the power of transformation in the lives of people. We spent this Easter season looking at how Jesus has changed the world and how he has changed me. And you, by faith, this Easter morning I want to look at what I believe is what I know is the most powerful real life-changing dynamic in all of human history. Nothing will change your life more than what we're going to talk about this morning.
I am certain of it. It is actually, it's actually a really big concept. It is hope. Hope.
And there is no event in the history of the world which impacts human hope more than the validity of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Now, if you've been here on Easter Sundays in the past, you know, I oftentimes get up here on Easter Sunday and I focus on the historicity and the reliability of the resurrection. As part of my research this week, I actually came across an article written by presidential historian John Meacham. It was published in Newsweek in 2005.
You should check it out. In the article, they look at all the historical data surrounding the resurrection of Jesus. And this very secular magazine, it doesn't definitively conclude, but it seemingly seems to conclude that the resurrection of Jesus probably happened. Most of the discussion points actually have to do with the apologetic, that there is no historically plausible alternative explanation for the birth of the church, then the early Christians, then that the early Christians saw a risen Jesus.
It's impossible to explain what happened without that being true. Tim Keller once said in light of this truth, this truth. Ultimately, the burden of truth, if you don't believe in the resurrection, it will eventually fall on you. Because if you say you don't believe it, then you have to account for certain things that are hard to account for.
One of those things would be the fact that hundreds of Jews saw and testified to see Jesus. And they saw him many times and they saw him repeatedly over 40 days in groups. People don't have hallucinations in groups. These same people spent the rest of their lives not only proclaiming that they saw Jesus resurrected, but they died because they would not stop proclaiming it.
If you don't believe, then you have to account for the fact that both thousands of Jews and thousands of Greeks who had worldviews that had no room for a resurrected Messiah. The Greeks didn't believe in the resurrection of the body and the Jews did not have any idea about a suffering servant Messiah that would die. They believed and were waiting in an all powerful, all conquering Messiah. There was no concept of a crucified Christ, which would leave you with the question, why did both thousands of Greeks and thousands of Jews overnight change their entire worldview and start to believe in Jesus?
You'd have to account for these things. It was experiencing the resurrected Jesus that changed the way they thought. It changed the way they lived. And here's why.
Because they had hope. They had experience and eternal, not temporal, right? Not an extinguishable hope. They had met the resurrected Jesus and they began to hope, well, that if Jesus is resurrected, then they would be too.
That hope changed the world. It changed their world. And this morning, I believe if you would move to not just, I think we oftentimes as Christians think that, well, the resurrection is provable. It's just not possible.
This morning, I would like you to move from provable to possible. Because if you do, right? If you begin to believe that Jesus really is resurrected, it's not only provable historically, but it's possible, then I think you might begin to expand the possibilities for your own life. That there is something more to life than grinding out 60 or 70 years.
There's something more profound and significant to live for and with. Because if you really begin to own the resurrection, right? And it's not just a historical concept, but it's a present truth and reality for you that you can trust him. That it becomes for you and eternal hope.
I promise you, you will live and experience life very differently. I want to explain the power of hope. This is such an important topic. It's the ultimate life-changing dynamic.
How you live today, think about this with me, how you live today is completely determined by what you believe about your future. Now, when I use the word hope, I'm using what I would call the biblical concept of hope, which is a great word translated hope. It's translated that way 80 times. But the translation into the English word of hope really is a poor vehicle for denoting what the authors of the scripture were writing about and what the story line, what the characters experience.
Because when you and I say hope, we tend to mean uncertainty. If I were to ask you, do you know that it's true? You might go, well, I don't know that it's true, but I hope that it's true. That is not what the authors of the scripture, especially when they talk about the resurrection we're talking about.
The writer to the Hebrews, again, which had no room for resurrection in their mindset about a suffering crucified savior, he explains hope this way. He said, now, faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. This is what the agents were commended for. When the writers of the New Testament speak of the whole, which the resurrection brings, it's not something uncertain, but it is for all of them.
And this is why their lives all change so dramatically. It is a life-shaping certainty of something that hasn't yet happened for them, but they know will. That's hope. Now, as human beings, I would tell you, we underestimate how much are believed in futures, determine how we live each and every day.
We are irreducibly hope-based creatures, almost completely shaped by what we think is to come. What you believe about your future is actually the main determinant of how you process and experience and how you get through and handle all of your circumstances. I'll give you an example. I've heard this week.
Two guys get a job. Same job. Same exact responsibilities. It's a terrible job.
Mean-to-work, boring work, smoke-filled widget factory, long hours, no vacation, nasty boss, zero fulfillment. Both guys. Same boss. Same job.
The only difference is that the one guy knows that his pay for the year when the year is up is going to amount to $15,000. The other guy, he knows his pay, too, but he knows his pay at the end of the year will amount to $15,000,000. One guy is bored and unhappy. He hates going to work every day, drags himself there.
The other guy whistles while he works. He's on time every day. He works hard. Well, same circumstance.
It's because your circumstances ultimately don't determine how you feel, how you experience life. It's what you believe about your future which determines how you process and respond to what's going on right now. You literally can't live without hope. I'm telling you it's not powerful.
Victor Frankl was a psychiatrist. He was also a concentration camp survivor. He observed while he was living within one of the Nazi camps that people who lost the sense of meaning or hope about their future were more likely to die, even without any worsening of their physical condition. Here's what he wrote about a man in his camp.
This is fascinating. He said there was a man on my camp who had a dream that the war would be over on March 30th. He was convinced he would be liberated by them. But as the day drew nearer, it became increasingly clear from the news that the war was not ended.
On March 29th, he became ill. On March 30th, he lost consciousness. On March 31st, he was dead. To all outward appearances, he had died of typhus.
But to me, it seemed that he had died because he had lost hope. The impact of hope is actually scientifically measurable. In the 1950s, Kurt Richter, who was a professor at John Hopkins, he did a famous psychological experiment. It's called the Drowning Rat Experiment.
Now I'm going to tell you about this experiment. I did not conduct this experiment. I know it's terrible. Don't email me.
I'm just your simple messenger. But what he did is he would drop rats into a bucket of water and essentially see how long they could swim for. And he would introduce a range of variables. He had domesticated rats.
He had wild rats. He would drop them all into the cups of water. They would yield varying, but at the end of the day, similar results, which was that the rats would swim for a short amount of time. But eventually, they gave up and they drowned.
He wrote, quote, the situation of these rats scarcely seemed one demanding fight or flight. It is rather one of hopelessness. The rats were in a situation against which they have no defense and they seemed literally, they were sweating and they just gave up. So then he tried something different with a different collection of rats.
Just as the rat gave up and began to sink, he would reach in, grab the rat out of the water and save them. Let the rat recover for a couple of minutes and then he would place the rat back into the bucket. And he did this over and over until the rat became accustomed to rescue. And do you know what happened?
The rats just kept swimming. Like longer and longer and longer and longer. Here was his conclusion. He said the rats quickly learned that the situation is not actually hopeless.
After elimination of hopelessness, listen to this, after elimination of hopelessness, the rats do not die. This is the power of hope. Now, as I've created earlier, here's the thing that we mess up, right? People that misplaced hope, they get lost because we tend to put our hope in things that can be taken away.
Things that are temporal, that are not eternal, money, power, position, people, relationships. Many of those are good things, but they are temporal. There is but one place where you can, well, you can hope that is actually eternal. It is unwithering.
It is unchanging. It is a hope that cannot be taken away from you. And that is this. If Jesus of Nazareth is resurrected, so too can you.
But now, can we be honest? Because I used to be a banker and now I'm a pastor and that's a weird transition. I mean, let's be honest, the resurrection is a nice story. I watched the 14th video of my son O'Laurain.
He was telling Landry about Jesus' resurrection the other day in bed. And honestly, like sometimes, even believers in Jesus were like, well, I know it's provable, but I don't think it's possible. We treat it almost like it's a child's story, right? I know the ancient truths of the lives changed, but it's hard to believe.
Yet, what's interesting is the people that experienced the resurrected Jesus, they actually never shied away from that truth either. They got it. They knew it was hard to believe. It's possible Paul.
He wrote most of the New Testament. Paul, if you know his story, he was an early persecutor of the church. He was an enemy of the church. He was actually out on his way to go kill Christians.
When he met the resurrected Jesus Christ, now if you want to deny the resurrection, you're going to have to explain Paul. But yet, even as town, Paul would go from town to town, people who did not believe in the resurrection would come in behind Paul and go, there is no such thing as resurrection. Paul's not right about that. Jesus, great teacher, just dead.
To which Paul wrote to a church that was falling prey to that belief. He said, look, if there is no resurrection of the dead, and I want you to listen if there's no resurrection of the dead, this is important, if there's no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ hasn't been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we're found to be false witnesses about God, for we've testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead, but he did not raise him in fact if the dead are not raised.
For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is fueled. You are still dead in your sins. Then those also, and this is for every one of us, who have hoped that we would see those we love again, Paul says, look, there's no resurrection, then those who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.
And it's conclusion. It's pretty dramatic, right? If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. If only for this life we have hope in Christ.
If we don't really believe in the resurrection, if our hope is it anchored to a resurrected life, and we're just following Jesus because he was a great teacher, you're a fool. I don't know what Paul says. Now again, you can check the news we've got a lot of if you like, you can Google or chat, chat GPT the proofs of the resurrection. I believe they're undeniable and they're compelling.
But you and I are 21st century modern educated intellectuals, historic proofs are one thing, but for many of us, it's the plausibility of the resurrection that we struggle with. I mean, it's for almost all of us, right? Well, I understand the historicity of it, but if I can't prove it, right? If I can't explain it, then it can't be.
Here's where I'm going to spend the last few minutes of my talk this morning. I want to get you past that idea. I want to move you past believing that it might be provable, but it's not possible. I know the history of the resurrection, but I can't believe it because it's beyond what could be validated or experienced or trusted.
So towards that end this morning, I'm going to try to blow your mind with the plausibility of the resurrection, not just historically, but present, because if the resurrection is true, if the resurrection is real, if the resurrection is indeed possible, then it's not possible. If the resurrection is not possible, it has implications about everything that we believe about this life, how we live. For example, we tend, I know we say we don't, but we invent a funeral, so I know what we tend to do. We tend to believe that when you die, you die.
When the heart stops beating, when the brain stops signaling life is over. Now, the biblical authors, we know this are quite clear, explaining that our physical bodies are merely containers. They are vessels for us. We are eternal beings.
We dwell on them now, but we will be released from them eventually. We won't be within them forever. There is more to you and I than flesh and blood, but we tend to die. Our experience is that when someone we love, when their body stops, they stop.
But that is not what science seems to be saying anymore. In an NYU Langone study led by Dr. Sam Parnia, they began to study hundreds of patients who had died, and by death, I mean dead. No cardiac signals, no brain function, no brain activity, and they were resuscitating.
The NYU study showed repeatedly that consciousness, awareness, seemed to somehow, for all of them, extend beyond measurable life. Here is what this aware study concluded. This is NYU. This is not some Christian apologist coming up with this idea.
In multiple hospital-based studies, patients who were quickly dead reported vivid, verifiable experiences during cardiac arrest, suggesting consciousness may continue after the brain activity ceases. Can you explain that? In fact, here is his personal conclusion. He said consciousness, awareness, and lucidity may not entirely cease at the time of death, and he warned, listen to this doctor's warning.
These experiences should not be dismissed as mere hallucinations. In fact, you can check this out. There's a whole study on something. One of the terms they're calling it, this is pan-consciousness, where there is an entire scientific study that is trying to figure out where the heart of our consciousness might lie.
It is becoming obvious to many of them that it is no longer centered in our brain, in our bodies. It's almost as if our consciousness dwells somewhere else. It's almost like there's this other thing in us, a soul, that does not live and die with your body. Time can trip you up when you're trying to understand who God is and the resurrection of Jesus.
We tend to think right time. We think as our experience has shown us. The time is linear. There's a yesterday and there's a then.
There's a today, there's a now, there's a tomorrow and a future. Did you know that science does not agree with you? Einstein's theory of relativity says if you could go fast enough all the time would condense into a singular moment, which leads to a pretty profound idea, which is that all moments in time are actually equally real, just like all places on a map. They're all existing somehow at once.
In fact, check out this quote from Einstein. For us, believing physicists, again, this is not a question. The distinction between past, present, future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. Body, soul, time.
Maybe not all we can understand or can explain is all that there is. Now, Einstein's trouble with this, as I understand it, because he struggled with something called quantum mechanics. It's a branch of physics that explains how things work at the smallest of scales, atoms, electrons, photons, subatomic particles. And here's what Einstein realized when he was studying this.
When you got down to that level, things got weird. So he begins to check out. Because quantum mechanics defies every day intuition. When you study it, you go, it can't be.
Objects apparently can somehow be in two places at one time. And they can affect each other across space and they can do it instantly. It makes no sense. In fact, here's a quote from Einstein.
He dismissed it. He said, I cannot seriously believe in quantum mechanics because it can't be reconciled with the idea that physics should represent a reality in time and space. Here's what he called it. Free from spooky actions at a distance.
Which would make sense were it not for the bell test experiments, which came long. One of the most, if you want to really have your mind blown, this is fascinating and it experientially confirmed phenomena in physics about quantum entanglement. What they did is they took two photons or electrons and they were entangled and they took them apart and they took them to great distances. The example that you hear oftentimes is San Francisco and New York City.
And in the experiment when these photons or electrons were separated from these great distances, you could have one in New York and one in San Francisco when you change the direction of the particles in New York instantaneously at the same time with no discernable lag, the correlating entangled particle in San Francisco moved the same way. Here was their conclusion. Modern physics shows that the universe is fundamentally interconnected in ways that defies face and time. What happens in one place?
Somehow can instantly affect another. I mean, how could the resurrection be true? Make no sense? I'm assigned to the God.
Right? Like that's what we speak of what we don't know all the time and we dismiss the resurrection as if it's like a childish story. I can't possibly believe in a God outside of time or life after death. But reality at its most fundamental level is not bound by space and time.
And I'll end with this one. Have you heard of strength theory? You really want to lose your mind. Go look at strength theory.
It's often referred to as the theory that could explain everything. It's an attempt to reconcile general relativity and quantum mechanics. It's thought of as being the long sought after unifying theory of all physics. Now, I speak of what I don't know right now, right?
But here's what strength theory is. It says that the kind of building blocks of everything, atoms, light, you, me, aren't little dots, but they're vibrating strings of energy. And these strings vibrate at different frequencies and their vibrations create the particles that form everything we see. It's almost like, and this is from the lips of scientists.
It's almost like every atom is a musical note, and together the universe is one big symphony. But here's the ultimate cool thing about strength theory. For strength theory to work, extra dimensions beyond the familiar three dimensions of space and time are required. They're up to counting ten or eleven.
In other words, there are scientifically proven multiple dimensions which you can't see or know right here, next to you, around you. Strength theory seems to say somehow they're bent in or folded on one another. In fact, where science is going in with this right now is, there's no way to get the math to work unless there are multiple dimensions we can't see. Which is super interesting because when you and I think of things like heaven, we tend to think, well, heaven is up there, out there somewhere, but the Bible never speaks about heaven that way.
Jesus said the kingdom of God is not coming with signs to be observed for behold the kingdom of God is in your midst. Dallas Willard may be the most brilliant spiritual mind of the 20th century. He said heaven is the atmosphere or dimension in which God exists. It's not a distant galaxy, it surrounds us, although we might not recognize it.
And he writes in his book, Surprised by Hope, he said it this way. In the Bible, heaven and earth are not radically different locations. They are different dimensions of God's good creation. They are mented, does this sound a little bit like something I just read, to interlock and overlap.
Friends, what if Jesus did not die and go up there? What if what Jesus did? What if what the Bible says he is? He is the first fruits of resurrection.
What is the resurrection of Jesus? Is the first revelation that Jesus hasn't really done anywhere. He's the first fruits of what will be true for all of us. What if the resurrection is not just some fairy tale, but it is the first look.
It's the first evidence of reality as it really is. I mean, when you wrestle with this, it gets mind-blowing, right? In a reality where there's more dimensions than we can perceive. What might seem impossible here might be quite natural.
There, what we call miracles could simply be natural events, seen through the lens of another dimension, making their way into this dimension. Now, you see this over and over on the scriptures. Over and over. I mean, the Prophet Elijah was encouraging a servant to not be afraid when they were seemingly surrounded by their enemies.
And so he said, Lord, my servant doesn't understand the way things really work. He prayed, quote, Lord, open his eyes so that he might see. Then the Lord opened the servant's eyes and he looked and he saw the hills full of horses and chariots on fire all around him. The Apostle Paul is bragging about a guy that he met.
Here's what he said about the guy. He says, I know a man in Christ who was caught up to the third heaven. Dimension? We're in the body or out of the body.
I do not know. God knows. And he heard inexpressible things. Things no one is permitted to tell.
Does it not make sense now when Paul wrote to the Ephesians? Our struggle is against flesh and blood, but against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms? Does it not maybe give us some context when you read in Revelation the last book in the scriptures, Jesus is divided into the cycle. John says, after this I looked and there before me was a door standing open in heaven and the voice said, come up here.
Why am I telling you all this on Easter morning? Here's why, because not only is the resurrection historically viable or verifiable. It is more than scientifically plausible. All of the stories of the resurrection Jesus walking on water, walking through doors, appearing and then disappearing.
They're not actually far-fetched at all. In fact, you could argue they're likely. What if heaven's not up there? What if it's right here?
What if it's around us? What if it's not just history but it's current discovery that is proving and showing there is life possible beyond the grave? There's another kingdom into which we can live then and a future we can live into now. And here's the key.
There is but one way into that kingdom. I did not say that. Jesus of Nazareth said that. Why should you believe him?
Because he is the only person that said, I'm going over there. And then I'm going to come back and he did. And then he said, I'm going back. And then I'm coming back to get you.
I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father except for me. I promise I'm coming back for you. Paul told the Corinthians if only for this life we have hope in Christ we are of all people to be pitied.
But in light of what he knew about the validity of the resurrection of Jesus, here's how he concluded to that church. He said, but Christ has indeed been raised from the dead the first truths of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all dies so in Christ all will be made alive.
Friends Jesus Christ is risen from the dead. It is not just historically validated. It is scientifically verifiable. It's not just like it.
I think it's true. And if Jesus Christ is resurrected from the dead so too can you. This is an eternal place that breast your hope. Nothing can take this away from you.
This is what Paul concluded to him. He said, listen I'm going to tell you a mystery. Which is what we're talking about right? He goes, we will not all sleep but we will all be changed in a flash in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet.
The trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable and we will be changed. The perishable will clothe itself with the imperishable, the mortal with immortality. And when the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable and the mortal with immortality then the saying that is written will come true. Death has been swallowed up in victory.
Where Odeth is your victory? Where Odeth is your sting? The sting of death is sin and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God he gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
That's the whole piece of it. I'm telling you. Don't believe me. All that you see is not all that there is.
You are not pointless. You are not worthless, cosmic, goo. You are not spitting randomly on a blue ball in space. You are made in the image of God who revealed himself in Jesus Christ.
And one day soon, everything, and this is according to Jesus, who said I'm going over there and then I'll be back and did. One day soon everything will not only be revealed but it'll be made right. Everything that you have lost, everyone that you have lost. They are not gone.
There is life after death. Trust in the only one who has gone there and come back to prove it. Again, he's invited you to join. Life is not spinning randomly out of control.
God has spoken it all into being. It is a well written, it is a choreographed symphony going back to the, to a being birthed out of his voice. It's a symphony in which you play your part. Because he lives once, once was unthinkable, I would argue he was now inevitable.
I would tell you what a day and age we live in because what just 50 years ago would have been considered superstition is now echoed in science. What was once the end is now just the beginning. There is a greater hope. There is a new beginning.
There is a rescue underway and in a very real way. It's already been completed. Live in this whole friends. Trust in this hope.
And right now can I ask you to stand up because it is Easter morning. Right now we are going to celebrate Jesus Christ, the living hope of Easter. It is not only historically true. It is scientifically verifiable.
Believe and live the kind of life today that only hope for the life.