The Bible says in the end of the Sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulcher. And behold, there was a great earthquake. For the angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone from the door and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning and his raiment white as snow. And for fear of him, the keepers did shake and became as dead men. And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye, for I know that you seek Jesus which was crucified. He is not here, for he is risen, as he said. Come see the place where the Lord lay. And may the Lord add his blessing to the reading of his word. Please be seated. When we look at the reality of the resurrection That reality has produced certain ramifications. And I want to mention some of those. When our Lord Jesus came into the world, it was a momentous event. He wasn't born like other people or born into the world. I like to think about those words, He came into the world. He came via a virgin's womb, but He came directly from His throne on high. And in Philippians 23 and 7, the Bible says this, what condescension. He made himself of no reputation and took upon him the form of a servant and was made in the likeness of men. That's how he came into the world. And then we can't think about his personal ministry without thinking about his cross. The Bible says being found in fashion As a man, what did he do then? After he had taken a body. The book of Hebrews says, sacrifice wouldst thou not have, but a body hast thou given me. And the Bible says that having taken that body, he humbled himself. He humbled himself. He humbled himself. We're to follow in our Master's footsteps and strive for humility in our lives every day if we truly, truly want to reflect Christ and be Christians. He humbled himself. What to? He humbled himself to God. To God's will. And we should humble ourselves to the will of God. Whatever the Bible says. Humble ourselves to God's will as it's revealed in the Word of God and as His Holy Spirit reveals it to us. The Bible says He became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross, making the distinction there how awful the type, the manner of death that Jesus died so that we could be saved. His cross. And then, it'd be a sad story indeed if it ended at the cross. But Jesus' ministry didn't end at the cross. It didn't end with His death. It ended with a story of great conquest, which we've been preaching about, singing about, celebrating today. And that is the fact when Jesus said, no man taketh my life from me, I lay it down of myself. You know, I'm looking forward to looking upon his face. He is the absolute epitome of what God intended man to be. He's all God, but He is all man. And it's going to be such a blessing. He's going to be in a physical body, a glorified body indeed, but He's going to be in a physical body. And He never would have had a physical body except for our need. He took a physical body and now He'll forevermore have a physical body. That's because he had a great, great victory, a great triumph of all places, a great conquest at the tomb. He had victory over death. Look at our chapter here and look at verse 6 again. He is not here. He'd been there for three days and nights, but the angel with a countenance like lightning said he's not here. He's risen, as He said. Now, in Acts 2 and in verse 23 and 24, this conquest of Christ over death and over the grave, Peter's talking about it in his sermon there, and he says this multitude, these throngs of people on the day of Pentecost, many of them, had been there during that time that they called Jesus out, brought Him out. They saw Him up there next to Barabbas and Pilate. And many of those people in that crowd that day on the Day of Pentecost had been jeering and cursing and who knows what all else they were doing when Jesus was being put to death. But now they're in this crowd and Peter says this to them. Peter's a changed man now. There's hardly any timidity about Peter now. And he preaches to these people and he says concerning Jesus, him have you taken and by wicked hands have crucified and slain. Then he went on and said, but God hath raised him up, having loosed the pains of death, because, listen to this, it was not, it wasn't possible that he beholden of it. It was just an impossibility that death could keep the second person of the Trinity in its grip. So I want to just look at the results of the resurrection, the effect of it on people, its had on people ever since Jesus came out of the tomb alive. What effect would that have on people? Well, here's the effect that it's had. Enmity. Enmity. Now look at our chapter just before this one. In chapter 27, at the very end of that chapter, look down at verse 62. Now the next day that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, saying, Sir, we remember that this deceiver said while he was yet alive, after three days I will rise again. Command, therefore, that the sepulcher be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead, so the last error shall be worse than the first." But it was much deeper than this with the Pharisees. The Bible teaches us in the Gospel of Luke and also in the Gospel of Matthew, many of these Pharisees, this is so incredulous, actually believe that Jesus was who He said He was. But this was their whole deal. This is the thing that was the greatest manifestation maybe where this is concerned of the insanity of sin. They said, lest we lose our place. We need to crucify Him. We need to pursue this until we can crucify Him, lest we lose our place. Now, if that is not satanic thinking, I don't know what is. See, that's the way the devil is. The devil knows this Bible better than most of us do. And he knows what the end of the Bible says. And yet he still keeps resisting. He still keeps rejecting. It's like he's in denial. And that's the way that many of these Pharisees were. And so they went on and Pilate said to them, you have a watch. In other words, he gave them a number, a century to go. And he said, go your way. Make it as sure as you can. That's not going to work. if they're just going to have the power to make it as sure as they can. They could have brought the whole Roman army to surround it. They sealed the tomb as well. See, all they can do is not ever going to be enough to keep and thwart God's purposes from coming about. But what I want you to see is that What they're attempting, now the sepulcher is sealed, the sentries are stationed at their post. And why? Somehow they thought they could keep him from coming out of the tomb. All of this other is a smoke screen here for the most part. So the thing is that this represents the attitude of so many people today. Like I said this morning, for a lot of people it's okay to believe that Jesus lived a wonderful and a beautiful life. This man Jesus really was a historical character. And he lived a wonderful, beautiful life. And he was a marvelous teacher. Maybe the greatest teacher on earth. Greater than Plato, Aristotle, or Confucius, or numbers of others of famous teachers. They'll give him that today. And I have no problem with that. And some will say, and he even died on a cross. How sad. He had these wonderful, wonderful ideals. But they didn't come to pass and He died on a cross. What a story. What a tragic ending. But they believe that. They don't have a problem believing any of these things and other things about Jesus. The problem they have is believing that He rose from the dead. Why don't they believe it? Because they don't want to believe it. Same reason that the evolutionists believe or profess to believe what they do. I mean, really, some of you have read it. They will say in interviews and so on that evolution is just ridiculous, really. But they keep pushing it and promoting it. And they'll even admit the why for that. Because the only alternative is to believe that God created the heaven and the earth. So people believe, have you ever heard this one? What they want to believe. And that's the way people are about Jesus and His resurrection. And this hostility is expressed by people. One of the ways is they're denying it. Trying to deny it. Way back here. And the denials that there have been. Again, such folly. I'll tell you two ways that they have denied and try to deny and write their books, make their movies, all this kind of thing. Their theories and their teaching, number one is that he really didn't die on the cross at all. Somebody took that sponge of vinegar and put it in some drugs and he just swooned and passed out on the cross and everybody thought he was dead. After they got him down off the cross, he was revived. I was reading some articles by some Christian medical scientists and medical people. And they said, when you read the Bible and you see the things that Jesus went through on the cross, it would have been impossible for anybody to have survived that. But that's just an expression of people's hostility toward the risen Christ. Not toward a theory, but toward the fact of the living Christ, the person of Jesus Christ who's alive. Another thing is they'll say that the apostles really did come and they took his body and they hid it, his dead body and they hid it. They bribed the Roman sentry, paid him off, Roman sentry. turned their backs, took the money, turned their backs and let the apostles steal away Jesus' body. There's not a Roman soldier that would have ever accepted a bribe because you know what the penalty would have been for them? That they themselves be crucified. There wasn't enough money to pay a Roman soldier to run that risk. When you talk about expressions of hostility, You know, I'm reminded of our own president and that crowd of Marxists that he's got around him. Absolutely. I don't know what he did today. Wouldn't surprise me if he dressed his czars up in bunny costumes. But they, he refuses from the very first time he got into office, his first Resurrection Sunday, first Easter, they say. He refused, broke American tradition and history in the White House and refused to celebrate Easter at the White House. And the reason for that is he's not a true Christian. I don't know if he's a Muslim or what. He's whatever it takes to be in power is what he is. But he's not a true Christian. I'm telling you, people need to get out of their own swoons today and start calling it like it is. And Christian people, Don't need to mince any words about this. He's not a Christian. Nobody can believe the things that he does and promote the things that he does and be the way that he is and be a Christian. And the same is true of others that have that kind of a testimony. You know, today, I just want to say this real quick. There's a lot being said about war on America, war on America, war on America. This has been going on against American culture and American way and all of this and our freedom for so long. It's really not a war on America. It's a war on God Himself. Some of the things besides denials as an expression of hostility, there's distractions. Brother Rick told me down there Sullivan today, they had a 10,000 egg Easter egg hunt. Up here at Queenie Park, they had a massive, as they've had every year for the last several years, massive adult Easter egg hunt. You know what that all is? That's just a worldly, ungodly distraction away from what this day is really all about. But you know what? I was talking to somebody this week. We can take, at Christmas we know this, Christmas is not about painted up eggs and bunny rabbits and it's getting so crazy. You know, you used to expect that Christmas time, as long as I can remember, they'd have somebody dressed up like Santa Claus in the mall and the kids would go up and sit in his lap. I didn't realize this until this week. Now they got Easter bunnies dressed, or not dressed, they got people dressed up like bunnies. for people to go up and sit in their laps, tell them what they want for Easter. I didn't know that Easter had also become a gift-giving extravaganza. But see, all of this is just a distraction from the real meaning of this day. But you know what we can do as Christians? We can use these things as opportunities to teach the truth, even to our children. I was talking to one of the little girls over in the fellowship hall. She had some simple, innocent little candies with like eggs. But she said to me, she said, Easter is not about eggs and bunny rabbits. That's what she said. She helped me with my sermon. It's not about Easter eggs and bunny rabbits, she said. It's about Jesus rising from the dead. So we can take these kinds of things, these so-called holidays like Halloween and all these different things, but use them as opportunities to teach the truth. And again, see the animosity of this world towards the truth. Now, here's the explanation for this negativism. If you want to turn to Acts chapter 17 and verse 30 and 31, this explains this negativism toward resurrection. That is, seeds in men's hearts. Here's the first reason. There's two. The first reason is right here. God now commandeth all men everywhere to repent. Remember that and its association. Because He hath appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained, whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead." Now here's the associations with his resurrection from the dead. God has commanded all men everywhere to repent. That's why people want to believe that Jesus did not rise from the dead and is just dead. Because they don't want, they don't like the idea of anybody telling them to repent. But God commands people to repent. And it's based upon the fact that we have a living Savior. And the second thing that people don't like in connection with the resurrection of Christ is when they get to the great white throne judgment, Jesus Christ is going to be the one seated on that judgment. And people don't like the idea of being judged. But everybody is going to be judged. And if there were no resurrection, you have to worry about repentance, you have to worry about any judgment. So people don't like either the demand for repentance or they don't like the idea of a day of reckoning. And we live in a day much like the day in the days of the judges when the Bible said every man did that which was right in his own eyes. So people want to do whatever they think is right And that's why God and the Bible and Bible messages from the pulpit are resented. Now, that's a mark of lost people when they resent any claim of God on their life, any call to repentance, any idea of judgment or accountability. They repent, they reject it, and they don't like that. And they're going to show that they're going to do what they want to do regardless of what's said. That's a mark of an unsaved person right there. And it's a mark of these people that want to deny the living Christ. Now, here's the second ramification. Besides this hostility, animosity, adversity is because Jesus lives, you and I as Christians get a lot of help. And if he hadn't risen from the tomb, we wouldn't have any help. We get a lot of help in living the Christian life. We've all, many of us have asked people, talked to people, witnessed to them about their need of salvation and we've, many of us heard people say, I would be saved but I couldn't live it. I just don't think I could live it. Well, anybody that gets saved can live it with God's help and the Lord's help. And when people get saved, because Jesus lives, He lives within us. And that's what the Bible is talking about when it says, greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world. And so, listen beloved, any Christian can be a whole lot better Christian than they are if they want to be. But don't have your own standard for what a good Christian is. See, a lot of people think they have their own standard and maybe they're basing it on what they see in other people. They say, well, you know, I'm a really good Christian because I don't go to the Catholic Church and squeeze rosary beads and take holy water and worship Mary and all of that. Because I'm a Baptist, I'm a lot better Christian. Or I'm a better Christian than people I know that say they're Christians and they've got a wine cellar and a liquor bar in their house. And we sure don't do that. So I'm a really good Christian. Beloved, all of those things do not make for anybody being a super Christian by any means whatsoever. What makes a real Christian is somebody who is striving for holiness in their life. Where they're wanting it themselves. That's what real Christianity is. It's you and me, ourselves, letting our light shine. Letting Christ live more and more. Being dead to ourselves. Our own selfish self. things of the flesh, being dead to those things and more and more letting Christ just live through us. So, you know, if a person says that they're a Christian and they have a problem with, I'll call it standards. I don't even like the word standards. I wish I had that little paragraph that you gave me look at in the book that you had there at lunchtime, Brother Jim. But what we call standards today is just the normal Christian life. I mentioned last week that 2020 program. where they had cherry-picked these wackos from independent Baptist churches that had done outrageous things and were trying to make it sound for a whole hour like that's what all independent Baptists are about. We're just a crazy bunch of cultists that tell everybody exactly how they have to dress and exactly who they can marry and who they can't. It just went on and on and on like that. But I'm telling you right now, When people like us and churches like this show a resentment for the clear teaching of God's Word in these areas, you're really in that 20-20 crowd. I mean, that's really where your mentality is. And you know, the Bible says if judgment begins, let it begin at the house of God. We need to line up with what the Bible says. Not just cherry pick the things that we want to fit into our life. The Lord gives us a lot of help because of the power of the indwelling. When Paul said, I can do all things through Christ that strengtheneth me. You know, there's power in all of us to change our ways. and more perfectly conformed. And God will give us a lot of help with that. Unless we're taking in so much of the world that the Holy Spirit is just suppressed in our life. So, you say, well, how is it then that some Christians, real Christians, they just don't overcome temptation and worldliness and everything. They're just wallowing in it and everything else. Well, maybe, I mean, it might be if it just keeps on like that, It may be that Christ isn't living in them. I mean, if Christian people don't seem to have either the desire or any kind of strength or power to live for God and conform their lives to what God wants for our lives, maybe it's because they don't have any power. See, the Bible says it's God that worketh in you both to will and to do. of His good pleasure. So it really is. There's a reason that Paul put this in his second letter to the church at Corinth. Now, it was the church at Corinth, but it was to the church that he said this. He said, examine yourselves whether you be in the faith. Prove your own selves. Know your own selves. Listen to this. Christ is in you. See, that's the secret. Except you be reprobates. And that's really what explains so much of the carnality there in Corinth is that there was no indwelling and living Christ in many of those church members. So we have a lot of help as Christians because He lives. I believe this. I believe in every church there are people who there's something within them, for sure, that's what we've been talking about, that makes them want to really live. I mean, make the break. Teenagers, as I've said before, I've seen in all of my Christian life, go to conferences, revivals, halftimes, that God speaks to them specifically, directly about certain things in their life that they need to change. But then it doesn't take long until very seldom do many follow through on that. But here's the thing, beloved, no matter how much the pressure is around us, we need to live for the Lord. We're not our own. We're bought with a price. And we need to stop acting like we're our own. That our own bodies to do with and go where and whatever we want. And we can think what we want. We can put anything we want in our minds that we want to. It's me. It's me. I'm the master of my fate. You know, I'm the captain of my soul. You know who wrote that poem, that real famous poem? A God-hater. Now, let me just say this. The hope that we have because He lives. Titus 2 verse 13 and 14 says, "...looking for the blessed hope and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Savior, Jesus Christ." It goes on and says, while we're looking, we ought to be zealous. Zealous of good works. Lots of promises in the book of Revelation about His coming. And it'll be a great day of victory when He comes. A great day of victory. But I'll close with this. It'll also be, and this is the hope, it'll be a great day of victory. It'll also be a great day of vindication. And here's going to be the vindication, friend. Them that have smirked and smirked and smirked at their fellow Christians who want to live for God are going to find out that they were right and they themselves were dead wrong. And the person who's wanted to live for Jesus and tried to live for Jesus is going to be vindicated for the way they lived. They haven't missed out. They haven't been the losers. The losers have been the ones who have let the world and the flesh and the devil monopolize their time and their thinking and everything else. When I was in that camp meeting in Kansas, I told you about that Chinese missionary and his family. The man, his wife, had a teenage daughter. She looked like she was about 15 and a little 7 or 8 year old. Really, I've never heard such beautiful singing in a foreign language. We've all been places where the missionaries got up and sang a song and then they'll sing it in some foreign language. And most of the time, at least for me, it hasn't been all that pretty, the singing in the foreign language. But it's the first time I ever heard anybody sing in Chinese. And they would sing a song, and I'll tell you, I never had heard half the songs they did. I'd never heard them before. But they would, and they were beautiful. And I'm hoping that we can have this family here in a couple of weeks. They're going to be in the area. And it's just a blessing. But I was sitting right about there from the pulpit. And they were up there singing. And they would sing a couple of verses, stanzas in English. And then the dad would say, the father would say, and this is how they sing it. This is how we sing it in China. And then they'd all four of them sing it in Chinese. And it was beautiful. They were singing a song, one of the songs we are all familiar with, something along the lines of the blood and Jesus' sacrifice for us. And that 15-year-old girl, that teenager, and you'd have to have been there that week, she was as quiet and reserved as, I'll just name somebody, Ruth or Rhoda. Excuse me. And in the middle of that song, She just put one hand up like that and just started weeping. Overcome with what Jesus had done for her, a 15 year old girl. And they have given their lives to the Chinese people. To reaching them. Those kids have. And we need to be that kind of adult. And we need to just not worry about the things of this world. It's garbage and it's glitter. It's trashiness and it's vulgarity. And we need to set ourselves apart for the Lord Jesus. Let's all stand together.