Easter Sunday

Apr 20, 2025 • Dave Gibson

So out of those more than 100 billion people, why is Jesus such a big deal?

Good morning, friends.

Thank you so much for coming out today. My name is Dave Gibson. I'm the interim pastor. We're in the process of replacing me. I only work one day a week, and I am late for work this morning. And that's why the lights were flickering and they're saying, Gibson, get up there and get to work. So here I am now.

He has risen.

And if you can make it to 2033, you will be alive 2000 years after the first Easter. So that is my personal goal in life, to be alive on that day. What a glorious day that's going to be. What a glorious day this is. So we're going to look today at a passage in Luke 24 and then some other Old Testament passages. And there will be some slides on the screen for you to follow along.

There's also an outline in the bulletin if you'd like to use that. You are welcome to follow that. As well, and please do not panic. The outline is extremely long, but I'm skipping a bunch of it, so we're just taking part of it. We will not be here at 2:00.

Luke 24, please. Luke 24:13. I'm going to read part of this chapter.

“And what happened was on Easter afternoon, two men were walking from Jerusalem about 7 miles to a town called Emmaus. Jesus joined them. They didn't know it was Jesus and he started explaining to them the things about himself from the Old Testament.”

Luke 24:1 says this. “But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, bringing the spices which they had prepared. (2) And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb. (3) But when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. (4)While they were perplexed about this, behold. Two men suddenly stood near them in dazzling clothing, (5) and as the women were terrified and bowed their faces to the ground. The men said to them,” This is a classic key verse. “Why do you seek the living one among the dead? (6)He is not here, but he has risen. Remember how he spoke to you while he was still in Galilee, (7)saying that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified. And the third day rise again. (8)And they remembered his words,(9) and returned from the tomb, and reported all these things to the 11 and to the rest of the disciples.

Jesus was very clear that he was going to die.”

He was very clear what he was going to do. Jesus is called the way, the truth and the life. He is the embodiment of life and the giver of life. You can't take life away from him. He had to give it up. If you read the text, it says he

dismissed his spirit from himself. So he gave it up for us. And these people don't understand yet that this is what has happened.

Drop down to verse 13 please. “And behold on that very day, two of the disciples were going that very day to a village named Emmaus which was about 7 miles from Jerusalem.

14) And they were talking with each other about all the things that had taken place.

15) While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself approached and began traveling with them,

16) But their eyes were prevented from recognizing him.

17) And he said to them, “What are these words that you are exchanging with one another as you are walking? And they stood still, looking sad.

18) One of them named Cleopas answered and said to him, Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem and unaware of the things which have happened here these days?

19)And he said to them, what things? And they said to him, the things about Jesus the Nazarene, who was a prophet, mighty indeed, and word in the sight of God and all the people.

20) And how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him to the sentence of death and crucified him.

21) But we were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel instead. Besides all this, it is now the third day since these things happen.

22) But also some women among us amazed us when they were at the tomb early in the morning

23)and they did not find his body. They came saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive.

24) Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just exactly as the women also had said. But him they did not see.

25) And he said to them, O foolish men. And slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken,

26) was it not necessary for the Christ? To suffer these things and enter into his glory,

27) Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he explained to them. The things concerning himself in all the scriptures.

28) And they approached the village where they were going. And he acted as though he were going further, going farther.

29) But they urged him, saying, Stay with us, for it is getting toward evening, and the day is now nearly over. So he went in to stay with them.

30)And when he had reclined a table with them, he took the bread and blessed it, and breaking it, he began giving it to them.

31)Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he vanished from their sight.

32)They said to one another, were not our hearts burning within us? While he was speaking to us on the road, while he was explaining the Scriptures to us. (33) And they got up that very hour and returned to Jerusalem and gathered together the 11 disciples and those who were with them saying,

34) the Lord really has risen. And he appeared to Simon.

35) They began to relate their experience on the road and how he was recognized by them in the breaking of bread.”

Let's pray for a second please, friends. We're so thankful, Father, for your son, for your offer of forgiveness, for your book, and for the chance to think today about this event from almost 2000 years ago. I pray it would be more clear to

us when we are finished with this day, who your son is, what he has done,

what he is offering to us, and we entrust ourselves to you in Christ's name, Amen.

A billion people are alive on the planet today, and that over the course of human history there have been between 110 billion and 117 billion people who have ever lived on this planet.

It is an unimaginable number of people who have lived on this planet. And out of those, let's say 110 billion, it's easy to say, hey, what's the big deal about Jesus?

While the fuss is about one man why all why all the focus, why all the divisiveness. Why all the arguments? Why all the conversations about this one man? And even in our world today, friends, there are more than 3 billion people who have never even heard Jesus' name. They've not even heard the name. They have no idea who he is. And there's another billion or so who have heard the name and maybe heard his claims and have rejected him and said,

no, he's not God.

And that leaves around around 3 billion people on the planet who know his name, who know his claims, who have responded to him in one way or another. That includes all the Faith in the world, around 3 billion have responded to him. But there are a lot of people who are saying no, he's a good teacher. But yeah, I'm not going with a thing that he's got.

So CS Lewis famously said there's only three options for who Jesus is.

1) He's either a liar who knew he wasn't God but said he was.

2) He's a Or he's a lunatic who thought he was God but was not. He's on the same level of sanity with a man who believes himself to be a poached egg. He's a nut.

3) Or he's the Lord. He really is the Lord. He knew he was the Lord. He knew he was God, and he said he was God.

Those are the only three options open to us about who he is. Well, I personally embraced him as the Lord, as the God of the universe. And there's a whole.

Reasons more than we can cover today, but think about the fact that Jesus is a man, capital M, the God man, and his birthday is the dividing point of our calendar, BC and AD. Think about the fact that the book written about him is the most widely selling book of all time, most widely read every year. I don't care what the big time authors release every year. The Bible is the best selling book of all time. It's the most read book, the most memorized book, the most quoted book by orders of magnitude. Think about the fact that Jesus is the most quoted man in the world. That he's the most divisive man in the world.

I know Donald Trump's pretty divisive. But he doesn't hold a candle to Jesus.

There's almost nobody who's neutral about Jesus, Jesus said. “I've come to divide families.” My own family is divided on how we feel about Jesus. Some

of us embraced him. Some of us said God doesn't even exist. He's the most divisive man of all time. He's also the founder of Christianity, the largest faith

in the world. Starting with this small group of maybe 120 people in Jerusalem, that group has grown and has transformed billions of people, has transformed groups and whole societies. This is all based on the person of Jesus. His followers have started more schools, more orphanages, more relief

organizations.

Then every other faith put together his followers. They have been crazy busy doing these kinds of things. Almost all human rights movements are based on his teaching. Western law is based on his teaching. Western philosophy based on his teaching.

He is a man who has had a crazy impact in this entire world. He has inspired more writing of books than any human, more writing of songs than any human, more painting of paintings than any human, and more sculpting of sculptures than any human by orders of magnitude.

There is a very, very remarkable individual, a man by the name of James Allen Francis said, “All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built, all the parliaments that ever sat, and all the kings that ever reigned put together have not affected the life of man on earth as powerfully as Jesus did.”

Here are some of the reasons that Jesus is in a set of one, the God-Man:

● Jesus is the set of one. There's nobody even close to being like Him. And he is also a man whom the Old Testament prophesied in more than 300 passages, passages that were written millennia before him or hundreds of years before him. And so you have this baby born in the winter of five, four BC, maybe December of five BC, maybe January of four BC, somewhere in there. This baby who's born, who fulfilled 300 things. From the Old Testament.

That was going to happen, they said. What happened, he fulfilled everyone of them. We're going to review some of them today. I'm simply saying Jesus is a set of 1 and Jesus understood all of this about himself.

I want to review some of what He might have said about Himself on the Emmaus Road:

He's reviewing these things. He says verse 27. It says he reviewed the Old Testament in three sections, the works of Moses, the first five books. The Prophets, the five major prophets, the 12 minor prophets and the Psalms.

● Moses–meaning from the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Bible

● The Proiphets–the 17 Old Testament books that we call the major and minor prophets

● The Psalms–the ancient worship songs of Israel that have repeated references to Jesus.

And so from those three groups of the Old Testament, he explained himself to these two men, Cleopas and the other other men. He said, here's what, here's what's true about me. I want to talk first of all about the fact that it was necessary for Jesus to die. Now he said to them in verse 24, “O foolish man and slow of heart, to believe in all that the prophets have spoken, was it not necessary for Christ to suffer these things and to enter into his glory?

What did he do? What did he say? What part of the Old Testament?

Did you look to prove that to them? Well, he probably used Psalm 22 for one thing. Verse one, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Exactly what he said on the cross. Verse 7, the mockery of onlookers. Verse 16, “They pierced my hands and feet.” Verse 18, "They divided my clothes among

themselves, and they cast lots for my garments.” The gospel accounts record all of these things.

#1 It was necessary for Jesus to die (Luke 24:25-26}

Psalm 22 was written by David in about 1000 BC. And so 1033 years later, this all happened.

Maybe he talked to them about Isaiah 53, “The suffering servant.” Verse 5, “He was pierced for our transgressions.”Verse 7, “He was brought as a lamb to the slaughter.” Verse 12, “He's numbered with the transgressors.” There's thieves on each side of him. There's two criminals who get the death penalty. He's numbered with the transgressors.

In that account, all the gospel accounts pick this up and talk about it. Isaiah was written 700 years ago. Before Jesus' birth, maybe he talked about

Zechariah 12:10. “They will look at me, the one whom they have pierced.”

And then John 19 quotes that very same thing. That was 520 years before Jesus.

So the question is, Jesus said it was necessary for Christ to suffer.

Why? Why was that necessary? Why did that have to happen?

Well, the New Testament says:

Romans 6:23 “For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.”

The entire gospel in one verse, it's many places in the Bible, but in that one verse it says here's your bad news, here's your good news. Your bad news is we're all sinners. We've all done stuff, said stuff, taken stuff, wanted stuff, failed to do stuff. Every honest person has to say I have violated the law of God, the character of God in my own personal conscience. I've done things I feel guilty about. I haven't shared the gospel with many people. I've encountered two people who told me that they had never sinned.

It's pretty fascinating to me because I mean, I have to be unconscious all day to not sin personally. But they said we never sinned. I investigated with the first woman in a long conversation. It turned out she had committed adultery twice. I don't know how that fits. And I never sinned with the second woman, long conversation, a beautiful, brilliant 21 year old girl, long conversation with her in Havana about her sin. And said you never took anything you shouldn't have. No, never want anything you shouldn't. No, I mean, I went through this whole litany of stuff. No, I've never done any of those. I said, sweetheart, you have one sin. It's the worst, and the first. It's pride.

I don't usually do this but I just looked at her and said you're an arrogant girl.

And she began to cry. And she said to me, “Yes, I am.” We've all done something or some things that have caused us to be separate from the holy God of the universe. Jesus had to pay for that. We were hopeless. We're helpless. We're going to an eternity without Him. Something had to be done. And what was done is that Jesus paid for our sin on the cross.

Good Friday, the substitute. He came up here to die for us. I was supposed to be on the cross. It was my sin. He had none of his own. If you don't understand substitution, you don't understand the Christian faith. It's about somebody dying in your place instead of you.

There's an article in the Dallas Times Herald, July 28, 1988, about a little girl named Tara Ziehowski. Tara was seven years old. Tara and her mom Karen, were picking up grass and putting it in a wagon and they were carrying it over to the fence and throwing it over the fence for their horses to eat. So they got a big load of grass and Tara's mom is pulling it under this electric wire

and the wire snaps, comes down, wraps around her ankle.

There's a huge voltage in it throws her to the ground and Tara, seven years old, says to her three-year-old brother, get away. She takes off her rubber soled shoe and knocks the wire off her mother, thereby saving her mother's life. And in the process falls with her head on the wire and dies.

Electrocuted.

Died in the place of her mother. If she had just stayed back, her mother would have died and she didn't. She went up there and saved her mother's life.

Friends, the message of the gospel is that Jesus knocked the wire off of you and took it on himself. He was our substitute. And he said because he's done that, he said, I'll give you, I'll give you an offer of forgiveness, a free gift.

I will forgive your sins if you will just put your trust in me, if you just stop hoping in whatever else you might have hoped in hoping only what I did for you on the cross. Just say I've got nothing else. It's all in Jesus. It's a one time decision that God is inviting everyone of us just to make. It's a free gift. It's a free gift.

Now you could be thinking, they're saying, listen Dave, you have no idea

what I've done. To which I say, I have no idea what you've done. But I'm very clear that God knows exactly what you did. I'm very clear about what God

did for you and for me. I'm very clear about the fact that God can save any person.

In fact, in First Timothy 1:15. The apostle Paul said. “God saved me, the foremost Sinner. Paul, under inspiration of the Holy Spirit recorded in the Bible, forever said I am the worst Sinner, whoever lived.” He was a killer of Christians. He was killing God's people. The hand of God had to reach further

to get Paul than it would have to reach to get you. He's already gotten the worst guy. You're somewhere in between there.

God knows what you've done. It's not about the depth of your sin, it's about the magnitude of Jesus' forgiveness. It's about the magnitude of what he did for us. And so the fact that he had to die is based on the fact that we are sinful people and we needed his forgiveness.

I don't know what you've done, but the Bible makes it very clear you are fully redeemable. I know what I've done. I know who I was. God redeemed me in his generosity, full forgiveness as a gift.

Why was it necessary for Jesus to die? Sin, separation, substitution, trust–your decision!

● App: you may well be sitting here thinking. “How could God forgive me? Dave, you have no idea what I have done.” True..but you are fully redeemable–your decision!

#2 It was necessary for Jesus to be raised. Luke 24:25-26

And so Jesus says verse, verse 20. I'm sorry, the two men say in verse 22, but also some women among us amazed us when they were at the tomb early in the morning and did not find his body. They came saying that they had also seen a vision of angels who also said he was alive. Some of those with us went to find the tomb. They found it exactly as they said, but Jesus they did not find.

Jesus probably talked to them about the Old Testament verses that relate to his own resurrection. He might have talked to them about Psalm 16:10. David wrote. “You will not abandon my soul to shield, nor will you allow your Holy One to undergo decay.”

The first half of the verse relates to King David. God, you won't let me go to shield to be lost forever in this place of this hellish place. But the second part of the verse has to relate to Jesus. You won't let your holy one undergo decay. Jesus won't be in the grave long enough for his body to decay.

Psalm 16:10 The resurrection. Psalm 22, Messianic Psalm with a whole bunch of resurrection stuff in it.

Isaiah 53, This is the suffering servant, the one whom they pierced, the one whom they're going to kill. They're going to smite him. He's going to be stricken. He's going to suffer death. But what else? He will also see his offspring. He will also prolong his days. He will also divide the portion with the great. He will divide the spoil with the strong. Those are things that living people do. Those are not things that dead people do. Dead people don't prolong their days, living people do. Maybe he talked about Jonah 1:17. Jonah is 3 days and three nights in the belly of the whale. And Jesus came back and said in Matthew 12, I will be 3 days and three nights in the in the depth of the

earth. Maybe he explained his resurrection from that.

Romans 4:25, “He who has delivered over because of our transgressions was raised because of our justification.” Jesus had to die because of our sin. He had to be raised to justify us and for us to know that the Heavenly Father said it. It was good, it worked, it was sufficient, it was enough. He's alive and the Father affirmed his sacrifice by bringing him back to life. And we're celebrating today.

It was necessary for him to die, but it was also necessary for him to be raised now

#3 It's necessary to see that Jesus was fully expected.

The Old Testament, as I said, has 300 things saying he's coming and.

Luke 24:27 Said that he started with Moses and all the prophets and he also did stuff from the Psalms. He showed them from the Old Testament. I was expected. I was coming. Here's a baby born in 5-4 BC who fulfilled 300 things. How much do you control about your birth?

You can curl the day. No, you control the place. I mean, I was born in Valentine, Nebraska, because my mom was there. You know, I didn't really have anything, any input. I had nothing to do with it. Jesus was born in Bethlehem because his mom was there and because He was the focal point of all these prophecies that came together. Maybe he talk to them about some of those in the seven miles they walked.

Maybe talked about Genesis 3:15. Where God said to Satan you will bruise his

heel meaning Jesus heel but he will bruise your head. You are going to bring Jesus to death temporarily, but he's going to crush you and put you in the lake of fire forever.

This is in the third chapter. I mean, the scripture says that Jesus was crucified before the foundation of the world, before the world was created. God said I'm going to provide a savior for them. And now we're three chapters in and we already know or in the same chapter, God killed animals to make garments to cover Adam and Eve to cover their shame and their sin. Animal sacrifice.

three chapters in, we already know that blood has to be shed to cover sin

Genesis 22:8, Abraham takes Isaac up to sacrifice him to kill him because

God commanded him to his son, his only son, his beloved son. The one that he waited 99 years for and he's just got his knife up ready to kill him. And God says, “Don't harm the boy. Now I know that you'll love me. And there's a ram caught in a thicket, and he kills the ram, sacrifices the ram, substitutionary death. The ram dies in the place of the boy. Maybe he talked about that in terms of why he had to die.

Maybe he talked about Exodus 12:1-27, The Passover lamb. The blood of that lamb would cause the children to be safe because it was on their doorpost and the blood of Christ. Causes us to be safe.

Maybe he talked about Numbers 21:4-9. People were grumbling against Moses and against God saying why did you bring us in the wilderness to let us die out here and so God sent these fiery serpents to to bite them and Moses interceded and God said make a fiery serpent make a form of a snake put it on a pole lift it up and everybody who looks at the pole will be saved if you look

up at the snake and then Jesus quotes that.

In the New Testament it says if I be lifted up I will draw all men to myself.

He was lifted up on a cross. That's where we look now. We don't look at a

snake on the cross. We look at the cross and say, yeah, Jesus covered it for me. And even on the cross, the criminal next to him looked over and said,

Jesus, Remember Me when you come in my Kingdom. He invested faith in him.

Jesus said, yeah, I will today. Today you'll be with me in paradise.

Maybe he talked about that particular passage in Numbers and what happened there. Maybe he talked about Deuteronomy 18:15-19, where Moses said there's going to be another prophet like me. And both Peter and Stephen say, yeah, that was Jesus. That's who he was talking about.

Maybe he talked about Psalm 8:2. Children will praise Jesus relating the triumphal entry when he came into town and the kids praised him.

Maybe he talked to him about Isaiah 7:14.

Maybe he talked about Isaiah 9:6 and 7, A child will be born to us. A son will be given to us. Wonderful counselor, mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace is written 700 years before Jesus.

Maybe he talked about Jeremiah 31:15, 31. “For thus says the Lord,

a voice heard in Rama. Lamentations and bitter weeping. Rachel is weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted because her children are no more. Rama was a miniature little town by Jerusalem and by Bethlehem. It's the.

Professional site where Rachel the beloved matriarch was buried and then Herod killed all the children 2 years old and younger trying to kill Jesus. Jesus was already going to Egypt, thankfully. And all of these Jewish women are weeping because their children have been killed. Rachel figuratively

crying for all of these children who have died. Maybe Jesus explained that to them. It goes on and on.

Hosea 11:1, Israel I called Israel out of Egypt. I called my son out of Egypt. Israel was in Egypt for 300 years and then he brought him out by Moses. Jesus was in Egypt for two years because his father took him there to keep

him safe from Herod and it refers to him Micah 5:2. “But As for you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, too little to be among the clans of Judah. From you one will go forth to be a ruler of Israel for his going forth or from long ago from Days of Eternity.”

Zechariah 9:9, Zechariah 11:13.

Malachi 3:1”Behold, I'm going to send my messenger before you, John the Baptist, crying in the wilderness.

I'm throwing a bunch of stuff out here I'm not even talking about. I don't have time to look at all of it. 300 prophecies that say Jesus was expected The fourth thing I will say is that it was necessary to see that Jesus was expected to come back again.

Revelation 22:20, second to the last verse in the Bible says, “He who

testifies to these things says, yes, I'm coming quickly, Amen. Come Lord Jesus.”

The Jesus who was born at the right time in the right place, died at the right

time in the right place, resurrected at the right time in the right place, is coming back. At the right time, of course, we don't know the time, but the truth is he's coming back and we are people.

Who looks forward to that? We live between the two greatest events of world history.

]The First Advent, when Jesus came the suffering servant.

The Second Advent, when he's coming as conquering king, It's a whole different appearance by him at that point. So there are billions of people who don't even know his name. But for those of us who've read this book and accepted this book, we're saying. There's good evidence. There's good

evidence, I believe in George Washington. I never saw him. I know some of you think I'm old enough that I knew him, but I don't know the man, you know? I just read about it. I would bet there's nobody in here who says I do not believe in George Washington.

You believe in him because you've read about him. There's evidence. We believe in Jesus because we read about him and we've watched the people's lives be transformed and we've watched, we've looked at creation and says this can't work by accident. We've got the evidence. We've looked at the evidence and he said this, this is the Son of God. This is the greater, this is the Savior. He's a big deal. He fulfilled 300 prophecies and he's coming back. And every one of us needs to make a decision about Him before he comes.

Back.

I'm inviting you to think about that decision today. I want to close by reading a paragraph out of a book called, The Truth and Beauty. There's a father who is close to accepting Christ. He's struggling about coming to faith, coming to

Christ, and he's sitting on a balcony talking to his grown son who has already embraced Christ. “I said to my son regarding my struggle to embrace Christianity. The thing is, I have this feeling, this intense feeling that it all does actually make sense somehow. It's like a beautiful picture, but it's blurry to me. I feel like I could just turn the lens a little bit this way, or that way it would all of a sudden come into focus, but I can't seem to do it. My son thought for a while and then he said, “Maybe the problem is you're trying to understand a

philosophy instead of trying to get to know a man.”

All these verses I reviewed, friends, they're not about a philosophy, they're not about a religion, they're not about a denomination. They're about a man, capital M, who paid for our sins, who raised from the dead, who's coming back, who walks with us every day of life. More than 50 years ago, I looked at this evidence and said, yes, I believe. I believe the evidence is good. I put my faith in Christ, and God has shown me nothing but crazy kindness for those five decades.

He's offering that crazy kindness to you. He's offering that forgiveness. He's offering that grace. If you've never made that decision, please come talk to me. Come talk to one of the folks on the platform here. We would love to talk to you about that question. Jesus had to die. He had to be raised. He was expected, and he's coming back. Let's pray.

We give you great thanks, Father, for your goodness, for this day.

Thank you so much for your book that you preserved for us for two millennia.

So we could read it and think about it and see the evidence. We don't want to be foolish people who are slow in heart to believe. Help us by your Holy Spirit,

and we pray in Christ's name, Amen.

Verses on list but not mentioned:

Genesis 3:21-23 Genesis 49:10 Leviticus 15

Ruth 2:20 Psalm 2:2, 6-9 Acts 13:33

Hebrews 1-5 Psalm 16:10 Psalm 22:7-8 16-18

Psalm 118:22 Isaiah 11:1 Isaiah 40:3-5

Isaiah 53 Isaiah 61:1 Jerimiah 23:5-6

Lamentations 4:12 Lamentations 3:22-25 Ezekiel 34:23-24

Ezekiel 27:24-28 Daniel 7:13-14 Daniel 9:24-27

Joel 2:28-32 Amos 9:11-12 Obediah 1:21

Jonah 1:17 Matthew 12:40 Micah 5:2

Matthew 2:1-6 Luke 2:4-7 Naham 3:15