A very blessed Resurrection Sunday regards to all of you!
Welcome to the Nathan Report. What a day, beautiful. As you all know today we had only one service at 8:00 AM. So we reached on time and grabbed the first row seats. We started off with usual praise and worship. Here is the list of today's songs:
1) My Savior lives - New Life Worship
2) Happy Day - Jesus Culture
3) Christ The Lord is risen - Hymn
4) In Christ Alone - Stuart Townend
5) Amazing Grace (My Chains are gone) - Chris Tomlin
Powerful worship and praise. I missed the fiddler today, but Kevin on Lead guitar was doing an amazing job. Today Pastor James Joute was absent, so Rev. Vivek Dindorkar lead the offerings as well as announcements. We greeted eachother (neighbors) by shaking hands and saying "Christ is Risen". It was fun, I like this, should happen more often. Here is the list of announcements:
- We have three Sunday services. Timings are 8:00 AM, 9:45 AM and 5:30 PM. For more information, log on to our official church website by clicking here.
Rev. Vivek DIndorkar, started off by saying, "Now no need of sacrificing sheep, goats etc. Lamb of God has been sacrificed for our sin. A perfect and final sacrifice for all of us." We started off with a prayer lead by one of the church member. Today's theme is "Resurrection Sunday" and the question that arises, is, "What is so big deal about the Resurrection of Jesus?" Well, if we notice, there are several tombs. Here is a list of few known tombs:
Why is Jesus' tomb more important than many tombs across the world? Well, because Jesus' tomb "IS EMPTY". Christ has risen and we worship a living God.
Pastor said, "Resurrection gives us hope". Why? Because Jesus conquered death, and saved us from our sins. The apostle Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15:13-14 that “If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.” In other words, if there isn’t any resurrection, our faith is pointless.
Today's reading is taken from Matthew 28 with various other references, which we will discuss later in this report. Matthew 28 talks about three things.
- The resurrection.
- The report of the guard.
- The great commission.
Here are the verses (entire Matthew 28):
"The Resurrection -
1 Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. 2 And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. 3 His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. 4 And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. 5 But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. 6 He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. 7 Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. See, I have told you.” 8 So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. 9 And behold, Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him. 10 Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.”
The Report of the Guard -
11 While they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. 12 And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers 13 and said, “Tell people, ‘His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ 14 And if this comes to the governor's ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” 15 So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.
The Great Commission -
16 Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. 17 And when they saw him they worshiped him, but some doubted. 18 And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in[b] the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”
Footnotes:
Matthew 28:6 Some manuscripts the Lord
Matthew 28:19 Or into
We have some cross references here:
Revelation 1:18, "and the living one. I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades."
Matthew 27:65-66, "Pilate said to them, “You have a guard of soldiers. Go, make it as secure as you can.” So they went and made the tomb secure by sealing the stone and setting a guard."
Acts 1:3, "He presented himself alive to them after his suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the kingdom of God."
1 Corinthians 15:8, "Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me."
Romans 8:11, "If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you."
1 Corinthians 15:51-52, "Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed."
Moving ahead, Pastor explained that the resurrection of Jesus is important for several reasons. First, it witnesses to the immense power of God Himself. To believe in the resurrection is to believe in God. If God exists, and if He created the universe and has power over it, He has power to raise the dead. If He does not have such power, He is not a God worthy of our faith and worship. Only He who created life can resurrect it after death, only He can reverse the hideousness that is death itself, and only He can remove the sting that is death and the victory that is the grave’s (1 Corinthians 15:54-55). In resurrecting Jesus from the grave, God reminds us of His absolute sovereignty over life and death.
Second, the resurrection of Jesus is a testimony to the resurrection of human beings, which is a basic tenet of the Christian faith. Unlike all other religions, Christianity alone possesses a founder who transcends death and who promises that His followers will do the same. All other religions were founded by men and prophets whose end was the grave. As Christians, we take comfort in the fact that our God became man, died for our sins, and was resurrected the third day. The grave could not hold Him. He lives, and He sits today at the right hand of God the Father in heaven.
We can follow the example of the thousands of martyrs through history who gladly traded their earthly lives for everlasting life via the resurrection.The resurrection is the triumphant and glorious victory for every believer. Jesus Christ died, was buried, and rose the third day according to the Scripture. And, He is coming again! The dead in Christ will be raised up, and those who remain and are alive at His coming will be changed and receive new, glorified bodies (1 Thessalonians 4:13-18). Why is the resurrection of Jesus Christ important to salvation? It demonstrated that God accepted Jesus’ sacrifice on our behalf. It proves that God has the power to raise us from the dead. It guarantees that those who believe in Christ will not remain dead, but will be resurrected unto eternal life. That is our blessed hope!
We have few more references:
Acts 2:32, "This Jesus God raised up, and of that we all are witnesses."
2 Peter 1:16, "For we did not follow cleverly devised myths when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty."
As we move ahead, pastor explained how apostles were persecuted for the sake of Christ. They accepted death because they knew the promise of our risen Lord and that we will be resurrected. Here is an interesting list of apostles who were persecuted for their faith in Christ:
- Acts 12:1-2 says that James was put to death by sword by the order of Herod.
- Matthew 27:5 says that Judas threw down the silver in the Temple and went and hanged himself. The priests took the blood money and bought the potter's field, which they called the field of blood. Acts 1:18 has a different story, that Judas bought a field with the reward of iniquity, and fell headlong, bursting asunder and all his bowels gushed out. Because of this, the field was called the field of blood. In other words, neither Matthew nor Luke knew how Judas Iscariot died, but Matthew seems to have got his story from the Book of Zechariah.
- Various traditions have grown up around the supposed deaths of other disciples, but there is no evidence that supports those traditions. Here are some of these:
- Peter - widely believed to have been either beheaded or crucified (upside down) in Rome.
- Matthew - arrested in Ethiopia and there nailed to the ground with short spears and beheaded.
- John - John faced martyrdom when he was boiled in a huge basin of boiling oil during a wave of persecution in Rome. However, he was miraculously delivered from death. John was then sentenced to the mines on the prison island of Patmos. He wrote his prophetic Book of Revelation on Patmos. The Apostle John was later freed and returned to what is now modern-day Turkey. He died as an old man, the only apostle to die peacefully.
- James, the brother of Jesus (not officially an apostle) - thrown over a hundred feet down from the southeast pinnacle of the Temple when he refused to deny his faith in Christ. When they discovered that he survived the fall, his enemies beat him to death with a club. This was the same pinnacle where Satan had taken Jesus during the temptation.
- Bartholomew, also know as Nathanael - a missionary to Asia, he witnessed in present-day Turkey and was martyred for his preaching in Armenia, when he was flayed to death by a whip.
- Andrew - was crucified on an x-shaped cross in Greece.
- Thomas - stabbed with a spear in India during one of his missionary trips to establish the church there. Reports say Thomas was pierced with a spear in Chennai.
- Matthias (the apostle chosen to replace the traitor Judas Iscariot) - stoned and then beheaded.
- Paul - tortured and then beheaded by the evil Emperor Nero at Rome in A.D. 67.
There are traditions regarding the other apostles as well, but none with any reliable historical or traditional support.
- James (son of Zebedee) was beheaded by King Herod in Palestine.
- Philip was crucified.
- James the Less (son of Aphaeus) was thrown from the pinnacle of the temple at Jerusalem and dispatched with a club where he fell, or crucified or stoned.
- Simon was crucified.
- Jude was "cruelly put to death" by the Magi of Persia, or crucified.
Pastor concluded with a quote from Cyprian (AD 200 - AD 258) while he was discussing with Donatus over persecution. Here is the quote, "It is a bad world, an incredibly bad world. But I have discovered in the midst of it a company of quiet and holy people who have learned a great secret. They have found a joy which is a thousand times better than any of the pleasures of our sinful life. They are despised and persecuted, but they care not: they are masters of their souls. They have overcome the world. These people, are the Christians —and I am one of them."
The early centuries were known as a tumultuous time, especially for those who professed to believe in Christ. Many were angered by the faith of Christians. Because of this, there was much persecution of those who claimed Christ was Lord. Rulers such as Nero, Vespasian, Titus, and Domitian were hostile toward the belief in God, and had much to do with the persecution of believers. This was a difficult time to be a believer. Nevertheless, as the man stated above, there was a sense of joy in the lives of Christians, a joy that could not be contained or explained.
One thing that has caused many Christian martyrs to stand out throughout history has been the joy expressed even in suffering. Even when burned at the stake, cast to the lions, or publicly executed, Christians have praised God for His goodness in saving them. How could Christians have such joy in "an incredibly bad world"? What caused them to stand out as joyful people during this time? They didn't feel joy due to pleasant circumstances; they felt joy knowing God was in control. We can have joy today because we know that God is watching over us.
Knowing you have a home in Heaven, a Savior who loves you, and all the blessings of Heaven-how can any Christian not be joyful? Those who focus on themselves and the situations around them rarely express joy. But Christians who acknowledge the blessings they have are often seen expressing joy even in the toughest of situations.
As we come to the closing, pastor tells a story of a 12 year old boy in a countryside wanted to see the circus, as it was coming to his town for the first time. Since it was early 19th century, he wasn't aware of what circus was. So he asked his father, "Dad, I want to go and see the circus". His dad responded with agreement provided his son finishes household work. Boy agreed and finishes the work. In the meantime, his father told him, "I will try to get some money for you to buy tickets. Finally the time comes, and dad manages to send his son to Circus. The son was so excited to leave, his father suggested him to be careful. As soon the boy leaves his home running, almost reaching the venue, he hears sounds of drums, trumpets, people singing. As soon he approaches, he sees a huge parade with all bands, jugglers, jesters, animals, acrobats etc. Finally after a long session, the parade ends with a group of jokers. He feels very excited and happy and finally gives his money to one of the joker and returns without seeing actual circus, as he wasn't aware of what circus is like. He ends p being happy by watching the parade and assuming he has seen circus.
The point of this story is, we have heard about the crucifixion and Jesus defeating the grave by resurrecting, yet there are many things which he haven't seen, are yet to come. We can say, we might have seen a mere parade, what is coming would be even more exciting.
If we summarize today's message, the lines of evidence: the demonstrable sincerity of the eyewitnesses (and in the Apostles’ case, compelling, inexplicable change), the conversion and demonstrable sincerity of key antagonists- and skeptics-turned-martyrs, the fact of the empty tomb, enemy attestation to the empty tomb, the fact that all of this took place in Jerusalem where faith in the resurrection began and thrived, the testimony of the women, the significance of such testimony given the historical context; all of these strongly attest to the historicity of the resurrection. We encourage you to thoughtfully consider these evidences. What do they suggest to you? Having pondered them ourselves, I personally resolutely affirm Sir Lionel Luckhoo's declaration:
“The evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof which leaves absolutely no room for doubt.”
If the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a historical event, then there is a Savior who loved us enough to die for us so that we might live.
We have a closing song, "Because he lives by Bill Gaither" that you can see below. I encourage you not to miss this one:
As we come to the closing, we have Church youth with a beautiful action song "Shout your fame by Hillsong United", which you can watch below:
We close with a powerful prayer followed by meet 'n' greet session and snacks. I hope you enjoyed our service. How was yours? Please mention below in the comment section.
God Bless!
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