it says and that&#39;s why it&#39;s so interesting that when Jesus resurrects the first two groups of people that he uh appears to are women women now let&#39;s go further why would Jesus do that why would he appear first to women well first of all it&#39;s because he wanted to show us that God places just as much value on women that he does men secondly it provs that the story of Jesus his resurrection was not fabricated you see if the disciples had made this story up then they would have made the story as believable and as acceptable to Their audience as possible which means that they would have used all men as Witnesses and not women but they had to report it as it really happened with a woman Mary Magdalene is the very first witness to the to the resurrection of Jesus and a group of women is the second let me tell you in their culture this proves that the story is true this proves that the resurrection of Jesus is true because Jews would have never done that so now that you know all of that let&#39;s get started on the story turn back to John chap 20 veres 1 and 2 and follow along with me as I read this early on Sunday morning while it was still dark Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been roled away from the entrance she ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciple the one whom Jesus loved she said they have taken the Lord&#39;s body out of the Tomb and we don&#39;t know where they have put him now if you&#39;re not careful when you read John&#39;s version you get the idea that Mary magdaline went to the tomb by herself but people that&#39;s not the case and the reason we know that is because of what she said in verse number two look at verse number two again and I want you to notice the word we says she ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciples IP Le the one whom Jesus loved she said they have taken the Lord&#39;s body out of the Tomb and we don&#39;t know where they have put him do you see that word we that means she was with other people when she went to the tomb and the other gospels tell us who those other people were Matthew lists two people it says Mary Magdalene and the other Mary Mark says the group of women included Mary Magdalene Mary the mother of James and salom and Luke adds one more to the list he lists Joanna so the group of women who went to the tomb that morning were Mary Magdalene Mary the mother of James salom and Joanna now there might have been a few more but if so they&#39;re not listed by name we know that those four were in the group but there was probably probably seven or eight women now when this group of ladies got to the tomb the to Stone had just been rolled away and they saw this Angel sitting on top of the stone and as I said last week the angel spoke to the women and he said said don&#39;t be afraid I know you&#39;re looking for Jesus who was crucified he isn&#39;t here he&#39;s risen from the dead just as he said he would come look inside the tomb you&#39;ll see that he&#39;s gone and then go quickly and tell the disciples that Jesus is risen from the dead now this is all recorded in Matthew chap 28: 1-8 but this is where John&#39;s account of what happened that morning starts so this is where we want to start everything else just kind of at the pace this lays the foundation but this is where John picks the story up so let&#39;s look back at John chapter 20 and let&#39;s read verses 1-10 early on Sunday morning while it was still dark Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been roled away from the entrance she ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciple the one whom Jesus loved she said they have taken the Lord&#39;s body out of the Tomb and we don&#39;t know where they have put him Peter and the other disciples started out for the tomb they were both running but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first he stooped and looked in and saw the linen wrappings lying there but he didn&#39;t go inside then Simon Peter arrived and went inside he also noticed the linen wrappings lying there while the cloth that had covered jesus&#39; head was folded up and lying apart from the other wrappings then the disciple who had reached the tomb first also win in and he saw and believed for as yet they still didn&#39;t understand the scriptures that said said Jesus must rise from the dead then they went home now the story implies that Mary Magdalene jumped to the conclusion that someone had taken jesus&#39; body from the tomb and had moved it and this is how she got separated from the other women this is how she became separate from the group once she saw the Stone Road aside and she heard the angel and he told her I know you&#39;re looking for Jesus who was crucified he&#39;s not here he&#39;s risen from the dead come look and inside the tomb you&#39;ll see that he&#39;s gone she didn&#39;t look inside the tomb like the other women instead she took off running to tell Peter and John that someone had taken the body of Jesus now obviously she didn&#39;t believe the angel in fact she might not have known that he was even an angel Hebrews chap 13 verse number two tells us that some people have entertained angels unaware in other words they didn&#39;t realize it believe it or not maybe you&#39;ve seen an angel but you didn&#39;t recognize them as an angel why because they look like us when they appear they look like men in fact if you read this closely it talks about and two men were there and then it tells us they were Angels but they look much like us but for whatever reason she didn&#39;t recognize them as angels and she took off running to tell Peter and John that someone had taken Jesus body so obviously she didn&#39;t believe that Jesus had risen from the dead to her this was a a sick Twisted act perpetrated by the Pharisees and uh the chief priest and the reason I say that is because she immediately suspected that it was them look at verse number two and I&#39;ll show you how I know that it says she ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciple the one whom Jesus loved she said they have taken the Lord&#39;s body out of the Tomb and we don&#39;t know where they have put him notice that she didn&#39;t say someone she said that and who was she referring to when she said they she was referring to Jesus&#39;s enemies the chief priest and the Pharisees the same ones that had him crucified so as Peter and John heard that they took off running to the tomb and of course John was in his early 20s Paul or Peter was probably in his early 40s so John outran Peter to the tomb but he didn&#39;t go inside he looked inside but he didn&#39;t go inside and what he saw was the linen w Happ lying there not wded up not thrown to the side just lying there and then Peter reached the tomb but he didn&#39;t stop at the entrance like John did now Peter&#39;s one of those type of guys that he&#39;s going to experience it he&#39;s going to walk on water he&#39;s going to go with Jesus he wants to be where Jesus is he&#39;s kind of like Joshua was with Moses when everyone else wanted to stay down at the bottom of the mountain not Joshua he wanted to go with Moses well Peter was like that so when Peter runs to the he doesn&#39;t stop at the at the outside of the Tomb and look in no he goes inside and so he saw what John didn&#39;t see he saw the linen wrappings lying there but he also saw the cloth that covered jesus&#39; head folded up and lying apart from the other wrappings now there&#39;s been a lot of speculation as to the signific significance of that because that&#39;s really an interesting detail in fact just last week I saw an article going around Facebook anyone see the article about this this very thing anyone see that article no one all right well what this article said is it said that the folded facecloth was jesus&#39; way of telling us that he would return you see supposedly wealthy Jews at the time of Christ had servants who served them their food and if they needed to get up from the table but they intended to return to the table to finish eating then what they would do is they would fold their napkin and that told the servants not to take the food because they weren&#39;t through they were going to return and continue eating but if they wed up their napkin and they threw it on the table then it told their servants that they were through they could take their plate they could clean up because they weren&#39;t going to return so when Jesus folded the cloth that covered his face it meant that he would return now does that remind anyone did anyone see that article on Facebook I&#39;m the only one well I wanted to put a little Emoji but I know that I&#39;m snarky and I was going to put the little emoji that showed a little happy face uh laughing and had the tears coming out because the truth of the matter is people that&#39;s an urban legend that&#39;s not true sorry to burst your bubble but that&#39;s not what it meant now let me explain how I know it&#39;s not true first of all the face cloth was not in the shape of a napkin it was about 8 in wide and 6 feet long in fact the face cloth was wrapped around the head several times very tightly and the purpose of it was to keep bugs out of the mouth the eyes and the nose for as long as possible you weren going to keep them out entirely but nothing would be worse than to go there and to finish preparing the body because many time for the Jews they could not finish the body in the in the day that they first buried them so they would go back and what they didn&#39;t want is to find all these bugs that are coming in and flies that are landing on the eyes or going in the nose or in the ears so what they would do is they would wrap the head very very tight to keep these bugs from going into the mountain the nose the eyes the ears for as long as possible in fact turn with me if you would to the Book of John 11 and I&#39;ll show you how Lazarus body was wrapped up look at verses 43 and 44 this is John chap 11 everyone remember Lazarus you guys are kind of dead out there Lazarus is the person that he raised from the dead so notice what it says then Jesus shouted Lazarus come out and the dead man came out his hands and feet bound in grave cloths in fact if you read this if you can translate this from the original Greek it&#39;s literally as if he levitated why because they would wrap each leg and then wrap the legs together and they would wrap the body and they would wrap the arms and the arms would be right to the side and as a result of that he didn&#39;t have the ability to move so he says Lazarus come out and the dead man came out his hands and feet bound in graved cloths his face wrapped in a head cloth Jesus told them unwrap him and let him go he didn&#39;t even have the ability to unwrap himself you see the body was wrapped with strips of linen cloth kind of like a mummy and the face cloth was wrapped around the head approximately six to seven times so people it wasn&#39;t a napkin that you folded now turn back to John chap 20: 6 and 7 and I want you to notice what Peter saw in jesus&#39; Tomb because this is an interesting detail then Simon Peter arrived and went inside and he also noticed the linen wrappings lying there not wed up not on the floor not tossed to the side lying where Jesus had been while the cloth that had covered jesus&#39; head was folded up and lying apart from the other wrappings now I I want you to underline that phrase folded up because it&#39;s not what you think that phrase folded up is translated from the Greek word into liso into liso and in liso means Road from being twisted around something or wrapped around something so what Peter saw was the face cloth still rode up as it had been when it was wrapped around jesus&#39; head and it was lying in the very same place where Jesus head would have been if he was still lying in the Tomb in fact I want you to notice how the NIV translates this because it&#39;s a better translation from the original Greek notice what it says as well as the as the cloth that had been wrapped around jesus&#39; head the cloth was still lying in its place separate from the linen now what&#39;s the implication the implication is that when Jesus was resurrected his body went right through the grave cloths wrapped around his body and they simply fell down right where they were were in other words he wasn&#39;t unwrapped let me give you a good picture of this how many of you saw the passion that Mel Gibson directed well let me show you the resurrection scene and I want you to notice the grave cloths the grave cloths are not the same way they really would have wrapped him but it will give you an idea of what happened let&#39;s run that video notice how the grave cloths just kind of went down people that&#39;s a good depiction of what would have happened it&#39;s a good depiction of what I&#39;m showing you when Peter went inside the tomb and he looked to the side he saw the grade cloths that had wrapped his body lying right where Jesus had been and then he looked where the head had been and it says it was folded up what that means into liso means that it was wrapped in the same way it had been wrapped around his head in the very same place it had not been unwrapped is what Peter is telling us so what it&#39;s telling us is that when Jesus was resurrected he went right through those clothes the difference between him and Lazarus is that Lazarus did not have a resurrected body Lazarus died years later so Jesus raised him from the dead but he was not given a resurrected body but when Jesus was resurrected he had what we call an extradimensional body yes he was flesh and Bone and not just a spirit but his flesh and Bone body is an extradimensional body which meant that he could pass through material substances whenever he wanted to now I know that blows your mind but people that&#39;s what the Bible teaches and once you understand that then you good you get a good picture of what&#39;s going to happen to us John tells us that we don&#39;t know what we&#39;re going to be like but we do know we will be like him that&#39;s what the Bible tells us when we&#39;re resurrected we&#39;re going to be like him and when you understand what an extra dimensional body is that not only are you bound to this three-dimensional world but you can actually step out of it do you really understand the Rapture in fact let me go off on another tangent I didn&#39;t really plan to do this but let&#39;s go ahead and do how many of you know where the Rapture is found the Rapture is found in the book of 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 go ahead and turn with me if you would to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 notice what it says and now dear brothers and sisters we want you to know what will happen to the Believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope let me just say this as Christians when someone dies who&#39;s a loved one we grieve but we don&#39;t grieve like those who have no hope let me tell you one of the hardest things I ever had was when my mom passed away but I do not grieve like those who have no hope and then Paul goes along and tells us what our hope is notice what he says for since we believe that Jesus died and was raised to life again we also believe that when Jesus returns God will bring back with him the Believers who have died so the implication is when a person dies who believes in Jesus their soul goes to be with the Lord but one day when Jesus comes back those people are coming back with him let&#39;s keep on reading we tell you this directly from the Lord we who are still living when the Lord returns will not meet him ahead of those who have died for the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding Shout with the voice of the Archangel and with the trumpet call of God first the Christians who have died will rise from their graves now wait a minute I thought it said those who have died and believe in Jesus are coming back with him well if they&#39;re coming back with him how can they rise from their graves well the scripture teaches that as a Believer when we die our body is buried and goes in the ground but our soul goes to be with the Lord so what Paul is telling us in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 is that when Jesus comes back The Souls of everyone who&#39;s died is they are coming back with Jesus and all of the bodies that are in the ground are going to be resurrected and reunited with their soul and those people will have a resurrected body just like Jesus but then it goes further he says then together with them we are who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air then we will be with the Lord forever Paul tells us it&#39;s going to happen in the twinkling of an eye but here&#39;s what I want you to understand when Jesus returns if we&#39;re in this church when he returns then we&#39;re going to be caught up that that word is harpazo it means snatched up from the Earth to meet the Lord in the air but here&#39;s what&#39;s interesting Paul tells us it&#39;s going to happen in the twinkling of an eye but not only that if we&#39;re we&#39;re inside a building how in the world are we going up are we going through this roof are we going to hit the ceiling and keep bouncing off of it till we can finally get to a door and get out no we&#39;re going to have an extradimensional body we&#39;ll be sitting in here I&#39;ll be preaching and 50% of you will probably go with the Rapture with me the other 50% are going to wonder what happened where are you Pastor Allan you were there a second and then boom you were gone you won&#39;t see us slowly Ascend up Jesus did that on his Ascension on the on the Mount of allies but he did that for the disciples sake when it happens with us instantly we&#39;re gone we were there a second and then we&#39;re gone but the reason we&#39;re going to be able to do that is because we&#39;re going to have a body just like Jesus an extra dimensional body and the resurrection gives us insight into what that that means now I want you to notice how that impacted Peter and John look back at verses 8-10 in John chapter 20 here&#39;s what it says then the disciples who had reached the tomb first also went in and he saw and believed for as yet they still didn&#39;t understand the scriptures that said Jesus must rise from the dead then they went home so at that point John believed that Jesus had R had risen from the dead in spite of the fact that he still yet didn&#39;t understand the scriptures that prophesied that the Messiah must first die and then be resurrected even though he didn&#39;t understand those scriptures he looked at the evidence of the empty tomb and he believed what Jesus had predicted that he would rise again Peter on the other hand had no idea of what happened Luke 24: number 12 says that Peter was wondering to him to himself what had happened in other words he was still trying to figure it out now John and Peter represent the two ways people respond when they hear the gospel for the very first time some people are like John they don&#39;t know about all the scriptures that talk about a messiah coming and dying for our sins being our propitiation and satisfying the wrath of God against sin they don&#39;t know about the scriptures that prophesy about Jesus being resurrected they just simply come and hear that they&#39;re a sinner their sin has separated them from God Jesus has come to pay the price for that and God raised him from the dead and based upon that they believe then you have others like Peter they hear the very same thing and they wonder what does that mean and they don&#39;t respond to the gospel yet so you actually have two types of people and I&#39;m not telling you that one is better than the other because Peter becomes one of the greatest disciples that Jesus ever had and he evangelized the world but you see that&#39;s two types of people and that&#39;s that&#39;s what it represents now after Mary Magdalene told Peter and John that someone had taken jesus&#39; body she followed them back to the tomb but the implication is she couldn&#39;t keep up with him think about this she had already walked to the tomb with a group of women about two miles away when she saw that jesus&#39; body wasn&#39;t in the Tomb and heard he wasn&#39;t there she took off running when she got to Peter and John she probably is out of breath and she says they&#39;ve taken his body away and we don&#39;t know where it is they immediately take off running so she goes okay now she&#39;s going to follow them so she starts trying to keep up with them but she can&#39;t so by the time she reaches the tomb Peter and John are already gone they&#39;ve left which meant that she was at the tomb by herself look at verses 11-8 in John chapter 20 Mary was standing outside the tomb crying and as she wept she stood up stooped and I&#39;m sorry she stooped and looked in she saw two white robed Angels one sitting at the head and the other at the foot of the place where the body of Jesus had been dear woman why are you crying the Angels asked her because they have taken away my Lord she replied and I don&#39;t know where they have put him now can you see this she still doesn&#39;t quite recognize these are angels Man start asking more questions listen to them but she still doesn&#39;t have it together so she goes on she turned to leave and saw someone standing there it was Jesus but she didn&#39;t recognize him either dear woman why are you crying Jesus asked her who are you looking for she thought he was the gardener sir she said if you have taken him away tell me where you have put him and I will go and get him Mary Jesus said she turned to him and cried out Rabani which is Hebrew for Teacher actually it&#39;s not but we&#39;ll talk about that in a minute don&#39;t cling to me Jesus said for I haven&#39;t yet ascended to the father but go find my brothers and tell them I am ascending to my father and your father to my God and your God Mary Magdalene found the disciples and told them I have seen the Lord then she gave them his message now I want you to notice that when Mary Magdalene returned to the tomb she still believed that the chief priest and the Pharisees had stolen jesus&#39; body and had moved it somewhere and to top it off with she looked into the tomb she still didn&#39;t recognize that these two men were angels in fact fact when they asked her why she was crying this is what she said because they have taken away my Lord and I don&#39;t know where they put him and then she turned around and she saw Jesus standing there but she didn&#39;t recognize him as Jesus and probably the reason she didn&#39;t recognize him as Jesus is because she&#39;s sobbing this has been such an emotional morning they&#39;ve taken my Lord I don&#39;t know where they are I&#39;ve run back to tell Peter and John I&#39;ve tried to get back here as fast as I can and she&#39;s probably sobbing and doing what most people do when they SOB her eyes are kind of blurry CU she&#39;s been wiping them she&#39;s got snot running down her face and no one wants to be seen like that so what do you do when you&#39;re like that you look at the ground and you kind of put your heads over your face and you I&#39;m sorry I just have a and that&#39;s what she&#39;s doing she&#39;s looking at the ground she can see the feet of someone there and she just suspects it&#39;s the gardener and so he wants to know why she&#39;s crying and she tells him you know if you&#39;ve taken his body somewhere please let me know and I&#39;ll get him and that&#39;s when Jesus said dear woman why are you crying who are you looking for and of course he goes a little bit further after she says that and that&#39;s when he said Mary and she recognized the voice so she turned and she said raboni now I told you it&#39;s not Hebrew it&#39;s actually Aramaic is Rabani and it&#39;s transliterated into Greek and we transliterate it and it&#39;s pronounced raboni but the Hebrew word and they took it and took it from this and used it is Rabbi and yes it does mean teacher but if you trace it back it literally means great it was an exalted title for someone who was supposedly a very well-respected teacher and so what she says is Rabbi but she says it in Aramaic she says Rabani and that&#39;s when she knows and of course her first reaction was to reach out and hug him she&#39;s been looking for him and so what&#39;s her first reaction to hugging but he steps back and he probably puts his hand up and he says don&#39;t touch me for I have not yet ascended now there are some people that says what he was saying is go ahead and touch me just don&#39;t cling to me cuz I got to leave no no no no that&#39;s not what he said when he said don&#39;t touch me that&#39;s the Greek word hopto and it literally means don&#39;t touch me but then he explains why he says for I&#39;ve not yet ascended to my father that word ascended is translated from the Greek word on AO that&#39;s a compound word which simply means it&#39;s made up of more than one word in this case it&#39;s made up of two words the limma boo which means to go and Anna which means up and what he says is for I&#39;ve not yet gone up to the father now this is very important because there are those who believe that Jesus did not descended into hell in order to pay for our sins people this tells us right here here that when Jesus died his soul was separated from God in order for him to pay for the penalty for our sins and he&#39;s telling her I have not yet gone up to the father don&#39;t touch me because of that I&#39;m getting ready to do something and I must be pure and undefiled now after he does that and he appears to other people can touch him as much as they want but right now they&#39;re not to touch him and then he goes further but go find your brothers and tell them that I&#39;m ascending to my father and your father all of the sudden the relationship has changed you see Jesus had always referred to God as his father and the Jews didn&#39;t like it in fact in the Old Testament you&#39;ll never find any saint referring to God as their father but Jesus did and that&#39;s why the Pharisees and the chief priests didn&#39;t like him because God was not his father in their mind but he always referred to God as father but then he says something different here he says go and find your brothers and tell them that I&#39;m ascending to my father and then he goes further and your father because of what he&#39;s done we&#39;re adopted into the family of God and he&#39;s now our father and then he says to my God and your God now does anyone know what he&#39;s talking about when he says I&#39;ve not yet ascended well again he was talking about ascending to heaven to present the souls of all of those who&#39;ve been in the bosom of Abraham as a first fruits offering but that&#39;s next week next week we&#39;re going to see the scripture that talks about certain dead people coming out of the grave and walking around Jerusalem for a while why did that happen what did Jesus do when he ascended what does it mean in Ephesians when it says he first descended and then he ascended taking captivity captive well this is what Jesus was talking about and that&#39;s what we&#39;re going to look at next week two weeks ago on Easter we started a new series entitled The Resurrection but the focus of this series is on all the people that Jesus revealed himself to after he rose from the dead you see Jesus didn&#39;t didn&#39;t just appear to a handful of people one or two times after he was resurrected no Jesus appeared to hundreds of people during the the 40 days he was here on this Earth after his resurrection and people these weren&#39;t just sightings it wasn&#39;t like someone saw Bigfoot down around cooken how many you know what I&#39;m talking about no these weren&#39;t sightings these were people who saw Jesus and who talked with Jesus and who touched Jesus with their hands to verify that he was flesh and Bone and not just a spirit in fact the resurrection of Jesus was confirmed by so many reliable witnesses that even Josephus wrote about it 50 to 60 years later so what we&#39;re doing in this series is we&#39;re looking at each incident in which Jesus appeared to people after his resurrection and we started with Mary Magdalene because she&#39;s the first person to see Jesus after he rose from the dead but if you remember something weird happened in her Encounter With Jesus something very unusual and I want to look at that before we move on in this series so turn with me if you would to the Book of John chapter 20 we&#39;re going to read verses 17 and 18 18 Jesus said unto her touch me not for I am not yet ascended to my father but go to my brethren and say say unto them I ascended to my father and your father and to my God and your God Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord now this is after the resurrection and that he had spoken these things unto her do you see that Jesus said don&#39;t touch me now that&#39;s kind of weird because Jesus allowed everyone else to touch him after he rose from the dead but not Mary Magdalene why it makes you wonder why Jesus wouldn&#39;t allow her to touch him but he would allow everyone else to touch him but that&#39;s not the only weird thing that happened on that day in fact at the very same time that Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene Jerusalem experienced what we might call a zombie apocalypse that it wasn&#39;t a real zombie apocalypse I&#39;m not into zombies how many of you like The Walking Dead you know my my nieces and nephew they love The Walking Dead and they&#39;re always talking about it I&#39;ve never seen the show don&#39;t really care about it but this wasn&#39;t a zombie apocalypse I guess that&#39;s considered to be a zombie is the Living Dead well these weren&#39;t the Living Dead these were the living living but I want you to understand this was in a sense an appearance like never before and these people were freaked out turn to Matthew chap 27: number verses number 51- 53 and I&#39;ll show you what I&#39;m talking about notice what it says at that moment the curtain of the temple was torn into two from top to bottom the Earth shook the Rocks split certain tombs broke open and the bodies of many Saints who had died were raised to life they came out of their tombs after Jesus resurrection and they went into the holy city what is the holy city Jerusalem and they appeared to many people now people I don&#39;t know about you but that&#39;s weird in fact fact I can&#39;t imagine anything weirder than that so what in the world was going on first of all Jesus wouldn&#39;t let Mary Magdalene touch him the veil of the temple was torn into from top to bottom the stones on certain tubes tombs rolled open and after jesus&#39; Resurrection the Saints in those tombs rose from the dead and not only that they went into Jerusalem and they appeared to many of their friends and their family and then poof they were gone and never mentioned again now how do I know that they actually appeared to their friends in their family because if they didn&#39;t just appear to their friends in the family no one would have known that they were resurrected but they had to have known them and so when they walked into Jerusalem and all of a sudden you see Uncle Tom who you just buried or or Aunt Lucille who you know was buried maybe two weeks ago and now she&#39;s at your house wouldn&#39;t you think maybe this was a zombie apocalypse and then all of a sudden poof they had this extra dimensional body so when it&#39;s time for them to leave they&#39;re G gone instantaneously what in the world happened now here&#39;s what&#39;s interesting only Matthew records this happening and do you want to know why it&#39;s because his book was written specifically to the Jews if you remember Mark&#39;s gospel was written to the Romans Luke&#39;s gospel was to a more broader Gentile audience and then John&#39;s gospel was written to the world in other words it was for everyone but Matthew&#39;s gospel was specifically written to the Jews and only a Jew would have understood the significance of what happened that morning and what it signified in other words the reason that Matthew is the only gospel that wrote about these things is because only a Jew would have understood what happened that morning and why it happened if you weren&#39;t a Jew you wouldn&#39;t have had a clue as to why those things happened that&#39;s why when we read it it doesn&#39;t really make sense I can&#39;t tell you the number of times as a child we would get to this point when we were going through Sunday school and and the and the Sunday school teacher would say I have no idea what happened and boy it was just so interesting but the reason we didn&#39;t understand is because we&#39;re Gentiles all we know is that when Jesus was resurrected that morning some really weird things happened and it&#39;s kind of freaky so what did the Jews know that we don&#39;t well it all goes back to the Jewish feast so if you don&#39;t mind let me explain a few things about the Jewish feast but first let me warn you that we&#39;re not going to go in depth we don&#39;t have time to go in depth so I&#39;m just going to be explaining the Bare Basics so you&#39;ll understand what happened that morning why Mary Magdalene was not allowed to touch him why these Stones rode open on the tombs why these people came out right after Jesus Christ was resurrected why they went into Jerusalem and then poof they were gone I&#39;m going to show you why that happened so let&#39;s take a let&#39;s learn a little bit about the Feast of the Lord and let&#39;s take a little informal poll of if you don&#39;t mind if you&#39;ve heard of the Feast of the Lord and you know a little bit about them I want you to raise your hand right now I see one or two if you&#39;ve never heard of the Feast of the Lord or you&#39;ve heard of them but you really don&#39;t know anything about them I want you to raise your hand all right that&#39;s the majority of you that&#39;s kind of what I thought that tells me that I&#39;ve got to keep it very very simple so let&#39;s start with the basics and if you&#39;re taking notes I want you to write this down there were seven feast of the Lord that every Jewish male was required to keep the Feast of Passover the Feast of unleavened bread the Feast of first fruits the Feast of Pentecost the Feast of trumpets the Feast of atonement and the Feast of Tabernacles the first three feasts were celebrated in the spring so naturally guess what they called them the spring feast and they were also celebrated together so the Jews normally refer to all three of them as Passover so when you&#39;re reading through the Bible and it talks about them in the Old Testament going to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover they&#39;re actually talking about the first three feasts the Feast of Passover the Feast of unle bread and the Feast of first fruits sometimes they refer to all three of those feasts as the Feast of unleavened bread but I want you to understand even though they will call it by one thing they were actually three distinct Feast Passover was celebrated on Nissan the 14th the Feast of unleavened bread began the next day on the 15th and it lasted for seven days the Feast of first fruits was celebrated on the marrow after the Sabbath during that week we don&#39;t talk like that anymore right so in other words on the Sunday after the 15th of Nissan the Feast of Pentecost was celebrated 50 days from the Feast of first fruits you counted seven sabbaths which was 49 days and on the next day the 50th day you celebrated Pentecost so it was always celebrated on the Sunday just like the Feast of first fruit now the last three feasts were celebrated in the fall so as you might have guessed they refer to them as what the fall feast and they were also celebrated together the Feast of trumpets was celebrated on the 1 of tishy the Feast of atonement was celebrated on the 10th of Tish those are Hebrew months if you want to know and the Feast of Tabernacles was celebrated on the 15th of tishy so and it lasted for seven days so you had three spring feasts that were celebrated together then you had the Feast of Pentecost 50 days after that and then the three fall feasts that were celebrated together so three times a year all Jewish males living in Israel were required to go to Jerusalem in order to keep these three feasts now there&#39;s seven feasts in all but they refer to them as three feasts the spring Feast Pentecost and the fall Feast look at Deuteronomy 16:1 16 and you&#39;ll see what I&#39;m talking about three times in a year all your males shall appear before the Lord your God in the place which he chooses and what was that place if you come on Wednesday nights you know Jerusalem so three times in a year all your males shall appear before the Lord your God in Jerusalem at the Feast of Passover that&#39;s referring to all three spring feast and at the Feast of Pentecost and at the Feast of Tabernacles which is referring to all three of the Fall feast and they shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed so in the month of Nissan you went to Jerusalem to celebrate the spring Feast 50 days later you went to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost and in the month of tishy you went to celebrate the fall feast and you were required to do that if you lived in Israel every year every year no exceptions now if you lived outside of the nation of Israel you still were required to keep the feast you just didn&#39;t have to go to Jerusalem but if you lived inside of Israel you were required to go to Jerusalem three times a year to celebrate these feasts now the feast had had two purposes and if you&#39;re taking notes write this down the first purpose was to commemorate certain events in Israel&#39;s history Every Nation tends to do that we do that how many of you celebrate the 4th of July anyone celebrate the 4th of July yeah you shoot off fireworks or you go to a fireworks display and if you&#39;re a pagan you drink beer right what does that make you I&#39;m just sorry just kidding anyways why do we celebrate the 4th of July we celebrate the 4th of July because we&#39;re commemorating the Declaration of Independence that&#39;s why we do that yeah now the first purpose of the feast was to commemorate certain events in Israel&#39;s history or his Israel&#39;s past the Feast of Passover commemorated the slaying of the Passover Lamb in Egypt look at Exodus 12: 21 through 24 you probably studied this when you grew up going to Sunday school here it is then Moses called for all the Elders of Israel and said unto them go and take for yourselves Lambs according to your families and slay the Passover Lamb and you shall take a bunch of hsip and dip it in the blood which is in the Basin and apply some of the blood that is in the Basin to the lentil into the two doorpost and none of you shall go outside the door of his house until morning for the Lord will pass through to Smite the Egyptians and when he sees the blood on the lentil and on the doorpost the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyed to come into your house to Smite you that&#39;s why it&#39;s called Passover the angel of death will pass over your house when they see the blood then he goes further and you shall observe this event as an ordinance for you and your children for how long forever how many of you know when Jesus Christ comes back we will not be celebrating Easter during the Millennium what will we be celebrating the Feast of Passover why because Jesus is the Passover he&#39;s also first fruits that&#39;s why he was resurrected so we will be celebrating the Jewish feast why don&#39;t we do that today because we would be weird if we did that you wouldn&#39;t understand it so we call it Easter but what we&#39;re really celebrating is Jesus is our Passover Lamb but I&#39;m getting ahead of myself the Feast of unleavened bread commemorated the The Exodus from from Egypt when they left they left in such a hurry that they didn&#39;t have time to leev the dough for their bread look at Exodus Chap 12: 33-34 and the Egyptians urged the people to send them out of the land in haste for they said we shall all be dead so the people took their dough before it was leaven with their kneading bows bound up in the clothes on their shoulders so remember when they they they slew the Passover Lamb they applied the blood they were supposed to do that with the shoes on their feet and the staff in their hand because God knew what was going to happen when the angel of death passed over and all of the firstborn in Egypt died they wanted Israel out they were scared to death that they were all going to die so they came to them and said you got to leave and you got to leave now and that&#39;s what they did they left Exodus 12: 33-34 the Egyptians urged the people to send them out of the land in haste for they said we shall all be dead so the people took their dough before it was leavened with their kneading bows bound up in the CL on their shoulders now the Feast of first fruits commemorated the crossing of the Red Sea if you remember once they sent them out the Egyptians had a change of heart so they chased after the Israelites and they trapped them between the Red Sea and their army and you all know the story God divided the Sea and the Israelites walked to the other side on dry land when the Egyptians followed them God released the water and they all drowned but the Jews passed safely across to the other side so they literally passed from Death to life you see they all thought they were going to die behind them was the Egyptians Army in front of them was the Red Sea there&#39;s no place to go we&#39;re all going to die but God performed this miracle he divided the Red Sea there was this wall of water on each side this wind came in it dried out the the riverbed and they walked on dry land and there was this fire behind them that didn&#39;t allow the Egyptians to come after them until they were on the other side and then it went up so thep ipans they came into the Red Sea and of course God had the waters come back and they all drowned yeah now the Israelites when they were on the other side they were considered to be the first fruits of God&#39;s chosen people and that&#39;s what the Feast of first fruits commemorates they crossed the Red Sea and they pass from Death to life and they became the first fruits of God&#39;s chosen people the first fruit roots of what&#39;s going to be a huge Nation much later now after they crossed the Red Sea it took them 47 days to get to Mount Si and then Moses told them to consecrate themselves for three days because God was going to come down and reveal himself on Mount Si so on the 50th day Pentecost the Lord appeared to Moses on Mount Si and he gave him the Ten Commandments and on that day Israel officially became a nation now they were God&#39;s people before then but that&#39;s when they officially became a nation and that&#39;s what the Feast of Pentecost commemorated God giving the Israelites the law yeah so what&#39;s Pentecost it&#39;s commemoration of God giving the law The Ten Commandments now I&#39;m not going to go into the fall Feast because we don&#39;t have time to do that sometime in the future I&#39;m going to do a series on the Feast of the Lord because every Christian should know the Feast of the Lord and I&#39;ll cover all of the feast when I do that Series so that&#39;s the first purpose of the feast all right it&#39;s to commemorate certain events in Israel&#39;s history the second purpose of the Feast of the Lord was to provide a prophetic picture of what the Messiah would do let me say that again so if you&#39;re taking notes you write this down the second purpose of the Feast of the Lord was to provide a prophetic picture of what the Messiah would do in fact Leviticus 23: number two tells us that the Feast of the Lord were meant to be rehearsals notice what it says this is Leviticus 23:2 speak unto the children of Israel and say unto them concerning the Feast of the Lord these seven feasts you see on the back wall which you shall Proclaim to be holy convocations now I want you to underline that word convocations convocations is translated from the Hebrew word mikra and it literally means rehearsals so what Leviticus 23:2 is 2 is saying is that the the Feast of the Lord were meant to be holy rehearsals now does everyone know what a rehearsal is I&#39;m sure you do a rehearsal is when you practice something in preparation for a future event some of you have children in dance how many of you have children in dance what do they do well when they have a recital they schedule rehearsals in other words they practice what they&#39;re going to be doing at the recital now according to Leviticus 23: number two the Feast of the Lord Lord are rehearsals so when the Jews kept the feast they were actually rehearsing what the Messiah would do when he came yeah so the first purpose of the Feast of the Lord is to commemorate things in the past but the second purpose is to be a rehearsal to practice what the Messiah is going to do when he comes in other words everything they did during the feast was was exactly what the Messiah would do when he came now the spring Feast has to do with the first coming of the Messiah and the fall Feast has to do with the second coming of the Messiah in fact look at the back wall let me stand up just for a second look at this back wall in Jesus first coming he was the Passover Lamb we&#39;ll go a little bit into that you&#39;ll see that he fulfilled it to the most minute detail now here&#39;s what&#39;s interesting and what most people don&#39;t understand you would slay the Passover Lamb on Nissan the 14th but you would begin to roast it and when you roast it you didn&#39;t actually eat of it until the evening after the sun went down now we reckon days from Midnight to midnight but the Jews didn&#39;t do that when the sun went down it started another day so you actually partook of the Passover meal during the Feast of unliving bread why because leav represents sin and what the Passover Lamb does is he takes away the sin remember when John the Baptist just saw Jesus what did he say Behold the Lamb that taketh away the sins of the world so when you were taking or participating in the Feast of the Passover Lamb and you were eating of that lamb you also ate with unleavened bread why because the Passover Lamb takes away the sins of the world and how long did you eat unleavened bread seven days why seven is a number of significance it means perfect and complete so he took away perfectly and completely our sin so Jesus comes he&#39;s our Passover Lamb he also takes away the L we eat that for seven days on Sunday first fruits Jesus was resurrected and he&#39;s the first fruits of the Resurrection we&#39;ll find out he did a little bit more on that then we get to the Feast of Pentecost what happened on the Feast of Pentecost that&#39;s when God gave the law after Jesus was resurrected 50 days later what was the Fulfillment of Pentecost God gave the spirit the life brings or the Commandments bring forth and the law brings forth death what does the spirit bring forth life so on Pentecost we see the Fulfillment anyone know what&#39;s going to happen on Trumpets the Feast of trumpets the Rapture yeah the Rapture is going to take place I&#39;ll talk a little bit more about that when we go to the feast what&#39;s going to happen on the great day of atonement Jesus physically returns to the Earth what&#39;s the Feast of Tabernacles the Feast of Tabernacles is when Jesus Christ is going to set up his kingdom here on the earth and Reign for a thousand years we&#39;re going to Tabernacle with the Lord ain&#39;t that good now since the Messiah has already come the first time we can see how he fulfilled the spring Feast so let me walk you through the three the first three feast and how Jesus fulfilled them down to the most minute detail but we&#39;re not going to look at all the details because I don&#39;t have time instead what we&#39;re going to do is we&#39;re going to look at what I consider to be the high points and the major things that Jesus did to fulfill the spring Feast first of all how many of you remember Jesus triumphant inry Jesus triumphant entry into Jerusalem occurred on the 10th of Nissan which was a very very important day to the Jewish people turn back to Exodus 12: 2-6 and I&#39;ll show you why notice what it says this month is to be for you the first month the first month of your year tell the whole community of Israel that on the 10th day of this month 10th day each man is to take a lamb for his family one for each household if any household is too small for the whole lamb they must share one of their nearest with their nearest neighbor having taken into account the number of people there are you are to determine the amount of land needed in accordance with what each person will eat the animals you choose must be year old males without defect and you may take them from the sheep or the goats take care of them until the 14th day of the month when all the members of the community of Israel must slaughter them so this is talking about the Passover Lambs so on the 10th of Nissan every household was supposed to select a Passover Lamb and and every day for 4 days you were supposed to inspect it to ensure that your Passover Lamb had no flaws to ensure that it was perfect now when Jesus entered into Jerusalem on a donkey all of the people began singing Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord hosana in the highest which is a Messianic Psalm it&#39;s Psalm 118:26 you see every Jew at the time of Jesus knew that these Feast were rehearsals and they expected the Messiah to come to fulfill the feast so on the 10th everyone would pick their Passover Lamb and the high priest he would pick his his lamb represented the lamb for the entire nation his was referred to as we&#39;ll find out the final Passover Lamb so when he brought his lamb in the people would begin to shout yes blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord hosana in the highest but what they were doing was rehearsing for when the Messiah would really come well on the 10th of Nissan Jesus does this triumphal entry which is the very same day the high priest is bringing in the Passover Lamb and everyone begins to shout and many of the people recognize and realize this is the Messiah so they start saying this Messianic Psalm but it goes a little bit further the people begin shouting hosan to the son of David which is a Messianic title so again the Jews knew that the feast were rehearsals and they were expecting the Messiah to come to fulfill the feast so this just wasn&#39;t just a triumphant entry this was Jesus entering as the Messiah and as the final Passover lamp and for four days he was on the Temple Mount being examined by the people the priests and the religious leaders just as the Passover Lambs were being examined every day for 4 days so what you would do is you got your Passover Lamb on the 10 you expected it inspected it you inspected on the 11th the 12th and the 13th on the 14th day you&#39;re going to slay it Jesus arrives on the 10th he&#39;s examined by the religious leaders the 10th the 11th the 12th and the 13th what day is he going to be crucified he&#39;s going to be crucified on the same day that the Passover Lambs are going to be slain so that&#39;s what takes place and at the end of Jesus tribe this is what&#39;s interesting how many of you remember when they arrested him and brought him before Pilate at the end of his trial before he was led away to be crucified what did pilate say pilate said I find no fault in him those are the very words that the Jews were supposed to say after examining their lamb for 4 days and right before they sacrificed it every person who had their sa their Passover Lamb when they brought it up they had been expecting it for 4 days this is now the day to sacrifice it they would bring it before the priest and they would say I found no fault in it and that&#39;s when they would slay it well that&#39;s exactly what pilate said about Jesus not once but twice I find no fault in him now the last lamb to be sacrificed every year for Passover was always the high priest lamb that&#39;s why it was called the final Passover Lamb and it was sacrificed at the 9th hour which is 3 p.m. and the reason that it had to be done by 3 P.M was because he had another ritual to perform before the sun went down so at the ninth hour the high priest sacrificed his lamb and as soon as he sacrificed his lamb and he caught the blood in the bow after he caught all the blood he would take a step back he would spread his arms and he would shout it is finished and at the very time that the high priest spreads his arms and shouts that Jesus is on the cross he takes one more gaps of air and he shouts out it is finished and he died now listen to me Jesus still had to descend into hell to pay for our sins so why in the world did he scream it is finished well I tell you why because as God&#39;s high priest he was letting us know that the final Passover Lamb had been slain and we would never ever have to sacrifice a Passover Lamb again he was the final Passover Lamb and as the Passover Lambs were going into the ovens jesus&#39; body was going into the grave and as the Lambs were being cooked by fire Jesus Soul was in hell now the high priest still had a ritual to perform before the sun went down on that day the day of Passover he had to Mark the first fruits that were going to be offered to God in the temple on the first day of the week Sunday that&#39;s when you celebrated the Feast of first fruits the biering so after the final Passover Lamb had been slain the high priest and his Entourage would would cross the Kidron Valley how many of you have ever been to Israel I&#39;ve been to Israel several times when you stand on the Mount of Olives you can look across the Kidron Valley and you see the temple Mount if you&#39;re on the Temple Mount you can look out over the Kidron Valley and you see the Mount of Olives so after the the final Passover Lamb had been slain the high priest and his Entourage they would cross the Kidron Valley and they would walk up the Mount of Olives to the small barley field that the Levites had planted just for this event and then what they would do is they would go into this barley field and they would reach out the high priest would and he would grab as much of the stalks of the barley that he could and he would bring them together and then he would hold it with one arm and try to bring a little bit more in and then he would stretch out with the other arm and try to bring a little bit more in in until he finally had it all and then he had an assistant that was with him and he would come in and he would grab it for him then the high priest would take the cord and he would wrap it around and he would tie it all right but he didn&#39;t cut them he did 10 sheaves like that but they were still attached to the ground they were not cut those 10 sheaves were being marked as the first fruits they were the sheaves that were going to be offered to God in the temple on the day of the Feast of first fruits all right now the scripture tells us that about the time they were tying those sheaves there was an earthquake and it caused the tombstones on certain tombs to roll open people that&#39;s what Matthew was talking about and I&#39;m sure they must have stopped for a second as they felt the trimmer of the trimmers of the earthquake but when the earthquake stopped they finished what they were doing so after the first fruits were marked the high priest and his Entourage they went back to the temple simple Mount and they ate their Passover meal as I said you fixed the Passover and you got everything ready but you actually didn&#39;t eat it till the sun went down and when the sun went down it started a new day which was the day of what the day of unliving bread why did you wait until then because the Passover Lamb takes away the sin of the world so you have to eat it with unleavened bread symbolizing that this Passover Lamb is taking away our sin everyone understand all right and then as they were participating and they were partaking of the Passover Lamb then Friday passed and then Saturday passed and about an hour before the sun was to rise on the first day of the week it was finally time to harvest the Bim that&#39;s the Hebrew word for the first fruits because the first day of the week during the Feast of unleavened bread is when the Feast of first fruits was celebrated so the high priest in his Entourage he always had people with him his people what do you call them peeps so the high priest and his peeps they would go back to the same barley field on the Mount of Olives and it was normally about 5: to 5:30 in the morning you see the first hours what they called the first hour was 6:00 CU that&#39;s usually when the sun came up in Israel then you had the third hour 9:00 right then you had the sixth hour which was noon and then you had the ninth hour which was 3:00 in the afternoon well they had to re this before the sun came up had no idea why they were doing this but you need to remember that before right before the sun came up when was Jesus resurrected yeah so let&#39;s keep going so about 5 or 5:30 in the morning before the sun came up the high priest and his Entourage would climb back up on the mouth of olives and then they would walk up to each one of the sheaths that had been marked and the high priest would take a sickle and he would cut the bottom of the stalks freeing them from the roots that TI them to the Earth in fact that&#39;s how they described it that&#39;s very significant these stalks that were tied to the Earth he literally would cut them freeing them from being tied to the Earth and then he would Place each one of the sheath into a basket to take back to the temple to present to God and at the same time the high priest was harvesting the first fruit at the very same time that he was cutting those stalks Jesus was resurrected but not just Jesus turn to Matthew Chap 27: 50-53 and let&#39;s read that again because everything is happening just like it did during these Feast so let&#39;s read that and when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice he gave up his Spirit when did he do that 3:00 in the afternoon the ninth hour when the high priest had just got through slaying his and said it is finished that&#39;s when Jesus said it is finished and he gave up his Spirit at that moment the curtain of the temple was torn into from top to bottom the Earth shook the rock split and the tombs broke open the bodies of many of the Saints who had died were raised to life they came out of the tombs after jesus&#39; resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people now notice what this is saying when Jesus died and the earthquake happened some of the tombs broke open in other words the Tombstones covering the graves rode away they revealed these tombs were open but the people in those tombs didn&#39;t come to life until after Jesus was resurrected look at verse 53 again they came out of the tombs after jesus&#39; resurrection and when did the holy C appear to be people so they didn&#39;t come back to life until after Jesus was resurrected but their tombs were open three days earlier why why were the tombs open 3 days earlier well I&#39;ll tell you why it&#39;s because the first fruits were always marked on the day of Passover after the final lamb was slain but they weren&#39;t harvested until the Feast of first fruits three days later so the whole purpose of the earthquake when Jesus died was to Mark which of the Saints would be resurrected at the first fruits yeah now after the first fruits was harvested the priest would take them back to the temple to prepare them for an offering for the Lord so there was a period of time between the harvesting of the first fruits and the offering to the Lord yeah about an hour and a half and that&#39;s why when Mary saw Jesus in the garden he told her not to touch him because he hadn&#39;t yet ascended to the father in fact he would not Ascend until it was the designated time for the priest to offer the first fruits to the Lord in the Holy place you see at the very time time the high priest had everything ready and began offering the first fruits to the Lord was the very time that Jesus was in the temple in heaven offering his first fruits to the Lord yeah but there was a period of time between the time you cut the stalks into when you actually offered them so there was this small window of time about an hour and a half from when Jesus was resurrected to when he ascended to heaven with the first fruits of his Harvest to offer them to God that&#39;s why many of the Saints who were resurrected had time to go into Jerusalem to appear into their family and friends but shortly after that about an hour and a half later they ascended with Jesus to the throne of God where Jesus presented them to God as the first fruits offering he also took all of the SS that were in the bosom of Abraham to heaven and they were part of the first fruits offering so now when a Believer dies his soul goes to heaven but his body is buried and it begins to decay but at the final Harvest because that was just first fruits at the final harvest the bodies of all the saints will be resurrected and they will be reunited once more with their soul and when is that going to happen at the Rapture the Feast of trumpets so if you don&#39;t mind I&#39;m going to draw on this whiteboard and just kind of show you exactly what happens and what took place then and what&#39;s going to happen in the future this is a timeline we&#39;ll put this timeline out here and we&#39;ll put this out here and this is the millennium that look like the Millennium to you that looks like the Millennium to me so we&#39;ll put the cross here this represents Jesus death burial and Resurrection now you need to understand that before Jesus death burial and resurrections our sins weren&#39;t paid for so all of the Saints who lived before Jesus death burial and Resurrection could not go to heaven when they died why because their sins had not yet been paid for so where did they go when they died well if you had a person that that died and let&#39;s make two people here this this is two people that look like two people to you all right so when two people died one of these people represents those who believed in the Messiah they believed that Jesus that God would bring forth the Messiah and which we know to be Jesus the other one wasn&#39;t a Believer so when that person died this person who was a Believer his soul would be laid into the ground that&#39;s him and his little grave there and his soul would actually go to a place called The bosom of Abraham now why was it called the bosom of Abraham do you remember anyone because Abraham was always there to welcome whoever believed in the Messiah so when you came to the bosom of Abraham when you died Abraham was there and he would give you a big old hug and he would bring you into his bosom so the Jews always refer to it as the bosom of Abraham the person who wasn&#39;t a Believer when he died his body went into the grave but his soul did not go to the bosom of Abraham he went to the place of of Torment all right now we need to understand something because this can cause a little bit of confusion for people who don&#39;t know all of this is referred to as Hades all right but Hades is divided into two places the bosom of Abraham which was also referred to by the Jews as guess what Paradise it&#39;s why he told the thief next to him this day you will be with me in Paradise but it doesn&#39;t mean that Jesus into the bosom of Abraham it&#39;s just that he has the nature of God which means that he&#39;s omnipresent means he&#39;s everywhere so what he&#39;s telling you if you believe in me you&#39;re going to be in Paradise the reason you&#39;re going to be there is because I&#39;m there but when the thief died with him he couldn&#39;t go to heaven yet because the sins hadn&#39;t been completely paid for so the thief went to the pum of Abraham this is all the people who believes all the people who didn&#39;t believe they went to a place of Torment uh Jesus tells us a little bit about it in the parable the rich man and Lazarus and so you had this great big chasm in between the two so if you wanted to cross over there to help someone you couldn&#39;t do it and if they wanted to cross over to get to the place of paradise they couldn&#39;t do it it&#39;s what Jesus taught us but here&#39;s what&#39;s neat on the 10th of Nissan right here Jesus enters in we call it the triumphal entry but actually he&#39;s coming in as the Passover Lamb because that&#39;s when you selected it and that&#39;s when the high priest would bring in the final Passover Lamb and all these people are coming blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord hosana in the highest which is a Messianic Psalm and they&#39;re calling out to the son of David which is a Messianic title so Jesus comes in on the tth of Nissan and for four days he&#39;s in the temple and what&#39;s happening in the temple they&#39;re asking him questions in a sense what they&#39;re doing is they&#39;re examining him and they can find no fault in fact when it comes time to kill him they have to make something up because he&#39;s perfect there&#39;s no fault in him and so what happens is after 4 days they take him to pilate and when he stands before Pilate pilate says I find no fault in him and he wants to turn him loose but they won&#39;t do it so he says you know you have this custom you can have this person barabus who is a murderer and he thinks surely they&#39;ll set Let Jesus go but they don&#39;t they want Jesus to be crucified and so when pilate finally says okay he says the same thing again I find no fault in him and so he&#39;s led to be crucified the Passover Lambs start on the 14th of Nissan begin at 6:00 a.m. that&#39;s when he&#39;s crucified that&#39;s when they first start but he doesn&#39;t actually die until 3:00 when the last final p uh Passover Lamb is there so what happens is when he dies Jesus so goes to the place of Torment begins to pay for our sins right yeah and for three days and three nights he&#39;s in the place of a torment but the scripture also tells us in the book of First Peter that he had to preach to those in captivity so Jesus does something that no one&#39;s ever done before he&#39;s able to cross this Chasm so he doesn&#39;t just preach a sermon to those in the bosom of Abraham he gives them an object lesson they literally see him come alive across this Chasm his life is brought back into him he crosses the chasm he comes over here and he preaches to those in the bosom of Abraham why does he have to preach to them because they&#39;re looking for the Messiah but they didn&#39;t know that Jesus was the Messiah and they have to accept him as the Messiah and so guess what takes place three days and three nights later all of the sudden the high priest on the Sunday is going to The Barley field he&#39;s now going to cut the sheep that have been marked for the first fruits as soon as that first sickle hits them shortly before the sun comes up and he frees them from the earth Jesus comes alive in the Tomb boom he&#39;s freed from this then all of these people in the booom of Abraham they&#39;re freed with him after his resurrection yeah that&#39;s Sunday and then he tells Mary don&#39;t touch me yet I&#39;m not yet ascended there&#39;s this period of time about an hour and a half where they&#39;ve cut these sheep now they take them back to the temple they&#39;re preparing everything now when it&#39;s time to present these to God as first fruits that&#39;s when Jesus ascends to Heaven takes through all everyone in the bosom of Abraham and he presents the first fruits to God now what is first fruits first fruits is what you give to God but you&#39;re saying there&#39;s going to be a final Harvest a bigger Harvest so now for those of us who live after the death burial and Resurrection when we die let&#39;s have two people here these two people represent people who believe in Jesus this one does and this is the one who doesn&#39;t believe in Jesus guess what happens when this person dies who believes in Jesus his body goes into the ground he&#39;s buried but his soul gets to go to heaven why doesn&#39;t it go to the bosom of Abraham because his sins have been paid for his sins have been paid for yeah the person person who dies that doesn&#39;t know Jesus his body goes into the ground he&#39;s buried but his soul still goes to the place of Torment now both of them their bodies are going to be resurrected but at two different timeses when the Feast of trumpets occurs everyone who believes in Jesus their body&#39;s going to come out of the Grave it&#39;s going to be reunited with their soul and when I talk about the other Feast we&#39;re going to see how Jesus fulfills those down to the most minute detail but here&#39;s what I want I want you to understand because we were looking at Mary Magdalene and we saw all these weird things happening I want you to understand we believe in Jesus the reason we believe in Jesus is because he fulfilled everything that the Bible said he would he not only fulfilled all of the Messianic prophecies but he also fulfilled everything in the feast everything that the Jews were rehearsing they were rehearsing for when the Messiah came and he fulfilled those feast and just as Jesus fulfilled the spring Feast Jesus is going to fulfill the fall Feast let me tell you something Jesus is going to fulfill the fall feast in the in every last minute detail just like he did the spring fix turn with me if you would to the Book of Romans chap 10 veres 9 and 10 now this ought to be a very familiar pass you to scripture especially if you were raised in the Baptist Church because in the Baptist Church you were taught the Romans road to Salvation how many of you have heard of the Romans road to Salvation that&#39;s what you use when you are witnessing to someone and you want to share Jesus Christ with them you go through the book of Romans and their certain scriptures well the climax to the Romans road to Salvation is Romans chap 10: 9 and 10 and the reason it&#39;s the climax is because it explains what you need to do in order to be saved so let&#39;s read that passage of scripture if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved for it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved now as you can see salvation is continued upon two things number one confession that Jesus is Lord and number two believing in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead now let me explain what those two things entail and I&#39;ll start with confession the word confess is translated from the Greek word homo and Homo is a compound word which simply means that it&#39;s made up of more than one word in this case it&#39;s made up of two words the prefix homo which means the same in fact our English prefix homo is transliterated from this Greek word and it also means same most of us have heard of a homosexual that means that someone is sexually attracted to someone of the same sex that&#39;s what homo means homogenized milk how many of you used to buy your milk from a dairy anyone we used to buy our milk from a dairy and if you buy your milk from a dairy it&#39;s not homogenized you actually don&#39;t you would shake it up if you wanted a glass of milk but if you didn&#39;t want a glass of milk and you just wanted the cream you could get it from the top because it wasn&#39;t all mixed together it wasn&#39;t the same does that make sense so homo means the same in Greek and it means the same in English then you have the word lto lto means to speak now when you got combine these two words it literally means to speak the same thing or in other words to agree you see if you and I are speaking the same thing it means that we agree if we&#39;re not speaking the same thing it means that we don&#39;t agree we disagree you&#39;re saying one thing and I&#39;m saying another so the first thing you have to do to be saved is to agree that Jesus is Lord and what do we mean by lord well the word Lord is translated from the Greek word curios and whenever it&#39;s used in a religious context it means means ruler of all and the one that we submit to so you have to agree to submit to Jesus as the ruler of everyone and everything but that in and of itself is not enough to be saved you also have to believe that God raised Jesus from the dead now this is extremely important because according to Paul it&#39;s not enough to believe in Jesus you see a lot of people believe in Jesus they just don&#39;t believe that God raised him from the dead to some he was a great teacher sent from God to show us a better way so if you asked them do you believe in Jesus they would say well of course I believe in Jesus I do but that doesn&#39;t necessarily mean that they believe that God raised Jesus from the dead to others Jesus was a prophet of God with a very important message concerning love so if you ask them do you believe in Jesus they would say well yes I believe in Jesus of course I do but that doesn&#39;t necessarily mean that they believe that God raised Jesus from the dead so believing in Jesus is not enough to be saved to be saved you have to believe that God raised Jesus from the dead so we have to be very careful in the way that we present the Gospel of Jesus Christ and we have to be very careful with the words we use you see it&#39;s not enough to receive Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior it&#39;s funny but we ask people that all the time have you received Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior and if they say yes we assume that that means means they&#39;re saved yeah but why do we assume that we assume that because of John 1 verse number 12 it says but as many as received him to them gave he power to become children of God so we use that very same phraseology have you received Jesus Christ as your lord and savior but we have to know what Jesus meant by that and when we ask that question we have to make sure that they know what John meant by that because John tells us in the last part part of that verse what he means to receive Jesus means that you believe in him and in his resurrection yeah so please listen to me very carefully your salvation is contingent upon two things number one that that a confession that Jesus is Lord in other words you agree to submit to Jesus Christ as the Lord and ruler of everything and everyone including yourself and number two a belief that God raised Jesus from the dead now if you don&#39;t believe that God raised Jesus from the dead you&#39;re not saved because the resurrection is the Crux of Christianity everyone understands what I mean by Crux right Crux is the decisive or most important point at issue so what I&#39;m saying is that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the decisive and most important point in Christianity in fact notice what Paul says about the resurrection in 1 Corinthians chapter 15: 16-19 he&#39;s already told us what the gospel is in that chapter and then He&#39;s listed all of these people who witness the resurrection of Jesus Christ but then he turns around and he becomes The Devil&#39;s Advocate notice what he says and if there is no resurrection of the Dead do you see that he&#39;s playing The Devil&#39;s Advocate in other words he&#39;s saying let&#39;s just assume you&#39;re right let&#39;s just assume Jesus did not rise from the dead and there is no Resurrection so that&#39;s what he&#39;s doing playing the Devil&#39;s Advocate so he says and if there is no resurrection of the dead then Christ has not been raised and if Christ has not been raised then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins in other words you&#39;re still separated from God you still can&#39;t go to heaven when you die and then he continues on he says in that case all who have died believing in Christ are lost in other words everyone who died believing in Christ right now they&#39;re in hell that&#39;s what Paul is saying and then he goes further and if our hope in Christ is only for this life we are more to be pity than anyone in the world do you see that according to Paul the resurrection is the Lynch pin to Christianity if you take it out Christianity falls apart and people that&#39;s the truth Christianity is built on one thing and one thing only and that&#39;s the resurrection of Jesus Christ listen to me there is no Christianity without the resurrection if you don&#39;t believe that God raised Jesus from the dead you&#39;re not saved and you&#39;re not a Christian because there is no Christianity without the resurrection so I&#39;m doing a series on the resurrection of Jesus Christ but the focus of this series is on all the people that Jesus revealed himself to after he rose from the dead you see Jesus didn&#39;t just appear to a handful of people one or two times after he was resurrected no Jesus appeared to hundreds of people during the 40 days he was here on this Earth after his resurrection so what we&#39;re doing in this series is we&#39;re looking at each incident in which Jesus appeared to people after he rose from the dead now these incidents were recorded in the Bible so that you might believe that Jesus is the Messiah the Son of the Living God and by believing in his resurrection have eternal life in fact I want I want you to notice what John wrote right after Jesus revealed himself to Thomas how many of you remember that story Jesus revealed himself to the disciples and at the time there were only 11 disciples because Judas has done what he&#39;s betrayed Jesus and he&#39;s hung himself so there&#39;s 11 disciples so when Jesus appears to the disciples there&#39;s only 10 why Thomas is not there and they get all excited because they saw Jesus resurrected and the next time they see Thomas they&#39;re all excited and they say he&#39;s alive he&#39;s been raised from the dead and what did Thomas say no I&#39;m not going to believe it unless I can place my finger and the hose where the nails were driven and until I can place my hand in his side where the where the spear pierced him and so Jesus appears to them and Thomas is there this time and of course Thomas recognizes this is truly Jesus he is resurrected and so I want you to to notice what John wrote right after this it&#39;s actually part of the story notice John 20:31 he says but these things are written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Messiah the Son of the Living God and that by believing in him you will have eternal life and what he means by believing in him is believing that he&#39;s the Messiah resurrected so that&#39;s why we&#39;re looking at all of these incidents in which Jesus appeared to people after he rose from the dead I want you to know that jesus&#39; Resurrection was verified by hundreds of reliable Witnesses and not just a handful of people so that you can be confident in your faith now we started with Mary Magdalene because she&#39;s the first person who saw Jesus after his resurrection so now we&#39;re ready to move on to the next appearances in chronological order and we&#39;re going to look at two separate incidents this morning the first is when Jesus appeared to the group of women who went to the Tom that morning that Jesus was resurrected and the second is jesus&#39; appearance to the two disciples on the road to Emmas so turn with me if you would to the Book of Matthew chap 28: 9 and 10 this is Jesus appearance to the women who went to the tomb that Sunday morning that Jesus rose from the dead and behold Jesus met them and greeted them and they came up and took holdat of his feet and worshiped him then Jesus said to themo not be afraid go and take word to my brethren to leave for Galilee and they shall see me and there they shall see me now there are three things that I want to point out the first is that Jesus allowed this group of women to touch him if you remember when Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene he told her don&#39;t touch me for I&#39;ve not yet ascended and I explained what that meant last week if you weren&#39;t here last week then you need to go back and you need to listen to that message you can watch it online if you want to but to make a long story short Jesus had to ascend into heaven in order to redeem us with his own blood and also to present unto God the first fruits of his resurrection which were the SWS of those who were in The bosom of Abraham Ephesians chapter 4 number 8 says therefore it says when he ascended on high in other words when he went to heaven he laid captive a host of captives from the bosom of Abraham and he gave gifts to men now once Jesus accomplished those two things he returned to this earth and from then on anyone in every everyone could touch him and that&#39;s exactly what happened when he appeared to this group of women they grabbed him by the feet and they began worshiping him which is the second thing that I want to point out notice that the women worshiped Jesus look at verse number nine again and behold Jesus met them and greeted them and they came up and took holdat of his feet and worshiped him now as you know no one is allowed to be worshiped except God people that&#39;s one of the Ten Commandments and yet these women worshiped Jesus and even more shocking Jesus allowed it why because Jesus is God let me say that again Jesus is God in fact there are six places in the New Testament the specifically state that Jesus is God the first is John chap 1 verse one and verse1 14 let me just explain that and then you can look at the rest of them in John chapter 1 verse number one it says in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God and then you keep on reading till you get down to verse number 14 and it says and the Word was made flesh in other words the word became Jesus so Jesus was God that&#39;s what John 1 verse1 and verse1 14 State the second place where it states it is John 20:28 the third is acts 20:28 the fourth is Colossians 2:9 then you have Titus chap 2:13 and 2 Peter 1 ver1 all of these verses specifically State they don&#39;t imply they state that Jesus is God and as God Jesus has the Divine attribute of infinitude which means that he could die for everyone at one time let me explain something because there are those that don&#39;t believe that Jesus was God people if Jesus wasn&#39;t for God then he could only die for one person first of all he could only die for himself because he would have had the adamic nature but because he was born of the Virgin the Holy Spirit came over Mary overshadowed her is what the Bible actually says she conceived and Jesus was born of a virgin you need to understand he didn&#39;t have the atomic nature but more importantly he was God and because he was God he had the attribute of infinitude which means that he could die for everyone at one time he could die for everyone in the past everyone in the future and everyone uh in the present and in the future not only that he could pay for everyone&#39;s sin and even future sins at one time notice what Hebrews chap 10 verse number 10 says by which we are Sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all if you accepted Jesus Christ as your lord and savior and then you sined after that you don&#39;t have to get resaved do you want to know why you don&#39;t have to be resaved because Jesus has the Divine attribute of infinitude he not only died for your past sins but he also died for your future sins so the Bible tells us that if we sin what we have to do is confess Jesus or confess our sin to Jesus and he&#39;s faithful and just to forgive us of our sin why because he&#39;s all already paid not only for my past sins and my present sins but also my future sins now do we sin that more grace May abound Paul says God forbid but you need to understand something Jesus is God God and that&#39;s why he allowed these women to worship him they are not the only ones that will worship him when he appears to the others the third thing I want to point out is that Jesus instructed this group of women to tell the disciples to go to Galilee and he would meet them there look back at verse number 10 then Jesus said to them who is them the group of women do not be afraid go and take my word or take word to my brethren to leave for Galilee and there they shall shall see me now here&#39;s what&#39;s interesting this is the third time the disciples have been told to go to Galilee and Jesus would meet them there the first time Jesus told the disciples himself look at Matthew 26: 31 and 32 on the way on the way where this was on the night that he was betrayed this is the night before he was crucified on the way to the Mount of Olives on the way to the Garden of Gethsemane he&#39;s talking to his disciples so notice what it says on the way to the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus told them tonight all of you will desert me for the scriptures say God will strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered but after I have been raised from the dead Jesus had been preparing them for the whole last year of his ministry he&#39;d been telling them over and over again that he was going to have to suffer die but he would be resurrected on the night that he was betrayed he once again reminds them I will be raised again but notice what he said after that but after I have been raised from the dead I will go ahead ahead of you to Galilee and I will meet you there and other words when I die don&#39;t hang around in Jerusalem go to Galilee because that&#39;s where I&#39;m going to meet you the second time the disciples were towed was by the angel who rode the stone away you&#39;ll find that in Matthew 28:7 that angel gave Specific Instructions for the disciples to go to Galilee and Jesus would meet them there and the third time was when Jesus appeared to this group of women they were supposed to tell the disciples to go to Galilee and Jesus would meet them there and they did that they went to the disciples they told them we&#39;ve seen Jesus resurrected he told us to tell you go to Galilee and he will meet you there but but of course the scripture says they didn&#39;t believe them but the disciples also didn&#39;t obey so Jesus had to appear unto them in Jerusalem not once but twice until they finally obeyed him and they went to galile so what&#39;s your point Pastor Allan well my point is that humans are hard-headed God usually has to tell us three or four times to do something before we actually get around to doing it and some sometimes we never get around to doing it and people the disciples were no different they also struggled with obedience but the Lord is patient and he continued to work with them in spite of their Disobedience but we&#39;re just like that some of you have been Christians for years you&#39;ve read the Bible you&#39;ve heard me teach on it you&#39;re supposed to tithe 10% of your income but you still don&#39;t do it guess what God is patient and he&#39;s still continuing to work with you some of you have come here for years and you&#39;ve heard me do series after series on parenting and one of the things that I always tell you in fact I can go all the way back to almost 30 years ago and I would tell parents you have to bond with your children and not only do you have to bond with your children you must instill within them your core values your beliefs and your convictions and yet you&#39;re not doing it because I told you how to do that you&#39;ve got to eat dinner at the table no TV on no radio on silence so you can visit and when you tuck your children into bed at night that&#39;s when you do devotions that&#39;s when you teach them that&#39;s when you instill within them the word of God and then when you get up in the morning and you go to bed at night when you&#39;re traveling to and fro when you&#39;re doing all the different things that you do you&#39;re supposed to speak of the Lord and yet most of you don&#39;t but the good news is the Lord is patient and he continues to work with you the only problem is time is running out because your children are growing your marriage I teach at least one series on marriage a year and I will teach some wonderful principles but you wouldn&#39;t believe the number of people that go I&#39;ve heard everything there is about marriage and I have a good marriage I&#39;m going to stay home during that series or I even listen to single people say that well I&#39;m not married I&#39;m not going to go it&#39;s for married people and my question is do you plan on getting married obviously not or you&#39;d be saying this is great information that I will get to use one day but my point is this in spite of your struggle with obedience the Lord is patient he continues to work with you yes because he loves you and he&#39;s longsuffering that&#39;s just who Jesus is and he had to do it with the disciples too sometimes we think of those disciples oh what Great Men of Faith they were just like us now let&#39;s look at jesus&#39; appearance to the two disciples on the road to Emmas turn with me if you would to the Book of Luke chapter 24 verses 13- 16 we&#39;re not going to read the whole story we&#39;re going to read it section by section if you don&#39;t mind first section verses 13- 16 that same day two of jesus&#39; followers were walking to the Village of emus seven miles from Jerusalem now we don&#39;t know if it was seven miles from Jerusalem or if it was seven miles round trip most scholars believe it was seven miles round trip but we won&#39;t go into that that&#39;s not really that important as they walked along they were talking about everything that had happened as they talked and discussed these things Jesus himself suddenly came and began walking with them but God kept them from recognizing him now I want you to notice verse number 16 it says but God kept them from recognizing him and who does him refer to Jesus God kept them from recognizing Jesus now Mark tells us how God prevented them from recognizing Jesus look at Mark 16: 12 and 13 if you don&#39;t mind it doesn&#39;t go into much detail but it gives us a little detail that Luke doesn&#39;t so notice what it says afterward he talking about Jesus appeared in a different form to two of his followers who were walking from Jerusalem into the country they rushed back to tell the others but no one believed them now I want you to underline the phrase different form that word different is translated from the Greek word heteros the Greeks had two different words for another heteros which means means another of a different kind and alos which means which means the same of another kind so you have heteros another of a different kind and you had alos another of the same kind well this is the word heteros so it means different and then you have the Greek word for form which is morphe and morphe means form in the sense of external appearance in fact our English word morph is actually transliterated from this Greek word and it means to change from one image into another when something morphs it changes its appearance that&#39;s what we mean by morph it means to change its appearance so what this is saying is that Jesus looked different when he appeared to these two men which is why they didn&#39;t recognize him now this is an important detail because this story is only given in two of the gospels but both of them actually comment that they didn&#39;t recognize Jesus but Mark tells us why it&#39;s because he didn&#39;t look the same he morphed his appearance he changed what he looked like now why would Jesus want to appear in a different form while he was walking with these two men think about it and other words why would God want to keep these men prevent these men from recognizing Jesus Does anyone know well I&#39;ll tell you why it&#39;s because Jesus had an agenda and if these two men had recognized Jesus that would have kept them or kept Jesus from accomplishing his agenda just think about it they would have been so excited and so overcome with emotion they wouldn&#39;t have been able to shut up and after all of the excitement finally did die down they would have had a million questions for Jesus so God purposely kept them from recognizing him now what was jesus&#39; agenda well we&#39;ll get to that in just a second let&#39;s not get ahead of ourselves instead let&#39;s continue on with the story so let&#39;s look at the SE second section of the story look at verses 17- 21 he asked them what are you discussing so intently as you walk alone they stopped short in other words what sadness written across their faces then one of them Copus replied you must be the only person in dream Jerusalem that doesn&#39;t have a clue you must be the only person in Jerusalem who hasn&#39;t heard about all the things that have happened there the last few days what things Jesus asked the things that happened to Jesus The Man from Nazareth they said he was a prophet who did Mighty Miracles or powerful Miracles and he was a mighty teacher in the eyes of God and all the people but our leading priests and other religious leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and they crucified him we had had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to redeem Israel this all happened 3 days ago now I want you to notice that they recognized that Jesus was a prophet because that was obvious why was it obvious because Jesus had performed many mighty Miracles he had walked on water he turned a few Loaves and Fishes into lots of food to be able to feed all these people he&#39;d healed the lame and the blind he brought people back to life they saw Lazarus come out of the Tomb he was hovering and came on out and he said unwrap him they knew he was a mighty Prophet they also acknowledge that he was a master teacher in the eyes of God and in the eyes of the people anyone could see that if they just listened to one of his sermons so naturally they had hoped that he was the long awaited Messiah who would redeem Israel look at verse number 21 and you&#39;ll see what I&#39;m talking about says we had hoped now people that&#39;s not present tense that&#39;s past past tense we aren&#39;t hoping now we had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to redeem Israel now the implication is that once Jesus died their hope that he was the Messiah also died do you see that notice what they said and how they said it we had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to redeem Israel but our leading priests and religious leaders had him crucified so what they were saying was that their hope died when Jesus died in other words when Jesus died they assumed that everything they thought everything they believed must have been wrong because now that he was dead he could couldn&#39;t possibly be the Messiah that they had hoped for now I want you to notice what they expected the Messiah to do look back at verse number 21 we had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to redeem Israel do you see that they expect Ed the Messiah to redeem Israel now does anyone know what that means to redeem Israel well the word redeem is translated from the Greek word lutra and it means to liberate or to set free so what they were hoping for and what they expected the Messiah to do was to liberate Israel from Rome in fact that&#39;s what every Jew expected the Messiah to do they expected the Messiah to liberate Israel from Rome and to restore Israel back to the Glory Days of the davidic Kingdom so when Jesus died their hope of him being the Messiah died with him which is so sad because not only was their perception of the Messiah wrong but it was also shortsighted and temporal think about it who cares if Israel would have been liberated from Rome if sin and death still reigned who cares about that if mankind would have remained eternally separated from God now don&#39;t get me wrong there will come a day people when Israel will be restored to the for former Glory Days of the davidic kingdom and yes there will come a day when all nations will submit to Israel and to the one who sits on the throne of Israel and what day is that the Millennium but we cannot Rule and reign with Jesus until sin and death is defeated and that had to be taken care of first which is why Jesus suffered and died he suffered and died in order to conquer sin and death so that we might have everlasting life now I want you to notice that I didn&#39;t say eternal life I said everlasting life why did I say everlasting life because the truth is man cannot have eternal life what do you want to pick up stones and sto me right no no no no listen to me the only one that has eternal life is God Only God is eternal because Eternal means no beginning Eternal means no beginning and no end we can have everlasting life which is what we have in Jesus Christ but we can never have eternal life because we had a beginning everyone with me so why do we call it eternal life because that&#39;s the way we translated it in the King James version and everyone else does but it should have been translated everlasting life but here&#39;s what I want you to see we needed Jesus to die to suffer and to be resurrected in order for us to be redeemed from our sin and to have everlasting life now I&#39;m going to call it eternal life too because that&#39;s what we grew up with right so we&#39;ll keep calling it but you just need to know it&#39;s everlasting life but the Jews and The Disciples of Jesus were so focused on the Messianic prophecies that talked about the Messiah reigning and ruling over the Earth that they lost side of all the other Messianic prophecies that talked about the bigger picture of the messiah&#39;s suffering and dying and being raised from the dead they lost sight of the fact that we needed to be redeemed from sin and reconciled to God through the messiah&#39;s death burial and Resurrection you see sometimes we get so focused on our own agenda on the things that we want that we get tunnel vision and we can&#39;t see anything else yeah and that&#39;s what happened to the disciples they got so focused on all the miss m MEC prophecies that talked about the Messiah ruling and reigning on this Earth that they couldn&#39;t see all of the other Messianic prophecies that talked about the messiah&#39;s suffering dying and being resurrected so Jesus had an agenda on the road to emus and that was to open up all of the scripture that talked about the Messiah suffering dying and being resurrected so man would be set free from sin and death look at verses 25 through 28 this is the third section of the story notice what it says then Jesus said to them you foolish people you&#39;re so slow to believe all that the prophets wrote in the scriptures wasn&#39;t it clearly prophesied that the Messiah would have to suffer all of these things before entering into his glory I want you to notice what he&#39;s saying here he&#39;s saying wasn&#39;t it clearly prophesied that the Messiah would have to suffer all of these things before entering into his glory there are certain things Jesus had to do first before we can get to the Millennium where he rules and Reigns yeah let&#39;s keep reading then Jesus took them through the writings of Moses and all of the prophets explaining from all the scriptures the things concerning himself by this time they were nearing Emmas in the end of their Journey Jesus acted as if he was going on now people wouldn&#39;t you have loved to have been there on the road to emus can you imagine listening to Jesus explain all of the Messianic prophecies explaining all of the typologies and christophanies explaining all of the things that were a shadow of what the Messiah would accomplish when he came explaining the Jewish feast and how they were a prophetic picture of what the Messiah would do and they were actually rehearsals and everything they were rehearsing was showing what the Messiah was going to do explaining all of the Mosaic sacrificial offerings and how they were fulfilled in Jesus and how they pointed to the ultimate sacrifice that he had just made to atone for our sin I&#39;ll be honest with you people I would have loved to have been there to listen to Jesus when he talked about the great prophet that would be like Moses and instead of redeeming the people from Egypt he would redeem them from their sins instead of taking them to a physical Promised Land he was going to take them to an eternal Promised Land instead of being baptized in the Red Sea were going to be baptized into him instead of cutting off the Egyptians was going to cut off the old man can you imagine everything that Jesus told them wow I would have loved to have been there but you know the rest of the story but we&#39;re still going to read it look at the last section verses 28-35 by this time they were nearing emus and at the end of their Journey Jesus acted as if he was going to go on but they begged him stay the night with us since it&#39;s getting late so he went home with them as they sat down to eat he took the bread and he blessed it then he broke it and gave it to them suddenly their eyes were open that doesn&#39;t tell us but I&#39;m sure he morphed again now he&#39;s not in a different appearance he&#39;s now in instead of heteros Mor he&#39;s alos Mor he&#39;s now in the same appearance suddenly their eyes were open and they recognized him at that moment he disappeared extradimensional body steps out of this Dimension and into the next they said to each other didn&#39;t our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the road and explained the scriptures to us and within the hour still men had to eat get the Necessities they were on their way back to Jerusalem there they found the 11 disciples with the others who had gathered with them who said the Lord has really Arisen and notice this he appeared to Peter then the two from emus told their story of how Jesus had appeared to them as they were were walking along the road and how they had recognized him as he was breaking the bread now it only says that he appeared to Peter this is the only gospel that says that Paul records that in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 now you would think because Peter is one of the great Disciples of Jesus that we would have that story of his appearance to Peter but we don&#39;t and you want to know why because it was very personal and very intimate Peter is the one who said Lord if everyone else deserts you I won&#39;t I&#39;ll be by your side of course we know the story Jesus turns to him he said Peter the devil desires to have you wants to sit you and he says before the crows you&#39;ll deny me three times and of course he did and I know that Peter must have been heartbroken that he did that even when he didn&#39;t realize Jesus was going to be resurrected number one he was embarrassed because he&#39;d said this and he&#39;d proven himself to be a coward wouldn&#39;t even go in to see Jesus trial when it was at John&#39;s PL or it&#39;s at the high priest where John gave him access to come in no he didn&#39;t even come in and so when Jesus meets him I can tell you very personal very intimate but people that&#39;s how God is and he&#39;s not going to reveal your dirty laundry he&#39;s just not going to do it we believe in the spiritual gifts and when I say the spiritual gifts I&#39;m talking about the manifestation gifts we&#39;re not cessationist cessationists believe that the manifestation gifts ended after the Bible was written after the end of the apostolic age the Bible doesn&#39;t teach that in fact when you&#39;re studying that first 1 Corinthians 13 it talks about and when that which is perfect is come then that which is in part shall be done away with and we say oh the Bible&#39;s here it&#39;s perfect actually that&#39;s not what it says in the original Greek it says when Perfection comes and when will Perfection come when Jesus returns then that which is in part shall be done away with but here&#39;s what&#39;s interesting seeing the gifts operate whether it&#39;s word of knowledge Word of Wisdom prophecy tongues interpretation healings one of the things that I&#39;ve noticed when it&#39;s true gifts of God God does not air people&#39;s dirty laundry and God&#39;s going to talk with someone it&#39;s between him and them because he respects you and he loves you we don&#39;t know what God said to Peter and the reason we don&#39;t know when I say God I&#39;m talking about Jesus remember Jesus is God we don&#39;t know what Jesus said to Peter but we do know know that he appeared unto Peter now let&#39;s get off that let&#39;s just make some application with this story of Jesus appearing to the two disciples on the road to mayus the truth is we&#39;re no different than Jesus disciples we get so focused on our own agenda and what we want that it creates tunnel vision and we lose sight of the big picture and what is the big picture what is the big picture I asked you what Jesus agenda was and then I told you Jesus agenda was the big picture we&#39;re full of sin we&#39;re at enmity with God sin has to be dealt with first before we can be reconciled to God the big picture is our relationship with God but you know what&#39;s sad we&#39;re just like the disciples we get so caught up with work we get so caught up with raising our kids we get so caught up with our hobbies that we forget that this life is very very short I&#39;ve told you this before when I was young I thought a lifetime was a long time as I got older I&#39;ve realized that a lifetime is a short time we get so caught up with these temporal things that we lose sight of what&#39;s really important when you get to the end of the of your life you&#39;re going to realize there&#39;s only two things that are important in this life your relationship with God and your relationship with your family it really doesn&#39;t matter how much money you made it doesn&#39;t really matter how many assets you accumulated it really doesn&#39;t matter all these accomplishments the only thing that&#39;s really going to matter is your relationship with God and your relationship with your family those are the only two things that really matter don&#39;t be like the disciples they missed the big picture because they were so caught up that Jesus was going to redeem Israel yes he will during the Millennium he will rule and Reign from Israel every nation will be required to come to Israel to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles and any nation that doesn&#39;t send a delegation will not receive rain that&#39;s what the Bible says but you need to understand something they missed the big picture and that&#39;s that you can have a relationship with Jesus this Easter I did something that I&#39;ve never done before instead of preaching a short simple message on the resurrection of Jesus Christ which is what I normally do I started a series and I entitled this series The Resurrection but the focus of this series is on all the people that Jesus revealed himself to after he rose from the dead you see Jesus didn&#39;t just appear to a handful of people people one or two times after his resurrection no he appeared to hundreds of people during the 40 days he was here on this Earth after his resurrection so what we&#39;re doing in this series is we&#39;re looking at each incident in which Jesus appeared to people after his resurrection and we started with Mary Magdalene because she was the very first person to see Jesus after his resurrection so as you might have guessed we&#39;re looking at these incidents in chronological order jesus&#39; second appearance was to a group of women who went to visit his tomb that morning the third appearance is with the two disciples on the road to EMAs the fourth appearance was to Peter we don&#39;t have much information about that I believe the Holy Spirit wanted to keep that private so we don&#39;t really know what took place we just know that Jesus appeared unto sephus or Peter and the fifth appearance was to his disciples in Jerusalem and that&#39;s what we&#39;re going to study this morning now all five of these appearances happened on the same day they all happened on the the day that Jesus Christ was resurrected now the appearance of his disciples is recorded in three of the gospels Mark Luke and John but we&#39;re going to use Luke&#39;s version because it&#39;s the most detailed so if you would turn with me to the Book of Luke chapter 24 and we&#39;re going to read verses 33 through 36 we&#39;re not going to read the entire story we&#39;re going to read it in portions and the reason we&#39;re going to do that it&#39;s because I just want you to follow along with me as we move through the story so this is verses 33 through 36 and within the hour they were on their way back to Jerusalem there they found the 11 disciples and the others who had gathered with them who said the Lord has really risen he appeared to Peter then the two from Emmas told their story of how Jesus had appeared to them as they were walking along the road and how they had recognized him as he was breaking the bread and just as they were telling about it Jesus himself was suddenly standing there among them peace be with you he said now now as you can see as soon as the two disciples from Emmas recognized Jesus and who he was they hightailed it back to Jerusalem because they were so excited they couldn&#39;t wait to tell the disciples about their Encounter With Jesus but while they were in the process of telling about it Jesus suddenly showed up now let me point something out before we continue reading so you don&#39;t get confused later on look at verse number 33 again and within the hour they were on their way back to Jerusalem there they found the 11 disciples and the others who had gathered with them now notice notice that it says there they found the 11 disciples now if you remember Jesus had 12 disciples but one of the disciples betrayed him and then went out and hung himself and of course that was Judas so 12 - 1 equal 11 however John tells us that Thomas wasn&#39;t there when Jesus appeared to his disciples the first time which is the time that we&#39;re talking about so so shouldn&#39;t it say the 10 disciples instead of 11 disciples shouldn&#39;t it no and here&#39;s why if you noticed in verse 33 it said there they found the 11 disciples and the others who had gathered there with them now one of the others who had gathered there with them was meias who was later chosen to take judah&#39;s place so when Luke wrote about this he naturally included Messias as one of the 12 disciples so Luke is right in numbering the disciples at 11 now why is this important well this is important because a lot of Skeptics try and use this to discredit the Bible to say that the Bible is not inherent 11 disciples weren&#39;t there there were 10 disciples see that&#39;s a mistake and so they try to say that the Bible is not without Heir it has HS because only 10 disciples were there but you need to understand in their culture the early church always included maias as one one of the 12 disciples because he was chosen to take judah&#39;s place Paul does the very same thing in 1 Corinthians chap 15 verse number 5 he included Maas as one of the 12 disciples and that was considered to be standard procedure for the early church it was very a mo it was their method of operation to include meias as one of the 12 disciples even before he was actually chosen so from the Resurrection on maias was always considered to be one of the 12 done deal been there bought the T-shirt let&#39;s move on that was the attitude of the early church they didn&#39;t want to give any more time to Judas they told you all about Judas when they were going through the gospels but once you came to his his betrayal and once he went out and hung himself they did not want to talk about Judas anymore so they included meias in his place does that make sense now let&#39;s see what happened when Jesus suddenly appeared to the disciples let&#39;s read verses 36 and 37 s and just as they were telling about it Jesus himself was suddenly standing there among them peace be with you he said but the whole group was startled and frightened thinking they were seeing a ghost now I mentioned this many times before but I still want to draw attention to the fact that Jesus resurrected body was an extradimensional body in fact if you&#39;re a Sci-Fi Enthusiast you probably love that word because you&#39;ve used it many times but his resurrection body truly was an extradimensional body in other words he was able to step from one dimension into another which means he could instantly appear and disappear and he was also able to pass through material substances whenever he wanted to if you were in a locked room it didn&#39;t matter if Jesus wanted to be in that room he could do it why because he had an extradimensional body now I want you to think about this and how you would react if someone just instantly appeared out of nowhere as especially if you were in a room where the doors were locked and all the windows were locked and then suddenly someone appeared right in front of you out of nowhere how would you react and what would you think well I know how most of you would react because you would probably react the way that I would I would probably need to change my pants because I would think that I was looking at a ghost or a spirit or I had experienced some type of Paranormal Activity right yeah well people that&#39;s exactly what the disciples thought look at verses 36 and 37 again and put yourself in their place and just as they were telling about it Jesus himself was suddenly standing there among them now you need to understand in the original Greek it says in the middle of them he didn&#39;t sneak in through a window he didn&#39;t sneak in through a door he wasn&#39;t at the at at at the side of them or behind them no all of the sudden he was in the middle of them and he said Peace be with you but the whole group was startled and frightened thinking that they were seeing a ghost now I love what Jesus said to them because it was so nonchalant Jesus said peace be with you now believe it or not that was a common Hebrew greeting I know we don&#39;t speak like that today but the Jews did and they still do today they still use this greeting the way you greet someone in Israel as you say ml that&#39;s kind of interesting isn&#39;t it m now that&#39;s if it&#39;s a female if it&#39;s a if it&#39;s a male I can&#39;t really say it but I&#39;ll try to say it I don&#39;t have that like I&#39;m harking something up but you need to have that that that sound where you&#39;re you&#39;re letting it come it&#39;s a guttural sound but it literally means what&#39;s your peace ma means what shalom means peace and of course eek is feminine and is masculine So when you say it you kind of squeeze it all together so if you ever are in Israel and you want to ask someone how they&#39;re doing you actually say what&#39;s your peace you say ml or mlim depending upon whether they&#39;re male or they&#39;re female now if you just want to say hi you say shalom which means peace and that&#39;s the way you greet people so the next time you&#39;re in Israel and you&#39;re walking down the street you make eye contact because you&#39;re from Oklahoma you have to say something right now if you were from California you wouldn&#39;t do that you just glare at them but if you&#39;re from Oklahoma and you make eye contact it doesn&#39;t matter whether you know them or not you have to have some type of greeting so what you would say is Shalom and they would say shalom back to you what they&#39;re actually saying is peace but that is their equivalent of high and they do that today now they&#39;ve done this for thousands of years so when Jesus said Peace be unto you actually what he was saying was Shalom and here&#39;s what&#39;s kind of interesting when he appeared and he not said Shalom it scared the be Jesus out of them now Jesus knew exactly what they were thinking plus he could see the fear that was written all over their face so he softly rebuked them before he tried to convince them that he was not what they thought he was in other words he was not a ghost now the reason he rebuked them is because he told them over and over again during the last year of his ministry that he was going to have to suffer die and be resurrected and yet they did believe it when it actually happened so yes he rebuked them for their unbelief look at verse number 38 he says why are you so fright frightened he asked why are your hearts filled with doubt in other words why are you doubting my resurrection you above everyone else should have expected me to rise from the grave and here you are cowering and thinking that I&#39;m a ghost now he doesn&#39;t say it but he implies it shame on you and then after after he rebuked them he encouraged them to touch him to prove that he wasn&#39;t a ghost look at verses 39 and 40 look at my hands look at my feet you can see that it&#39;s really me touch me and make sure that I&#39;m not a ghost because ghosts don&#39;t have bodies as you see that I do as he spoke he showed them his hands and his feet now Jesus said something here that&#39;s very important to note he said ghost don&#39;t have bodies I like the way the New American Standard says it because it&#39;s really a more accurate translation it says a spirit does not have Flesh and Bones and people that&#39;s a no-brainer ghost or Spirits don&#39;t have Flesh and Bones ghosts are ethereal now does everyone know what etherial means ethereal means lacking material substance immaterial or intangible in other words your hand would go right through them so if someone ever suddenly appears in front of you and you want to determine whether or not they&#39;re a real person or they&#39;re a ghost all you have to do is reach out and if you reach out to grab them but your hand goes through them then they&#39;re a spirit there&#39;s no material substance there so what Jesus was saying was touch me grab me hold on to me you see that I&#39;m not a ghost because ghosts don&#39;t have Flesh and Bones ghosts are ethereal now this is important I think many of you were shocked when I taught on Heaven and the reason I did is because I said now when we die our soul our spirit leaves the body and it goes to heaven our body is buried but we are not in our final condition because one day at the last trumpet our bodies are going to rise from the grave and they&#39;re going to meet the Lord in the air to be reunited with our soul and we will have a resurrected body just like Jesus it will not be an ethereal body it will be a real physical body if you&#39;re alive on the earth when that happens a transformation is going to take place you also would be snatched from the earth if you&#39;re reading the Latin Bible it says rapur where we get the word rapture in the Greek it&#39;s harped they all mean the same thing you&#39;re going to be snatched from this Earth to meet the Lord in the air and your body is going to be transformed into a glorified resurrected body but listen to me it will not be an ethereal body people will be able to touch you they will be able to grab you it will be an extradimensional body like Jesus body but it will not be a ghost body now until the Rapture occurs your soul and spirit will be ethereal with Jesus but you&#39;re not clothed with your final clothing you don&#39;t have that tint that Paul talks about anyways I just want you to understand when Jesus was resurrected he told the disciples ghost don&#39;t have bodies touch me feel me you will see that I&#39;m not a ghost it&#39;s true me and then he takes it a step further because he wants them to know that it&#39;s really him it&#39;s not someone disguised as him it&#39;s not someone that looks like him it&#39;s not an impersonator it&#39;s truly Jesus look at verse number 40 as he spoke he showed them his hands and feet now people this has caused a lot of problems for theologians in fact I kind of enjoy it because you got you get to read all of these theologians who go through all of these things but the reason it&#39;s caused a lot of problems is because Jesus resurrected body should have been a glorified body now does everyone know what I mean by glorified in this context glorified means perfect and other words a body without any afflictions deformities defects or scars from the past and yet Jesus still retained the scars from his crucifixion and people that throws theologians for a loop just think about it when your body is resurrected it&#39;s going to be changed into an immortal body a body without any afflictions or deformities without any ailments without any diseases it is going to be a perfect body look at 1 Corinthians 15: 51-55 and I&#39;ll show you what I&#39;m talking about notice what it says behold I show you a mystery now the word mystery in the Greek is musterion and what it really means is this is something people don&#39;t know anything about unless you&#39;re part of the initiated Paul was part of the initiated because the Lord had taught him so he says I&#39;m going to show you a mystery I&#39;m going to show you something that the Lord showed me we shall not all sleep sleep is a euphamism for death why is sleep as why is sleep used as a euphemism for death well first maybe I need to explain what a euphemism is how many of you know what a euphemism is it&#39;s a nice way of saying something that&#39;s not socially acceptable we don&#39;t say mom and dad died we say mom and dad passed away we don&#39;t say so and so had sex we say they slept together why do we do that because that&#39;s just kind of a nicer way of saying it well the Bible uses euphemisms too and instead of saying they died the Bible uses the euphemism of sleeping does anyone know why well the reason the Bible uses the euphemism of sleep sleep for death is because when we die our body goes into the ground but our soul is still alive so our soul goes to be with the Lord in the air and here&#39;s what&#39;s interesting even though you&#39;re just a soul even though you&#39;re ethereal you still have use of all five senses you can see you can hear you can taste you can smell you can feel now here&#39;s what&#39;s interesting what is that like that is like sleeping when you&#39;re sleeping your body is at rest but you&#39;re dreaming and in your dreams if you&#39;re a very Vivid dreamer you you dream in color you can see you can smell you can touch you can taste you can feel you can do all of those things but you&#39;re dreaming your body&#39;s at rest but your soul is not your mind is not so the Bible uses the anal ology of sleep for death so here let&#39;s keep reading this behold I show you a mystery we shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed the word changed is translated from the Greek word alaso and it literally means transformed there&#39;s going to be a metamorphosis take place there&#39;s going to be a process where you&#39;re changed from one thing into another that&#39;s what alaso means you are not going to remain the same you&#39;re going to be transformed and then he goes further in the twinkling of an eye at the last Trump for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised Incorruptible now the word Incorruptible is translated from the Greek word aaras and aaras literally means it won&#39;t get owed or sick you won&#39;t get gray hairs you won&#39;t get the elments you know when you kind of get odor your body just seems to start falling apart now mine started falling apart about the age of 29 i&#39; torn my rotator cuffs I had uh torn all of my carage I&#39;d had two knee operations I had arthritis in my lower back from trying to play sports and I wasn&#39;t good at sports and so I started falling apart around 29 or 30 years old old Lisa waited till she was about 52 53 years old and she found out wait a minute maybe my husband wasn&#39;t making all of this up but I want you to understand what aaras means it means means you won&#39;t get wrinkles women it means you won&#39;t have to pluck any gray hairs or color your hair it means that you won&#39;t pick up any sickness or disease viruses won&#39;t affect you you won&#39;t get the stomach Buck no you&#39;re going to have an in corruptible body it cannot Decay it cannot get owed you will remain at around the age of 28 years old someone says how do you know that Pastor Alan because the book of Ephesians says all things are going to revert back to the way they were before the fall Adam and Eve are not created as babies they were created to be full human beings and we reach our peak of maturity around the age of 26 to 28 the next time I see my mother she will be between the ages of 26 to 28 that&#39;s what your body will be and it will be an incorruptible body let&#39;s keep going and we shall all be changed and there&#39;s that word alaso again transformed he has to put it in again and he says this for this corruptible must put on incorruption and this Mortal must put on immortality that word immortality is a fenosa and it means that you can&#39;t die but more than that you can&#39;t be subject to to disease or any defect so if your pancreas isn&#39;t working the way that it should be and you&#39;re a diabetic don&#39;t worry about it you won&#39;t be a diabetic in heaven if your appendix was taken out you won&#39;t have a scar there if you had knee Replacements you&#39;re not going to have titanium inside those knees anymore no yes you will be Flesh and Bones but it&#39;s going to be an immortal body but more than what we think of immortal see mortal means subject to death but not yet dead did you know that yeah Immortal means you&#39;re no longer subject to death but not only that you&#39;re no longer subject to disease or anything that can go wrong that&#39;s what a fantasa means so when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption and this Mortal shall have put on immortality then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written death is swallowed up in Victory oh death where is thy sting oh grave where is thy Victory why is it saying that because you&#39;ll never grow up you&#39;ll never be diseased if you have an amputation when you&#39;re taken up there that limb will be back yeah that&#39;s how you&#39;re going to be now I do have a question I started losing hair early by 28 I had a high receding hairline I don&#39;t know will I still have that I don&#39;t know anyways I don&#39;t think so and the reason I don&#39;t think so is because again I will have a glorified body in this context a perfect body so the fact that Jesus still retained his scars from his crucifixion it baffles theologians people there are books written on just this subject why did Jesus still have his scars but in my opinion it shouldn&#39;t baffle the theologians and the reason I don&#39;t believe it should baffle them is because I believe believe that Jesus chose to retain those scars and let me explain why by using an analogy when a couple gets married they exchange wedding rings as a token of their love and their commitment to each other in fact whenever I officiate a wedding ceremony I&#39;ll usually turn to the best man and I&#39;ll say may I have her wedding ring please and of course they all think that this is unique and it&#39;s never been done before the best man does this and then he turns to the groomsman next to him and he goes and they go all the way down and then until the finally have it and they pass it back up and you know everyone&#39;s laughing I&#39;m thinking I&#39;ve seen it once I&#39;ve seen it a hundred times but anyways just give me the wedding ring and I hold this wedding ring up and I say this wedding ring is a token it is a symbol of your love and commitment to each other it symbolizes the type of love that you should have for each other it shape as a circle with no beginning and no end much like agapy love that is the type of love you should have for one another a love with no end now how many of you have your wedding ring on that wedding ring is a symbol or a token of the vows that you&#39;ve taken it is a symbol or a token they mean the same thing of your loving commitment to each other well I personally believe that Jesus chose to retain his cars as a token of his love and commitment to us it&#39;s a token it&#39;s a symbol of the great price he had to pay in order to redeem us and make us his because he is the bridegroom we are the bride and it will remind us for all eternity of how much he loves us I believe that when I die and I go to heaven that when I see Jesus I&#39;m going to see the nail prints in his wrist they use the word hands because in their time wrists were part of the hands if you cut off the hands you cut it off about right here I believe I&#39;m going to see the nail prints in his feet I believe that if he opened up his robe I would see where they pierced him in his side that will be an eternal reminder a symbol or a token of his great love for the church and how he redeemed us and he purchased us with a great price so in my opinion his body was glorified but he chose to retain those scars now I want you to notice the disciples response look back at verse 41 still they stood there in disbelief filled with joy and wonder then he asked them do you have anything here to eat like a teenager but no actually this is not a good translation but to be fair none of the English translations are good because it&#39;s hard to translate what it actually says in the original Greek I hate to give you the indication that you really can&#39;t understand the Bible unless you understand Greek because 99% of the time you don&#39;t need to understand Greek to understand the Bible that&#39;s what&#39;s wonderful about the Greek languag is that it&#39;s very descriptive and as a result of that it translates very easily so 99% of the Bible you can you can understand without knowing Greek but about 1% of the Bible you cannot understand if you don&#39;t understand Greek so let me try and explain what this verse is trying to convey and then what I&#39;m going to do is I&#39;m going to show you the NIV trans how they translate this verse because it&#39;s probably the best translation so the best way to explain what this verse is trying to convey is to use a hypothetical situation as an illustration so I want you to imagine and this won&#39;t be hard for many of you because you buy lottery tickets all the time I want you to imagine that you won $300 million in the lottery now when you first hear the winning numbers you have to check your ticket not once not twice but over and over and over again and then you have to go to the website and look at those numbers and compare those numbers and then you want to make sure that you&#39;re not making mistakes so you know you ask someone else did you record it and you want to look at it again because you still can&#39;t believe you&#39;re holding the winning number and it might take a day or two to sink in maybe it&#39;ll take a week or two before it sinks in until then you just don&#39;t believe it in fact you keep saying that over and over to yourself I just don&#39;t believe it but you&#39;re looking at the winning ticket it&#39;s in your hand but still you don&#39;t believe it why it&#39;s 300 million well that&#39;s the type of unbelief this verse is talking about in other words it&#39;s too good to be true you believe it but you don&#39;t believe it so you keep saying to yourself I don&#39;t believe it and that&#39;s what the disciples were doing they were saying I don&#39;t believe it but they were looking at Jesus right in front of him uh in front of them but still they just couldn&#39;t believe it because it was too good to be true somehow some way Jesus had risen from the dead just like he said he would now let me show you how the NIV translates this verse because it&#39;s the closest translation to the original Greek notice what it says and while they still not did not believe it because of joy and amazement let me read that again that&#39;s kind of weird and while they still still did not believe it because of joy and amazement he asked them do you have anything to eat now do you see that they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement not because of Doubt but because it seemed too good to be true in other words this can&#39;t be real someone pinched me because this has to be a dream I see Jesus right in front of me but this can&#39;t be real so Jesus took it a step further in order to bring them back to reality so they would know yes this is real look at verses 41-43 still they stood there in disbelief filled with joy and wonder now why would they be filled with joy and wonder if they didn&#39;t believe you need me to ask you that again because you didn&#39;t catch it why would they be filled with joy and wonder if they didn&#39;t believe well they did believe and that&#39;s what the original Greek is telling us they did believe but they were having a hard time wrapping their head around it because it seemed too good to be true does that make sense that&#39;s what this verse is trying to convey but let&#39;s keep reading CU Jesus has to bring them back down to reality so it says still they stood there disbelief filled with joy and wonder then he asked them do you have anything here to eat they gave him a piece of broiled fish and he ate it as they watched you know it&#39;s kind of funny we have a little dog we&#39;re keeping we don&#39;t like pets but it&#39;s my baby daughter&#39;s pet so I love her pet and when I eat and I&#39;m chewing I sometimes will chew and just kind of go and I watch him do this as he keeps thinking something might fall out of his mouth and I&#39;m going to grab it now this is what I picture they give Jesus this piece of fish and they&#39;re all watching them as he chews it and he eats it they&#39;re watching it for a different reason but I want you to understand the reason they&#39;re watching Just to See Jesus eat made it real it brought them back to reality this was Jesus the same person that they shared so many meals with and inside they&#39;re going I can&#39;t wrap my head around it but this is Jesus he did rise from the grave just like he said he would now Jesus did one more thing before he vanished but Luke doesn&#39;t record it John does so turn with me if you would to the Book of John chapter 20 verses 19- 22 if you notice there&#39;s not many verses that&#39;s why we used Luke Luke goes into more detail but Luke leaves out something very important that John doesn&#39;t that&#39;s why we&#39;re jumping over to John so let&#39;s read this John 20: 19-22 that Sunday evening the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders see Luke didn&#39;t add that detail did he but the reason I said that he just appeared and they were behind doors that were locked because I&#39;d read it in John the doors were locked the windows were locked they were afraid of the Jews let&#39;s keep going suddenly Jesus was standing there among them peace be with you he said as he spoke he showed them the wounds in his hands and his side they were filled with joy when they saw the Lord again he said peace be with you as the father has sent me so I am sending you then he breathed on them and said receive the Holy Spirit now I want to zero in on verse number 22 then he breathed on them and said rece receive the Holy Spirit now people this is symbolic you see the moment they believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead and wanted Jesus to be Lord they were saved which meant that they had received the Holy Spirit because you can&#39;t be saved without the Holy Spirit turn to Romans chapter 8 verse number 9 and I will prove it to you notice what it says however you are not in the flesh but in the spirit if indeed the spirit of God dwells in you in other words lives inside of you but if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ he does not belong to him do you see that if the Holy Spirit does not dwell within you if the Holy Spirit does not reside within you you are not saved in fact let me kind of walk you through this process when I believe that God raised Jesus from the dead and wanting him him to be Lord something happened immediately mediately when I said Jesus I want you to be Lord I believe that God raised you from the dead the Bible says that by one Spirit the Holy Spirit we are baptized into one body Jesus body and then in that same chapter it says he that&#39;s joined to the Lord is one spirit so immediately when I believe that God raised Jesus from the dead and I wanted Jesus to be Lord Of My Life The Holy Spirit who&#39;s omnipresent what do we mean by omnipresent we mean that he&#39;s everywhere at all times you see some of you don&#39;t restrict him to space but you restrict him by time you say that I&#39;m the presentent means he&#39;s everywhere at the same time no no no no no Jesus is everywhere at all times Jesus is everywhere in the past present and future so 2,000 years ago when Jesus was getting ready to die for my sin I 2,000 years later believe that God raised him from the dead and want him to be Lord Of My Life The Holy Spirit immersed me baptized me into jesus&#39; body and we were joined and became one Spirit 2 Corinthians 521 says for Heath made him who knew no sin who is that Jesus to be sin or to be S on our behalf that we might be made the righteousness of God in him so we became one he became my sin and he was crucified for my sin in fact Paul says that he was crucified with him he said I am crucified with Christ nevertheless I live yet not I but Christ who liveth within me so when he was made my sin Jesus died on the cross for me but I was in him and when he died and the so went into hell I was in him because we were one Spirit jointed and when he paid the penalty for my sin I was in Christ and then when God looked into hell and he saw a soul had never sinned and all my sin was was paid for God legally raised him from the dead according to Leviticus 18:5 the man which doeth these things shall live by them so God looked into hell and he saw soul that had never sinned all the sin had been paid for so he said live and at that moment the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead but I&#39;m in Christ so the Holy Spirit regenerates me I&#39;m born again and the Bible says the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead now lives within me so why what happened is that very moment the Holy Spirit regenerates me I&#39;m born again and the Holy Spirit begins to live inside of me now here&#39;s what&#39;s interesting that happened 2,000 years ago but all of this took place in an instant like this the moment I believe that God raised Jesus from the dead and I confessed him as my Lord so the moment that those disciples realized that this is Jesus he really was resurrected he&#39;s right here and he&#39;s their lord at that very moment all those things I talked about happened like they had been immersed into him he died for them they were resurrected with them and the Holy Spirit was living inside of them they were born again now that&#39;s what took place so what happened at Pentecost well on the day of Pentecost God poured out his holy spirit upon them and they received the gifts of the Spirit and they were empowered you see there is a subsequent work of the Holy Spirit Pentecostals refer to it as the baptism of the Holy Spirit it doesn&#39;t matter what you refer to it as as long as you understand that there is a subsequent work of the Holy Spirit but that&#39;s not what I&#39;m teaching on the point I want to make this morning is that you can&#39;t can&#39;t be saved without the Holy Spirit regenerating you and residing within you and some people teach that the disciples did not receive the Holy Spirit until the day of Pentecost but if that was the case that would have meant that they weren&#39;t saved until the day of Pentecost until 50 days later and people that&#39;s not true they were saved the moment they belied that God raised Jesus from the dead and they confessed him as their lord so guess what Jesus does this is remember all five of these appearance happened on the same day the day that Jesus was resurrected when he&#39;s there and they figure out he&#39;s not a ghost when they figure out that this is truly Jesus Jesus breathed on them and said receive the Holy Spirit which symbolized their salvation which symbolized what had taken place in the spiritual realm in other words it symbolized what took place in the spiritual realm at the moment they placed their faith in Jesus now if you want to know more about Pentecost that&#39;s another series we&#39;ll talk about that when we talk about the Feast of the Lord but for now you need to know that the moment the disciples believed that God raised Jesus from the dead and confessed him as Lord they were saved and they immediately received the Holy Spirit that&#39;s why John included this in gospel he didn&#39;t want anyone to get the idea that the disciples weren&#39;t saved until the day of Pentecost no and that&#39;s what happens with you it&#39;s not actually the prayer that you pray what it is is that moment you believe that God raised Jesus from the dead and you want him to be Lord at that very moment those things that I talked about happened just like that that holy spirit because he&#39;s omnipresent is is there 2,000 years ago but he&#39;s also in the present he baptized you into one body Jesus body you were joined and became one Spirit which meant Jesus died for you which meant that he went to hell to pay the penalty for your sins but it also means when all your sins were paid for and God looked into hell saw so that had never sinned and he said rise at that moment because you were in Christ you were born again you were regenerated and the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead now dwells within in you that&#39;s what all those scriptures mean and all of the sudden the holy spirit is living inside of you and that scripture we read Romans chapter 8 verse 9 that if you don&#39;t have the spirit of Christ you&#39;re none of his that doesn&#39;t apply to you because now the Holy Spirit dwells within you and you are a child of God I can&#39;t see the spirit of God living inside of you but I can promise you God can the angels can even the demons can you see can I go a little bit deeper you guys don&#39;t mind do you when Jesus walked on this Earth he didn&#39;t have the adamic nature he was born of a virgin so he walked as the second Adam and the demons that were on this Earth had never seen a man since the Garden of Eden that was alive spiritually that&#39;s why they all recognized him it didn&#39;t matter where he went wherever he came demons would recognize him because they had not seen a man since the Garden of Eden before Adam had sin that was alive spiritually every man they had seen since the time of the Fall was dead spiritually except Jesus so when they saw Jesus they immediately knew who he was and what he was now here&#39;s what&#39;s interesting once you&#39;re born again they instantly see who you are and what you are you are born again and I promise you one day you will see the transformation and you will have a glorified body

nowhere does it say in any of the four gospels nowhere does it say anywhere in the Bible that Jesus walked out of the Tomb in fact the angel didn&amp;#39;t roll away the stone so Jesus could get out uhuhuh the angel rolled the stone away so people could look inside and see that Jesus wasn&amp;#39;t there the main reason and I love Easter because it&amp;#39;s about the resurrection yeah so normally on Easter I preach a very short sermon not this morning but usually I preach a very short sermon on the resurrection but this morning I&amp;#39;m going to do things a little bit different in fact I&amp;#39;m going to do something that I&amp;#39;ve never done before even though it&amp;#39;s Easter I&amp;#39;m going to start a series this morning and in this series we&amp;#39;re going to cover all of the people that Jesus revealed himself to after he rose from the dead you see Jesus Jesus didn&amp;#39;t just appear to a handful of people one or two times and then Ascend to heaven after he was resurrected oh no Jesus appeared to hundreds of people during the 40 days he was on this Earth after he was resurrected in fact turn with me if you would to the book of 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verses 1-8 and I want you to notice all of the people that Jesus revealed himself to after he rose from the dead notice what it says now I make known to you Brethren the gospel which I preach to you which also you receive D and which you also stand by which also you are saved if you hold fast the word which I preach to you unless you believed in vain for I delivered to you as of first importance what I received that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures now people that&amp;#39;s the gospel but here&amp;#39;s what&amp;#39;s sad many of you have been saved for 30 or 40 years you consider yourself to be a Christian you&amp;#39;ve been in church all of your life but if we were to do a pop a pop quiz this morning and I was to ask you to define the gospel many of you would know what to do what is the gospel well actually I&amp;#39;m going to tell you this morning the gospel is found in First Corinthians chapter 15: 3 and 4 it&amp;#39;s basically three things here&amp;#39;s the gospel Christ died for our sins he was buried and on the third day he rose again that is the gospel that&amp;#39;s the good news because Jesus died for our sins he was buried and he was resurrected we get to have eternal life that&amp;#39;s the gospel now we refer to the first four go for the first four books of the New Testament as gospels and the reason we do is because those first four books Matthew Mark Luke and John they talk about the life of Jesus and the ministry of Jesus but they all conclude with Jesus death Buri bual and Resurrection they each tell us the story of his death burial and Resurrection so they&amp;#39;re giving us the story of the Gospel so we refer to them as the gospels well let&amp;#39;s keep reading it says and that he was buried and that he was raised on the third day according the scriptures and he appeared to sephus anyone know who sephus is sephus is Peter in fact I used to have a cousin his name was Joe and we called him Josephus because his name was Jo of Peter and so we called him Josephus but sephus is actually an Aramaic term Jesus spoke an Aramaic and so when they were at uh the place where they were coming in and talking about the stone and Jesus said who do men say that I am well of course Peter answered and says you are the Christ the son of the Living God and he turned to him and he said in Greek we think he said it in Greek but he didn&amp;#39;t he said it in Aramaic he said you are sephus now because the Bible is written in Greek it translated as Petros Peter and at that point he started calling him Peter but in Aramaic it&amp;#39;s sephus when you when you transliterate that into Greek it&amp;#39;s keos and so Paul would always refer to him as the stone or the rock so this is Peter and he appeared to Peter then to the 12 after that he appeared to more than 500 Brethren at one time most of whom remain until now but some have fallen asleep in other words when Paul wrote this he said the majority of people that he revealed himself to they&amp;#39;re still alive you want to check it out go to Judea go to Jerusalem you&amp;#39;ll meet the majority of the 500 because they&amp;#39;re still alive some have fallen asleep but not the majority of them and then he goes further then he appeared to James then to all the apostles and last of all as a as it were to one untimely born he appeared to me also now this list isn&amp;#39;t comprehensive because because it doesn&amp;#39;t include the women that Jesus revealed himself to after he rose from the dead it only includes the men because of their culture but I don&amp;#39;t have time to go into their culture I&amp;#39;ll do that a little bit later and why women were not included but that&amp;#39;s later that&amp;#39;s in the next few weeks so we&amp;#39;re talking about hundreds of people who saw Jesus after he rose from the dead and I don&amp;#39;t mean sightings I&amp;#39;m not talking about someone saying that they saw Elvis in Las Vegas it was a side no these weren&amp;#39;t sightings I&amp;#39;m talking about people who saw Jesus and talked with J Jesus and who touched him with their hands and they verified that he was flesh and Bone and he wasn&amp;#39;t just some Spirit as John says in his first epistle in fact the resurrection of Jesus was confirmed by so many reliable witnesses that Josephus wrote about it 40 to 50 years later how many of you have the works of Josephus this is the works of Josephus in fact if you don&amp;#39;t mind let me read from his work Jewish Antiquities book 18 chapter 3 paragraph 3 in fact if you want to come up after the service and want to read it for yourself I&amp;#39;ve got it highlighted and I&amp;#39;ll have it bookmarked but I&amp;#39;m going to read to you exactly what Josephus said this is 50 years after the resurrection of Jesus he wrote this now there was about this time Jesus A wise man if it be lawful to call him a man why did he say that because Jesus was much more than a man Jesus was the god man Jesus was God incarnated he was one person two Natures a human nature and a divine nature and so Jes Josephus is saying I&amp;#39;m not even sure it&amp;#39;s lawful to call him a man and then he goes further for he was a doer of wonderful Works in other words Miracles a teacher of such men has received the truth with pleasure I don&amp;#39;t know if you caught that but that&amp;#39;s actually a jab at the Rel religious leaders who rejected Jesus and then he goes further he drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles he was the Christ now most of us think of Christ as a name because we refer to Jesus as Jesus Christ as if Jesus is his first name and Christ is his last name people Christ is not a name Christ is a title Christ is translated from the Greek word Christos and it literally means the anointed one which is the title of the Messiah so when we say Jesus Christ what we&amp;#39;re really saying is Jesus the anointed one Jesus the Christ the Messiah now that&amp;#39;s what Josephus is saying he&amp;#39;s saying Jesus was the Christ in other words Jesus was the Messiah the one person the Jews were looking for to redeem Mankind and then he goes further and when pilate at the suggestion of the principal men Among Us had condemned him to the Cross those that loved him him at the first did not forsake Him for he appeared to them alive again on the third day do you see that Josephus wrote about this people this isn&amp;#39;t the Bible this is extra biblical material and yet he&amp;#39;s a historian he&amp;#39;s saying Jesus rose on the third day and then he goes further as the Divine prophets had for told these and 10,000 other wonderful things concerning him and the tribe of Christians that&amp;#39;s kind of interesting you know why he calls them the tribe of Christians because at that time Christianity was thought of as a sect of Judaism they weren&amp;#39;t thought of as being separate from the Jews they were actually a sect of Judaism it&amp;#39;s not until about 100 AD that there&amp;#39;s actually a big split Jews go one way Christians go the other way because Christians were excommunicated out of the synagogue but you need to understand something in the beginning they were thought of as a sect and there&amp;#39;s 12 tribes of Israel so they thought of Christians as being the Third third tribe so he refers to him as the tribe of Christians so named from him and they&amp;#39;re not extinct at this day so even Jo Josephus acknowledged that Jesus rose from the grave in other words Josephus wrote this as a matter of fact because at that time it could be verified by numerous credible Witnesses so for Josephus there was no doubt about it Jesus was the Christ the son of the Living God who died for our sins and on the third day was resurrected yeah so what I want to do in this series is I want to go through the gospels and look at each event in which Jesus revealed himself after the resurrection but before I do that I need to explain something about the four gospels I&amp;#39;m talking about the gospel of Matthew Mark Luke and John so you&amp;#39;ll understand why I tend to jump from one gospel to another whenever I&amp;#39;m preaching on an event that&amp;#39;s recorded in the gospels because rarely do I ever stay in one gospel if I&amp;#39;m talking about a certain event that&amp;#39;s recorded one of the gospels normally I&amp;#39;m going to pull in details from the other gospels yeah in fact in this series I&amp;#39;m going to continually jump from one gospel to another as we look at each event in which Jesus revealed himself after he rose from the dead so let me explain why I do that and why it&amp;#39;s necessary to do that the first three gospels Matthew Mark and Luke are referred to as the synoptic gospels because they see the Jes the ministry of Jesus and much the same way you see the word synoptic literally means to see the same in fact the word synoptic comes from the Greek prefix soon literally we we pronounce it sin but it it not s i n but s y n and it means the same and the Greek word optic which means to view now when you combine these two words together it literally means to see the same so the synoptic gospels see the ministry of Jesus much the same way however just because because Matthew Mark and Luke see Jesus Ministry in much the same way doesn&amp;#39;t mean that they see it exactly the same they see it close to the same but not exactly the same in fact the differences in the stories they tell are based on their unique perspective and based on who their book was written to you see Matthew was written for a Jewish audience Mark was written for a Roman audience and Luke was written to a broader Gentile audience so what I&amp;#39;m telling you is this Matthew Mark and L cover most of the same events in Jesus life and the Book of them are from jesus&amp;#39; ministry in Galilee and they record those events and much the same order in fact 90% of the content in The Book of Mark is f found in the gospel of Matthew and about 50% of Mark&amp;#39;s content appears in the Book of Luke so that&amp;#39;s why the gospels Matthew Mark and Luke are referred to as the synoptic gospels it&amp;#39;s because they include much of the same stories often in a similar sequence and in similar or sometimes identical wording now the reason John&amp;#39;s gospel does not referred to as one of the synoptic gospels is because its content is comparatively distinct in other words it&amp;#39;s different it leaves a lot of things out but it also includes a lot of things that the others don&amp;#39;t and it emphasizes different things now whenever I study an event that&amp;#39;s recorded in the gospels I want to study it from all four perspectives I want to study from Matthew&amp;#39;s perspective from Mark&amp;#39;s perspective and from Luke&amp;#39;s perspective and from John&amp;#39;s perspective if it&amp;#39;s written in the Book of John so that I get a complete picture of that event in fact I want you to think of it like this each of the four gospels paints a picture of Jesus and his ministry but they&amp;#39;re all a little bit different because they each have unique details that others don&amp;#39;t have and the reason they have different details is because they each offer a unique perspective on the various events but when you take all of the details from each of the gospels and you bring them together you get a complete picture of Jesus and his ministry yeah see it on the back wall you get a complete picture when you combine all of the details taken from each of the gospels and that&amp;#39;s why you study an event from all four gospels and not just one and you&amp;#39;ll see what I&amp;#39;m talking about as I go through this series and we look at each event in which Jes Jesus revealed himself after his resurrection now whenever I&amp;#39;m studying an event recorded in the synoptic gospels I don&amp;#39;t want to have to keep flipping back and forth between the Gospels in other words I don&amp;#39;t want to have to turn to the Book of Matthew and read the event and then flip over to the Book of Mark and read the event and then turn to Luke and read the same event and then look to see if it&amp;#39;s recorded in John and if it is read the event and then go back and forth comparing each gospel with the other three to see if one adds something that the others don&amp;#39;t people that&amp;#39;s way too much work I don&amp;#39;t do that so what I do is I cheat anyone else cheat yeah I cheat and I look that up that event up in this book called The Harmony of the gospels because the harmony of the gospels arranges each event recorded in the gospels in parallel columns as an example the story of the women visiting jesus&amp;#39; tomb on the day he was resurrected is recorded in all four gospels it&amp;#39;s recorded in Matthew 28: 2-8 in Mark 16: 2-8 in Luke 24: 1-8 and also in the Book of John 20 ver number one and those passages of scripture are laid out side by side in parallel columns take a look on the back wall and you&amp;#39;ll see what I&amp;#39;m talking about this is on the back wall this is Pages 240 and 241 from the book Harmony of the gospels scanned and placed on the back wall in fact this is Page 240 and 241 that&amp;#39;s what&amp;#39;s scanned from these two pages now on your left you&amp;#39;ll see the title in fact let me just read the title so before every event they come in and they title the event so you know what event you&amp;#39;re talking about this is what I look like when I study by the way anyways here&amp;#39;s the title of this event it&amp;#39;s the visit of the women to the Tomb of Jesus about Sunrise Sunday morning and the message of the Angels about the empty tomb so on your left you see the title of this event on the right you see a subtitle and the subtitle here is gotha early Sunday morning and then you have each passage of scripture that deals with this event side by side in parallel columns in fact you can come up and read this and look at this afterwards but here&amp;#39;s what&amp;#39;s interesting in the First Column is The Book of Mark in the second column is Matthew in the third column is Luke and in the fourth column is John the reason Mark is in the First Column and not Matthew is because Mark was the very first go gospel that was ever written did you know that yeah that&amp;#39;s a new little tip just give you that so anyways it&amp;#39;s laid out Mark Matthew Luke and John so the harmony of the gospels makes it easy for me to compare what each one wrote with the other three I&amp;#39;m not flipping back and forth I&amp;#39;m actually reading them side by side I&amp;#39;m looking at all the details in each one of the gospels and I can start taking notes on the different details that each one provides so that I can get a complete picture of that event is everyone with me good so let&amp;#39;s get started this morning in our in our series and let&amp;#39;s start by looking at the burial of Jesus not the resurrection let&amp;#39;s start with his burial so turn with me if you would to the Book of John the Gospel of John chapter 19: 38-42 it says afterward Joseph of arthea who had been a secret disciple of Jesus because he feared the Jewish leaders asked pilate for permission to take down jesus&amp;#39; body when pilate gave permission Joseph came and took the body away with him came Nicodemus the man who had come to Jesus at night he brought about 75 pounds of perfumed ointment made from myrrh and alows following Jew Jewish burial Customs they wrapped jesus&amp;#39; body with the spices and L sheets of linen cloth the place of crucifixion was near a garden where there was a new Tomb never used before and so because it was the day of preparation for the Jewish Passover and since the tomb was Clos at hand they laid Jesus there now as you can see Joseph of arthea was a secret disciple of Jesus and the reason he was a secret disciple is because it would have been political suicide to be openly supportive of Jesus you see according to the gospel of Mark in the Gospel of Luke Joseph was a member of the Sanhedrin the Sanhedrin was the Supreme Court and the legislative assembly of Israel all rode into one it consisted of 71 members in fact if you want to get technical it was a Nazi and 70 members not German Nazi with a z but Hebrew Nazi which means president so you had a president of the Sanhedrin and then you had 70 members and these 70 members were known as counselors who had been selected to serve in the Sanhedrin based on their expertise on the Mosaic law but it was very very anti- Jesus so both Joseph of arthea and Nicodemus who were Believers had to keep their beliefs and their opinions about Jesus secret but that do doesn&amp;#39;t mean that they went along with them in their plot to get rid of Jesus in fact Luke tells us that Joseph didn&amp;#39;t consent to their plan to kill Jesus which means that he must have spoken out against it he must must have voted against it look with me if you would in the Book of Luke 23: number 50 and 51 here&amp;#39;s what it says now there was a man named Joseph a member of the Council the Sanhedrin was referred to the by the Jews as the great Council and all the members of the Sanhedrin were referred to as counselors so he was a member of the council the Sanhedrin a good and upright man who had not consented to their decision and action to kill Jesus now you need to understand something about the Sanhedrin they had to vote on everything and every member had one vote so in their plot to crucify Jesus they had to vote on it and so when they went around voting when they came to Joseph of AR arthea he didn&amp;#39;t consent to it and neither did he consent to the action so what it means is he voted against it and when they said let&amp;#39;s take him to pilate let&amp;#39;s accuse him of rebelling against Rome and having crucified he voted against that too that&amp;#39;s what this is saying and then it goes further he came from the Judean town of arthea and he himself was awaiting the kingdom of God so even in the Sanhedrin Jesus had those who believed in him the only problem was they were the minority they weren&amp;#39;t the majority and because there was so much animosity towards Jesus they had to be very careful about speaking out in support of him now under Roman law any person who was crucified for sedition as Jesus was was not allowed to be buried now most people don&amp;#39;t realize this the crime that they accused Jesus of was being seditious trying to rebel against Rome in fact if you remember when he was crucified they had this little wooden piece with his crime written above it and what did it did it say king of the Jews and the chief priests and the Pharisees didn&amp;#39;t like didn&amp;#39;t like that they wanted to say he claimed to be the the uh King of the Jews but pilate said no no no what I said will go on there King of the Jews but that&amp;#39;s why he was being crucified they accused him of being seditious even though he wasn&amp;#39;t now under Roman law any person who was crucified for being seditious for rebelling against Rome was not allowed to be buried instead they hung on the cross until their corpse fell to the ground as a result of decomposition literally they would fall apart on the cross and then the dogs would drag their bones off now the reason they left them on the cross was to send a message to everyone that if you rebel against Rome this is what will happen to you but the Romans made an exception for the Jews because of their beliefs in fact let just say something about the Jews this is not anti-semitic if we had Jews here they would agree with this the Jews were a peculiar people and they still are and the reason the Jews were a peculiar people is because they had all of these religious customs and habits but more importantly they believed that God had given them 613 Commandments and they were supposed to live by those Commandments and so they were a very peculiar people and Rome was ruling over them but what they found out is that they broke their religious laws these people would Riot they&amp;#39;re crazy so guess what the Jews would do even though they made no exception for other groups of people they always made exceptions for the Jews and their law so even though by their law if you were crucified for sedition you were not supposed to be brought down from that cross you literally rotted on the cross they made an exception for the Jews because the Jews believe something really interesting they believed in Deuteronomy chapter 21:23 notice what it says the body must not remain hanging from the tree overnight you must bury the body that same day for anyone who is hung is cursed in the sight of God in this way you will prevent the defilement of the land the Lord your God is giving you as a special possession so the Jews believe that if you hung overnight on a cross it would defile and pollute the land not only that it was a violation of one of God&amp;#39;s direct commands therefore they didn&amp;#39;t allow it so the Romans made an exception for the Jews and they allowed them to take down the body after the person had died but that&amp;#39;s also why they broke the legs of the two thieves they needed to speed up their death so that they wouldn&amp;#39;t be on the cross after the sunset the Jews didn&amp;#39;t allow that and the Romans didn&amp;#39;t allow them to come off the cross until they were dead so what did they do they came out with these big metal bars and they broke their legs so that they couldn&amp;#39;t push off and be able to breathe no they broke their legs so that they had to just hang until they became too weak to even breathe and they would suffocate but when they came to Jesus they didn&amp;#39;t break his legs why because he was already dead they didn&amp;#39;t take his life he gave it up but here&amp;#39;s what&amp;#39;s interesting it fulfilled the prophecy that not one bone of his body would be broken now what pilate intended was to have the soldiers throw Jesus corpse into the valley of gehenna which is just south of Jerusalem that&amp;#39;s where the Jews threw their trash in the bodies of criminals and of unclean animals and they would burn all of their trash in this Valley now the reason they burned their trash in the valley of gehenna is because the winds usually Blow from the Northwest to the southeast therefore it kept the stench out of the city but Joseph well fact let me go a little bit further anyone ever been to Jerusalem it&amp;#39;s built on there&amp;#39;s actually three valleys this there and that Southern Valley is called geh and it symbolizes hell and the reason it symbolizes hell is because it&amp;#39;s where they put their trash and they would burn the trash and you&amp;#39;d have these corpses that were criminals and these these unclean animals that were there and here&amp;#39;s what Jesus said about gehenna he said it&amp;#39;s where the worm dieth not and the fire is not crined because the fire never went out so it was a good picture of hell but anyways that&amp;#39;s where they intended to throw jesus&amp;#39; body but Joseph of arthea went to pilate and he asked for the body of Jesus Jesus and the reason that pilate agreed to see him was because he was a very rich man and he was a member of the Sanhedrin otherwise he would have never had an audience with pilate but he went to pilate and he asked for jesus&amp;#39; body but before Pilate could release the body he first had to confirm that it was dead because Roman law said you couldn&amp;#39;t come off the cross unless you were dead and after confirming it Mark chapter 15:44 says that pilate marveled that he was already dead but if you remember he died about 3:00 that afternoon in fact he died at the exact time that the high priest was killing the last Passover Lamb you see here&amp;#39;s the way it worked if you were participating in Passover you brought your lamb after inspecting it for 4 days and you brought it to the priest and they would cut its throat well at 3:00 it had to end because the last passover was being slaughtered and that was the high priest so he would take his sacrificial lamb his pass over them and he would cut its throat he would allow that blood to come out and then when the lamb collapsed the high priest would take a step back he would throw his arms out and he would say it is finished and at the very time he was doing that Christ was on the cross and at 3:00 he has his arms nailed to the cross he bows up and Jesus yells it is finished the spirit leaves and he dies because he gave up his life now the reason the high priest did that when he stepped back and he held his arms out he said it is finished it&amp;#39;s because it&amp;#39;s a rehearsal but what he&amp;#39;s telling the people is the last Passover Lamb has been slaughtered but you see that was just a rehearsal for the real deal when Jesus was on that cross he was our Passover Lamb and when he was getting ready to die he seals out it is finished symbolizing that he is the last Passover Lamb that will ever be slaughtered for man it&amp;#39;s because of what Jesus did that the angel of death passes over us because of what he&amp;#39;s done yeah so I got off on a little tangent I wasn&amp;#39;t really teaching about that but here&amp;#39;s what I want you to see pilate marveled that Jesus was already dead so he released the body to Joseph of arthea and he and Nicodemus took Jesus down from the cross they hurly cleaned the body and they wrapped it in a white clean linen cloth and they packed it with about 75 PBS of spices to stifle the odor of puic and they had to do it before the sun set so they didn&amp;#39;t have much time look at John chapter 19: 39 and 40 he was accompanied by Nicodemus the man who earlier had visited Jesus At Night Nicodemus brought a mixture of myr and allows about 75 lbs taking taking Jesus body what does it mean taking his body taking it off of the Cross and carrying it to the tomb the two of them wrapped it with the spices and strips of linen this was in accordance with Jewish burial Customs now Matthew Mark and Luke all tell us that Mary Magdalene and several other women followed Jose uh Joseph and uh Nicodemus and they saw where Jesus was buried which will be important next week now the next day the chief priests and the Pharisees went to pilate with their own request look at Matthew 27: 62-66 the next day the chief priest and the Pharisees went to pilate sir they said we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said now the word deceiver is translated from the Greek word plos and it literally means impostor fraud someone who leads the people astray so they said while this deceiver was still alive we remember that he said after 3 days I will rise again so give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day otherwise his disciples may come and steal the body and tell people that he&amp;#39;s been raised from the dead this last deception will be worse than the first take a guard pilate said go and make the tomb as secure as you know how so they went and they made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone now the word seal is translated from the Greek word sprago or yeah sprag sprag gido and literally what it means it refers to the impression made by a signant you would take either soft wax or soft clay and if it was a ring or maybe it was on a little Club you would push it into that wax you would push it into that soft clay and then it would Harden and you would have this imprint that was a seal and someone in power someone who had Authority would do this and basically what it said is that I&amp;#39;m in control of this this is mine I own this or this is under my possession and no one can open this unless they&amp;#39;re authorized to do so if they do it&amp;#39;s punishable by death yeah and then they posted the guard now it&amp;#39;s interesting that the chief priest and the Pharisees remembered Jesus prediction to rise again in fact this is the sole reason that they went to pilate they remembered that Jesus said that after three days he would rise again so they were going to use his words against him to prove that he was a fraud to prove Pro that he was a liar an impostor a deceiver notice what they asked pilate to do let&amp;#39;s read that again verses 63 and 64 sir they said we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said after 3 days I will rise again so give the order for the tomb to be made secure until when the third day and of course pilate gave his approval and told them to take a guard and to seal the tomb which meant that they were supposed to take Pilot&amp;#39;s orders to the commander at the Antonio Fortress now I don&amp;#39;t know if you know anything about the Antonio Fortress but it was right next to the Temple Mount its job was to make sure there was never a riot on the Temple Mount and so there was a good working relationship between the chief priest and the Sanhedrin and the commander at the Antonio Fortress so they took this order from pilate they take it to the commander at the Antonio Fortress and it said that they were supposed to dispatch a group of soldiers to seal the tomb and to guard it for three days which usually meant four to six soldiers working 12-hour ships if you guarded something it was usually in in pairs of four sometimes it could go as much as eight but normally it was four to six guards these guards were responsible for what they were guarding if it was a possession and stolen they were put to death if it was a person and he escaped they were put to death they didn&amp;#39;t have to watch for 72 hours they actually did it in shifts of 12 they could not leave until the next guards came to relieve them of their Duty now here&amp;#39;s the way they sealed the tomb first they verified that Jesus was in the Tomb because if they&amp;#39;re responsible for this person being in there they&amp;#39;re going to make sure that he is so the first thing they did is they rolled the stone away they walk into the tomb they see jesus&amp;#39; body laying there they take off the face plate they make sure that it&amp;#39;s Jesus they put it back on they check to make sure there&amp;#39;s no other way to get inside this tomb then they roll the stone back and then secondly they take soft clay and they put it between the stone and the walls of the Tomb all the way around the stone then they press the official seill of the Roman military into the soft clay then they take a rope and they attach it to the front of the stone with clay and to the wall of the Tomb with clay and again they take the signate and they impress the seal within that now the seal signified that the tomb could only be opened by a person authorized to do so by the Roman Commander or by someone of a higher rank than them in this case the person who was authorized to do so was the Nazi the president of the Sanhedrin or someone in that because pilate had given them the authority to place a guard and to seal the tomb so they had the authority to do it anyone else who opened the tomb who wasn&amp;#39;t authorized to do so would be put to death and the Goman guards were there to make sure that no one did it now the whole reason the chief priest and the Pharisees wanted the tomb sealed and so that they could open it after the third day to prove that Jesus was a fraud because he said that he was going to rise again after the third day he told the Pharisees that as Jonah was in the belly of the whale for three days and three nights so so shall the son of man be in the belly of the Earth for three days and three nights and as Jonah came out of the belly of the will after three days and three nights so shall the son of man come out of the belly of the earth after three days and three nights they understood what he was saying he was going to rise again not only that he told the Pharisees destroy this Temple and he was referring to his body and I will rebuild it in three days and they knew exactly what he was talking about you see Jesus didn&amp;#39;t just tell his disciples I&amp;#39;m going to be crucified and I&amp;#39;m going to rise again he also told the Pharisees and the chief priest so they knew that he was predicted he was predicting to do that so what they wanted to do is they wanted to open his tomb after three days and prove that he was a liar that he was an impostor they were going to have every member of the Sanhedrin come to that tomb walk inside look there see that his body is corrupting and that&amp;#39;s Jesus and then they were going to m bring all of the people that they could to come in and see it and say see the man was an impostor he predicted he would rise again but there&amp;#39;s his stinking rotting corpse kind of tickles me because the plan backfired on let&amp;#39;s see what happened three days later turn to Matthew chap 28: 1-6 early on Sunday morning as the new day was Dawning Mary Magdalene the other Mary went out to visit the tomb suddenly there was a great earthquake for an angel the Lord came down from heaven rode aside the stone and sat on it his face Shone like lightning and his clothing was as white as snow the guards shook with fear when they saw him and they fell into a dead faint then the angel spoke to the women don&amp;#39;t be afraid he said I know you&amp;#39;re looking for Jesus who was crucified he isn&amp;#39;t here he is risen from the dead just as he said it would happen come see where his body was laying now just as the women were arriving at the tomb there was this great earthquake but the earthquake was caused by this Angel descending from heaven and rolling the stone aside look back at verse number two and I&amp;#39;ll show you how we know that notice what it says suddenly there was a great earthquake four an angel of the Lord came down from heaven rode aside the stone and sat on it do you see that word four four is translated from the Greek word gar and it&amp;#39;s a causal conjunction it&amp;#39;s telling you what caused the earthquake in this case it was the angel when he came down and he took one arm and he pushed that he caused such a vibration the Earth there was a great earthquake now the Angel&amp;#39;s face Shone like lightning in other words there was a beam of light that&amp;#39;s what it means when it says that his face shown like lightning that word lightning is translated from the Greek word ASR in fact it comes from the root word Asar Asar means sun or star and it refers to a bright beam of light so when this angel came down from from heaven and he looks at the guards it&amp;#39;s like lightning and then all of a sudden it dissipates and they can see his face and with one arm he rose that stone and his clothes were as white as snow now when the guards saw this it says they shook with fear yeah that word shook is translated from the Greek word SEO SE W but we would pronounce it o Sayo but we pronounce it in Greek SEO our English word seismic comes from this Greek word seismic refers to the vibrations of the earth and crust whenever there&amp;#39;s an earthquake those those plates are moving actually there&amp;#39;s a vibration that&amp;#39;s what an earthquake is it&amp;#39;s vibrations but we usually translate it as tremble but that&amp;#39;s what the guards were doing when they saw this Angel and he rode this Stone they started vibrating we call it trembling and then they fell to the ground as if they were dead how many of you have ever had a dream where someone was after you and you were so scared and in the dream you were trying to get away from them but it&amp;#39;s like you were frozen or if you couldn&amp;#39;t move it&amp;#39;s like you were in slow motion this is what happened to the guards they started trembling and then they fell to the ground and they were petrified they were so scared they couldn&amp;#39;t move a dollar says they peed their pants and then the angel casually climbs up on the Rock and he sat down and he looked over the ladies who were also petrified they&amp;#39;re frozen in shock and he said don&amp;#39;t be afraid I know you&amp;#39;re looking for Jesus who was crucified he isn&amp;#39;t here he&amp;#39;s risen from the dead just as he said he would come look inside the tomb you&amp;#39;ll see that he&amp;#39;s gone now here&amp;#39;s what&amp;#39;s interesting and probably none of you have ever thought about this nowhere does it say in any of the four gospels nowhere does it say anywhere in the Bible that Jesus walked out of the Tomb in fact the angel didn&amp;#39;t roll away the stone so Jesus could get out uhuhuh the angel rode the stone away so people could look inside and see that Jesus wasn&amp;#39;t there you see when Jesus was raised from the dead his new body was a resurrected body and it was an extradimensional body which meant that he could step from one dimension into another in other words Jesus could instantly appear and disappear he could go through walls and Stones just like Angels let me give you two examples and we&amp;#39;re going to close with this look at John chapter 20: 19 that Sunday evening evening the disciples were meeting behind locked doors all the doors and windows were locked people because they&amp;#39;re afraid notice what it says because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders suddenly Jesus was standing there among them and he said boo no no but it had the same effect he said peace be with you and it&amp;#39;s like whoa where did you come from Jesus but he didn&amp;#39;t just do this once he did this twice look at John chapter 20: 26 8 Days Later the disciples were together again and this time Thomas was with them the doors were locked but suddenly as before Jesus was standing among them peace be with you he said now I don&amp;#39;t know about you but this would have scared the Jesus out of me I probably Jesus don&amp;#39;t do that but my point is this the angel didn&amp;#39;t roll the stone away so Jesus could walk out of the Tomb uh-uh he rode the stone away so people could look inside and see that Jesus wasn&amp;#39;t there people Jesus was alive as he predicted and just as the prophets had proph prophesied and that&amp;#39;s what we celebrate today that God has the authority over the Seal of death you see Jesus not only overcame sin but he also overcame the consequences of sin which is death we all look to Jesus for our salvation and we think that salvation means that when we die we get to go to heaven but that&amp;#39;s only half of it people when I die my soul will go to be with Jesus but that&amp;#39;s only half of the Salvation process what&amp;#39;s the other half because Jesus was resurrected The Book of John tells us that we will have the same type of body on the day of Resurrection my body that&amp;#39;s corrupting in that grave will be resurrected it will be joined and reunited with my soul and I will have a body like Jesus an extradimensional body in which I can step from this threedimensional world into another dimension but I can still come back to this earth during the Millennium and I can rule and reign with Jesus I won&amp;#39;t just be a spirit I will be flesh and Bone like Jesus that&amp;#39;s what salvation is and that&amp;#39;s what the resurrection means we will live last week I did something that I&amp;#39;ve never done before I started a series on Easter now I don&amp;#39;t know if it was good idea or not you know sometimes I have these great ideas I sit out I do them and I find out later they weren&amp;#39;t that great but after 30 years of doing the same thing every year I decided to do something different you see normally on Easter I preach a short simple sermon on the resurrection of Jesus Christ but I&amp;#39;ve always felt like I&amp;#39;m sure changing you because there&amp;#39;s so much more to the story than just he&amp;#39;s alive now don&amp;#39;t get me wrong that&amp;#39;s the most important thing in the world as Paul said if Christ not be not R risen from the dead we are still in our sins and that&amp;#39;s true so the most important thing in the world is Jesus was resurrected and I&amp;#39;m not making light of that but I also want you to realize that there&amp;#39;s more to the story than just that so what I decided to do this year is to go a little bit deeper and to do that I had to turn it into a series now I&amp;#39;ve entitled this series The Resurrection but the focus is on all of the people that Jesus revealed himself to after rose from the dead you see Jesus didn&amp;#39;t just appear to a handful of people one or two times after his resurrection no Jesus appeared to hundreds of people during that time period of 40 days after he was resurrected and these weren&amp;#39;t just sightings it wasn&amp;#39;t like someone saw Elvis in the building no these weren&amp;#39;t just sightings these were people who saw Jesus who talked with Jesus and who touched Jesus with their hands to verify that he was flesh and Bone and not just a spirit in fact the resurrection of Jesus was confirmed by so many reliable witnesses that Josephus wrote about the resurrection 50 to 60 years later so what I want to do in this series is I want to go through the gospels and I want to look at each incident in which Jesus appeared to someone after his resurrection and we&amp;#39;re going to start with Mary Magdalene because she&amp;#39;s the first person who saw Jesus after he rose from the dead so if you would turn with me in your Bible to the Book of John chap 20 and as you&amp;#39;re turning there let me remind you that we can&amp;#39;t just study this incident from John&amp;#39;s perspective not if we want to get a complete picture of what happened on that Sunday morning you see the other gospels add little bitty details that John doesn&amp;#39;t so to get the full story we&amp;#39;re going to have to supplement John&amp;#39;s account of what happened with details from the other gospels but people I&amp;#39;m not making a jab at John I&amp;#39;ve had people come up to me after I&amp;#39;ve taught certain things and they would say Pastor Allan which of the gospels is your favorite and I I don&amp;#39;t have a favorite well which one would you recommend I read and I said I can&amp;#39;t really tell you that because they each are written to different audiences and they each add little details so when I make this comment about John I&amp;#39;m not taking a jab at him I&amp;#39;m not being um in in a sense deprecating towards him that&amp;#39;s not what I want to do because we&amp;#39;d have to do the very same thing regardless of which God goel we used people if we use Mark&amp;#39;s account we would have to supplement it with details from John&amp;#39;s version of what happened that morning and we would have to do the same thing with Matthew and Luke&amp;#39;s version that&amp;#39;s just the way it is now having said that let me explain why we&amp;#39;re using John&amp;#39;s account rather than one of the others first of all John&amp;#39;s version of the story focuses on Mary Magdalene so he&amp;#39;s going to go into much more detail than the other gospels in fact the the only reason we need the other gospels is because as I said they add little bitty details that are helpful in painting a complete picture secondly John&amp;#39;s version shows us the emphasis that Jesus placed on women you see Matthew Mark and Luke combine all the women who went to the tomb that morning into one group and they simply give you a brief synopsis of what happened without really going into much depth because from their perspective they&amp;#39;re just women and I&amp;#39;m not being facius I&amp;#39;m being honest about the way that women R viewed in their culture at that time in fact of the synoptic gospels only Mark mentions that Mary Magdalene was the first person to see Jesus after his resurrection and he just mentions it in passing look at Mark 16: 9-1 and I&amp;#39;ll show you what I&amp;#39;m talking about after Jesus rose from the dead early on Sunday morning the first person who saw him was Mary Magdalene the woman from whom he had cast out seven demons she went to the disciples who were grieving and weeping and told them what had happened but when she told them that Jesus was alive and that she had seen him they didn&amp;#39;t believe her now you want to know why they didn&amp;#39;t believe her they didn&amp;#39;t believe her because she was a woman and I&amp;#39;ll explain more about that in just a second now Matthew and Luke chose to combine Mary magdalene&amp;#39;s personal Encounter With Jesus with jesus&amp;#39; appearance to all the other women in that group you see even though they were two separate events they chose to group them together as if they were one of because they just wanted to present a brief synopsis of what happened why because from a Jewish perspective they&amp;#39;re women and that&amp;#39;s what you would expect in their culture you see in their culture women could not serve as Witnesses in fact according to Jewish law the Witnesses in a court of law had to be men never women because a woman&amp;#39;s testimony was never considered to be valid yeah people that&amp;#39;s why Paul doesn&amp;#39;t mention women in his list of all the people who who saw Jesus after he rose from the dead if you go home today and you look in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 starting verse number one the first three to four verses or the gospel and then after that he list all of the people who saw Jesus not one of them is a woman why because they would not accept the testimony of women yeah that&amp;#39;s why Paul didn&amp;#39;t mention them it&amp;#39;s because in their culture you didn&amp;#39;t accept the testimony of women so Matthew and Luke didn&amp;#39;t see any reason to go into great detail when it came to the women being used as witnesses to the resurrection of Jesus so they just put them all into one group and then mentioned that Jesus appeared unto them and Mark only mentions it in passing that Mary Magdalene was by herself when Jesus appeared to her now if their culture didn&amp;#39;t accept the testimony of women why did Jesus appear to them before he did anyone else anyone know any guesses well first of all it&amp;#39;s because God places just as much value on women than he does that he does men look at Galatians 3: 26- 28 says for you are all children of God through faith in Christ Jesus and all who have been United with Christ in baptism have put on Christ like putting on new clothes there is neither Jew nor Gentile slave nor free male nor female for you are all one in Christ now some people accuse Christianity as being discriminating against women but let me say this if it wasn&amp;#39;t for Christianity women you would have never been liberated Christianity is what liberated you fall is what puts you under subjection or submission let me let me go a little bit further in fact let me just go off on a tangent how many of you mind if I go off on a tangent let&amp;#39;s chase a rabbit just for a second if you would turn with me to Genesis 3 verse number 16 this isn&amp;#39;t in the notes so I just decided I might do that this morning because I get tired of hearing about Christianity and and how uh it set women back I want you to understand something if it wasn&amp;#39;t for Christianity women you would never be where you are today why is that because of of the of sin and what took place at the fall notice what it says in Genesis 3: number 16 he said unto the woman this is after the fall he said I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception and sorrow Thou shalt bring forth children and thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee now here&amp;#39;s what&amp;#39;s interesting most people don&amp;#39;t understand what that means the scripture says that the women would shall have desire towards her husband but they don&amp;#39;t understand what that means when it he says desire that word is used in Genesis 4 verse number 7 this is when Cain and Abel we having the little spat here and God speaks to Cain and he tells them that sin is at the door and it&amp;#39;s desire desire is for you and what does he mean but that word desire it&amp;#39;s the same word that&amp;#39;s used in Genesis 3: number 16 it means he wants to control you he wants to rule you so what this is saying is after the fall women wanted to control their husbands women wanted to manipulate their husbands but then he goes further and he says but he shall rule over you and that saying the very same thing you know what men want to do they want to control their wives they want to rule over their wives but I want you to understand it wasn&amp;#39;t like that before the fall before the fall men and women were equal Adam and Eve were co-s joint heirs with Jesus Christ they weren&amp;#39;t one up here and one down here it wasn&amp;#39;t like that at all it was because of the Fall that we have this and we need to understand this so when we&amp;#39;re looking at this and we&amp;#39;re talking about women we need to understand Christianity has put them forward it has brought them to the status that they&amp;#39;re supposed to be which is walking side by side Not underneath and so we should never look at Christianity and think that it discriminates against women because that is not true that&amp;#39;s not what it says and that&amp;#39;s why it&amp;#39;s so interesting that when Jesus resurrects the first two groups of people that he uh appears to are women women now let&amp;#39;s go further why would Jesus do that why would he appear first to women well first of all it&amp;#39;s because he wanted to show us that God places just as much value on women that he does men secondly it provs that the story of Jesus his resurrection was not fabricated you see if the disciples had made this story up then they would have made the story as believable and as acceptable to Their audience as possible which means that they would have used all men as Witnesses and not women but they had to report it as it really happened with a woman Mary Magdalene is the very first witness to the to the resurrection of Jesus and a group of women is the second let me tell you in their culture this proves that the story is true this proves that the resurrection of Jesus is true because Jews would have never done that so now that you know all of that let&amp;#39;s get started on the story turn back to John chap 20 veres 1 and 2 and follow along with me as I read this early on Sunday morning while it was still dark Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been roled away from the entrance she ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciple the one whom Jesus loved she said they have taken the Lord&amp;#39;s body out of the Tomb and we don&amp;#39;t know where they have put him now if you&amp;#39;re not careful when you read John&amp;#39;s version you get the idea that Mary magdaline went to the tomb by herself but people that&amp;#39;s not the case and the reason we know that is because of what she said in verse number two look at verse number two again and I want you to notice the word we says she ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciples IP Le the one whom Jesus loved she said they have taken the Lord&amp;#39;s body out of the Tomb and we don&amp;#39;t know where they have put him do you see that word we that means she was with other people when she went to the tomb and the other gospels tell us who those other people were Matthew lists two people it says Mary Magdalene and the other Mary Mark says the group of women included Mary Magdalene Mary the mother of James and salom and Luke adds one more to the list he lists Joanna so the group of women who went to the tomb that morning were Mary Magdalene Mary the mother of James salom and Joanna now there might have been a few more but if so they&amp;#39;re not listed by name we know that those four were in the group but there was probably probably seven or eight women now when this group of ladies got to the tomb the to Stone had just been rolled away and they saw this Angel sitting on top of the stone and as I said last week the angel spoke to the women and he said said don&amp;#39;t be afraid I know you&amp;#39;re looking for Jesus who was crucified he isn&amp;#39;t here he&amp;#39;s risen from the dead just as he said he would come look inside the tomb you&amp;#39;ll see that he&amp;#39;s gone and then go quickly and tell the disciples that Jesus is risen from the dead now this is all recorded in Matthew chap 28: 1-8 but this is where John&amp;#39;s account of what happened that morning starts so this is where we want to start everything else just kind of at the pace this lays the foundation but this is where John picks the story up so let&amp;#39;s look back at John chapter 20 and let&amp;#39;s read verses 1-10 early on Sunday morning while it was still dark Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been roled away from the entrance she ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciple the one whom Jesus loved she said they have taken the Lord&amp;#39;s body out of the Tomb and we don&amp;#39;t know where they have put him Peter and the other disciples started out for the tomb they were both running but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first he stooped and looked in and saw the linen wrappings lying there but he didn&amp;#39;t go inside then Simon Peter arrived and went inside he also noticed the linen wrappings lying there while the cloth that had covered jesus&amp;#39; head was folded up and lying apart from the other wrappings then the disciple who had reached the tomb first also win in and he saw and believed for as yet they still didn&amp;#39;t understand the scriptures that said said Jesus must rise from the dead then they went home now the story implies that Mary Magdalene jumped to the conclusion that someone had taken jesus&amp;#39; body from the tomb and had moved it and this is how she got separated from the other women this is how she became separate from the group once she saw the Stone Road aside and she heard the angel and he told her I know you&amp;#39;re looking for Jesus who was crucified he&amp;#39;s not here he&amp;#39;s risen from the dead come look and inside the tomb you&amp;#39;ll see that he&amp;#39;s gone she didn&amp;#39;t look inside the tomb like the other women instead she took off running to tell Peter and John that someone had taken the body of Jesus now obviously she didn&amp;#39;t believe the angel in fact she might not have known that he was even an angel Hebrews chap 13 verse number two tells us that some people have entertained angels unaware in other words they didn&amp;#39;t realize it believe it or not maybe you&amp;#39;ve seen an angel but you didn&amp;#39;t recognize them as an angel why because they look like us when they appear they look like men in fact if you read this closely it talks about and two men were there and then it tells us they were Angels but they look much like us but for whatever reason she didn&amp;#39;t recognize them as angels and she took off running to tell Peter and John that someone had taken Jesus body so obviously she didn&amp;#39;t believe that Jesus had risen from the dead to her this was a a sick Twisted act perpetrated by the Pharisees and uh the chief priest and the reason I say that is because she immediately suspected that it was them look at verse number two and I&amp;#39;ll show you how I know that it says she ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciple the one whom Jesus loved she said they have taken the Lord&amp;#39;s body out of the Tomb and we don&amp;#39;t know where they have put him notice that she didn&amp;#39;t say someone she said that and who was she referring to when she said they she was referring to Jesus&amp;#39;s enemies the chief priest and the Pharisees the same ones that had him crucified so as Peter and John heard that they took off running to the tomb and of course John was in his early 20s Paul or Peter was probably in his early 40s so John outran Peter to the tomb but he didn&amp;#39;t go inside he looked inside but he didn&amp;#39;t go inside and what he saw was the linen w Happ lying there not wded up not thrown to the side just lying there and then Peter reached the tomb but he didn&amp;#39;t stop at the entrance like John did now Peter&amp;#39;s one of those type of guys that he&amp;#39;s going to experience it he&amp;#39;s going to walk on water he&amp;#39;s going to go with Jesus he wants to be where Jesus is he&amp;#39;s kind of like Joshua was with Moses when everyone else wanted to stay down at the bottom of the mountain not Joshua he wanted to go with Moses well Peter was like that so when Peter runs to the he doesn&amp;#39;t stop at the at the outside of the Tomb and look in no he goes inside and so he saw what John didn&amp;#39;t see he saw the linen wrappings lying there but he also saw the cloth that covered jesus&amp;#39; head folded up and lying apart from the other wrappings now there&amp;#39;s been a lot of speculation as to the signific significance of that because that&amp;#39;s really an interesting detail in fact just last week I saw an article going around Facebook anyone see the article about this this very thing anyone see that article no one all right well what this article said is it said that the folded facecloth was jesus&amp;#39; way of telling us that he would return you see supposedly wealthy Jews at the time of Christ had servants who served them their food and if they needed to get up from the table but they intended to return to the table to finish eating then what they would do is they would fold their napkin and that told the servants not to take the food because they weren&amp;#39;t through they were going to return and continue eating but if they wed up their napkin and they threw it on the table then it told their servants that they were through they could take their plate they could clean up because they weren&amp;#39;t going to return so when Jesus folded the cloth that covered his face it meant that he would return now does that remind anyone did anyone see that article on Facebook I&amp;#39;m the only one well I wanted to put a little Emoji but I know that I&amp;#39;m snarky and I was going to put the little emoji that showed a little happy face uh laughing and had the tears coming out because the truth of the matter is people that&amp;#39;s an urban legend that&amp;#39;s not true sorry to burst your bubble but that&amp;#39;s not what it meant now let me explain how I know it&amp;#39;s not true first of all the face cloth was not in the shape of a napkin it was about 8 in wide and 6 feet long in fact the face cloth was wrapped around the head several times very tightly and the purpose of it was to keep bugs out of the mouth the eyes and the nose for as long as possible you weren going to keep them out entirely but nothing would be worse than to go there and to finish preparing the body because many time for the Jews they could not finish the body in the in the day that they first buried them so they would go back and what they didn&amp;#39;t want is to find all these bugs that are coming in and flies that are landing on the eyes or going in the nose or in the ears so what they would do is they would wrap the head very very tight to keep these bugs from going into the mountain the nose the eyes the ears for as long as possible in fact turn with me if you would to the Book of John 11 and I&amp;#39;ll show you how Lazarus body was wrapped up look at verses 43 and 44 this is John chap 11 everyone remember Lazarus you guys are kind of dead out there Lazarus is the person that he raised from the dead so notice what it says then Jesus shouted Lazarus come out and the dead man came out his hands and feet bound in grave cloths in fact if you read this if you can translate this from the original Greek it&amp;#39;s literally as if he levitated why because they would wrap each leg and then wrap the legs together and they would wrap the body and they would wrap the arms and the arms would be right to the side and as a result of that he didn&amp;#39;t have the ability to move so he says Lazarus come out and the dead man came out his hands and feet bound in graved cloths his face wrapped in a head cloth Jesus told them unwrap him and let him go he didn&amp;#39;t even have the ability to unwrap himself you see the body was wrapped with strips of linen cloth kind of like a mummy and the face cloth was wrapped around the head approximately six to seven times so people it wasn&amp;#39;t a napkin that you folded now turn back to John chap 20: 6 and 7 and I want you to notice what Peter saw in jesus&amp;#39; Tomb because this is an interesting detail then Simon Peter arrived and went inside and he also noticed the linen wrappings lying there not wed up not on the floor not tossed to the side lying where Jesus had been while the cloth that had covered jesus&amp;#39; head was folded up and lying apart from the other wrappings now I I want you to underline that phrase folded up because it&amp;#39;s not what you think that phrase folded up is translated from the Greek word into liso into liso and in liso means Road from being twisted around something or wrapped around something so what Peter saw was the face cloth still rode up as it had been when it was wrapped around jesus&amp;#39; head and it was lying in the very same place where Jesus head would have been if he was still lying in the Tomb in fact I want you to notice how the NIV translates this because it&amp;#39;s a better translation from the original Greek notice what it says as well as the as the cloth that had been wrapped around jesus&amp;#39; head the cloth was still lying in its place separate from the linen now what&amp;#39;s the implication the implication is that when Jesus was resurrected his body went right through the grave cloths wrapped around his body and they simply fell down right where they were were in other words he wasn&amp;#39;t unwrapped let me give you a good picture of this how many of you saw the passion that Mel Gibson directed well let me show you the resurrection scene and I want you to notice the grave cloths the grave cloths are not the same way they really would have wrapped him but it will give you an idea of what happened let&amp;#39;s run that video notice how the grave cloths just kind of went down people that&amp;#39;s a good depiction of what would have happened it&amp;#39;s a good depiction of what I&amp;#39;m showing you when Peter went inside the tomb and he looked to the side he saw the grade cloths that had wrapped his body lying right where Jesus had been and then he looked where the head had been and it says it was folded up what that means into liso means that it was wrapped in the same way it had been wrapped around his head in the very same place it had not been unwrapped is what Peter is telling us so what it&amp;#39;s telling us is that when Jesus was resurrected he went right through those clothes the difference between him and Lazarus is that Lazarus did not have a resurrected body Lazarus died years later so Jesus raised him from the dead but he was not given a resurrected body but when Jesus was resurrected he had what we call an extradimensional body yes he was flesh and Bone and not just a spirit but his flesh and Bone body is an extradimensional body which meant that he could pass through material substances whenever he wanted to now I know that blows your mind but people that&amp;#39;s what the Bible teaches and once you understand that then you good you get a good picture of what&amp;#39;s going to happen to us John tells us that we don&amp;#39;t know what we&amp;#39;re going to be like but we do know we will be like him that&amp;#39;s what the Bible tells us when we&amp;#39;re resurrected we&amp;#39;re going to be like him and when you understand what an extra dimensional body is that not only are you bound to this three-dimensional world but you can actually step out of it do you really understand the Rapture in fact let me go off on another tangent I didn&amp;#39;t really plan to do this but let&amp;#39;s go ahead and do how many of you know where the Rapture is found the Rapture is found in the book of 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 go ahead and turn with me if you would to 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 notice what it says and now dear brothers and sisters we want you to know what will happen to the Believers who have died so you will not grieve like people who have no hope let me just say this as Christians when someone dies who&amp;#39;s a loved one we grieve but we don&amp;#39;t grieve like those who have no hope let me tell you one of the hardest things I ever had was when my mom passed away but I do not grieve like those who have no hope and then Paul goes along and tells us what our hope is notice what he says for since we believe that Jesus died and was raised to life again we also believe that when Jesus returns God will bring back with him the Believers who have died so the implication is when a person dies who believes in Jesus their soul goes to be with the Lord but one day when Jesus comes back those people are coming back with him let&amp;#39;s keep on reading we tell you this directly from the Lord we who are still living when the Lord returns will not meet him ahead of those who have died for the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a commanding Shout with the voice of the Archangel and with the trumpet call of God first the Christians who have died will rise from their graves now wait a minute I thought it said those who have died and believe in Jesus are coming back with him well if they&amp;#39;re coming back with him how can they rise from their graves well the scripture teaches that as a Believer when we die our body is buried and goes in the ground but our soul goes to be with the Lord so what Paul is telling us in 1 Thessalonians chapter 4 is that when Jesus comes back The Souls of everyone who&amp;#39;s died is they are coming back with Jesus and all of the bodies that are in the ground are going to be resurrected and reunited with their soul and those people will have a resurrected body just like Jesus but then it goes further he says then together with them we are who are still alive and remain on the earth will be caught up in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air then we will be with the Lord forever Paul tells us it&amp;#39;s going to happen in the twinkling of an eye but here&amp;#39;s what I want you to understand when Jesus returns if we&amp;#39;re in this church when he returns then we&amp;#39;re going to be caught up that that word is harpazo it means snatched up from the Earth to meet the Lord in the air but here&amp;#39;s what&amp;#39;s interesting Paul tells us it&amp;#39;s going to happen in the twinkling of an eye but not only that if we&amp;#39;re we&amp;#39;re inside a building how in the world are we going up are we going through this roof are we going to hit the ceiling and keep bouncing off of it till we can finally get to a door and get out no we&amp;#39;re going to have an extradimensional body we&amp;#39;ll be sitting in here I&amp;#39;ll be preaching and 50% of you will probably go with the Rapture with me the other 50% are going to wonder what happened where are you Pastor Allan you were there a second and then boom you were gone you won&amp;#39;t see us slowly Ascend up Jesus did that on his Ascension on the on the Mount of allies but he did that for the disciples sake when it happens with us instantly we&amp;#39;re gone we were there a second and then we&amp;#39;re gone but the reason we&amp;#39;re going to be able to do that is because we&amp;#39;re going to have a body just like Jesus an extra dimensional body and the resurrection gives us insight into what that that means now I want you to notice how that impacted Peter and John look back at verses 8-10 in John chapter 20 here&amp;#39;s what it says then the disciples who had reached the tomb first also went in and he saw and believed for as yet they still didn&amp;#39;t understand the scriptures that said Jesus must rise from the dead then they went home so at that point John believed that Jesus had R had risen from the dead in spite of the fact that he still yet didn&amp;#39;t understand the scriptures that prophesied that the Messiah must first die and then be resurrected even though he didn&amp;#39;t understand those scriptures he looked at the evidence of the empty tomb and he believed what Jesus had predicted that he would rise again Peter on the other hand had no idea of what happened Luke 24: number 12 says that Peter was wondering to him to himself what had happened in other words he was still trying to figure it out now John and Peter represent the two ways people respond when they hear the gospel for the very first time some people are like John they don&amp;#39;t know about all the scriptures that talk about a messiah coming and dying for our sins being our propitiation and satisfying the wrath of God against sin they don&amp;#39;t know about the scriptures that prophesy about Jesus being resurrected they just simply come and hear that they&amp;#39;re a sinner their sin has separated them from God Jesus has come to pay the price for that and God raised him from the dead and based upon that they believe then you have others like Peter they hear the very same thing and they wonder what does that mean and they don&amp;#39;t respond to the gospel yet so you actually have two types of people and I&amp;#39;m not telling you that one is better than the other because Peter becomes one of the greatest disciples that Jesus ever had and he evangelized the world but you see that&amp;#39;s two types of people and that&amp;#39;s that&amp;#39;s what it represents now after Mary Magdalene told Peter and John that someone had taken jesus&amp;#39; body she followed them back to the tomb but the implication is she couldn&amp;#39;t keep up with him think about this she had already walked to the tomb with a group of women about two miles away when she saw that jesus&amp;#39; body wasn&amp;#39;t in the Tomb and heard he wasn&amp;#39;t there she took off running when she got to Peter and John she probably is out of breath and she says they&amp;#39;ve taken his body away and we don&amp;#39;t know where it is they immediately take off running so she goes okay now she&amp;#39;s going to follow them so she starts trying to keep up with them but she can&amp;#39;t so by the time she reaches the tomb Peter and John are already gone they&amp;#39;ve left which meant that she was at the tomb by herself look at verses 11-8 in John chapter 20 Mary was standing outside the tomb crying and as she wept she stood up stooped and I&amp;#39;m sorry she stooped and looked in she saw two white robed Angels one sitting at the head and the other at the foot of the place where the body of Jesus had been dear woman why are you crying the Angels asked her because they have taken away my Lord she replied and I don&amp;#39;t know where they have put him now can you see this she still doesn&amp;#39;t quite recognize these are angels Man start asking more questions listen to them but she still doesn&amp;#39;t have it together so she goes on she turned to leave and saw someone standing there it was Jesus but she didn&amp;#39;t recognize him either dear woman why are you crying Jesus asked her who are you looking for she thought he was the gardener sir she said if you have taken him away tell me where you have put him and I will go and get him Mary Jesus said she turned to him and cried out Rabani which is Hebrew for Teacher actually it&amp;#39;s not but we&amp;#39;ll talk about that in a minute don&amp;#39;t cling to me Jesus said for I haven&amp;#39;t yet ascended to the father but go find my brothers and tell them I am ascending to my father and your father to my God and your God Mary Magdalene found the disciples and told them I have seen the Lord then she gave them his message now I want you to notice that when Mary Magdalene returned to the tomb she still believed that the chief priest and the Pharisees had stolen jesus&amp;#39; body and had moved it somewhere and to top it off with she looked into the tomb she still didn&amp;#39;t recognize that these two men were angels in fact fact when they asked her why she was crying this is what she said because they have taken away my Lord and I don&amp;#39;t know where they put him and then she turned around and she saw Jesus standing there but she didn&amp;#39;t recognize him as Jesus and probably the reason she didn&amp;#39;t recognize him as Jesus is because she&amp;#39;s sobbing this has been such an emotional morning they&amp;#39;ve taken my Lord I don&amp;#39;t know where they are I&amp;#39;ve run back to tell Peter and John I&amp;#39;ve tried to get back here as fast as I can and she&amp;#39;s probably sobbing and doing what most people do when they SOB her eyes are kind of blurry CU she&amp;#39;s been wiping them she&amp;#39;s got snot running down her face and no one wants to be seen like that so what do you do when you&amp;#39;re like that you look at the ground and you kind of put your heads over your face and you I&amp;#39;m sorry I just have a and that&amp;#39;s what she&amp;#39;s doing she&amp;#39;s looking at the ground she can see the feet of someone there and she just suspects it&amp;#39;s the gardener and so he wants to know why she&amp;#39;s crying and she tells him you know if you&amp;#39;ve taken his body somewhere please let me know and I&amp;#39;ll get him and that&amp;#39;s when Jesus said dear woman why are you crying who are you looking for and of course he goes a little bit further after she says that and that&amp;#39;s when he said Mary and she recognized the voice so she turned and she said raboni now I told you it&amp;#39;s not Hebrew it&amp;#39;s actually Aramaic is Rabani and it&amp;#39;s transliterated into Greek and we transliterate it and it&amp;#39;s pronounced raboni but the Hebrew word and they took it and took it from this and used it is Rabbi and yes it does mean teacher but if you trace it back it literally means great it was an exalted title for someone who was supposedly a very well-respected teacher and so what she says is Rabbi but she says it in Aramaic she says Rabani and that&amp;#39;s when she knows and of course her first reaction was to reach out and hug him she&amp;#39;s been looking for him and so what&amp;#39;s her first reaction to hugging but he steps back and he probably puts his hand up and he says don&amp;#39;t touch me for I have not yet ascended now there are some people that says what he was saying is go ahead and touch me just don&amp;#39;t cling to me cuz I got to leave no no no no that&amp;#39;s not what he said when he said don&amp;#39;t touch me that&amp;#39;s the Greek word hopto and it literally means don&amp;#39;t touch me but then he explains why he says for I&amp;#39;ve not yet ascended to my father that word ascended is translated from the Greek word on AO that&amp;#39;s a compound word which simply means it&amp;#39;s made up of more than one word in this case it&amp;#39;s made up of two words the limma boo which means to go and Anna which means up and what he says is for I&amp;#39;ve not yet gone up to the father now this is very important because there are those who believe that Jesus did not descended into hell in order to pay for our sins people this tells us right here here that when Jesus died his soul was separated from God in order for him to pay for the penalty for our sins and he&amp;#39;s telling her I have not yet gone up to the father don&amp;#39;t touch me because of that I&amp;#39;m getting ready to do something and I must be pure and undefiled now after he does that and he appears to other people can touch him as much as they want but right now they&amp;#39;re not to touch him and then he goes further but go find your brothers and tell them that I&amp;#39;m ascending to my father and your father all of the sudden the relationship has changed you see Jesus had always referred to God as his father and the Jews didn&amp;#39;t like it in fact in the Old Testament you&amp;#39;ll never find any saint referring to God as their father but Jesus did and that&amp;#39;s why the Pharisees and the chief priests didn&amp;#39;t like him because God was not his father in their mind but he always referred to God as father but then he says something different here he says go and find your brothers and tell them that I&amp;#39;m ascending to my father and then he goes further and your father because of what he&amp;#39;s done we&amp;#39;re adopted into the family of God and he&amp;#39;s now our father and then he says to my God and your God now does anyone know what he&amp;#39;s talking about when he says I&amp;#39;ve not yet ascended well again he was talking about ascending to heaven to present the souls of all of those who&amp;#39;ve been in the bosom of Abraham as a first fruits offering but that&amp;#39;s next week next week we&amp;#39;re going to see the scripture that talks about certain dead people coming out of the grave and walking around Jerusalem for a while why did that happen what did Jesus do when he ascended what does it mean in Ephesians when it says he first descended and then he ascended taking captivity captive well this is what Jesus was talking about and that&amp;#39;s what we&amp;#39;re going to look at next week two weeks ago on Easter we started a new series entitled The Resurrection but the focus of this series is on all the people that Jesus revealed himself to after he rose from the dead you see Jesus didn&amp;#39;t didn&amp;#39;t just appear to a handful of people one or two times after he was resurrected no Jesus appeared to hundreds of people during the the 40 days he was here on this Earth after his resurrection and people these weren&amp;#39;t just sightings it wasn&amp;#39;t like someone saw Bigfoot down around cooken how many you know what I&amp;#39;m talking about no these weren&amp;#39;t sightings these were people who saw Jesus and who talked with Jesus and who touched Jesus with their hands to verify that he was flesh and Bone and not just a spirit in fact the resurrection of Jesus was confirmed by so many reliable witnesses that even Josephus wrote about it 50 to 60 years later so what we&amp;#39;re doing in this series is we&amp;#39;re looking at each incident in which Jesus appeared to people after his resurrection and we started with Mary Magdalene because she&amp;#39;s the first person to see Jesus after he rose from the dead but if you remember something weird happened in her Encounter With Jesus something very unusual and I want to look at that before we move on in this series so turn with me if you would to the Book of John chapter 20 we&amp;#39;re going to read verses 17 and 18 18 Jesus said unto her touch me not for I am not yet ascended to my father but go to my brethren and say say unto them I ascended to my father and your father and to my God and your God Mary Magdalene came and told the disciples that she had seen the Lord now this is after the resurrection and that he had spoken these things unto her do you see that Jesus said don&amp;#39;t touch me now that&amp;#39;s kind of weird because Jesus allowed everyone else to touch him after he rose from the dead but not Mary Magdalene why it makes you wonder why Jesus wouldn&amp;#39;t allow her to touch him but he would allow everyone else to touch him but that&amp;#39;s not the only weird thing that happened on that day in fact at the very same time that Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene Jerusalem experienced what we might call a zombie apocalypse that it wasn&amp;#39;t a real zombie apocalypse I&amp;#39;m not into zombies how many of you like The Walking Dead you know my my nieces and nephew they love The Walking Dead and they&amp;#39;re always talking about it I&amp;#39;ve never seen the show don&amp;#39;t really care about it but this wasn&amp;#39;t a zombie apocalypse I guess that&amp;#39;s considered to be a zombie is the Living Dead well these weren&amp;#39;t the Living Dead these were the living living but I want you to understand this was in a sense an appearance like never before and these people were freaked out turn to Matthew chap 27: number verses number 51- 53 and I&amp;#39;ll show you what I&amp;#39;m talking about notice what it says at that moment the curtain of the temple was torn into two from top to bottom the Earth shook the Rocks split certain tombs broke open and the bodies of many Saints who had died were raised to life they came out of their tombs after Jesus resurrection and they went into the holy city what is the holy city Jerusalem and they appeared to many people now people I don&amp;#39;t know about you but that&amp;#39;s weird in fact fact I can&amp;#39;t imagine anything weirder than that so what in the world was going on first of all Jesus wouldn&amp;#39;t let Mary Magdalene touch him the veil of the temple was torn into from top to bottom the stones on certain tubes tombs rolled open and after jesus&amp;#39; Resurrection the Saints in those tombs rose from the dead and not only that they went into Jerusalem and they appeared to many of their friends and their family and then poof they were gone and never mentioned again now how do I know that they actually appeared to their friends in their family because if they didn&amp;#39;t just appear to their friends in the family no one would have known that they were resurrected but they had to have known them and so when they walked into Jerusalem and all of a sudden you see Uncle Tom who you just buried or or Aunt Lucille who you know was buried maybe two weeks ago and now she&amp;#39;s at your house wouldn&amp;#39;t you think maybe this was a zombie apocalypse and then all of a sudden poof they had this extra dimensional body so when it&amp;#39;s time for them to leave they&amp;#39;re G gone instantaneously what in the world happened now here&amp;#39;s what&amp;#39;s interesting only Matthew records this happening and do you want to know why it&amp;#39;s because his book was written specifically to the Jews if you remember Mark&amp;#39;s gospel was written to the Romans Luke&amp;#39;s gospel was to a more broader Gentile audience and then John&amp;#39;s gospel was written to the world in other words it was for everyone but Matthew&amp;#39;s gospel was specifically written to the Jews and only a Jew would have understood the significance of what happened that morning and what it signified in other words the reason that Matthew is the only gospel that wrote about these things is because only a Jew would have understood what happened that morning and why it happened if you weren&amp;#39;t a Jew you wouldn&amp;#39;t have had a clue as to why those things happened that&amp;#39;s why when we read it it doesn&amp;#39;t really make sense I can&amp;#39;t tell you the number of times as a child we would get to this point when we were going through Sunday school and and the and the Sunday school teacher would say I have no idea what happened and boy it was just so interesting but the reason we didn&amp;#39;t understand is because we&amp;#39;re Gentiles all we know is that when Jesus was resurrected that morning some really weird things happened and it&amp;#39;s kind of freaky so what did the Jews know that we don&amp;#39;t well it all goes back to the Jewish feast so if you don&amp;#39;t mind let me explain a few things about the Jewish feast but first let me warn you that we&amp;#39;re not going to go in depth we don&amp;#39;t have time to go in depth so I&amp;#39;m just going to be explaining the Bare Basics so you&amp;#39;ll understand what happened that morning why Mary Magdalene was not allowed to touch him why these Stones rode open on the tombs why these people came out right after Jesus Christ was resurrected why they went into Jerusalem and then poof they were gone I&amp;#39;m going to show you why that happened so let&amp;#39;s take a let&amp;#39;s learn a little bit about the Feast of the Lord and let&amp;#39;s take a little informal poll of if you don&amp;#39;t mind if you&amp;#39;ve heard of the Feast of the Lord and you know a little bit about them I want you to raise your hand right now I see one or two if you&amp;#39;ve never heard of the Feast of the Lord or you&amp;#39;ve heard of them but you really don&amp;#39;t know anything about them I want you to raise your hand all right that&amp;#39;s the majority of you that&amp;#39;s kind of what I thought that tells me that I&amp;#39;ve got to keep it very very simple so let&amp;#39;s start with the basics and if you&amp;#39;re taking notes I want you to write this down there were seven feast of the Lord that every Jewish male was required to keep the Feast of Passover the Feast of unleavened bread the Feast of first fruits the Feast of Pentecost the Feast of trumpets the Feast of atonement and the Feast of Tabernacles the first three feasts were celebrated in the spring so naturally guess what they called them the spring feast and they were also celebrated together so the Jews normally refer to all three of them as Passover so when you&amp;#39;re reading through the Bible and it talks about them in the Old Testament going to Jerusalem to celebrate Passover they&amp;#39;re actually talking about the first three feasts the Feast of Passover the Feast of unle bread and the Feast of first fruits sometimes they refer to all three of those feasts as the Feast of unleavened bread but I want you to understand even though they will call it by one thing they were actually three distinct Feast Passover was celebrated on Nissan the 14th the Feast of unleavened bread began the next day on the 15th and it lasted for seven days the Feast of first fruits was celebrated on the marrow after the Sabbath during that week we don&amp;#39;t talk like that anymore right so in other words on the Sunday after the 15th of Nissan the Feast of Pentecost was celebrated 50 days from the Feast of first fruits you counted seven sabbaths which was 49 days and on the next day the 50th day you celebrated Pentecost so it was always celebrated on the Sunday just like the Feast of first fruit now the last three feasts were celebrated in the fall so as you might have guessed they refer to them as what the fall feast and they were also celebrated together the Feast of trumpets was celebrated on the 1 of tishy the Feast of atonement was celebrated on the 10th of Tish those are Hebrew months if you want to know and the Feast of Tabernacles was celebrated on the 15th of tishy so and it lasted for seven days so you had three spring feasts that were celebrated together then you had the Feast of Pentecost 50 days after that and then the three fall feasts that were celebrated together so three times a year all Jewish males living in Israel were required to go to Jerusalem in order to keep these three feasts now there&amp;#39;s seven feasts in all but they refer to them as three feasts the spring Feast Pentecost and the fall Feast look at Deuteronomy 16:1 16 and you&amp;#39;ll see what I&amp;#39;m talking about three times in a year all your males shall appear before the Lord your God in the place which he chooses and what was that place if you come on Wednesday nights you know Jerusalem so three times in a year all your males shall appear before the Lord your God in Jerusalem at the Feast of Passover that&amp;#39;s referring to all three spring feast and at the Feast of Pentecost and at the Feast of Tabernacles which is referring to all three of the Fall feast and they shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed so in the month of Nissan you went to Jerusalem to celebrate the spring Feast 50 days later you went to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Pentecost and in the month of tishy you went to celebrate the fall feast and you were required to do that if you lived in Israel every year every year no exceptions now if you lived outside of the nation of Israel you still were required to keep the feast you just didn&amp;#39;t have to go to Jerusalem but if you lived inside of Israel you were required to go to Jerusalem three times a year to celebrate these feasts now the feast had had two purposes and if you&amp;#39;re taking notes write this down the first purpose was to commemorate certain events in Israel&amp;#39;s history Every Nation tends to do that we do that how many of you celebrate the 4th of July anyone celebrate the 4th of July yeah you shoot off fireworks or you go to a fireworks display and if you&amp;#39;re a pagan you drink beer right what does that make you I&amp;#39;m just sorry just kidding anyways why do we celebrate the 4th of July we celebrate the 4th of July because we&amp;#39;re commemorating the Declaration of Independence that&amp;#39;s why we do that yeah now the first purpose of the feast was to commemorate certain events in Israel&amp;#39;s history or his Israel&amp;#39;s past the Feast of Passover commemorated the slaying of the Passover Lamb in Egypt look at Exodus 12: 21 through 24 you probably studied this when you grew up going to Sunday school here it is then Moses called for all the Elders of Israel and said unto them go and take for yourselves Lambs according to your families and slay the Passover Lamb and you shall take a bunch of hsip and dip it in the blood which is in the Basin and apply some of the blood that is in the Basin to the lentil into the two doorpost and none of you shall go outside the door of his house until morning for the Lord will pass through to Smite the Egyptians and when he sees the blood on the lentil and on the doorpost the Lord will pass over the door and will not allow the destroyed to come into your house to Smite you that&amp;#39;s why it&amp;#39;s called Passover the angel of death will pass over your house when they see the blood then he goes further and you shall observe this event as an ordinance for you and your children for how long forever how many of you know when Jesus Christ comes back we will not be celebrating Easter during the Millennium what will we be celebrating the Feast of Passover why because Jesus is the Passover he&amp;#39;s also first fruits that&amp;#39;s why he was resurrected so we will be celebrating the Jewish feast why don&amp;#39;t we do that today because we would be weird if we did that you wouldn&amp;#39;t understand it so we call it Easter but what we&amp;#39;re really celebrating is Jesus is our Passover Lamb but I&amp;#39;m getting ahead of myself the Feast of unleavened bread commemorated the The Exodus from from Egypt when they left they left in such a hurry that they didn&amp;#39;t have time to leev the dough for their bread look at Exodus Chap 12: 33-34 and the Egyptians urged the people to send them out of the land in haste for they said we shall all be dead so the people took their dough before it was leaven with their kneading bows bound up in the clothes on their shoulders so remember when they they they slew the Passover Lamb they applied the blood they were supposed to do that with the shoes on their feet and the staff in their hand because God knew what was going to happen when the angel of death passed over and all of the firstborn in Egypt died they wanted Israel out they were scared to death that they were all going to die so they came to them and said you got to leave and you got to leave now and that&amp;#39;s what they did they left Exodus 12: 33-34 the Egyptians urged the people to send them out of the land in haste for they said we shall all be dead so the people took their dough before it was leavened with their kneading bows bound up in the CL on their shoulders now the Feast of first fruits commemorated the crossing of the Red Sea if you remember once they sent them out the Egyptians had a change of heart so they chased after the Israelites and they trapped them between the Red Sea and their army and you all know the story God divided the Sea and the Israelites walked to the other side on dry land when the Egyptians followed them God released the water and they all drowned but the Jews passed safely across to the other side so they literally passed from Death to life you see they all thought they were going to die behind them was the Egyptians Army in front of them was the Red Sea there&amp;#39;s no place to go we&amp;#39;re all going to die but God performed this miracle he divided the Red Sea there was this wall of water on each side this wind came in it dried out the the riverbed and they walked on dry land and there was this fire behind them that didn&amp;#39;t allow the Egyptians to come after them until they were on the other side and then it went up so thep ipans they came into the Red Sea and of course God had the waters come back and they all drowned yeah now the Israelites when they were on the other side they were considered to be the first fruits of God&amp;#39;s chosen people and that&amp;#39;s what the Feast of first fruits commemorates they crossed the Red Sea and they pass from Death to life and they became the first fruits of God&amp;#39;s chosen people the first fruit roots of what&amp;#39;s going to be a huge Nation much later now after they crossed the Red Sea it took them 47 days to get to Mount Si and then Moses told them to consecrate themselves for three days because God was going to come down and reveal himself on Mount Si so on the 50th day Pentecost the Lord appeared to Moses on Mount Si and he gave him the Ten Commandments and on that day Israel officially became a nation now they were God&amp;#39;s people before then but that&amp;#39;s when they officially became a nation and that&amp;#39;s what the Feast of Pentecost commemorated God giving the Israelites the law yeah so what&amp;#39;s Pentecost it&amp;#39;s commemoration of God giving the law The Ten Commandments now I&amp;#39;m not going to go into the fall Feast because we don&amp;#39;t have time to do that sometime in the future I&amp;#39;m going to do a series on the Feast of the Lord because every Christian should know the Feast of the Lord and I&amp;#39;ll cover all of the feast when I do that Series so that&amp;#39;s the first purpose of the feast all right it&amp;#39;s to commemorate certain events in Israel&amp;#39;s history the second purpose of the Feast of the Lord was to provide a prophetic picture of what the Messiah would do let me say that again so if you&amp;#39;re taking notes you write this down the second purpose of the Feast of the Lord was to provide a prophetic picture of what the Messiah would do in fact Leviticus 23: number two tells us that the Feast of the Lord were meant to be rehearsals notice what it says this is Leviticus 23:2 speak unto the children of Israel and say unto them concerning the Feast of the Lord these seven feasts you see on the back wall which you shall Proclaim to be holy convocations now I want you to underline that word convocations convocations is translated from the Hebrew word mikra and it literally means rehearsals so what Leviticus 23:2 is 2 is saying is that the the Feast of the Lord were meant to be holy rehearsals now does everyone know what a rehearsal is I&amp;#39;m sure you do a rehearsal is when you practice something in preparation for a future event some of you have children in dance how many of you have children in dance what do they do well when they have a recital they schedule rehearsals in other words they practice what they&amp;#39;re going to be doing at the recital now according to Leviticus 23: number two the Feast of the Lord Lord are rehearsals so when the Jews kept the feast they were actually rehearsing what the Messiah would do when he came yeah so the first purpose of the Feast of the Lord is to commemorate things in the past but the second purpose is to be a rehearsal to practice what the Messiah is going to do when he comes in other words everything they did during the feast was was exactly what the Messiah would do when he came now the spring Feast has to do with the first coming of the Messiah and the fall Feast has to do with the second coming of the Messiah in fact look at the back wall let me stand up just for a second look at this back wall in Jesus first coming he was the Passover Lamb we&amp;#39;ll go a little bit into that you&amp;#39;ll see that he fulfilled it to the most minute detail now here&amp;#39;s what&amp;#39;s interesting and what most people don&amp;#39;t understand you would slay the Passover Lamb on Nissan the 14th but you would begin to roast it and when you roast it you didn&amp;#39;t actually eat of it until the evening after the sun went down now we reckon days from Midnight to midnight but the Jews didn&amp;#39;t do that when the sun went down it started another day so you actually partook of the Passover meal during the Feast of unliving bread why because leav represents sin and what the Passover Lamb does is he takes away the sin remember when John the Baptist just saw Jesus what did he say Behold the Lamb that taketh away the sins of the world so when you were taking or participating in the Feast of the Passover Lamb and you were eating of that lamb you also ate with unleavened bread why because the Passover Lamb takes away the sins of the world and how long did you eat unleavened bread seven days why seven is a number of significance it means perfect and complete so he took away perfectly and completely our sin so Jesus comes he&amp;#39;s our Passover Lamb he also takes away the L we eat that for seven days on Sunday first fruits Jesus was resurrected and he&amp;#39;s the first fruits of the Resurrection we&amp;#39;ll find out he did a little bit more on that then we get to the Feast of Pentecost what happened on the Feast of Pentecost that&amp;#39;s when God gave the law after Jesus was resurrected 50 days later what was the Fulfillment of Pentecost God gave the spirit the life brings or the Commandments bring forth and the law brings forth death what does the spirit bring forth life so on Pentecost we see the Fulfillment anyone know what&amp;#39;s going to happen on Trumpets the Feast of trumpets the Rapture yeah the Rapture is going to take place I&amp;#39;ll talk a little bit more about that when we go to the feast what&amp;#39;s going to happen on the great day of atonement Jesus physically returns to the Earth what&amp;#39;s the Feast of Tabernacles the Feast of Tabernacles is when Jesus Christ is going to set up his kingdom here on the earth and Reign for a thousand years we&amp;#39;re going to Tabernacle with the Lord ain&amp;#39;t that good now since the Messiah has already come the first time we can see how he fulfilled the spring Feast so let me walk you through the three the first three feast and how Jesus fulfilled them down to the most minute detail but we&amp;#39;re not going to look at all the details because I don&amp;#39;t have time instead what we&amp;#39;re going to do is we&amp;#39;re going to look at what I consider to be the high points and the major things that Jesus did to fulfill the spring Feast first of all how many of you remember Jesus triumphant inry Jesus triumphant entry into Jerusalem occurred on the 10th of Nissan which was a very very important day to the Jewish people turn back to Exodus 12: 2-6 and I&amp;#39;ll show you why notice what it says this month is to be for you the first month the first month of your year tell the whole community of Israel that on the 10th day of this month 10th day each man is to take a lamb for his family one for each household if any household is too small for the whole lamb they must share one of their nearest with their nearest neighbor having taken into account the number of people there are you are to determine the amount of land needed in accordance with what each person will eat the animals you choose must be year old males without defect and you may take them from the sheep or the goats take care of them until the 14th day of the month when all the members of the community of Israel must slaughter them so this is talking about the Passover Lambs so on the 10th of Nissan every household was supposed to select a Passover Lamb and and every day for 4 days you were supposed to inspect it to ensure that your Passover Lamb had no flaws to ensure that it was perfect now when Jesus entered into Jerusalem on a donkey all of the people began singing Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord hosana in the highest which is a Messianic Psalm it&amp;#39;s Psalm 118:26 you see every Jew at the time of Jesus knew that these Feast were rehearsals and they expected the Messiah to come to fulfill the feast so on the 10th everyone would pick their Passover Lamb and the high priest he would pick his his lamb represented the lamb for the entire nation his was referred to as we&amp;#39;ll find out the final Passover Lamb so when he brought his lamb in the people would begin to shout yes blessed is he that comes in the name of the Lord hosana in the highest but what they were doing was rehearsing for when the Messiah would really come well on the 10th of Nissan Jesus does this triumphal entry which is the very same day the high priest is bringing in the Passover Lamb and everyone begins to shout and many of the people recognize and realize this is the Messiah so they start saying this Messianic Psalm but it goes a little bit further the people begin shouting hosan to the son of David which is a Messianic title so again the Jews knew that the feast were rehearsals and they were expecting the Messiah to come to fulfill the feast so this just wasn&amp;#39;t just a triumphant entry this was Jesus entering as the Messiah and as the final Passover lamp and for four days he was on the Temple Mount being examined by the people the priests and the religious leaders just as the Passover Lambs were being examined every day for 4 days so what you would do is you got your Passover Lamb on the 10 you expected it inspected it you inspected on the 11th the 12th and the 13th on the 14th day you&amp;#39;re going to slay it Jesus arrives on the 10th he&amp;#39;s examined by the religious leaders the 10th the 11th the 12th and the 13th what day is he going to be crucified he&amp;#39;s going to be crucified on the same day that the Passover Lambs are going to be slain so that&amp;#39;s what takes place and at the end of Jesus tribe this is what&amp;#39;s interesting how many of you remember when they arrested him and brought him before Pilate at the end of his trial before he was led away to be crucified what did pilate say pilate said I find no fault in him those are the very words that the Jews were supposed to say after examining their lamb for 4 days and right before they sacrificed it every person who had their sa their Passover Lamb when they brought it up they had been expecting it for 4 days this is now the day to sacrifice it they would bring it before the priest and they would say I found no fault in it and that&amp;#39;s when they would slay it well that&amp;#39;s exactly what pilate said about Jesus not once but twice I find no fault in him now the last lamb to be sacrificed every year for Passover was always the high priest lamb that&amp;#39;s why it was called the final Passover Lamb and it was sacrificed at the 9th hour which is 3 p.m. and the reason that it had to be done by 3 P.M was because he had another ritual to perform before the sun went down so at the ninth hour the high priest sacrificed his lamb and as soon as he sacrificed his lamb and he caught the blood in the bow after he caught all the blood he would take a step back he would spread his arms and he would shout it is finished and at the very time that the high priest spreads his arms and shouts that Jesus is on the cross he takes one more gaps of air and he shouts out it is finished and he died now listen to me Jesus still had to descend into hell to pay for our sins so why in the world did he scream it is finished well I tell you why because as God&amp;#39;s high priest he was letting us know that the final Passover Lamb had been slain and we would never ever have to sacrifice a Passover Lamb again he was the final Passover Lamb and as the Passover Lambs were going into the ovens jesus&amp;#39; body was going into the grave and as the Lambs were being cooked by fire Jesus Soul was in hell now the high priest still had a ritual to perform before the sun went down on that day the day of Passover he had to Mark the first fruits that were going to be offered to God in the temple on the first day of the week Sunday that&amp;#39;s when you celebrated the Feast of first fruits the biering so after the final Passover Lamb had been slain the high priest and his Entourage would would cross the Kidron Valley how many of you have ever been to Israel I&amp;#39;ve been to Israel several times when you stand on the Mount of Olives you can look across the Kidron Valley and you see the temple Mount if you&amp;#39;re on the Temple Mount you can look out over the Kidron Valley and you see the Mount of Olives so after the the final Passover Lamb had been slain the high priest and his Entourage they would cross the Kidron Valley and they would walk up the Mount of Olives to the small barley field that the Levites had planted just for this event and then what they would do is they would go into this barley field and they would reach out the high priest would and he would grab as much of the stalks of the barley that he could and he would bring them together and then he would hold it with one arm and try to bring a little bit more in and then he would stretch out with the other arm and try to bring a little bit more in in until he finally had it all and then he had an assistant that was with him and he would come in and he would grab it for him then the high priest would take the cord and he would wrap it around and he would tie it all right but he didn&amp;#39;t cut them he did 10 sheaves like that but they were still attached to the ground they were not cut those 10 sheaves were being marked as the first fruits they were the sheaves that were going to be offered to God in the temple on the day of the Feast of first fruits all right now the scripture tells us that about the time they were tying those sheaves there was an earthquake and it caused the tombstones on certain tombs to roll open people that&amp;#39;s what Matthew was talking about and I&amp;#39;m sure they must have stopped for a second as they felt the trimmer of the trimmers of the earthquake but when the earthquake stopped they finished what they were doing so after the first fruits were marked the high priest and his Entourage they went back to the temple simple Mount and they ate their Passover meal as I said you fixed the Passover and you got everything ready but you actually didn&amp;#39;t eat it till the sun went down and when the sun went down it started a new day which was the day of what the day of unliving bread why did you wait until then because the Passover Lamb takes away the sin of the world so you have to eat it with unleavened bread symbolizing that this Passover Lamb is taking away our sin everyone understand all right and then as they were participating and they were partaking of the Passover Lamb then Friday passed and then Saturday passed and about an hour before the sun was to rise on the first day of the week it was finally time to harvest the Bim that&amp;#39;s the Hebrew word for the first fruits because the first day of the week during the Feast of unleavened bread is when the Feast of first fruits was celebrated so the high priest in his Entourage he always had people with him his people what do you call them peeps so the high priest and his peeps they would go back to the same barley field on the Mount of Olives and it was normally about 5: to 5:30 in the morning you see the first hours what they called the first hour was 6:00 CU that&amp;#39;s usually when the sun came up in Israel then you had the third hour 9:00 right then you had the sixth hour which was noon and then you had the ninth hour which was 3:00 in the afternoon well they had to re this before the sun came up had no idea why they were doing this but you need to remember that before right before the sun came up when was Jesus resurrected yeah so let&amp;#39;s keep going so about 5 or 5:30 in the morning before the sun came up the high priest and his Entourage would climb back up on the mouth of olives and then they would walk up to each one of the sheaths that had been marked and the high priest would take a sickle and he would cut the bottom of the stalks freeing them from the roots that TI them to the Earth in fact that&amp;#39;s how they described it that&amp;#39;s very significant these stalks that were tied to the Earth he literally would cut them freeing them from being tied to the Earth and then he would Place each one of the sheath into a basket to take back to the temple to present to God and at the same time the high priest was harvesting the first fruit at the very same time that he was cutting those stalks Jesus was resurrected but not just Jesus turn to Matthew Chap 27: 50-53 and let&amp;#39;s read that again because everything is happening just like it did during these Feast so let&amp;#39;s read that and when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice he gave up his Spirit when did he do that 3:00 in the afternoon the ninth hour when the high priest had just got through slaying his and said it is finished that&amp;#39;s when Jesus said it is finished and he gave up his Spirit at that moment the curtain of the temple was torn into from top to bottom the Earth shook the rock split and the tombs broke open the bodies of many of the Saints who had died were raised to life they came out of the tombs after jesus&amp;#39; resurrection and went into the holy city and appeared to many people now notice what this is saying when Jesus died and the earthquake happened some of the tombs broke open in other words the Tombstones covering the graves rode away they revealed these tombs were open but the people in those tombs didn&amp;#39;t come to life until after Jesus was resurrected look at verse 53 again they came out of the tombs after jesus&amp;#39; resurrection and when did the holy C appear to be people so they didn&amp;#39;t come back to life until after Jesus was resurrected but their tombs were open three days earlier why why were the tombs open 3 days earlier well I&amp;#39;ll tell you why it&amp;#39;s because the first fruits were always marked on the day of Passover after the final lamb was slain but they weren&amp;#39;t harvested until the Feast of first fruits three days later so the whole purpose of the earthquake when Jesus died was to Mark which of the Saints would be resurrected at the first fruits yeah now after the first fruits was harvested the priest would take them back to the temple to prepare them for an offering for the Lord so there was a period of time between the harvesting of the first fruits and the offering to the Lord yeah about an hour and a half and that&amp;#39;s why when Mary saw Jesus in the garden he told her not to touch him because he hadn&amp;#39;t yet ascended to the father in fact he would not Ascend until it was the designated time for the priest to offer the first fruits to the Lord in the Holy place you see at the very time time the high priest had everything ready and began offering the first fruits to the Lord was the very time that Jesus was in the temple in heaven offering his first fruits to the Lord yeah but there was a period of time between the time you cut the stalks into when you actually offered them so there was this small window of time about an hour and a half from when Jesus was resurrected to when he ascended to heaven with the first fruits of his Harvest to offer them to God that&amp;#39;s why many of the Saints who were resurrected had time to go into Jerusalem to appear into their family and friends but shortly after that about an hour and a half later they ascended with Jesus to the throne of God where Jesus presented them to God as the first fruits offering he also took all of the SS that were in the bosom of Abraham to heaven and they were part of the first fruits offering so now when a Believer dies his soul goes to heaven but his body is buried and it begins to decay but at the final Harvest because that was just first fruits at the final harvest the bodies of all the saints will be resurrected and they will be reunited once more with their soul and when is that going to happen at the Rapture the Feast of trumpets so if you don&amp;#39;t mind I&amp;#39;m going to draw on this whiteboard and just kind of show you exactly what happens and what took place then and what&amp;#39;s going to happen in the future this is a timeline we&amp;#39;ll put this timeline out here and we&amp;#39;ll put this out here and this is the millennium that look like the Millennium to you that looks like the Millennium to me so we&amp;#39;ll put the cross here this represents Jesus death burial and Resurrection now you need to understand that before Jesus death burial and resurrections our sins weren&amp;#39;t paid for so all of the Saints who lived before Jesus death burial and Resurrection could not go to heaven when they died why because their sins had not yet been paid for so where did they go when they died well if you had a person that that died and let&amp;#39;s make two people here this this is two people that look like two people to you all right so when two people died one of these people represents those who believed in the Messiah they believed that Jesus that God would bring forth the Messiah and which we know to be Jesus the other one wasn&amp;#39;t a Believer so when that person died this person who was a Believer his soul would be laid into the ground that&amp;#39;s him and his little grave there and his soul would actually go to a place called The bosom of Abraham now why was it called the bosom of Abraham do you remember anyone because Abraham was always there to welcome whoever believed in the Messiah so when you came to the bosom of Abraham when you died Abraham was there and he would give you a big old hug and he would bring you into his bosom so the Jews always refer to it as the bosom of Abraham the person who wasn&amp;#39;t a Believer when he died his body went into the grave but his soul did not go to the bosom of Abraham he went to the place of of Torment all right now we need to understand something because this can cause a little bit of confusion for people who don&amp;#39;t know all of this is referred to as Hades all right but Hades is divided into two places the bosom of Abraham which was also referred to by the Jews as guess what Paradise it&amp;#39;s why he told the thief next to him this day you will be with me in Paradise but it doesn&amp;#39;t mean that Jesus into the bosom of Abraham it&amp;#39;s just that he has the nature of God which means that he&amp;#39;s omnipresent means he&amp;#39;s everywhere so what he&amp;#39;s telling you if you believe in me you&amp;#39;re going to be in Paradise the reason you&amp;#39;re going to be there is because I&amp;#39;m there but when the thief died with him he couldn&amp;#39;t go to heaven yet because the sins hadn&amp;#39;t been completely paid for so the thief went to the pum of Abraham this is all the people who believes all the people who didn&amp;#39;t believe they went to a place of Torment uh Jesus tells us a little bit about it in the parable the rich man and Lazarus and so you had this great big chasm in between the two so if you wanted to cross over there to help someone you couldn&amp;#39;t do it and if they wanted to cross over to get to the place of paradise they couldn&amp;#39;t do it it&amp;#39;s what Jesus taught us but here&amp;#39;s what&amp;#39;s neat on the 10th of Nissan right here Jesus enters in we call it the triumphal entry but actually he&amp;#39;s coming in as the Passover Lamb because that&amp;#39;s when you selected it and that&amp;#39;s when the high priest would bring in the final Passover Lamb and all these people are coming blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord hosana in the highest which is a Messianic Psalm and they&amp;#39;re calling out to the son of David which is a Messianic title so Jesus comes in on the tth of Nissan and for four days he&amp;#39;s in the temple and what&amp;#39;s happening in the temple they&amp;#39;re asking him questions in a sense what they&amp;#39;re doing is they&amp;#39;re examining him and they can find no fault in fact when it comes time to kill him they have to make something up because he&amp;#39;s perfect there&amp;#39;s no fault in him and so what happens is after 4 days they take him to pilate and when he stands before Pilate pilate says I find no fault in him and he wants to turn him loose but they won&amp;#39;t do it so he says you know you have this custom you can have this person barabus who is a murderer and he thinks surely they&amp;#39;ll set Let Jesus go but they don&amp;#39;t they want Jesus to be crucified and so when pilate finally says okay he says the same thing again I find no fault in him and so he&amp;#39;s led to be crucified the Passover Lambs start on the 14th of Nissan begin at 6:00 a.m. that&amp;#39;s when he&amp;#39;s crucified that&amp;#39;s when they first start but he doesn&amp;#39;t actually die until 3:00 when the last final p uh Passover Lamb is there so what happens is when he dies Jesus so goes to the place of Torment begins to pay for our sins right yeah and for three days and three nights he&amp;#39;s in the place of a torment but the scripture also tells us in the book of First Peter that he had to preach to those in captivity so Jesus does something that no one&amp;#39;s ever done before he&amp;#39;s able to cross this Chasm so he doesn&amp;#39;t just preach a sermon to those in the bosom of Abraham he gives them an object lesson they literally see him come alive across this Chasm his life is brought back into him he crosses the chasm he comes over here and he preaches to those in the bosom of Abraham why does he have to preach to them because they&amp;#39;re looking for the Messiah but they didn&amp;#39;t know that Jesus was the Messiah and they have to accept him as the Messiah and so guess what takes place three days and three nights later all of the sudden the high priest on the Sunday is going to The Barley field he&amp;#39;s now going to cut the sheep that have been marked for the first fruits as soon as that first sickle hits them shortly before the sun comes up and he frees them from the earth Jesus comes alive in the Tomb boom he&amp;#39;s freed from this then all of these people in the booom of Abraham they&amp;#39;re freed with him after his resurrection yeah that&amp;#39;s Sunday and then he tells Mary don&amp;#39;t touch me yet I&amp;#39;m not yet ascended there&amp;#39;s this period of time about an hour and a half where they&amp;#39;ve cut these sheep now they take them back to the temple they&amp;#39;re preparing everything now when it&amp;#39;s time to present these to God as first fruits that&amp;#39;s when Jesus ascends to Heaven takes through all everyone in the bosom of Abraham and he presents the first fruits to God now what is first fruits first fruits is what you give to God but you&amp;#39;re saying there&amp;#39;s going to be a final Harvest a bigger Harvest so now for those of us who live after the death burial and Resurrection when we die let&amp;#39;s have two people here these two people represent people who believe in Jesus this one does and this is the one who doesn&amp;#39;t believe in Jesus guess what happens when this person dies who believes in Jesus his body goes into the ground he&amp;#39;s buried but his soul gets to go to heaven why doesn&amp;#39;t it go to the bosom of Abraham because his sins have been paid for his sins have been paid for yeah the person person who dies that doesn&amp;#39;t know Jesus his body goes into the ground he&amp;#39;s buried but his soul still goes to the place of Torment now both of them their bodies are going to be resurrected but at two different timeses when the Feast of trumpets occurs everyone who believes in Jesus their body&amp;#39;s going to come out of the Grave it&amp;#39;s going to be reunited with their soul and when I talk about the other Feast we&amp;#39;re going to see how Jesus fulfills those down to the most minute detail but here&amp;#39;s what I want I want you to understand because we were looking at Mary Magdalene and we saw all these weird things happening I want you to understand we believe in Jesus the reason we believe in Jesus is because he fulfilled everything that the Bible said he would he not only fulfilled all of the Messianic prophecies but he also fulfilled everything in the feast everything that the Jews were rehearsing they were rehearsing for when the Messiah came and he fulfilled those feast and just as Jesus fulfilled the spring Feast Jesus is going to fulfill the fall Feast let me tell you something Jesus is going to fulfill the fall feast in the in every last minute detail just like he did the spring fix turn with me if you would to the Book of Romans chap 10 veres 9 and 10 now this ought to be a very familiar pass you to scripture especially if you were raised in the Baptist Church because in the Baptist Church you were taught the Romans road to Salvation how many of you have heard of the Romans road to Salvation that&amp;#39;s what you use when you are witnessing to someone and you want to share Jesus Christ with them you go through the book of Romans and their certain scriptures well the climax to the Romans road to Salvation is Romans chap 10: 9 and 10 and the reason it&amp;#39;s the climax is because it explains what you need to do in order to be saved so let&amp;#39;s read that passage of scripture if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead you will be saved for it is by believing in your heart that you are made right with God and it is by confessing with your mouth that you are saved now as you can see salvation is continued upon two things number one confession that Jesus is Lord and number two believing in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead now let me explain what those two things entail and I&amp;#39;ll start with confession the word confess is translated from the Greek word homo and Homo is a compound word which simply means that it&amp;#39;s made up of more than one word in this case it&amp;#39;s made up of two words the prefix homo which means the same in fact our English prefix homo is transliterated from this Greek word and it also means same most of us have heard of a homosexual that means that someone is sexually attracted to someone of the same sex that&amp;#39;s what homo means homogenized milk how many of you used to buy your milk from a dairy anyone we used to buy our milk from a dairy and if you buy your milk from a dairy it&amp;#39;s not homogenized you actually don&amp;#39;t you would shake it up if you wanted a glass of milk but if you didn&amp;#39;t want a glass of milk and you just wanted the cream you could get it from the top because it wasn&amp;#39;t all mixed together it wasn&amp;#39;t the same does that make sense so homo means the same in Greek and it means the same in English then you have the word lto lto means to speak now when you got combine these two words it literally means to speak the same thing or in other words to agree you see if you and I are speaking the same thing it means that we agree if we&amp;#39;re not speaking the same thing it means that we don&amp;#39;t agree we disagree you&amp;#39;re saying one thing and I&amp;#39;m saying another so the first thing you have to do to be saved is to agree that Jesus is Lord and what do we mean by lord well the word Lord is translated from the Greek word curios and whenever it&amp;#39;s used in a religious context it means means ruler of all and the one that we submit to so you have to agree to submit to Jesus as the ruler of everyone and everything but that in and of itself is not enough to be saved you also have to believe that God raised Jesus from the dead now this is extremely important because according to Paul it&amp;#39;s not enough to believe in Jesus you see a lot of people believe in Jesus they just don&amp;#39;t believe that God raised him from the dead to some he was a great teacher sent from God to show us a better way so if you asked them do you believe in Jesus they would say well of course I believe in Jesus I do but that doesn&amp;#39;t necessarily mean that they believe that God raised Jesus from the dead to others Jesus was a prophet of God with a very important message concerning love so if you ask them do you believe in Jesus they would say well yes I believe in Jesus of course I do but that doesn&amp;#39;t necessarily mean that they believe that God raised Jesus from the dead so believing in Jesus is not enough to be saved to be saved you have to believe that God raised Jesus from the dead so we have to be very careful in the way that we present the Gospel of Jesus Christ and we have to be very careful with the words we use you see it&amp;#39;s not enough to receive Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior it&amp;#39;s funny but we ask people that all the time have you received Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior and if they say yes we assume that that means means they&amp;#39;re saved yeah but why do we assume that we assume that because of John 1 verse number 12 it says but as many as received him to them gave he power to become children of God so we use that very same phraseology have you received Jesus Christ as your lord and savior but we have to know what Jesus meant by that and when we ask that question we have to make sure that they know what John meant by that because John tells us in the last part part of that verse what he means to receive Jesus means that you believe in him and in his resurrection yeah so please listen to me very carefully your salvation is contingent upon two things number one that that a confession that Jesus is Lord in other words you agree to submit to Jesus Christ as the Lord and ruler of everything and everyone including yourself and number two a belief that God raised Jesus from the dead now if you don&amp;#39;t believe that God raised Jesus from the dead you&amp;#39;re not saved because the resurrection is the Crux of Christianity everyone understands what I mean by Crux right Crux is the decisive or most important point at issue so what I&amp;#39;m saying is that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the decisive and most important point in Christianity in fact notice what Paul says about the resurrection in 1 Corinthians chapter 15: 16-19 he&amp;#39;s already told us what the gospel is in that chapter and then He&amp;#39;s listed all of these people who witness the resurrection of Jesus Christ but then he turns around and he becomes The Devil&amp;#39;s Advocate notice what he says and if there is no resurrection of the Dead do you see that he&amp;#39;s playing The Devil&amp;#39;s Advocate in other words he&amp;#39;s saying let&amp;#39;s just assume you&amp;#39;re right let&amp;#39;s just assume Jesus did not rise from the dead and there is no Resurrection so that&amp;#39;s what he&amp;#39;s doing playing the Devil&amp;#39;s Advocate so he says and if there is no resurrection of the dead then Christ has not been raised and if Christ has not been raised then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins in other words you&amp;#39;re still separated from God you still can&amp;#39;t go to heaven when you die and then he continues on he says in that case all who have died believing in Christ are lost in other words everyone who died believing in Christ right now they&amp;#39;re in hell that&amp;#39;s what Paul is saying and then he goes further and if our hope in Christ is only for this life we are more to be pity than anyone in the world do you see that according to Paul the resurrection is the Lynch pin to Christianity if you take it out Christianity falls apart and people that&amp;#39;s the truth Christianity is built on one thing and one thing only and that&amp;#39;s the resurrection of Jesus Christ listen to me there is no Christianity without the resurrection if you don&amp;#39;t believe that God raised Jesus from the dead you&amp;#39;re not saved and you&amp;#39;re not a Christian because there is no Christianity without the resurrection so I&amp;#39;m doing a series on the resurrection of Jesus Christ but the focus of this series is on all the people that Jesus revealed himself to after he rose from the dead you see Jesus didn&amp;#39;t just appear to a handful of people one or two times after he was resurrected no Jesus appeared to hundreds of people during the 40 days he was here on this Earth after his resurrection so what we&amp;#39;re doing in this series is we&amp;#39;re looking at each incident in which Jesus appeared to people after he rose from the dead now these incidents were recorded in the Bible so that you might believe that Jesus is the Messiah the Son of the Living God and by believing in his resurrection have eternal life in fact I want I want you to notice what John wrote right after Jesus revealed himself to Thomas how many of you remember that story Jesus revealed himself to the disciples and at the time there were only 11 disciples because Judas has done what he&amp;#39;s betrayed Jesus and he&amp;#39;s hung himself so there&amp;#39;s 11 disciples so when Jesus appears to the disciples there&amp;#39;s only 10 why Thomas is not there and they get all excited because they saw Jesus resurrected and the next time they see Thomas they&amp;#39;re all excited and they say he&amp;#39;s alive he&amp;#39;s been raised from the dead and what did Thomas say no I&amp;#39;m not going to believe it unless I can place my finger and the hose where the nails were driven and until I can place my hand in his side where the where the spear pierced him and so Jesus appears to them and Thomas is there this time and of course Thomas recognizes this is truly Jesus he is resurrected and so I want you to to notice what John wrote right after this it&amp;#39;s actually part of the story notice John 20:31 he says but these things are written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Messiah the Son of the Living God and that by believing in him you will have eternal life and what he means by believing in him is believing that he&amp;#39;s the Messiah resurrected so that&amp;#39;s why we&amp;#39;re looking at all of these incidents in which Jesus appeared to people after he rose from the dead I want you to know that jesus&amp;#39; Resurrection was verified by hundreds of reliable Witnesses and not just a handful of people so that you can be confident in your faith now we started with Mary Magdalene because she&amp;#39;s the first person who saw Jesus after his resurrection so now we&amp;#39;re ready to move on to the next appearances in chronological order and we&amp;#39;re going to look at two separate incidents this morning the first is when Jesus appeared to the group of women who went to the Tom that morning that Jesus was resurrected and the second is jesus&amp;#39; appearance to the two disciples on the road to Emmas so turn with me if you would to the Book of Matthew chap 28: 9 and 10 this is Jesus appearance to the women who went to the tomb that Sunday morning that Jesus rose from the dead and behold Jesus met them and greeted them and they came up and took holdat of his feet and worshiped him then Jesus said to themo not be afraid go and take word to my brethren to leave for Galilee and they shall see me and there they shall see me now there are three things that I want to point out the first is that Jesus allowed this group of women to touch him if you remember when Jesus appeared to Mary Magdalene he told her don&amp;#39;t touch me for I&amp;#39;ve not yet ascended and I explained what that meant last week if you weren&amp;#39;t here last week then you need to go back and you need to listen to that message you can watch it online if you want to but to make a long story short Jesus had to ascend into heaven in order to redeem us with his own blood and also to present unto God the first fruits of his resurrection which were the SWS of those who were in The bosom of Abraham Ephesians chapter 4 number 8 says therefore it says when he ascended on high in other words when he went to heaven he laid captive a host of captives from the bosom of Abraham and he gave gifts to men now once Jesus accomplished those two things he returned to this earth and from then on anyone in every everyone could touch him and that&amp;#39;s exactly what happened when he appeared to this group of women they grabbed him by the feet and they began worshiping him which is the second thing that I want to point out notice that the women worshiped Jesus look at verse number nine again and behold Jesus met them and greeted them and they came up and took holdat of his feet and worshiped him now as you know no one is allowed to be worshiped except God people that&amp;#39;s one of the Ten Commandments and yet these women worshiped Jesus and even more shocking Jesus allowed it why because Jesus is God let me say that again Jesus is God in fact there are six places in the New Testament the specifically state that Jesus is God the first is John chap 1 verse one and verse1 14 let me just explain that and then you can look at the rest of them in John chapter 1 verse number one it says in the beginning was the word and the Word was with God and the Word was God and then you keep on reading till you get down to verse number 14 and it says and the Word was made flesh in other words the word became Jesus so Jesus was God that&amp;#39;s what John 1 verse1 and verse1 14 State the second place where it states it is John 20:28 the third is acts 20:28 the fourth is Colossians 2:9 then you have Titus chap 2:13 and 2 Peter 1 ver1 all of these verses specifically State they don&amp;#39;t imply they state that Jesus is God and as God Jesus has the Divine attribute of infinitude which means that he could die for everyone at one time let me explain something because there are those that don&amp;#39;t believe that Jesus was God people if Jesus wasn&amp;#39;t for God then he could only die for one person first of all he could only die for himself because he would have had the adamic nature but because he was born of the Virgin the Holy Spirit came over Mary overshadowed her is what the Bible actually says she conceived and Jesus was born of a virgin you need to understand he didn&amp;#39;t have the atomic nature but more importantly he was God and because he was God he had the attribute of infinitude which means that he could die for everyone at one time he could die for everyone in the past everyone in the future and everyone uh in the present and in the future not only that he could pay for everyone&amp;#39;s sin and even future sins at one time notice what Hebrews chap 10 verse number 10 says by which we are Sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all if you accepted Jesus Christ as your lord and savior and then you sined after that you don&amp;#39;t have to get resaved do you want to know why you don&amp;#39;t have to be resaved because Jesus has the Divine attribute of infinitude he not only died for your past sins but he also died for your future sins so the Bible tells us that if we sin what we have to do is confess Jesus or confess our sin to Jesus and he&amp;#39;s faithful and just to forgive us of our sin why because he&amp;#39;s all already paid not only for my past sins and my present sins but also my future sins now do we sin that more grace May abound Paul says God forbid but you need to understand something Jesus is God God and that&amp;#39;s why he allowed these women to worship him they are not the only ones that will worship him when he appears to the others the third thing I want to point out is that Jesus instructed this group of women to tell the disciples to go to Galilee and he would meet them there look back at verse number 10 then Jesus said to them who is them the group of women do not be afraid go and take my word or take word to my brethren to leave for Galilee and there they shall shall see me now here&amp;#39;s what&amp;#39;s interesting this is the third time the disciples have been told to go to Galilee and Jesus would meet them there the first time Jesus told the disciples himself look at Matthew 26: 31 and 32 on the way on the way where this was on the night that he was betrayed this is the night before he was crucified on the way to the Mount of Olives on the way to the Garden of Gethsemane he&amp;#39;s talking to his disciples so notice what it says on the way to the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus told them tonight all of you will desert me for the scriptures say God will strike the shepherd and the sheep of the flock will be scattered but after I have been raised from the dead Jesus had been preparing them for the whole last year of his ministry he&amp;#39;d been telling them over and over again that he was going to have to suffer die but he would be resurrected on the night that he was betrayed he once again reminds them I will be raised again but notice what he said after that but after I have been raised from the dead I will go ahead ahead of you to Galilee and I will meet you there and other words when I die don&amp;#39;t hang around in Jerusalem go to Galilee because that&amp;#39;s where I&amp;#39;m going to meet you the second time the disciples were towed was by the angel who rode the stone away you&amp;#39;ll find that in Matthew 28:7 that angel gave Specific Instructions for the disciples to go to Galilee and Jesus would meet them there and the third time was when Jesus appeared to this group of women they were supposed to tell the disciples to go to Galilee and Jesus would meet them there and they did that they went to the disciples they told them we&amp;#39;ve seen Jesus resurrected he told us to tell you go to Galilee and he will meet you there but but of course the scripture says they didn&amp;#39;t believe them but the disciples also didn&amp;#39;t obey so Jesus had to appear unto them in Jerusalem not once but twice until they finally obeyed him and they went to galile so what&amp;#39;s your point Pastor Allan well my point is that humans are hard-headed God usually has to tell us three or four times to do something before we actually get around to doing it and some sometimes we never get around to doing it and people the disciples were no different they also struggled with obedience but the Lord is patient and he continued to work with them in spite of their Disobedience but we&amp;#39;re just like that some of you have been Christians for years you&amp;#39;ve read the Bible you&amp;#39;ve heard me teach on it you&amp;#39;re supposed to tithe 10% of your income but you still don&amp;#39;t do it guess what God is patient and he&amp;#39;s still continuing to work with you some of you have come here for years and you&amp;#39;ve heard me do series after series on parenting and one of the things that I always tell you in fact I can go all the way back to almost 30 years ago and I would tell parents you have to bond with your children and not only do you have to bond with your children you must instill within them your core values your beliefs and your convictions and yet you&amp;#39;re not doing it because I told you how to do that you&amp;#39;ve got to eat dinner at the table no TV on no radio on silence so you can visit and when you tuck your children into bed at night that&amp;#39;s when you do devotions that&amp;#39;s when you teach them that&amp;#39;s when you instill within them the word of God and then when you get up in the morning and you go to bed at night when you&amp;#39;re traveling to and fro when you&amp;#39;re doing all the different things that you do you&amp;#39;re supposed to speak of the Lord and yet most of you don&amp;#39;t but the good news is the Lord is patient and he continues to work with you the only problem is time is running out because your children are growing your marriage I teach at least one series on marriage a year and I will teach some wonderful principles but you wouldn&amp;#39;t believe the number of people that go I&amp;#39;ve heard everything there is about marriage and I have a good marriage I&amp;#39;m going to stay home during that series or I even listen to single people say that well I&amp;#39;m not married I&amp;#39;m not going to go it&amp;#39;s for married people and my question is do you plan on getting married obviously not or you&amp;#39;d be saying this is great information that I will get to use one day but my point is this in spite of your struggle with obedience the Lord is patient he continues to work with you yes because he loves you and he&amp;#39;s longsuffering that&amp;#39;s just who Jesus is and he had to do it with the disciples too sometimes we think of those disciples oh what Great Men of Faith they were just like us now let&amp;#39;s look at jesus&amp;#39; appearance to the two disciples on the road to Emmas turn with me if you would to the Book of Luke chapter 24 verses 13- 16 we&amp;#39;re not going to read the whole story we&amp;#39;re going to read it section by section if you don&amp;#39;t mind first section verses 13- 16 that same day two of jesus&amp;#39; followers were walking to the Village of emus seven miles from Jerusalem now we don&amp;#39;t know if it was seven miles from Jerusalem or if it was seven miles round trip most scholars believe it was seven miles round trip but we won&amp;#39;t go into that that&amp;#39;s not really that important as they walked along they were talking about everything that had happened as they talked and discussed these things Jesus himself suddenly came and began walking with them but God kept them from recognizing him now I want you to notice verse number 16 it says but God kept them from recognizing him and who does him refer to Jesus God kept them from recognizing Jesus now Mark tells us how God prevented them from recognizing Jesus look at Mark 16: 12 and 13 if you don&amp;#39;t mind it doesn&amp;#39;t go into much detail but it gives us a little detail that Luke doesn&amp;#39;t so notice what it says afterward he talking about Jesus appeared in a different form to two of his followers who were walking from Jerusalem into the country they rushed back to tell the others but no one believed them now I want you to underline the phrase different form that word different is translated from the Greek word heteros the Greeks had two different words for another heteros which means means another of a different kind and alos which means which means the same of another kind so you have heteros another of a different kind and you had alos another of the same kind well this is the word heteros so it means different and then you have the Greek word for form which is morphe and morphe means form in the sense of external appearance in fact our English word morph is actually transliterated from this Greek word and it means to change from one image into another when something morphs it changes its appearance that&amp;#39;s what we mean by morph it means to change its appearance so what this is saying is that Jesus looked different when he appeared to these two men which is why they didn&amp;#39;t recognize him now this is an important detail because this story is only given in two of the gospels but both of them actually comment that they didn&amp;#39;t recognize Jesus but Mark tells us why it&amp;#39;s because he didn&amp;#39;t look the same he morphed his appearance he changed what he looked like now why would Jesus want to appear in a different form while he was walking with these two men think about it and other words why would God want to keep these men prevent these men from recognizing Jesus Does anyone know well I&amp;#39;ll tell you why it&amp;#39;s because Jesus had an agenda and if these two men had recognized Jesus that would have kept them or kept Jesus from accomplishing his agenda just think about it they would have been so excited and so overcome with emotion they wouldn&amp;#39;t have been able to shut up and after all of the excitement finally did die down they would have had a million questions for Jesus so God purposely kept them from recognizing him now what was jesus&amp;#39; agenda well we&amp;#39;ll get to that in just a second let&amp;#39;s not get ahead of ourselves instead let&amp;#39;s continue on with the story so let&amp;#39;s look at the SE second section of the story look at verses 17- 21 he asked them what are you discussing so intently as you walk alone they stopped short in other words what sadness written across their faces then one of them Copus replied you must be the only person in dream Jerusalem that doesn&amp;#39;t have a clue you must be the only person in Jerusalem who hasn&amp;#39;t heard about all the things that have happened there the last few days what things Jesus asked the things that happened to Jesus The Man from Nazareth they said he was a prophet who did Mighty Miracles or powerful Miracles and he was a mighty teacher in the eyes of God and all the people but our leading priests and other religious leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and they crucified him we had had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to redeem Israel this all happened 3 days ago now I want you to notice that they recognized that Jesus was a prophet because that was obvious why was it obvious because Jesus had performed many mighty Miracles he had walked on water he turned a few Loaves and Fishes into lots of food to be able to feed all these people he&amp;#39;d healed the lame and the blind he brought people back to life they saw Lazarus come out of the Tomb he was hovering and came on out and he said unwrap him they knew he was a mighty Prophet they also acknowledge that he was a master teacher in the eyes of God and in the eyes of the people anyone could see that if they just listened to one of his sermons so naturally they had hoped that he was the long awaited Messiah who would redeem Israel look at verse number 21 and you&amp;#39;ll see what I&amp;#39;m talking about says we had hoped now people that&amp;#39;s not present tense that&amp;#39;s past past tense we aren&amp;#39;t hoping now we had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to redeem Israel now the implication is that once Jesus died their hope that he was the Messiah also died do you see that notice what they said and how they said it we had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to redeem Israel but our leading priests and religious leaders had him crucified so what they were saying was that their hope died when Jesus died in other words when Jesus died they assumed that everything they thought everything they believed must have been wrong because now that he was dead he could couldn&amp;#39;t possibly be the Messiah that they had hoped for now I want you to notice what they expected the Messiah to do look back at verse number 21 we had hoped he was the Messiah who had come to redeem Israel do you see that they expect Ed the Messiah to redeem Israel now does anyone know what that means to redeem Israel well the word redeem is translated from the Greek word lutra and it means to liberate or to set free so what they were hoping for and what they expected the Messiah to do was to liberate Israel from Rome in fact that&amp;#39;s what every Jew expected the Messiah to do they expected the Messiah to liberate Israel from Rome and to restore Israel back to the Glory Days of the davidic Kingdom so when Jesus died their hope of him being the Messiah died with him which is so sad because not only was their perception of the Messiah wrong but it was also shortsighted and temporal think about it who cares if Israel would have been liberated from Rome if sin and death still reigned who cares about that if mankind would have remained eternally separated from God now don&amp;#39;t get me wrong there will come a day people when Israel will be restored to the for former Glory Days of the davidic kingdom and yes there will come a day when all nations will submit to Israel and to the one who sits on the throne of Israel and what day is that the Millennium but we cannot Rule and reign with Jesus until sin and death is defeated and that had to be taken care of first which is why Jesus suffered and died he suffered and died in order to conquer sin and death so that we might have everlasting life now I want you to notice that I didn&amp;#39;t say eternal life I said everlasting life why did I say everlasting life because the truth is man cannot have eternal life what do you want to pick up stones and sto me right no no no no listen to me the only one that has eternal life is God Only God is eternal because Eternal means no beginning Eternal means no beginning and no end we can have everlasting life which is what we have in Jesus Christ but we can never have eternal life because we had a beginning everyone with me so why do we call it eternal life because that&amp;#39;s the way we translated it in the King James version and everyone else does but it should have been translated everlasting life but here&amp;#39;s what I want you to see we needed Jesus to die to suffer and to be resurrected in order for us to be redeemed from our sin and to have everlasting life now I&amp;#39;m going to call it eternal life too because that&amp;#39;s what we grew up with right so we&amp;#39;ll keep calling it but you just need to know it&amp;#39;s everlasting life but the Jews and The Disciples of Jesus were so focused on the Messianic prophecies that talked about the Messiah reigning and ruling over the Earth that they lost side of all the other Messianic prophecies that talked about the bigger picture of the messiah&amp;#39;s suffering and dying and being raised from the dead they lost sight of the fact that we needed to be redeemed from sin and reconciled to God through the messiah&amp;#39;s death burial and Resurrection you see sometimes we get so focused on our own agenda on the things that we want that we get tunnel vision and we can&amp;#39;t see anything else yeah and that&amp;#39;s what happened to the disciples they got so focused on all the miss m MEC prophecies that talked about the Messiah ruling and reigning on this Earth that they couldn&amp;#39;t see all of the other Messianic prophecies that talked about the messiah&amp;#39;s suffering dying and being resurrected so Jesus had an agenda on the road to emus and that was to open up all of the scripture that talked about the Messiah suffering dying and being resurrected so man would be set free from sin and death look at verses 25 through 28 this is the third section of the story notice what it says then Jesus said to them you foolish people you&amp;#39;re so slow to believe all that the prophets wrote in the scriptures wasn&amp;#39;t it clearly prophesied that the Messiah would have to suffer all of these things before entering into his glory I want you to notice what he&amp;#39;s saying here he&amp;#39;s saying wasn&amp;#39;t it clearly prophesied that the Messiah would have to suffer all of these things before entering into his glory there are certain things Jesus had to do first before we can get to the Millennium where he rules and Reigns yeah let&amp;#39;s keep reading then Jesus took them through the writings of Moses and all of the prophets explaining from all the scriptures the things concerning himself by this time they were nearing Emmas in the end of their Journey Jesus acted as if he was going on now people wouldn&amp;#39;t you have loved to have been there on the road to emus can you imagine listening to Jesus explain all of the Messianic prophecies explaining all of the typologies and christophanies explaining all of the things that were a shadow of what the Messiah would accomplish when he came explaining the Jewish feast and how they were a prophetic picture of what the Messiah would do and they were actually rehearsals and everything they were rehearsing was showing what the Messiah was going to do explaining all of the Mosaic sacrificial offerings and how they were fulfilled in Jesus and how they pointed to the ultimate sacrifice that he had just made to atone for our sin I&amp;#39;ll be honest with you people I would have loved to have been there to listen to Jesus when he talked about the great prophet that would be like Moses and instead of redeeming the people from Egypt he would redeem them from their sins instead of taking them to a physical Promised Land he was going to take them to an eternal Promised Land instead of being baptized in the Red Sea were going to be baptized into him instead of cutting off the Egyptians was going to cut off the old man can you imagine everything that Jesus told them wow I would have loved to have been there but you know the rest of the story but we&amp;#39;re still going to read it look at the last section verses 28-35 by this time they were nearing emus and at the end of their Journey Jesus acted as if he was going to go on but they begged him stay the night with us since it&amp;#39;s getting late so he went home with them as they sat down to eat he took the bread and he blessed it then he broke it and gave it to them suddenly their eyes were open that doesn&amp;#39;t tell us but I&amp;#39;m sure he morphed again now he&amp;#39;s not in a different appearance he&amp;#39;s now in instead of heteros Mor he&amp;#39;s alos Mor he&amp;#39;s now in the same appearance suddenly their eyes were open and they recognized him at that moment he disappeared extradimensional body steps out of this Dimension and into the next they said to each other didn&amp;#39;t our hearts burn within us as he talked with us on the road and explained the scriptures to us and within the hour still men had to eat get the Necessities they were on their way back to Jerusalem there they found the 11 disciples with the others who had gathered with them who said the Lord has really Arisen and notice this he appeared to Peter then the two from emus told their story of how Jesus had appeared to them as they were were walking along the road and how they had recognized him as he was breaking the bread now it only says that he appeared to Peter this is the only gospel that says that Paul records that in 1 Corinthians chapter 15 now you would think because Peter is one of the great Disciples of Jesus that we would have that story of his appearance to Peter but we don&amp;#39;t and you want to know why because it was very personal and very intimate Peter is the one who said Lord if everyone else deserts you I won&amp;#39;t I&amp;#39;ll be by your side of course we know the story Jesus turns to him he said Peter the devil desires to have you wants to sit you and he says before the crows you&amp;#39;ll deny me three times and of course he did and I know that Peter must have been heartbroken that he did that even when he didn&amp;#39;t realize Jesus was going to be resurrected number one he was embarrassed because he&amp;#39;d said this and he&amp;#39;d proven himself to be a coward wouldn&amp;#39;t even go in to see Jesus trial when it was at John&amp;#39;s PL or it&amp;#39;s at the high priest where John gave him access to come in no he didn&amp;#39;t even come in and so when Jesus meets him I can tell you very personal very intimate but people that&amp;#39;s how God is and he&amp;#39;s not going to reveal your dirty laundry he&amp;#39;s just not going to do it we believe in the spiritual gifts and when I say the spiritual gifts I&amp;#39;m talking about the manifestation gifts we&amp;#39;re not cessationist cessationists believe that the manifestation gifts ended after the Bible was written after the end of the apostolic age the Bible doesn&amp;#39;t teach that in fact when you&amp;#39;re studying that first 1 Corinthians 13 it talks about and when that which is perfect is come then that which is in part shall be done away with and we say oh the Bible&amp;#39;s here it&amp;#39;s perfect actually that&amp;#39;s not what it says in the original Greek it says when Perfection comes and when will Perfection come when Jesus returns then that which is in part shall be done away with but here&amp;#39;s what&amp;#39;s interesting seeing the gifts operate whether it&amp;#39;s word of knowledge Word of Wisdom prophecy tongues interpretation healings one of the things that I&amp;#39;ve noticed when it&amp;#39;s true gifts of God God does not air people&amp;#39;s dirty laundry and God&amp;#39;s going to talk with someone it&amp;#39;s between him and them because he respects you and he loves you we don&amp;#39;t know what God said to Peter and the reason we don&amp;#39;t know when I say God I&amp;#39;m talking about Jesus remember Jesus is God we don&amp;#39;t know what Jesus said to Peter but we do know know that he appeared unto Peter now let&amp;#39;s get off that let&amp;#39;s just make some application with this story of Jesus appearing to the two disciples on the road to mayus the truth is we&amp;#39;re no different than Jesus disciples we get so focused on our own agenda and what we want that it creates tunnel vision and we lose sight of the big picture and what is the big picture what is the big picture I asked you what Jesus agenda was and then I told you Jesus agenda was the big picture we&amp;#39;re full of sin we&amp;#39;re at enmity with God sin has to be dealt with first before we can be reconciled to God the big picture is our relationship with God but you know what&amp;#39;s sad we&amp;#39;re just like the disciples we get so caught up with work we get so caught up with raising our kids we get so caught up with our hobbies that we forget that this life is very very short I&amp;#39;ve told you this before when I was young I thought a lifetime was a long time as I got older I&amp;#39;ve realized that a lifetime is a short time we get so caught up with these temporal things that we lose sight of what&amp;#39;s really important when you get to the end of the of your life you&amp;#39;re going to realize there&amp;#39;s only two things that are important in this life your relationship with God and your relationship with your family it really doesn&amp;#39;t matter how much money you made it doesn&amp;#39;t really matter how many assets you accumulated it really doesn&amp;#39;t matter all these accomplishments the only thing that&amp;#39;s really going to matter is your relationship with God and your relationship with your family those are the only two things that really matter don&amp;#39;t be like the disciples they missed the big picture because they were so caught up that Jesus was going to redeem Israel yes he will during the Millennium he will rule and Reign from Israel every nation will be required to come to Israel to celebrate the Feast of Tabernacles and any nation that doesn&amp;#39;t send a delegation will not receive rain that&amp;#39;s what the Bible says but you need to understand something they missed the big picture and that&amp;#39;s that you can have a relationship with Jesus this Easter I did something that I&amp;#39;ve never done before instead of preaching a short simple message on the resurrection of Jesus Christ which is what I normally do I started a series and I entitled this series The Resurrection but the focus of this series is on all the people that Jesus revealed himself to after he rose from the dead you see Jesus didn&amp;#39;t just appear to a handful of people people one or two times after his resurrection no he appeared to hundreds of people during the 40 days he was here on this Earth after his resurrection so what we&amp;#39;re doing in this series is we&amp;#39;re looking at each incident in which Jesus appeared to people after his resurrection and we started with Mary Magdalene because she was the very first person to see Jesus after his resurrection so as you might have guessed we&amp;#39;re looking at these incidents in chronological order jesus&amp;#39; second appearance was to a group of women who went to visit his tomb that morning the third appearance is with the two disciples on the road to EMAs the fourth appearance was to Peter we don&amp;#39;t have much information about that I believe the Holy Spirit wanted to keep that private so we don&amp;#39;t really know what took place we just know that Jesus appeared unto sephus or Peter and the fifth appearance was to his disciples in Jerusalem and that&amp;#39;s what we&amp;#39;re going to study this morning now all five of these appearances happened on the same day they all happened on the the day that Jesus Christ was resurrected now the appearance of his disciples is recorded in three of the gospels Mark Luke and John but we&amp;#39;re going to use Luke&amp;#39;s version because it&amp;#39;s the most detailed so if you would turn with me to the Book of Luke chapter 24 and we&amp;#39;re going to read verses 33 through 36 we&amp;#39;re not going to read the entire story we&amp;#39;re going to read it in portions and the reason we&amp;#39;re going to do that it&amp;#39;s because I just want you to follow along with me as we move through the story so this is verses 33 through 36 and within the hour they were on their way back to Jerusalem there they found the 11 disciples and the others who had gathered with them who said the Lord has really risen he appeared to Peter then the two from Emmas told their story of how Jesus had appeared to them as they were walking along the road and how they had recognized him as he was breaking the bread and just as they were telling about it Jesus himself was suddenly standing there among them peace be with you he said now now as you can see as soon as the two disciples from Emmas recognized Jesus and who he was they hightailed it back to Jerusalem because they were so excited they couldn&amp;#39;t wait to tell the disciples about their Encounter With Jesus but while they were in the process of telling about it Jesus suddenly showed up now let me point something out before we continue reading so you don&amp;#39;t get confused later on look at verse number 33 again and within the hour they were on their way back to Jerusalem there they found the 11 disciples and the others who had gathered with them now notice notice that it says there they found the 11 disciples now if you remember Jesus had 12 disciples but one of the disciples betrayed him and then went out and hung himself and of course that was Judas so 12 - 1 equal 11 however John tells us that Thomas wasn&amp;#39;t there when Jesus appeared to his disciples the first time which is the time that we&amp;#39;re talking about so so shouldn&amp;#39;t it say the 10 disciples instead of 11 disciples shouldn&amp;#39;t it no and here&amp;#39;s why if you noticed in verse 33 it said there they found the 11 disciples and the others who had gathered there with them now one of the others who had gathered there with them was meias who was later chosen to take judah&amp;#39;s place so when Luke wrote about this he naturally included Messias as one of the 12 disciples so Luke is right in numbering the disciples at 11 now why is this important well this is important because a lot of Skeptics try and use this to discredit the Bible to say that the Bible is not inherent 11 disciples weren&amp;#39;t there there were 10 disciples see that&amp;#39;s a mistake and so they try to say that the Bible is not without Heir it has HS because only 10 disciples were there but you need to understand in their culture the early church always included maias as one one of the 12 disciples because he was chosen to take judah&amp;#39;s place Paul does the very same thing in 1 Corinthians chap 15 verse number 5 he included Maas as one of the 12 disciples and that was considered to be standard procedure for the early church it was very a mo it was their method of operation to include meias as one of the 12 disciples even before he was actually chosen so from the Resurrection on maias was always considered to be one of the 12 done deal been there bought the T-shirt let&amp;#39;s move on that was the attitude of the early church they didn&amp;#39;t want to give any more time to Judas they told you all about Judas when they were going through the gospels but once you came to his his betrayal and once he went out and hung himself they did not want to talk about Judas anymore so they included meias in his place does that make sense now let&amp;#39;s see what happened when Jesus suddenly appeared to the disciples let&amp;#39;s read verses 36 and 37 s and just as they were telling about it Jesus himself was suddenly standing there among them peace be with you he said but the whole group was startled and frightened thinking they were seeing a ghost now I mentioned this many times before but I still want to draw attention to the fact that Jesus resurrected body was an extradimensional body in fact if you&amp;#39;re a Sci-Fi Enthusiast you probably love that word because you&amp;#39;ve used it many times but his resurrection body truly was an extradimensional body in other words he was able to step from one dimension into another which means he could instantly appear and disappear and he was also able to pass through material substances whenever he wanted to if you were in a locked room it didn&amp;#39;t matter if Jesus wanted to be in that room he could do it why because he had an extradimensional body now I want you to think about this and how you would react if someone just instantly appeared out of nowhere as especially if you were in a room where the doors were locked and all the windows were locked and then suddenly someone appeared right in front of you out of nowhere how would you react and what would you think well I know how most of you would react because you would probably react the way that I would I would probably need to change my pants because I would think that I was looking at a ghost or a spirit or I had experienced some type of Paranormal Activity right yeah well people that&amp;#39;s exactly what the disciples thought look at verses 36 and 37 again and put yourself in their place and just as they were telling about it Jesus himself was suddenly standing there among them now you need to understand in the original Greek it says in the middle of them he didn&amp;#39;t sneak in through a window he didn&amp;#39;t sneak in through a door he wasn&amp;#39;t at the at at at the side of them or behind them no all of the sudden he was in the middle of them and he said Peace be with you but the whole group was startled and frightened thinking that they were seeing a ghost now I love what Jesus said to them because it was so nonchalant Jesus said peace be with you now believe it or not that was a common Hebrew greeting I know we don&amp;#39;t speak like that today but the Jews did and they still do today they still use this greeting the way you greet someone in Israel as you say ml that&amp;#39;s kind of interesting isn&amp;#39;t it m now that&amp;#39;s if it&amp;#39;s a female if it&amp;#39;s a if it&amp;#39;s a male I can&amp;#39;t really say it but I&amp;#39;ll try to say it I don&amp;#39;t have that like I&amp;#39;m harking something up but you need to have that that that sound where you&amp;#39;re you&amp;#39;re letting it come it&amp;#39;s a guttural sound but it literally means what&amp;#39;s your peace ma means what shalom means peace and of course eek is feminine and is masculine So when you say it you kind of squeeze it all together so if you ever are in Israel and you want to ask someone how they&amp;#39;re doing you actually say what&amp;#39;s your peace you say ml or mlim depending upon whether they&amp;#39;re male or they&amp;#39;re female now if you just want to say hi you say shalom which means peace and that&amp;#39;s the way you greet people so the next time you&amp;#39;re in Israel and you&amp;#39;re walking down the street you make eye contact because you&amp;#39;re from Oklahoma you have to say something right now if you were from California you wouldn&amp;#39;t do that you just glare at them but if you&amp;#39;re from Oklahoma and you make eye contact it doesn&amp;#39;t matter whether you know them or not you have to have some type of greeting so what you would say is Shalom and they would say shalom back to you what they&amp;#39;re actually saying is peace but that is their equivalent of high and they do that today now they&amp;#39;ve done this for thousands of years so when Jesus said Peace be unto you actually what he was saying was Shalom and here&amp;#39;s what&amp;#39;s kind of interesting when he appeared and he not said Shalom it scared the be Jesus out of them now Jesus knew exactly what they were thinking plus he could see the fear that was written all over their face so he softly rebuked them before he tried to convince them that he was not what they thought he was in other words he was not a ghost now the reason he rebuked them is because he told them over and over again during the last year of his ministry that he was going to have to suffer die and be resurrected and yet they did believe it when it actually happened so yes he rebuked them for their unbelief look at verse number 38 he says why are you so fright frightened he asked why are your hearts filled with doubt in other words why are you doubting my resurrection you above everyone else should have expected me to rise from the grave and here you are cowering and thinking that I&amp;#39;m a ghost now he doesn&amp;#39;t say it but he implies it shame on you and then after after he rebuked them he encouraged them to touch him to prove that he wasn&amp;#39;t a ghost look at verses 39 and 40 look at my hands look at my feet you can see that it&amp;#39;s really me touch me and make sure that I&amp;#39;m not a ghost because ghosts don&amp;#39;t have bodies as you see that I do as he spoke he showed them his hands and his feet now Jesus said something here that&amp;#39;s very important to note he said ghost don&amp;#39;t have bodies I like the way the New American Standard says it because it&amp;#39;s really a more accurate translation it says a spirit does not have Flesh and Bones and people that&amp;#39;s a no-brainer ghost or Spirits don&amp;#39;t have Flesh and Bones ghosts are ethereal now does everyone know what etherial means ethereal means lacking material substance immaterial or intangible in other words your hand would go right through them so if someone ever suddenly appears in front of you and you want to determine whether or not they&amp;#39;re a real person or they&amp;#39;re a ghost all you have to do is reach out and if you reach out to grab them but your hand goes through them then they&amp;#39;re a spirit there&amp;#39;s no material substance there so what Jesus was saying was touch me grab me hold on to me you see that I&amp;#39;m not a ghost because ghosts don&amp;#39;t have Flesh and Bones ghosts are ethereal now this is important I think many of you were shocked when I taught on Heaven and the reason I did is because I said now when we die our soul our spirit leaves the body and it goes to heaven our body is buried but we are not in our final condition because one day at the last trumpet our bodies are going to rise from the grave and they&amp;#39;re going to meet the Lord in the air to be reunited with our soul and we will have a resurrected body just like Jesus it will not be an ethereal body it will be a real physical body if you&amp;#39;re alive on the earth when that happens a transformation is going to take place you also would be snatched from the earth if you&amp;#39;re reading the Latin Bible it says rapur where we get the word rapture in the Greek it&amp;#39;s harped they all mean the same thing you&amp;#39;re going to be snatched from this Earth to meet the Lord in the air and your body is going to be transformed into a glorified resurrected body but listen to me it will not be an ethereal body people will be able to touch you they will be able to grab you it will be an extradimensional body like Jesus body but it will not be a ghost body now until the Rapture occurs your soul and spirit will be ethereal with Jesus but you&amp;#39;re not clothed with your final clothing you don&amp;#39;t have that tint that Paul talks about anyways I just want you to understand when Jesus was resurrected he told the disciples ghost don&amp;#39;t have bodies touch me feel me you will see that I&amp;#39;m not a ghost it&amp;#39;s true me and then he takes it a step further because he wants them to know that it&amp;#39;s really him it&amp;#39;s not someone disguised as him it&amp;#39;s not someone that looks like him it&amp;#39;s not an impersonator it&amp;#39;s truly Jesus look at verse number 40 as he spoke he showed them his hands and feet now people this has caused a lot of problems for theologians in fact I kind of enjoy it because you got you get to read all of these theologians who go through all of these things but the reason it&amp;#39;s caused a lot of problems is because Jesus resurrected body should have been a glorified body now does everyone know what I mean by glorified in this context glorified means perfect and other words a body without any afflictions deformities defects or scars from the past and yet Jesus still retained the scars from his crucifixion and people that throws theologians for a loop just think about it when your body is resurrected it&amp;#39;s going to be changed into an immortal body a body without any afflictions or deformities without any ailments without any diseases it is going to be a perfect body look at 1 Corinthians 15: 51-55 and I&amp;#39;ll show you what I&amp;#39;m talking about notice what it says behold I show you a mystery now the word mystery in the Greek is musterion and what it really means is this is something people don&amp;#39;t know anything about unless you&amp;#39;re part of the initiated Paul was part of the initiated because the Lord had taught him so he says I&amp;#39;m going to show you a mystery I&amp;#39;m going to show you something that the Lord showed me we shall not all sleep sleep is a euphamism for death why is sleep as why is sleep used as a euphemism for death well first maybe I need to explain what a euphemism is how many of you know what a euphemism is it&amp;#39;s a nice way of saying something that&amp;#39;s not socially acceptable we don&amp;#39;t say mom and dad died we say mom and dad passed away we don&amp;#39;t say so and so had sex we say they slept together why do we do that because that&amp;#39;s just kind of a nicer way of saying it well the Bible uses euphemisms too and instead of saying they died the Bible uses the euphemism of sleeping does anyone know why well the reason the Bible uses the euphemism of sleep sleep for death is because when we die our body goes into the ground but our soul is still alive so our soul goes to be with the Lord in the air and here&amp;#39;s what&amp;#39;s interesting even though you&amp;#39;re just a soul even though you&amp;#39;re ethereal you still have use of all five senses you can see you can hear you can taste you can smell you can feel now here&amp;#39;s what&amp;#39;s interesting what is that like that is like sleeping when you&amp;#39;re sleeping your body is at rest but you&amp;#39;re dreaming and in your dreams if you&amp;#39;re a very Vivid dreamer you you dream in color you can see you can smell you can touch you can taste you can feel you can do all of those things but you&amp;#39;re dreaming your body&amp;#39;s at rest but your soul is not your mind is not so the Bible uses the anal ology of sleep for death so here let&amp;#39;s keep reading this behold I show you a mystery we shall not all sleep but we shall all be changed the word changed is translated from the Greek word alaso and it literally means transformed there&amp;#39;s going to be a metamorphosis take place there&amp;#39;s going to be a process where you&amp;#39;re changed from one thing into another that&amp;#39;s what alaso means you are not going to remain the same you&amp;#39;re going to be transformed and then he goes further in the twinkling of an eye at the last Trump for the trumpet shall sound and the dead shall be raised Incorruptible now the word Incorruptible is translated from the Greek word aaras and aaras literally means it won&amp;#39;t get owed or sick you won&amp;#39;t get gray hairs you won&amp;#39;t get the elments you know when you kind of get odor your body just seems to start falling apart now mine started falling apart about the age of 29 i&amp;#39; torn my rotator cuffs I had uh torn all of my carage I&amp;#39;d had two knee operations I had arthritis in my lower back from trying to play sports and I wasn&amp;#39;t good at sports and so I started falling apart around 29 or 30 years old old Lisa waited till she was about 52 53 years old and she found out wait a minute maybe my husband wasn&amp;#39;t making all of this up but I want you to understand what aaras means it means means you won&amp;#39;t get wrinkles women it means you won&amp;#39;t have to pluck any gray hairs or color your hair it means that you won&amp;#39;t pick up any sickness or disease viruses won&amp;#39;t affect you you won&amp;#39;t get the stomach Buck no you&amp;#39;re going to have an in corruptible body it cannot Decay it cannot get owed you will remain at around the age of 28 years old someone says how do you know that Pastor Alan because the book of Ephesians says all things are going to revert back to the way they were before the fall Adam and Eve are not created as babies they were created to be full human beings and we reach our peak of maturity around the age of 26 to 28 the next time I see my mother she will be between the ages of 26 to 28 that&amp;#39;s what your body will be and it will be an incorruptible body let&amp;#39;s keep going and we shall all be changed and there&amp;#39;s that word alaso again transformed he has to put it in again and he says this for this corruptible must put on incorruption and this Mortal must put on immortality that word immortality is a fenosa and it means that you can&amp;#39;t die but more than that you can&amp;#39;t be subject to to disease or any defect so if your pancreas isn&amp;#39;t working the way that it should be and you&amp;#39;re a diabetic don&amp;#39;t worry about it you won&amp;#39;t be a diabetic in heaven if your appendix was taken out you won&amp;#39;t have a scar there if you had knee Replacements you&amp;#39;re not going to have titanium inside those knees anymore no yes you will be Flesh and Bones but it&amp;#39;s going to be an immortal body but more than what we think of immortal see mortal means subject to death but not yet dead did you know that yeah Immortal means you&amp;#39;re no longer subject to death but not only that you&amp;#39;re no longer subject to disease or anything that can go wrong that&amp;#39;s what a fantasa means so when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption and this Mortal shall have put on immortality then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written death is swallowed up in Victory oh death where is thy sting oh grave where is thy Victory why is it saying that because you&amp;#39;ll never grow up you&amp;#39;ll never be diseased if you have an amputation when you&amp;#39;re taken up there that limb will be back yeah that&amp;#39;s how you&amp;#39;re going to be now I do have a question I started losing hair early by 28 I had a high receding hairline I don&amp;#39;t know will I still have that I don&amp;#39;t know anyways I don&amp;#39;t think so and the reason I don&amp;#39;t think so is because again I will have a glorified body in this context a perfect body so the fact that Jesus still retained his scars from his crucifixion it baffles theologians people there are books written on just this subject why did Jesus still have his scars but in my opinion it shouldn&amp;#39;t baffle the theologians and the reason I don&amp;#39;t believe it should baffle them is because I believe believe that Jesus chose to retain those scars and let me explain why by using an analogy when a couple gets married they exchange wedding rings as a token of their love and their commitment to each other in fact whenever I officiate a wedding ceremony I&amp;#39;ll usually turn to the best man and I&amp;#39;ll say may I have her wedding ring please and of course they all think that this is unique and it&amp;#39;s never been done before the best man does this and then he turns to the groomsman next to him and he goes and they go all the way down and then until the finally have it and they pass it back up and you know everyone&amp;#39;s laughing I&amp;#39;m thinking I&amp;#39;ve seen it once I&amp;#39;ve seen it a hundred times but anyways just give me the wedding ring and I hold this wedding ring up and I say this wedding ring is a token it is a symbol of your love and commitment to each other it symbolizes the type of love that you should have for each other it shape as a circle with no beginning and no end much like agapy love that is the type of love you should have for one another a love with no end now how many of you have your wedding ring on that wedding ring is a symbol or a token of the vows that you&amp;#39;ve taken it is a symbol or a token they mean the same thing of your loving commitment to each other well I personally believe that Jesus chose to retain his cars as a token of his love and commitment to us it&amp;#39;s a token it&amp;#39;s a symbol of the great price he had to pay in order to redeem us and make us his because he is the bridegroom we are the bride and it will remind us for all eternity of how much he loves us I believe that when I die and I go to heaven that when I see Jesus I&amp;#39;m going to see the nail prints in his wrist they use the word hands because in their time wrists were part of the hands if you cut off the hands you cut it off about right here I believe I&amp;#39;m going to see the nail prints in his feet I believe that if he opened up his robe I would see where they pierced him in his side that will be an eternal reminder a symbol or a token of his great love for the church and how he redeemed us and he purchased us with a great price so in my opinion his body was glorified but he chose to retain those scars now I want you to notice the disciples response look back at verse 41 still they stood there in disbelief filled with joy and wonder then he asked them do you have anything here to eat like a teenager but no actually this is not a good translation but to be fair none of the English translations are good because it&amp;#39;s hard to translate what it actually says in the original Greek I hate to give you the indication that you really can&amp;#39;t understand the Bible unless you understand Greek because 99% of the time you don&amp;#39;t need to understand Greek to understand the Bible that&amp;#39;s what&amp;#39;s wonderful about the Greek languag is that it&amp;#39;s very descriptive and as a result of that it translates very easily so 99% of the Bible you can you can understand without knowing Greek but about 1% of the Bible you cannot understand if you don&amp;#39;t understand Greek so let me try and explain what this verse is trying to convey and then what I&amp;#39;m going to do is I&amp;#39;m going to show you the NIV trans how they translate this verse because it&amp;#39;s probably the best translation so the best way to explain what this verse is trying to convey is to use a hypothetical situation as an illustration so I want you to imagine and this won&amp;#39;t be hard for many of you because you buy lottery tickets all the time I want you to imagine that you won $300 million in the lottery now when you first hear the winning numbers you have to check your ticket not once not twice but over and over and over again and then you have to go to the website and look at those numbers and compare those numbers and then you want to make sure that you&amp;#39;re not making mistakes so you know you ask someone else did you record it and you want to look at it again because you still can&amp;#39;t believe you&amp;#39;re holding the winning number and it might take a day or two to sink in maybe it&amp;#39;ll take a week or two before it sinks in until then you just don&amp;#39;t believe it in fact you keep saying that over and over to yourself I just don&amp;#39;t believe it but you&amp;#39;re looking at the winning ticket it&amp;#39;s in your hand but still you don&amp;#39;t believe it why it&amp;#39;s 300 million well that&amp;#39;s the type of unbelief this verse is talking about in other words it&amp;#39;s too good to be true you believe it but you don&amp;#39;t believe it so you keep saying to yourself I don&amp;#39;t believe it and that&amp;#39;s what the disciples were doing they were saying I don&amp;#39;t believe it but they were looking at Jesus right in front of him uh in front of them but still they just couldn&amp;#39;t believe it because it was too good to be true somehow some way Jesus had risen from the dead just like he said he would now let me show you how the NIV translates this verse because it&amp;#39;s the closest translation to the original Greek notice what it says and while they still not did not believe it because of joy and amazement let me read that again that&amp;#39;s kind of weird and while they still still did not believe it because of joy and amazement he asked them do you have anything to eat now do you see that they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement not because of Doubt but because it seemed too good to be true in other words this can&amp;#39;t be real someone pinched me because this has to be a dream I see Jesus right in front of me but this can&amp;#39;t be real so Jesus took it a step further in order to bring them back to reality so they would know yes this is real look at verses 41-43 still they stood there in disbelief filled with joy and wonder now why would they be filled with joy and wonder if they didn&amp;#39;t believe you need me to ask you that again because you didn&amp;#39;t catch it why would they be filled with joy and wonder if they didn&amp;#39;t believe well they did believe and that&amp;#39;s what the original Greek is telling us they did believe but they were having a hard time wrapping their head around it because it seemed too good to be true does that make sense that&amp;#39;s what this verse is trying to convey but let&amp;#39;s keep reading CU Jesus has to bring them back down to reality so it says still they stood there disbelief filled with joy and wonder then he asked them do you have anything here to eat they gave him a piece of broiled fish and he ate it as they watched you know it&amp;#39;s kind of funny we have a little dog we&amp;#39;re keeping we don&amp;#39;t like pets but it&amp;#39;s my baby daughter&amp;#39;s pet so I love her pet and when I eat and I&amp;#39;m chewing I sometimes will chew and just kind of go and I watch him do this as he keeps thinking something might fall out of his mouth and I&amp;#39;m going to grab it now this is what I picture they give Jesus this piece of fish and they&amp;#39;re all watching them as he chews it and he eats it they&amp;#39;re watching it for a different reason but I want you to understand the reason they&amp;#39;re watching Just to See Jesus eat made it real it brought them back to reality this was Jesus the same person that they shared so many meals with and inside they&amp;#39;re going I can&amp;#39;t wrap my head around it but this is Jesus he did rise from the grave just like he said he would now Jesus did one more thing before he vanished but Luke doesn&amp;#39;t record it John does so turn with me if you would to the Book of John chapter 20 verses 19- 22 if you notice there&amp;#39;s not many verses that&amp;#39;s why we used Luke Luke goes into more detail but Luke leaves out something very important that John doesn&amp;#39;t that&amp;#39;s why we&amp;#39;re jumping over to John so let&amp;#39;s read this John 20: 19-22 that Sunday evening the disciples were meeting behind locked doors because they were afraid of the Jewish leaders see Luke didn&amp;#39;t add that detail did he but the reason I said that he just appeared and they were behind doors that were locked because I&amp;#39;d read it in John the doors were locked the windows were locked they were afraid of the Jews let&amp;#39;s keep going suddenly Jesus was standing there among them peace be with you he said as he spoke he showed them the wounds in his hands and his side they were filled with joy when they saw the Lord again he said peace be with you as the father has sent me so I am sending you then he breathed on them and said receive the Holy Spirit now I want to zero in on verse number 22 then he breathed on them and said rece receive the Holy Spirit now people this is symbolic you see the moment they believe that God had raised Jesus from the dead and wanted Jesus to be Lord they were saved which meant that they had received the Holy Spirit because you can&amp;#39;t be saved without the Holy Spirit turn to Romans chapter 8 verse number 9 and I will prove it to you notice what it says however you are not in the flesh but in the spirit if indeed the spirit of God dwells in you in other words lives inside of you but if anyone does not have the spirit of Christ he does not belong to him do you see that if the Holy Spirit does not dwell within you if the Holy Spirit does not reside within you you are not saved in fact let me kind of walk you through this process when I believe that God raised Jesus from the dead and wanting him him to be Lord something happened immediately mediately when I said Jesus I want you to be Lord I believe that God raised you from the dead the Bible says that by one Spirit the Holy Spirit we are baptized into one body Jesus body and then in that same chapter it says he that&amp;#39;s joined to the Lord is one spirit so immediately when I believe that God raised Jesus from the dead and I wanted Jesus to be Lord Of My Life The Holy Spirit who&amp;#39;s omnipresent what do we mean by omnipresent we mean that he&amp;#39;s everywhere at all times you see some of you don&amp;#39;t restrict him to space but you restrict him by time you say that I&amp;#39;m the presentent means he&amp;#39;s everywhere at the same time no no no no no Jesus is everywhere at all times Jesus is everywhere in the past present and future so 2,000 years ago when Jesus was getting ready to die for my sin I 2,000 years later believe that God raised him from the dead and want him to be Lord Of My Life The Holy Spirit immersed me baptized me into jesus&amp;#39; body and we were joined and became one Spirit 2 Corinthians 521 says for Heath made him who knew no sin who is that Jesus to be sin or to be S on our behalf that we might be made the righteousness of God in him so we became one he became my sin and he was crucified for my sin in fact Paul says that he was crucified with him he said I am crucified with Christ nevertheless I live yet not I but Christ who liveth within me so when he was made my sin Jesus died on the cross for me but I was in him and when he died and the so went into hell I was in him because we were one Spirit jointed and when he paid the penalty for my sin I was in Christ and then when God looked into hell and he saw a soul had never sinned and all my sin was was paid for God legally raised him from the dead according to Leviticus 18:5 the man which doeth these things shall live by them so God looked into hell and he saw soul that had never sinned all the sin had been paid for so he said live and at that moment the Holy Spirit raised Jesus from the dead but I&amp;#39;m in Christ so the Holy Spirit regenerates me I&amp;#39;m born again and the Bible says the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead now lives within me so why what happened is that very moment the Holy Spirit regenerates me I&amp;#39;m born again and the Holy Spirit begins to live inside of me now here&amp;#39;s what&amp;#39;s interesting that happened 2,000 years ago but all of this took place in an instant like this the moment I believe that God raised Jesus from the dead and I confessed him as my Lord so the moment that those disciples realized that this is Jesus he really was resurrected he&amp;#39;s right here and he&amp;#39;s their lord at that very moment all those things I talked about happened like they had been immersed into him he died for them they were resurrected with them and the Holy Spirit was living inside of them they were born again now that&amp;#39;s what took place so what happened at Pentecost well on the day of Pentecost God poured out his holy spirit upon them and they received the gifts of the Spirit and they were empowered you see there is a subsequent work of the Holy Spirit Pentecostals refer to it as the baptism of the Holy Spirit it doesn&amp;#39;t matter what you refer to it as as long as you understand that there is a subsequent work of the Holy Spirit but that&amp;#39;s not what I&amp;#39;m teaching on the point I want to make this morning is that you can&amp;#39;t can&amp;#39;t be saved without the Holy Spirit regenerating you and residing within you and some people teach that the disciples did not receive the Holy Spirit until the day of Pentecost but if that was the case that would have meant that they weren&amp;#39;t saved until the day of Pentecost until 50 days later and people that&amp;#39;s not true they were saved the moment they belied that God raised Jesus from the dead and they confessed him as their lord so guess what Jesus does this is remember all five of these appearance happened on the same day the day that Jesus was resurrected when he&amp;#39;s there and they figure out he&amp;#39;s not a ghost when they figure out that this is truly Jesus Jesus breathed on them and said receive the Holy Spirit which symbolized their salvation which symbolized what had taken place in the spiritual realm in other words it symbolized what took place in the spiritual realm at the moment they placed their faith in Jesus now if you want to know more about Pentecost that&amp;#39;s another series we&amp;#39;ll talk about that when we talk about the Feast of the Lord but for now you need to know that the moment the disciples believed that God raised Jesus from the dead and confessed him as Lord they were saved and they immediately received the Holy Spirit that&amp;#39;s why John included this in gospel he didn&amp;#39;t want anyone to get the idea that the disciples weren&amp;#39;t saved until the day of Pentecost no and that&amp;#39;s what happens with you it&amp;#39;s not actually the prayer that you pray what it is is that moment you believe that God raised Jesus from the dead and you want him to be Lord at that very moment those things that I talked about happened just like that that holy spirit because he&amp;#39;s omnipresent is is there 2,000 years ago but he&amp;#39;s also in the present he baptized you into one body Jesus body you were joined and became one Spirit which meant Jesus died for you which meant that he went to hell to pay the penalty for your sins but it also means when all your sins were paid for and God looked into hell saw so that had never sinned and he said rise at that moment because you were in Christ you were born again you were regenerated and the same spirit that raised Christ from the dead now dwells within in you that&amp;#39;s what all those scriptures mean and all of the sudden the holy spirit is living inside of you and that scripture we read Romans chapter 8 verse 9 that if you don&amp;#39;t have the spirit of Christ you&amp;#39;re none of his that doesn&amp;#39;t apply to you because now the Holy Spirit dwells within you and you are a child of God I can&amp;#39;t see the spirit of God living inside of you but I can promise you God can the angels can even the demons can you see can I go a little bit deeper you guys don&amp;#39;t mind do you when Jesus walked on this Earth he didn&amp;#39;t have the adamic nature he was born of a virgin so he walked as the second Adam and the demons that were on this Earth had never seen a man since the Garden of Eden that was alive spiritually that&amp;#39;s why they all recognized him it didn&amp;#39;t matter where he went wherever he came demons would recognize him because they had not seen a man since the Garden of Eden before Adam had sin that was alive spiritually every man they had seen since the time of the Fall was dead spiritually except Jesus so when they saw Jesus they immediately knew who he was and what he was now here&amp;#39;s what&amp;#39;s interesting once you&amp;#39;re born again they instantly see who you are and what you are you are born again and I promise you one day you will see the transformation and you will have a glorified body

Transcript for:Post-Resurrection Appearances of Jesus and Their Significance

Transcript for:
Post-Resurrection Appearances of Jesus and Their Significance