Easter 2025

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in Southwest Florida. For more info, visit us at thrive-fl.org. So welcome today. It's great to have you here today. We are in Matthew chapter 28, the end of the gospel, the whole chapter that is about the resurrection and the commissioning and the making of disciples. 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. 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. His appearance was like lightning and his clothing white as snow, and for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said, Come, see the place where he lay. 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. So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy and ran to tell his disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and said, Greetings. And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him. And Jesus said to them, Do not be afraid, go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me. While they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers and said, Tell people his disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep. And if this comes to the governor's ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble. So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story has been spread among the Jews to this day. Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. And then when they saw him, they worshiped him. But some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. Christ is risen, hallelujah. Is that true? Is it good? And does it matter? Those things we're going to discuss today, and though only about 10% of our culture these days in America are strongly skeptical of anything spiritual or religious, only 10%. Most people believe in God in some form or spirituality. At the same time, though, almost everyone today is skeptical of any authority figure telling us what is true and want to stay at the center of deciding what is good for them and whether it matters, okay? Even in Christian churches, I just saw a survey this week that said only about 45% of the people within Christianity going to church actually think pastors are trustworthy and reliable sources of information. I got a little work to do today, I guess, huh? I don't want you to take my word for it. I want you to see it just like the Bereans did in the book of Acts. You can look this story up. They kept checking the scriptures to see if it was true what Paul was saying. I think they were skeptical as well. We're okay with some skepticism that way. But even if you're not skeptical, if you go like, oh, yeah, John, he's great, you know, whatever. Hey, my wife is skeptical of things I say, and rightly so, okay? Even if you don't doubt that miracles can happen in this one, and you've never wrestled with the questions about whether the resurrection is true or whether Christianity is actually good and that faith actually matters, I'll tell you this, your friends, your neighbors, your coworkers, your relatives, fellow classmates, they have wrestled with this, and they're going to ask you those questions. Is it true? How do we know? Is it any good? Is Christianity good? These days, there's questions about that. And does it make any difference? So that's why we're going through these. We're going to start out with, is it true? And you can't say, it doesn't work too well to say, well, my pastor told me it's true. And it doesn't work to say, even for most people, well, the Bible says it's true. They're just not going to take those as authorities anymore. So we're going to look at a little of the resurrection from the perspective of just, how do we know what it says and why it says and why it's true? Now, most people at a campus like FGCU will say something like, and there are a lot of Christians at our campus, but others who are not will say something like, OK, yeah, Jesus of Nazareth, I do believe he historically existed, and he was a good moral teacher. He had some good things to say. He talked about love and truth and serving and all that stuff...