Christmas Questions - Seven Life-Changing Questions About Jesus
Tom Shrader addresses seven questions about Jesus that Life Magazine posed: Was a child born? Did He grow to be man or God? What did He teach? Was He a healer or revolutionary? Was He tormented or saintly? What happened on the cross and third day? Is He alive today? Through Scripture, Tom demonstrates that Jesus is not whatever we want Him to be, but the way, the truth, and the life - requiring each person to answer Jesus' question: Who do you say that I am?
“Jesus says I'm the truth, this is who I am, you may have all sorts of opinions, it doesn't really matter, this is who I am, I'm the way, the truth, the life, there is life nowhere apart from Him eternally.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Standalone Teachings
Recorded: December 13, 2012
Duration: 39 min
Themes: identity, salvation, truth, faith, discipleship, purpose, eternity, commitment, questioning faith, seeking truth, new believer, doubting, exploring christianity, spiritual seeker, nonbeliever, young adult
Scripture: Mark 8:27-29, John 14:6, John 10:24-39, John 11, John 3:16, Matthew 1:18-25, 1 Corinthians 15:3-8, 2 Corinthians 5:21, Romans 10:9, Luke 2:52, John 20:30-31
Theological Themes: christology, incarnation, atonement, resurrection, deity of christ, gospel, biblical authority, eschatology
Full Transcript
Christmas Questions - Seven Life-Changing Questions About Jesus
Life magazine used to do special publications at Christmas and Easter. They did one on Jesus by asking seven questions and then answering them. I thought it would be interesting to take those seven questions, look at them, and answer them as our Christmas message.
Here are the seven questions. Number one: A child was born or was He? Number two: Did the boy grow to be a man or God? Number three: What did He teach and why did He teach it? Number four: Was He a healer, a miracle worker, or a revolutionary? Number five: Was He a tormented man or a saintly missionary? Number six: This was the key question we'll spend the most time on—what happened on the cross and what happened on the third day? Number seven: Jesus died, is He alive today?
The Most Important Question Ever Asked
Part of what I like about this is that Life magazine, clearly not a publication with a Christian bent, was asking these questions. In their introduction, they wrote an essay about how there's a lot to be said about Jesus. He's called the Son of God, He's an inspiration, He's a great teacher, He's a rabble rouser—He is all these things. But then they quoted from Mark 8 and inferred that even Jesus was a little confused about who He was.
In Mark chapter 8 verse 27, Jesus went out with His disciples to Caesarea Philippi and asked, "Who do people say that I am?" They told Him, "Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, others say one of the prophets." Mark 8:29 continues: He questioned them, "But who do you say that I am?"
That really becomes the question that resonates over thousands of years and will until Jesus comes again. It goes from this broad, general question—"What do the people out there say?"—and shifts to "But what do you say?" It's the most important question you'll ever deal with in your entire life. There's nothing else that compares. I'm sure your days, weeks, and months ahead are filled with important things, but all of them pale in comparison to this issue, regardless of who you are.
The Problem with Cultural Christianity
Life magazine's approach to answering this question was very interesting. They referenced Paul's writing in 1 Corinthians 9, where Paul talks about being "all things to all people." What they seemed to be saying is that the general view on Jesus is that He's flexible, adaptable. Their conclusion appeared to be that He is whatever you want Him to be and whatever you need Him to be.
In reality, that's the exact opposite of what scripture teaches and what Jesus teaches. As Jesus was getting ready for His last moments with His disciples before the crucifixion, He said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father but through Me." The language is significant because He uses the definite article, which really narrows things down.
"I am the way"—there isn't any other way. "I am the truth"—it's an absolute truth, an objective truth, not a subjective truth. It's not like asking whether it's warm or cold in a room, which is subjective and individual. But if we say two plus two equals what? Four. If you say five, you're wrong. If you say three, you're wrong. It doesn't matter how you feel about it or how earnest you are—there's a truth there.
Jesus says, "I'm the truth. This is who I am. You may have all sorts of opinions, but it doesn't really matter. This is who I am. I'm the way, the truth, the life." There is life nowhere apart from Him eternally, and ultimately, to be reconciled to God, "I am the way"—there isn't any other way.
It's important to understand this because the general consensus in the world requires that our language and our minds be shaped accordingly. When I talk about Christianity, I rarely use that word anymore without context. I'll use "biblical Christian" or "biblical Christianity," not something that's just in the marketplace. We're Christians primarily based on what we believe. Our behaviors change as a consequence of that, but what makes me a Christian isn't just good deeds—there are plenty of secular humanists ringing bells and gathering toys for tots.
Question One: A Child Was Born or Was He?
Now let's work through these seven questions. "A child was born or was He?" To me, this seemed like the easiest one to answer, but Life magazine quoted an atheist who said, "Listen, Jesus is not a historical figure. There's no historical evidence for Him. The Jesus myth and the God myth is simply good business."
However, they also had a church historian and a secular historian who basically said this: "If you believe in Julius Caesar, you must believe in Jesus because the evidence is overwhelming."
When I first did this study fifteen years ago, you couldn't Google things easily. But when I Googled "Was Jesus born?" the first thing that popped up was "When was Jesus born?"—treating it as a fact. There may be a few people who would say Jesus never existed, but I don't know that I've met one in quite a while.
We're talking about forgetting what He did or accomplished—just was He ever born? We number our calendar according to this. We have the record of His birth in various places, including scripture, where Luke tells us that a decree went forth from Caesar Augustus that a census should be taken. Joseph took his wife Mary and they went to Bethlehem, where Jesus was born.
Was Jesus born? Absolutely.
grow to be a man or to be a God? And obviously, well I don't know obviously, the answer is yes. Did He grow to be a man? Sure. In Luke chapter 2, if I remember it's verse 52, it is, Jesus kept increasing in wisdom and stature and favor with God and with man. He grew like a normal person. He got bigger. At the same time, He's God. Jesus begins to grow. Is He God or is He man?
There's all sorts of, again I would say non-Christian writing. Emerson wrote about it and talked about Jesus in the context of something you term the over-soul and so here's what he said: Jesus is divine just like you're divine so He's nothing special. The problem is when we get to the scripture is that the scripture says Jesus was God and here's something that oftentimes people are a little surprised by: He claimed to be God.
Jesus Claims to Be God
If you have your Bibles you can open them to John chapter 10 verse 24. It says the Jews—and what they mean there is the group of Jewish leaders—came to Him and they said, "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you're the Christ, if you're the Messiah, tell us plainly."
Verse 25 He said, "I told you but you don't believe. The works that I do in my Father's name they testify of me but you don't believe because you're not my sheep." Verse 27 could be all marked up—there's all sorts of truths there. "My sheep hear my voice."
The imagery there is one of a shepherd and sheep. It's one that's used all the way through scripture to describe God and His relationship with His people. Interestingly enough, He calls us sheep, which are by and large pretty pathetic, stupid animals. A sheep will eat almost indiscriminately. If lost, almost every other animal seems to have some sort of a homing calibration in them. A sheep doesn't. They secrete this oily lanolin that makes their wool almost like flypaper that just attracts all sorts of things, and they are unable to clean themselves or each other. The shepherd has to come along and provide that. They're defenseless. If they're frightened they will just run off, stampeding over each other.
But at night, here's what they would do. The shepherds—a tough job—might have five or six flocks who would gather together at night, and then in the day they would go out. When they came back at night, the shepherd would stand in front of his pen. There'd be five or six pens, and he would simply call his sheep, and his voice would be so distinctive that those sheep would hear that voice. That's what He'd say: "My sheep hear my voice, and they follow me, and I give them eternal life."
So here's a question we get all the time: if I'm a Christian, can I lose my salvation? And the answer is no. What is eternal life? When does eternal life end? "I give them eternal life. No one can snatch them out of my hand. My Father's given to them is greater than all. No one's able to snatch them out of my Father's hand. I and the Father are one."
The Jewish Leaders' Response
So we go, you know, too vague, I don't know what it means. What the Jews did: they picked up stones to stone Him again, and He said, "I show you many good works from the Father. For which one of these are stoning me?" And the Jews said, "We don't stone you for a good work, but because you are blasphemer, because you, being a man, make yourself out to be God." That was His claim.
So we have to deal with that and go, listen, here's what He says He is. So the old classic answer here is that He's either a liar, or He's a lunatic, or He's who He said He is—He's Lord.
I was on a plane coming back from San Francisco. There were—these are the old days, they don't do it now—there were six of us, literally six of us on the flight, and it was a Southwest flight. Somehow, I'm not sure how, we all decided to get together back when the seats faced each other, and the six of us are back in this one section talking. I, to this day, don't know how that happened.
A Conversation About Jesus
So I said, "What do you do?" And they were both writers for one of the local newspapers. "Well, that's a fascinating job, great influence." And they said, "What do you do?" I said, "Well, I do a variety of different things, but I make my living teaching Bible studies just out in the world during the week." And they said, "Well, that's interesting, that's nice." And I said, "Yes, it's nice."
We got talking, and I said, "You know, where do you live?" And they told me. I said, "Do you ever go to a church?" And they said, "No, we don't go to church." And, you know, we started talking about Jesus, because I don't want to talk about a bunch of other stuff, so we're talking about Jesus. And I said, "You know, He's either a liar or a lunatic, or He's Lord. He's either a liar, because He said He's God, and He's not, or He's a lunatic, like those people down in Van Buren who think they're George Washington, or He's who He said He was."
And they said, "Oh, no, there's other possibilities." I said, "Really? That screws me up. What other ones?" And they said, "Well, He could have been just seriously misled." So the conversation didn't go very far, but it's an important issue, obviously.
The Death and Resurrection of Lazarus
John 10, if you flip a page to John 11, it's one of those great scenes in the Bible. The heading on John 11 in my Bible says, "The death and resurrection of Lazarus." The word comes to Jesus that His good friend, the one that He loved—verse 5—that this Lazarus—Jesus loved Mary, loved Martha, loved Lazarus—and then He heard that he was very, very sick, and He did an odd thing. He stayed two days longer.
Then Lazarus dies. Verse 14: Jesus said to them plainly, "Lazarus is dead," and this is odd, "and I'm glad." That seems strange. "I'm glad for your sake." Well, something's gonna happen, remember?
So off Jesus goes. He arrives at the home of Mary and Martha. The celebration continues about a week long after his passing. People are gathered there. The girls come out and say, "Boy, we wish you would have gotten here. You could have saved him, could have delivered him." Jesus said, "Well, we're gonna see him
Jesus Demonstrates His Divine Claims
He goes, "I know that in the resurrection." He said, "I got a different plan." So off they go to the tomb. Imagine the scene now. Everybody's gathered around, and they're going, what's He going to do? He gets to the tomb, and He says, "Roll away the stone."
If ever I have an ancestor who's in Scripture, it's this guy, because he says, "Surely he stinketh." That would have been my approach to this. "You know, I don't know about the practical side of this." Jesus said, "Roll away the stone." He says, "Lazarus comes forth," and Lazarus comes out.
An amazing story, but I've always said to me the most amazing part of this story is verse 45. Therefore, when all this is done, many of the Jews came to Mary and saw what He'd done and believed in Jesus, but some of them went to the Pharisees and told Him the things that Jesus had done, and they refused to believe. What do you need to see? How much do you need?
Jesus did this over and over and over and over again. Jesus said He was God, and then did things that God could only do. The fact that you're here, you got a Bible, most of you I see every Thursday, seen you every Thursday for a decade, a decade and a half, two decades, and what's amazing is you can be going through this exercise with your Bible in this room and still not be a follower of Christ. It might be that you've heard this story or similar stories over and over and over again and never taken that step from factual belief into trusting Him. Jesus says that He is God and then seems to live a life that proves it.
What Did He Teach and Why Did He Teach It?
Many of you have what's called a red-lettered Bible, and the red-lettered Bible has the words of Jesus written in red. So what did He teach? Well, there they are. He taught the whole gamut of things, clearly some deep theology, but He's also teaching filled with practical application.
Depending upon exactly how you number them, Jesus told, we're going to say, 32 parables. It's when He would stop His teaching and tell a story and illustrate it most often with very common language and common elements that everybody knew and understood. Of those 32, 16 of them deal with money. Very practical. Here's how you should live, here's what you should do, the Sermon on the Mount.
Jesus does this and teaches, and here's what He says in John chapter 3 verse 16: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life."
The Elmo Illustration of God's Love
One year, and to this day, I bet I've heard it a dozen times in the last two weeks, "What are you going to do for Christmas?" And I say, "I don't know, something around Jesus." And they'll all say, "It isn't even close, they'll all go, you know the best Christmas message ever was Elmo."
One year I brought in Elmo, and I explained Elmo and the research that went into Elmo, and I believe it was Hasbro that did the Elmo doll. This doll tested more positively than any other toy that Hasbro had ever tested. And so you take the Elmo doll, you hit it, and it said, "Elmo loves you." You hit it again, and it said, "Elmo loves you more."
That's what started this search for me. So one day I took the doll in, and I gave it to the gal who was working with me as my admin at the time, and I said, "There has—I mean none of this is accident. I know business well enough to know there's a reason that's there. Will you do the research for me?" And she came back with this stack of stuff and the secrecy around it, but here's what happened.
And it was universal. When they were in a room like this with a bunch of kids, and they hit that thing, and it said, "Elmo loves me," immediately, in unison, the kids said, "I love you, Elmo." "Elmo loves you more." And what I did that Christmas was to say, here's what God says. God says, "I love you." "We love you, God." "I love you more." And here's how I'm going to show it. For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son. There's the perfect picture of love. Jesus. That whoever believes in Him shall have eternal life. That's what He taught.
Practical Theology That Transforms Daily Life
And it's so good to be focused on that, and to somehow, and it happens almost naturally, is to go, "Wow, I'm glad I have that settled." And I don't even mean in a dismissive way. It's all of a sudden I understand, "Wow, here's my sin. It's taken care of. I'm in this relationship. The Bible teaches it can't be broken. I'm glad that's done." But it's no. It's that theology that has this practical side of it.
We were just locked away, our leadership staff, for two days at the Valley Hall. I love the Valley Hall. It's one of my favorite spots. There's something about the joint. Just when you walk in it, it takes you to a different place, and a different time. And I love the joint.
So we're in a room, and we're talking. So we're doing strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, right? How many of those drills have you done? So we're going through strengths. And I said, "We teach a practical theology." What does that mean? We teach the Bible, but a lot of places do that. What I think we do is connect it to everyday life in a real way. Not just to get through a hard day, but to get through the crises of life.
A Real-Life Example of Faith in Crisis
So I'm walking in one day, there's a lady there, and I know a little bit about her story. She has kids that are eight, six, four, two, and she's pregnant. And her husband has decided he wants to be with somebody else, so he's gone. Very difficult life. And she has this little smile.
I said, "How are you doing?" Which is always kind of a stupid question. And she said, "You know what? It is amazing. God is teaching me so much. Some nights I find myself at really what would be the darkest time, I find myself in my bedroom just singing and rejoicing. I said, 'I've got my moments where I start to go, whoa, whoa, whoa, why?' But I know that I'm not going to get any answer."
And she said, "It's kind of like what you talked about. There was a moment at Susan's Memorial Service. It was afterwards."
We're over and there's some food or whatever. And I run into somebody and here's what they said to me. This was a great moment. They said, I don't know what to say to you right now, but whatever I would say would be something you taught me. That's pretty cool. That was that moment. And that's what she said is, I don't know the why. I just know that it's for my good, ultimately in God's glory.
And I've watched that for 22 years. Babies that die, spouses that leave, marriage that falls apart, physical challenges. And by and large, when the people have been around our place for a long period of time, and this is to God's credit, not ours, they step back. It's what J. I. Packer says in his classic work, Knowing God. When I understand my primary goal in life is to know God and understand Him, and I do that, life seems to fall in place on its own accord.
He's not saying you never have problems, but he's saying there's this almost endless energy to face them. So that people can say, I would never want to go through this again, but I wouldn't trade the experience for the world because God taught me so much in this. So what did He teach? Well, He taught a variety of things and He taught them so we would know Him and believe Him.
Is He a Healer, a Miracle Worker, or a Revolutionary?
Number four: is He a healer, a miracle worker, or a revolutionary? You're in John's gospel. If you turn to the very back of it, John chapter 20, verse 30, John does something that's particularly helpful to us. He tells you why he wrote the book. He said, therefore, John 20:30, many other signs Jesus performed in the presence of His disciples, they're not written in this book. So he said there's other signs, there's miracles, there's wonders, they're all through the book.
So did He do miracles? Yeah. Was He a healer? Yeah. In the sense of like a real healer. Some of you know now, because I share it endlessly, I have Direct TV now. And one of the things I like, it's a little more cumbersome to work, a little easier to record, but I have from channels 363 to 374, are religious or kind of the equivalent channels. And there's shows on there like, expect a miracle. You're a miracle today. Today, you're healing.
So you'll go on, and it'll be a guy, and he'll be talking, and he'll go, yes, there's one of these guys, this is my favorite guy. Yes, Lord, yes, I got it, yes. There's somebody whose ear hurts, okay? And God's going to take that away. And then a lady will call in and say, my ear hurt, and it doesn't hurt anymore. Okay. There's somebody whose back is tight. Here's what I want to see. I want to see where the guy goes, there's someone out there who's dead. And bring their body, and I'm going to raise them from the dead. Now we're talking miracles. That's what Jesus did.
John said, I recorded some in here. So we looked even at one of them in Lazarus. He said, here's why. They've been written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing in Him, you have life. So was He a miracle worker? Yeah, absolutely. Was He a healer? Absolutely.
Was He a revolutionary? I did the old trusty go to Webster. Revolution. The first definition in the 300 basically talked about moving around. He said, a revolution. Second definition, a sudden radical complete change. A fundamental change in a political organization, especially the overthrow or renunciation of one government or ruler and the substitution of another in government. A fundamental change in a way of thinking about or visualizing something.
So if I put it in that context, clearly, is He a revolutionary? Well, this is something that is clearly a fundamental change of thinking. And yet at the same time, He didn't come to destroy the past, but to fulfill it. So in the Old Testament, I find 332 Old Testament prophecies relating to the birth and life and crucifixion of Jesus, of the Messiah, perfectly fulfilled in Jesus. All 27 New Testament books write about Him.
Clearly, when Jesus comes into the world, and since there's nothing like it, there are knockoffs of Christianity. But there's only one. The way, the truth, the life, no one comes to the Father but through Him.
Was He a Tormented Man or a Saintly Missionary?
Was He a tormented man or a saintly missionary? One of the commentators in this Life Magazine article wrote this, for Jesus to succeed, He had to choose martyrdom. He'd been a failure at all sorts of enterprises. One was to convince everyone to love and turn the other cheek. That was a failure. He was also a failure in His more militant, sovereign role as scourging money lenders and the like.
What was He tormented? If by that they mean deranged and frustrated that what He wanted to do He couldn't do, no. No. He was broken and He wept and He saw sin around Him and it broke His heart. But when He gets to, when we get to John 7, Jesus had a line in here where He said, Father, I've completed the work you sent me to do. So was He frustrated in that He had a goal, an agenda, a life plan, a mission statement that He, no. And that spins us right into number six.
What Happened on the Cross and What Happened on the Third Day?
What happened on the cross and what happened on the third day? Again, if you have your Bibles, you're in John, just turn to the left a little bit to Matthew. Matthew chapter 1. What happened on the third day? To really understand it, we need to at least, I think, go back to Matthew chapter 1 verse 18. This is the, now the birth of Jesus is as follows. When His mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child and Joseph her husband.
So right there you go, wait a minute. I thought they were betrothed, now husband. In that day and age, an engagement was the equivalent of being married minus the living together and the sexual part of it. So I'll meet all the time. There'll be a girl or a guy and a girl that'll come up in church and they'll go, we're so excited, we're engaged. And I'll look down and there's no ring. Do you have a ring? No. Do you have a date? No. I'm not sure how engaged you are. Okay.
He may be just working you, sweetheart. I don't know that. In that day and age when they got engaged, that engagement was so serious that the man would go away as the bridegroom and prepare a place. See the significance there? Prepare a place. Oftentimes add a room onto his father's house. Process would take about a year. Then he would come back and get that bride. To break off the engagement required a decree of divorce. That's how serious this was.
And so it lends into this story. Joseph being her husband, righteous man, not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. He's going to do this undercover. But an angel comes and appears to him. Matthew 1:20. "Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is by the Holy Spirit."
The Human Side of Joseph's Struggle
And we've said again, the human side of this has to be huge because here's Joseph. He knows biology. He knows she's pregnant. He hasn't been with her. He's got to be going, who is it? It's like a Jerry Springer show almost. And he said, listen, here's a mission. She'll bear a son, don't need an ultrasound. You're gonna have a boy, and I'm gonna give you the name. You're gonna call him Jesus. Why? He will save His people from their sin. That was His mission.
What happened on the cross is what Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, where he says, "I delivered you of first importance, and that is that Christ died for our sin, according to the scripture." I would suggest to you that Jesus born is a historic fact, and Jesus dying is a historic fact. Common sense would tell us that. We don't have a 2,000-year-old man roaming around. He died, but what the scripture tells us is why. He died for our sin.
The Great Exchange at the Cross
So what took place on the cross is this, a great exchange. We trade our sin, we receive His righteousness. That on the cross, in this divine, how did it happen, can't explain, transaction, 2 Corinthians 5:21, absolutely the key verse for this, is that He, God, made Him, Jesus, who knew no sin, to be sin on our behalf. All of the wrath of God, the punishment that was due us for our sin, was thrust onto Jesus at that moment. That's what happened on the cross.
When He screams out, "My God, my God, why have You forsaken me?" That was the agony of the cross, not the physical part of it. It's at that moment, only time, I think, in all of the New Testament, where Jesus refers to God as something other than the Father. At that moment, He is feeling this abandonment, and He is feeling the result of this thing that He hates so much, sin. It's not that He sinned, He was your substitute.
What happened that moment, the theological term is propitiation. It means to satisfy the wrath. God's wrath is upon sin and sinners. Jesus intervenes, and He dies in our place. He does what you could never do. He's the perfect sacrifice, the sinless sacrifice.
Seven Safeguards Around Jesus' Death and Burial
Well, what happened on the third day? Well, He rose from the dead. Safeguards all around, I have seven of them. Let me give them to you real quickly. As we look through scripture, there were trials, six of them, that Jesus endured.
The second thing is, it was a death by crucifixion. So from a human historical safeguard, a crucifixion, this public crucifixion, required being signed off on a death certificate by four professionals. This is all they did. They saw death all the time. Couldn't fool them with a fooling machine if you tried. And on top of it, there's a spear, remember, that's thrust into Jesus' side, and out comes blood and water separated, which is a sign of death. The bottom line is, He's dead.
Third, He's buried in a solid rock tomb. So it's carved out of a hillside or out of a large rock. There's one way in, it's about four and a half feet high, so I could walk in, you would have to stoop. And in it, you can stand up, and here's a room, here's a ledge, and a tomb may hold as many as one or two or three bodies. But it's solid rock, one way in, one way out.
The fourth thing is, Jesus' body's prepared in such a way that He's literally encased in this, body's washed in warm water, and then oils, then wrapped in more oils. This would literally solidify. The fifth thing is, the opening of this tomb is covered by a stone that they estimate is between one and a half and two tons.
The sixth thing are the Roman guards. It would be a Roman detail of six soldiers. A Roman soldier was trained to defend an area of six square feet. And they said that 36 Roman soldiers could hold off a battalion of men. These are fighting machines, and if they need motivation, here's the motivation. If they're guarding something, in this case the tomb, and the tomb is disrupted, and the body is gone, they're executed. There's no due process, there's no gathering of information. They may ask a question or two and say, what happened? Somebody said they can try to figure something out, but they're executed.
And then the seventh thing is the seal of Rome. So there's hot wax that's applied to this stone, and the signet ring, or the authority of Rome goes, and it says to everybody, if you tamper with that, you'll be killed. Those are the safeguards.
The Empty Tomb and Alternative Theories
And then on that third day, the body's gone. Well, the Jews took it. Well, the Jews aren't gonna take it. This would defeat everything they were about. The Romans are gonna take it. The Romans are gonna take it because they're concerned about the uprising, plus they're the ones who are in charge of protecting it. Well, the disciples overpowered these guys, moved the stone and took it. The disciples are hidden away and afraid.
Here's the deal. The tomb is empty for this reason. Jesus rose from the dead. It's the last question. Jesus died. Does He live today? And the answer is yes. See, the fact that that tomb is empty doesn't prove that Jesus is risen. Strong case, but here's what Paul tells us, that He was buried. He rose again on the third day. It's 1 Corinthians 15:5. He appeared to Peter, then to the 12, then to a group
of more than 500 who were gathered together at one time. They're all alive, or many of them alive, He says, go interview them. And then to James and then to Paul himself. Is Jesus alive? Yes, He is.
So there's the seven questions. There, I think, are the answers that the scripture would give us.
What Do You Do With This?
So I go back to that original thing. What do you do with this? Here's what the Bible tells us. Romans 10, verse nine: "If you confess with your mouth Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved." This idea of saved means rescued or delivered.
I come into the world, by nature a sinner, and then my action is verify it. So if my daughter Sarah is pregnant, so when we get together for the Kentucky Derby this year, there'll be eight kids ages seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero. Every one of them are sweetest little kids.
I picked up Brayden yesterday from school, Sandy and I did, and took him down to Tempe, down to a Sunflower, got a grilled cheese, and then right next to it is Secondhand's bookstore, Changing Hands Bookstore. And he came and I said, if you find something, I'll buy you a book. So he came back, he said, I've got these books. I have three of them. I said, okay, one was on space, one was on planets, one was on Barack Obama. And I said, well, I only have enough money for two. And he said, well, I really like this one. You can assume which one he held up. And I said, let's do this. Since I have only enough money for two, planets in space are pretty similar. Let's buy those two, and we'll let your dad come down and buy the other one if you need that, okay?
He's so sweet, and yet even in the midst of that, he'll go, but I think Yale would really like this book. Well, you little manipulating lying little kid. That's who we are. By nature a sinner, then by action, our actions separated us from God, and the only way to bridge that is Jesus.
God and Sinner Reconciled
So the song you'll sing in church, if you get there in the next week or so, is God and sinner reconciled. That's what Jesus did. So that's who Jesus is. That's the Christmas story. Obviously, you could write volumes on it, but that's pretty solid right there. And I love the fact that those are seven questions that the world asks, I didn't.
So there you go. Hope you have a great Christmas. Some of you are so fired up, you want your siblings and your family to see Jesus. And I'm telling you, the best way to do that is let them see you, that's a transformed you. And that becomes so powerful that it will force them, and they'll inevitably ask, what's different? And now you tell them about Jesus.
Don't turn Christmas dinner into a crusade, okay? Use your head as you approach it. Have a great time. We'll be back here on January 10th.
Father, thank you for this. I look down and I see that we are gone a long five minutes. Father, I look forward to the day when five minutes doesn't matter anymore, that we're drawn so close to You, and You're so active and involved, and we're in relationship with You in heaven that a day is 1,000 years. Till then, God, make us good stewards of our lives.
Pray for those who are headed out, and maybe they're having toughness this time of year, pray You'd comfort them and all of us that we would make You the invisible God visible, and we would, when we have the chance, speak the truth boldly to our friends around us and family. God, do that in our life. We ask it in Christ's name, amen.