Audio Transcript:

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Good morning, Happy Easter.

Happy Easter.

More accurately, Christ is risen.

He's risen indeed.

Praise God. Christ is risen.

He's risen indeed.

Christ is risen.

He's risen indeed.

Best news ever, hallelujah. Praise God. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you that with all the forces that the evil one tried to marshal against you, it wasn't enough. They couldn't keep you down. We thank you for that. We thank you that you rose victoriously to open the door for us to a relationship with God, a life giving relationship with God. Today unlock our minds and our hearts. And I pray that you the living God meet us by the power of the Holy Spirit. We thank You, Jesus. Amen.

The title of the sermon today is locked doors and minds. This has been, and what a year, what a year it has been, the phrase lock down has been used over and over. So what comes to mind when you think of things that are locked or locked doors? We lock the doors on our homes, you unlock to come in and you lock it as soon as you're in automatically. Door on your car, same thing you lock once you're in. Why, why, why? For security, for safety, to keep the threats out or locks on businesses, you pull the door and the door is closed, it's not business hours or a locked door representing confinement, a prison, detention center where the doors clang ominously as they shut.

Again, the person that's locked up in a prison, for example, is locked up for our safety, driven perhaps by fear. Two basic reasons to lock a door to keep someone out keep something in, keep someone or something out, keep someone or something in, same motivation for both. It's a fear of a real or perceived danger. On Easter Sunday today, as we look at Luke 24, we also see the disciples behind locked doors. Why? Who locked the doors? They did. Why? Why did they lock the doors? For the same reason that we do, keep danger out. They're on edge, why? The Lord has been arrested, Jesus Christ in a mockery of a trial has been executed brutally. The Lord has been crucified, and no one comes back from that alive.

And the disciples think they might come for us as well. They're afraid for their lives. They're reeling, they're cast into fear and to despair, and they also feel guilty. Their consciences feel guilt and shame, why? For having abandoned their Lord and Savior at his greatest moment of need. They're numb, they're deflated, they're defeated, they're miserable, they're confused, they're also skeptical. They don't believe anymore. They don't believe everything that Jesus has taught them for three years. They don't believe that the miracles were real, that he had real power, they don't believe because it seems like he's been defeated. So not only did they lock their doors, they locked their minds. And that's where we find ourselves in Luke 24, what a text, what a chapter.

Would you look at the text with me, Luke 24:36. "As they were talking about these things, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, 'Peace to you.' But they were startled and frightened and thought they saw a spirit. And he said to them, Why are you troubled? Why do doubts arise in your hearts? See my hands and my feet, that it is I myself, touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.' And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. And while they still disbelieved for joy and were marveling, he said to them, 'Have you anything here to eat?' They gave him a piece of broiled fish and he took and ate before them.

Then he said to them, 'These are my words that I spoke to while I was still with you that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled," then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, and said to them, 'Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. Behold, I'm sending the promise of my Father upon you to stay in the city until you were clothed with power from on high.'

Then he led them out as far as Bethany and lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he blessed them, he parted from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple blessing God." This is the reading of God's holy in our infallible, authoritative word, may you write these beautiful, eternal truths upon our hearts.

Three points, first one is unbelieving. The second is unbelievable. And the third one's blessed to bless, unbelieving. The context is that Jesus just came back from the dead. And what happened in chronological order? In the morning, he appears to Mary and some other women. In the afternoon, he found Peter and spoke to him. What a conversation that must have been as he restores Peter into faith with the Lord. Then he appeared to the two disciples on the road to Emmaus, and in the evening, he appears to the 11 disciples minus Thomas. He meets with Thomas later. So the disciples are in the room, they've locked the door, and when they hear a bang, it's the disciples from the road to Emmaus that met with Jesus Christ, the resurrected Christ, and they're sharing with the disciples, "Hey, Jesus just met us. Jesus just unlocked our minds, our hearts burned as he explained the Scriptures and they still didn't believe."

Same thing the women had told him, he had told them that Jesus came back from dead, the tomb is empty, they still didn't believe. And then out of nowhere, as they're talking about these things that someone said that there were sightings, someone said that Jesus came back from the dead. Jesus himself stood among them and said, "Peace to you." He does not open the door, and the Gospel of John it says that they locked the door for fear of the religious leaders, for fear that they would be crucified as well, for fear of death.

And here Jesus shows up and says, "Peace to you," what an understatement. Peace to you, I'm bringing you peace. They're startled, they're frightened. And it's one thing to know the supernatural, so much different to encounter it. What's fascinating is, as you read the Gospels, there's hardly any details of the scorching. There's hardly any details of the crucifixion. It just says, they crucified him. And there's hardly any details of the resurrection. How did it happen? Did Jesus roll away the stone himself? No, he didn't need to. He had a perfect resurrected body with features that our bodies do not have. He could walk through material things, the stone wasn't rolled away for Jesus, it was rolled away for us.

It's utterly unexpected that that would happen. That's where I want to start. And I want to start there because in the 21st century, we think that we're so much different than the people that came before us. We just do. We think we're so much smarter than the people came before us, we just do. Who's smarter, you or your mom? Trick question. Don't look at it. Who's smarter? Who's smarter, you or your grandparents? They didn't even have an iPhone. Who's smarter? One of the things we think, we think the disciples, they were so dumb, they believe that Jesus came back from the dead. No, they didn't. That's where I want to start. They did not believe it. He's before them. He is in front of them and the resurrected body and they do not believe it.

Verse 37. They were startled and frightened and thought that they saw a spirit. Their first response is fear, not faith. Why do they believe that this was a spirit? Not because he was some shadow we barely material figure. When Mary saw Jesus, she thought he was a gardener, so he looked a little different, but he still looked human. The disciples on the road to Emmaus, they had no doubt that they were talking to a human being. He was a little different. Why? He had a perfect body with no aging, no decay, no imperfections, it's the glorious resurrected body.

Why did they think they saw a spirit? Because that was the only category they had in their mind. And Jesus comes in and he busts these categories. They believe as we do that the spirit continues to live on after death. We believe that. We believe that dying is not the end, we believe that there's something else. When someone dies, no one stands up at the funeral and says, "They're gone, period." Nobody says that. What do they say? They're in a better place. They're in a better place. Why? Because we believe that the spirit lives on, and the disciples didn't believe. And I wonder if that's where you are today.

And I do want to acknowledge that most people around us in a city like this do not believe that Jesus came back from the dead because they don't believe that people come back from the dead. Perhaps you believe that the story is a fabrication or you believe that the disciples stole the body, that this is a myth or perhaps it's just teaching theological truths that because Jesus theologically, or metaphorically rose from the dead, that there's hope for us. And one of the reasons why this is the case in a city like Boston, is because we've assumed the false premise that intelligence and faith are at odds, that smart people do not believe things like this, as if intelligence gets in the way of believing in Jesus, as if intelligent people only believe what is true, as if intelligent people are purely rational. They're not. We're not, I'll be nice, we're not.

We're not purely rational. I can give you a million examples. We are not purely rational, we hold biases. We're not just creatures of thought, and truth, we're creatures of feeling and emotion and desire. We hold biases and the biases cloud our judgment, that's always been a reality. More than 2000 years ago, Cicero observed that there's no ideas so ridiculous that it hasn't been believed by some intellectual or another. I was having conversation with a gentleman who is a dean of a university. And we're talking about the idea that to come up with a PhD, to get a PhD, to write a PhD dissertation, nowadays, you can't just say, especially in theology, you can't publish anything that's true because that's already been done. So you had to concoct a brand new idea, brand new idea. And that's what gets you published.

In our time, Paul Johnson observed about Bertrand Russell. Bertrand Russell, by the way, was an atheist and he was one of the greatest philosophers of the 20th century. And his friend Paul Johnson, and his work To Hell with Picasso says this Bertrand Russell was the only philosopher I've come across who always conveyed his meaning clearly, and because he did, you could debate the merits of his conclusions, and they were usually wrong. Nobody disputed Russell who had a powerful brain, but equally, no one in his or her senses would go to him for advice on anything that mattered.

Intelligence actually sometimes gets in the way of us seeing reality as it is because intelligence sometimes can lead to self-deception. The more intelligent you are, the more prone you can be to self-deception where you ignore evidence, twist logic, lash out lie as a means to justify the end we hope is right. And sometimes what gets in the way of us truly seeing reality as it is, is the mind locking desire or emotion of fear. A lot of intelligent people, you fear that you've been wrong, therefore, you do everything not to look at the evidence. Fear gets in the way. And psychologists can tell you, you can just google this, the mind locking power of fear, perhaps is fear of change when we think of God.

Fear of what God could require of you, fear of difficulty, fear of giving up what we love, fear of losing control, fear of standing out, fear of what people will think, fear of men, and to a very great degree people believe what we want to believe, what's easy to believe because fear gets in the way. And I think the main fear when it comes to God was the disciples, you're in that moment, what's their fear? Their fear, I'm talking past the fear of getting crucified like Jesus, past the fear of dying, I think the greatest fear as they see Jesus Christ materialized in the flesh before them. I think their greatest fear is that of punishment. It's a fear of guilt and shame. We've abandoned you Jesus, we've denied you, Jesus, we betrayed you, Jesus, Jesus is here to punish us. That he is here to reveal our guilt, to expose our shame.

God did not create the world with fear. In the garden of Eden, there was no fear, in paradise there was no fear. When does fear enter into the world? After the fall. Adam and Eve sin, they reject God, they rebel against God, and God comes looking for Adam. He says, "Adam, where are you? Where are you?" And what does Adam say? He said, "I heard your voice in the garden, and I was afraid. I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself. I was afraid." The disciples that moment on Easter morning, the emotion that they felt was fear. Jesus is in front of them, and they fear. Jesus, are you here to punish us? And you know what Jesus says? The first words, peace to you. I'm here to bring shalom. I'm here to bring reconciliation. I'm here to bring forgiveness. I'm here to take your guilt and your shame from you, peace to you.

They were unbelieving. And then Jesus gives them more evidence to the point where they can't believe this is true. And they go from unbelieving to unbelievable. And he says to them, "Why are you troubled, and why do doubts arise in your heart? See my hands and my feet that it is I myself. Touch me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have." And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet, and while they still disbelief for joy, and were marveling, he said to them, "Have you anything here to eat? And they give him a piece of broiled fish and he took it and ate before them."

What I found fascinating about this text is he keeps building a case for them. You don't believe, see, look, you don't believe, touch, feel, you don't believe, hey, you got anything to eat? This is one of my favorite things about Jesus, the resurrected Jesus. I love to eat. My family loves to... We come from a family where we're fast eaters, and the reason why we're fast eaters, I have four siblings, and whenever there's a meal before us, who gets the most food? Whoever eats the fastest. And with my kids, I've got four daughters, is the same thing. I made four bags of chicken wings yesterday, chicken wings, and I got three. I had three left because my kids are smart, they grab as much as they can onto their plate and they shield it.

I love that Jesus eats here in a glorified body, meaning in the glorify body, in the resurrection, in heaven, it's a real material thing. It's a physical reality and we in heaven will eat and calories do not matter, praise God, hallelujah. Percentage body fat, everyone gets 4%, everybody, because we don't have to store anything, praise God. Jesus is here eating, why does he do this? He's building a case for them. Not only that, not only that, he's showing that the glorified body is different. The resurrection is different.

Jesus brought Lazarus back from the dead, not on his glorified body. Lazarus came back from the dead only to die. His body still succumbed to sickness and death. Jesus comes back, and he says, "Here, it is I," not just it is I, it is I myself. It is I myself. Why does he say I and myself? The Word of God, the living Word of God, when he speaks every word matters. What is he saying? He says I myself, but it's a new self, it's a renewed self, but it's still me. The fact what kind of fish do we got here? What kind of fish? It's broiled fish. That's an interesting little adjective that's included. Why? Because this is true, it happens. Eye witness account, eye witnesses just remember weird details. This wasn't made up.

And Jesus says, "Why do doubts arise in your hearts?" And he eats, and he eats not just to prove that he has a resurrected body, he eats with them because in ancient cultures, food was a sign of fellowship. There's a sign of acceptance and meaning I forgive you, I accept you, peace be to you. Let's eat together. Why does he do all of this? Because he knows where their faith is. Their faith has crumbled. Three years they spent with Jesus Christ, and it feels like everything was for nothing. They're gutted, and Jesus meets them in this place of hopelessness, faithlessness, doubt. And not just in the Gospel of Luke, in the Gospel of Matthew, Matthew 28:16-17, this is right before the Great Commission, some of the last verses of the Gospel of Matthew. "Now the 11 disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And when they saw him, they worshiped him, but some doubted." After everything, there's still doubting. Why? Because that's our natural predisposition.

So what overcame their doubt, what overcame their doubt was new evidence. And it's intellectually dishonest and actually foolish not to reassess your beliefs when you're presented with brand new evidence. And that's what happened with the disciple. See my hand, see my feet, touch, see, why hands and feet? Why hands and feet? Why not shoulders? Why not knees? Why hands and feet? Why? Because they get the wounds. That's why. So he's not just overcoming their minds, he's overcoming the doubt in their hearts. I have died for you, I'm proving it. I love you, I'm proving it.

Now the disciples have a decision to make, they're thinking. You can almost see the thought bubbles, and they're thinking, what are they thinking about? New evidence, resurrected Christ. Now I got a decision to make, is this believable? And not just in the sense of a theory, is this is believable in now I'm going to change my life because of this reality. Augustine in Predestination of the Saints says, "No one believes anything unless one first thought it believable. Everything that is believed is believed after being preceded by thought. Not everyone who thinks believes, since many think in order not to believe, but everyone who believes thinks in believing and believes in thinking, they're thinking, there's evidence."

Jesus is building a case in order get them to a place of believing and true belief is something where we actually change our lives based on this reality. Will we believe? The disciples are thinking that we are sinners. Will we believe that we're such great sinners, that the Son of God had to die for us? Will we believe that we are so loved that the Son of God would die for us? Will we believe that this is truly God, and believe so much that we will bend our lives to this reality, believe in such a way where we submit to the King that's risen from the dead, yield is authority, believe in a way where we actually do what he says, whatever he says.

In past years, I've made the case for the resurrection that Jesus really came back from dead. Factually, historically, I've done that. What I found is that's kind of boring for a lot of people. You can do that, you can go back, you can look at the primary documents, you can study N.T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God, it's like 1,100 pages. It's tremendous. It's tremendous. This year, I want to turn the tables. Oh, how the tables turn, Turntables, Michael Scott. I want to flip it around. I want to flip it around, not how do I prove that the resurrection happened? Instead, I want to ask, how can you explain the world if the resurrection did not happen? How do you explain? How do you explain that alien nature of the Christian message, a message about God entering the world as a man, dying for our sins, rising to a new and everlasting life.

And not simply that this is a new message, not simply that this is not the message that the Jewish people would have expected about the Messiah. No, it's the flat contradiction of everything that the Jewish people who were the first believer in Jesus Christ, that the Jewish people believed the Messiah would do, it's the opposite. Why did the disciples have such a hard time believing as Jesus is in front of them, why? Because they could not believe that the Messiah who was supposed to come and conquer and reign, they couldn't believe that he would suffer and die. He was supposed to destroy the wicked not be destroyed by the wicked. He was supposed to establish the kingdom of God not fall victim to the kingdom of man. That's why the disciples struggled to understand what Jesus was saying when he predicted suffering and death, and he told them over and over. So what changed their minds?

What would it take to change their minds? And not just their minds, but that of the 500 plus as St. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, that saw Jesus come back from there. What would change the mind of Saul of Tarsus, who then became the Apostle Paul, one of the intellectual titans of human history, what would turn him from persecuting Christian, murdering Christians as he did with Stephen to actually dying for the faith? What would have happened to actually make them so convincing that hundreds and thousands of other people would believe to start a movement that transformed the world? Where do they get the museum to sacrifice everything, risk everything? What turn them from being cowards, fearing, closing the door to opening the door and then saying no matter what, you crucify me, fine. What in the world would do that?

And Peter actually was crucified upside down. Why weren't the enemies of this message capable of shutting them up? What would have done it? What would it have taken? And then what would have led them to change their day of worship? What day is today? Sunday, Sunday, why are we worshiping on a Sunday? And one of the commandments actually says keep the Sabbath day holy. For the Jewish people, it was in their bones that Saturday was the day that they worship, there was a sacred character of the Sabbath that was fixed deep in their bones. Saturday had been the Sabbath, since the beginning of the world, they were Sabbath keepers. And then all of a sudden they start worshiping on Sunday, why? What would it take? And on top of that, how did Jewish believers just change the character of God?

Remember, World History you studied the religions in ninth grade. And one of the things that monotheistic religions, monotheistic religions, Judaism, monotheistic religions, one God, and all of a sudden the Jewish believers believe that this man Jesus Christ, is God. And he sends the Holy Spirit. Now there's a trinity, one God, three persons, what would it take? And I would submit to you, it would take the resurrection of Jesus Christ to harbor all of these changes. And how does he do it? He does it by blessing them when he blesses them to bless, and the blessing, the first one is the blessing of Scripture fulfilled.

Jesus Christ in verse 44, has a Bible study with the disciples here as he's eating the fish. Then he said to them, "These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still with you that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled." Jesus takes the whole Hebrew Scriptures and he explains to them in all the three divisions of the Hebrew Bible, the three divisions, law of Moses, the prophets of the Psalms, he explains them that everything is about me. That's the hermeneutic, through which he says we are to read all of the Scriptures.

For thousands of years, God has been revealing himself in the Scriptures, in the law. He launches the old covenant with his people, with the blood of the sacrificial animals and he said, "That is the point to a new covenant of Jesus Christ." The daily sacrifice is pointed and begged for ultimate atoning sacrifice, the Passover lamb. The Passover lamb pointed to Jesus Christ in his sufferings, the prophets, talking about Scriptures like Isaiah 53, about the suffering servant or Hosea 6:2, when the Psalms 22 talks about his hands and his feet being pierced centuries before crucifixion was even invented. Hosea 6:2 talking about that he would come back. Psalm 16 talking about that God wouldn't let his holy one be left in the grave. Why? Why does Jesus do this?

Jesus to prove his resurrection, stands before them, shows him his hands and his feet, eats a fish. And he says, "That's cool. Now open up your Bibles. Let's have a Bible study." Why does he do that? Because there's power in the Word of God. He didn't want them to root their beliefs in just experience or feelings. As great as that is, he wanted them to root their faith in the Holy Scriptures. The Living Word of God is opening the written Word of God and showing that the written Word of God is as alive as the Living Word of God. This is why we do what we do at Mosaic, what are we doing? We're opening the Scriptures, we're opening the Scriptures and explaining.

Someone asked me, "How in the world did you start this church? How did you start this church?" And the person he's in the business world, so he understands how organizations work. So how did you start this church? Because starting a church is like starting a business except you've got a product that no one wants. We've got a product where the thing I stand up and say, everything that I stand up and say you are winking sinners. You're so terrible. You're awful. There's no hope for you, there's no hope. That's where we start every time. And then we go to Jesus every time, every time, every time. How? Because of the living word of God.

In 2021, we do the same thing that they've done through the centuries, we open up the Word of God, we open, we do what Jesus did. And Jesus doesn't just read the Scriptures, he reveals the Scriptures, and that's verse 45, then he opened their minds to understand the Scriptures and said to them, "Thus it is written that the Christ should suffer, and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance for the forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem." Has Jesus told them this before? Yes, he has.

On two occasions of the Gospel of Luke, he tells them that he was going to die and rise from the dead. And on both occasions, it said, "It was hidden from them," Luke 9, so they did not grasp it. And Luke 18 disciples didn't understand it. Its meaning was hidden from them. And Jesus Christ here, it says, "He sovereignly opens their minds." Their minds have been closed, there's a spiritual blindness and the Holy Scriptures now are illumined by the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ, in the same way that he passed through the walls of that house. They didn't ask for it. He passes through the walls of their mind, and he does it through the Scriptures. How does he do that? How does he plant faith in their minds? By overcoming their fears. Fear of being punished, fear of the unknown, fear of the negative sides of life, the fear, fear, fear. Why did the resurrected Christ do this to his disciples? Why did he do it to them? Why only them?

This is a fascinating question, this is a fascinating thought experiment. If you want it to grow Christianity as quickly as possible, and you are coming back from the dead to whom would you reveal yourself? You're the resurrection of Christ, you can reveal yourself to absolutely anybody. Why are you going to reveal yourself to some fishermen and tax collectors, insurrectionist, and the disciples, why would you do that? Why didn't the resurrected Christ appear to Herod or Pilate or Caiaphas or the Sanhedrin? Why didn't he appear to Tiberius in the Roman Senate? Why didn't he do that? Why did he reveal himself to these people? Why?

Part of the reason was it was an act of judgment. The religious leaders rejected Jesus Christ. And when you reject Jesus Christ, and you get to a point of no return, you'll get rejected by God. That's part of the gospel message that you can get to a point where you reject God. A lot of people say Jesus Christ died for everybody. He died for those who would believe. If you do not believe this message, there will be a point where you get rejected, that's part of this message. His appearance to unbelievers wouldn't have made a difference. And Jesus gives us this theology in the parable of Lazarus and the rich man in Luke 16, where it talks about the Lazarus who goes to heaven after he dies, and the rich man does not.

And verse 27, the rich man's speaking to the Lord, "Then I beg you, Father, send him, Lazarus to my Father's house, for I have five brothers so that he may warn them lest they also come into this place of torment. And Abraham said, 'They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them.' And he said, 'No, Father Abraham, but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' And he said to him, 'If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.'"

Here is Jesus saying that our minds are so locked from God in of ourselves, even if Jesus Christ would come in, show himself in the flesh, we naturally do not believe, why? Because evidence is never the issue. This is what a lot of people think, "If God just showed up, then I believe in him." Believe how? Believe that he just exists? That's not true faith, that's not the faith that Jesus Christ is demanding. True Faith is a faith that yields to his authority, where you shape your life around the fact that God is and he is who he says he is. People who crucified Jesus had seen miracle after miracle. They knew Jesus had resurrected Lazarus a few weeks before his crucifixion. So it's not evidence that make someone a Christian, it's not. It's not evidence, it's not intelligence.

In second coming, the Scripture says that Jesus will come back, and there will be a group of people who will try to fight him, who will try to raise up armies against the living God in futility. And Jesus appeared to these hardhearted, to Pilate, to Caiaphas, to the Sanhedrin, to Tiberias, you know what they would have done? They would have tried to crucify him again. So he doesn't appear to them. So this brings us to a point where this is so crucial. To become a Christian, to see God for who he is, you got to beg him to unlock your mind, to soften your heart, God, please, please let me see the truth. He has to illuminate your darkened mind. To believe, to know the truth, you need to embrace the fact that you can't do it on your own, you need to embrace the gift God, please save me.

That's part of the repentance message that we need to repent of our sins. And part of the sin is willful disbelief. Stuart Jackman wrote a book called The Davidson Affair, The Davidson Affair. And this is a little while back, but he imagines Jesus coming back from the dead in the modern era, and he is an investigative reporter, and he works for no television station. So this gentleman is called Cass Tennel. He's sent by his network to cover the story of the purported resurrection of Jesus Davidson, the son of David, Jesus Davidson.

So Tennel goes and it's in the modern era, and he goes and he interviews everyone who was involved. He interviews first Pilate, and Pilate says, "Oh, yeah, they stole the body." And then he goes, and he interviews Herod, is the same thing, the grave robbing store, then he interviews Thomas. And Thomas says, "I didn't believe but then I saw," and then he interviews Mary Magdalene and, and the other disciples and he hears their electrifying testimonies. That they've really changed, that they really believe that they saw Jesus Christ. And the story begins taking on a completely different character. And try as he would Cass Tennel, the hard bitten reporter begins to become persuaded that Jesus did come back from the dead. And he starts putting the documentary together with the hope that he can get others to believe what he believes that this is true.

And as he puts this together, one of his bosses says to him, "No, no, no, you got to get this idea out of your head that you are going to convince anybody," and they're having this conversation. And the boss says, "Even if Davidson has come back to life, Cass, these people don't have a chance." And Cass says, "I think they do." No Cass you know they don't, you can't change the world with a handful of wise sayings, a seasoning of compassion and a miracle or two, even if one of the miracles is a dead man coming back to life.

And the boss says, "Come on Cass, it's been long day, time we went home." Cass said hopelessly, "But the world he promised them the freedom," and the boss says, smiles with the tired smile and says, "It's no use, Cass we like it in prison. We don't want to be rescued. We like it in prison, we don't want to be rescued." Part of the gospel message, the resurrection of Jesus Christ is that Jesus came to rescue us, came to open the doors, to set us free. He said you will know the truth and the truth will set you free, free from lies, free from sin, free from the captivity of the enemy, free from fear. He wants to replace our fear with faith.

So if you are a Christian, for us today, we rejoice in the glory of Jesus Christ rising from the dead, and we need to bless God from the bottom of our hearts for unlocking our minds and our hearts. Bless him for making your heart burn with his voice and truth. And if you're not a Christian, or if you're not sure that you're Christian, I plead with you to plead with God. Saying, "God, please unlock my mind. If this is true, help me understand, give me eyes to see, give me a heart to love and to receive." He did that for the disciples. He's done that for me. I hope he does that for you as well.

Luke 24:47-49. And Jesus says, "And that repentance for the forgiveness of sins." That's our message, repentance for the forgiveness, "It should be proclaimed in his name to all nations beginning from Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. And behold, I'm sending you the promise of my Father upon you. But stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high." This is the message this is the Gospel, Jesus died for our sins, he died the death that we deserve to die because we wouldn't live the life that he called us to live. And when we repent, he forgives us. And how can we believe this? How do people believe this? Because of the power of the Holy Spirit.

And Jesus says, once you believe our job is to proclaim it. That's why this church exists. That's why Mosaic exists. That's why 12 years ago at the age of 26, apparently I'm still a millennial, whatever that category means. I'm like an early millennial, at the age of 26, I went to seminary 24. You know what most young men do in their 20s? Not go to seminary and definitely not playing churches. And we had this audacious vision of coming to Boston, one of the godless cities in the whole world. Not just non-believing but anti-God. We just had this vision to start a church. How? By the power of the Holy Spirit. God started saving people.

The first person that we baptize is right here today, Vaughn, right up there, Vaughn there you are. Stand up, Vaughn. Stand up, bro. He's the man. Oh, he's so humble. He didn't stand up completely. We baptize in the YMCA pool, the YMCA in Huntington Avenue. Why, why? Vaughn, why did you believe? For the same reason why I believe, why did I believe? Because God said your mine. I'm unlocking your mind and your heart and you are safe. That's how we do it. This is our message, and we do this by the power of the Holy Spirit.

"And then Jesus led them out," in verse 50, "As far as Bethany lifting up his hands, he blessed them. And while he blessed them, he parted from them, was carried up into heaven, and they worshiped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple blessing God. He blesses them, he blesses them with joy, and then they return the blessing to God. They bless God." Early on, when we started the church, one of the first members of the church was a nice lady named Susan and Susan Hawking and I really connected, our families connected because she had studied Russian. And Susan lived in an assisted living home because Susan had many disabilities and one of the disabilities that she had was when she was two years old, she had cancer in her eye and her eye was removed.

And we met Susan and one of the things that we did and I look back now, in her 20s, my wife and I would go and we'd drive to Susan's assisted living home in Brighton and we drive her to church, and she liked church. And she liked the fact that we had food after services. Back when we were starting we would bribe people with food. It was very godly because Jesus did food, we did food. And Susan and I just we maintain a relationship and for the past few years, she hasn't been able to go to church, because she got that sick. And Susan would call me, she would call me all the time. I have 16 voicemails from Susan that aren't open on my phone. And we have that set up a time. I said, "Susan, I can't just answer the phone anytime, let's schedule a time to have a conversation."

And every Friday afternoon she would call me at 4PM. Last Friday, she called me and I had never heard her voice that weak. And Sunday, she called, I wasn't preaching, Pastor Shane was preaching last Sunday. I wasn't preaching. And she calls me I'm like, "Susan never calls me on Sunday." And she calls me and she said, "Yana, I'm in hospice." And she said, "But they're telling me that I'm going to be released soon." And then she said, "Yana, what's the Russian word for Sunday?" I said, "I can't remember what the Russian word for Sunday." I said, "Susan's was [foreign language 00:44:07]." And she says, "Isn't that the same word for resurrection?" I said, "Yes, Susan, it is." And then she said, "Will you visit me?" I said, "Yeah, I'll visit you soon, hopefully."

And on Wednesday, I got a text message Susan passed away. Susan, loved Jesus Christ. She loved the Lord. And Susan today is in the presence of Jesus. I told my daughters as Susan died, one of my daughters started bawling. My other daughter comes in and says, "Why are you crying? Susan's dancing with Jesus, and Susan has two eyes." She does, and a glorified body. This is what we believe. So the disciples, what changed them from being locked in a room afraid of death to saying, "Crucify me." If you're going to come at me and you're going to crucify me for the message, come at me. What changed is this truth, this truth that Jesus Christ died [inaudible 00:45:09], that Jesus Christ has the keys of death and Hades.

So on Resurrection Sunday, what do we proclaim? We proclaim that Jesus Christ, they tried as they... With everything, they had tried to lock him down, they couldn't. The Gospel can't be locked out. Jesus is the key to life. And Jesus said, "I am the resurrection and the life and anyone and everyone who believes in this message that Jesus Christ is the key to life, he is life, he is the resurrection and the life, if you believe that, though you die, you shall still live a resurrected body." So there's literally as Christians, nothing to fear.

Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we thank you for this gospel message. We thank you for this truth. We thank you that You rose from the dead, that you defeated Satan's sin and death, and you did it to give us life. So Lord, if there's anyone who's still not a believer listening to this message, I pray unlock their minds, sovereignly unlock their minds, give them the gift of repentance, the gift of faith, the gift of new life, the gift of eternal life. And we do thank you, Holy Spirit for building your church, the church of Christ, and continue to use us to proclaim this message and we pray this in Jesus name, amen.