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So if you've got one of these little red Gospels of Mark, it's on page 51 and we're reading from chapter 15. And starting at verse 42, headed the burial of Jesus. It was preparation Day, that is, the day before the Sabbath. So as evening approached, Joseph of Aramathea, a prominent member of the council who was himself waiting for the kingdom of God, went boldly to Pilate and asked for Jesus' body. Pilate was surprised to hear that he was already dead.

Summoning the centurion, he asked him if Jesus had already died. When he learned from the centurion that it was. So he gave the body to Joseph. So Joseph bought some linen cloth, took down the body, wrapped it in the linen and placed it in the tomb, cut out of rock. Then he rolled a stone against the entrance of the tomb.

Mary Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Joseph, saw where he was laid. Jesus has risen. When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus' body. Very early on the first day of the week, just after sunrise, they were on their way to the tomb and they asked each other who rolled the stone away from the entrance of the tomb. But when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away.

As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side. And they were alarmed. Don't be alarmed, he said. You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene who was crucified. He has risen.

He's not here. See the place where they laid him. But go tell his disciples and Peter, he is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him just as he told you. Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb.

They said nothing to anyone because they were afraid.

Good evening, folks. It's wonderful to see you. Particular welcome if you're new to all Saints this evening. My name is Chris. I'm one of the ministers here and we're so pleased that you've joined us.

For midway through our Christianity explored series, we've been looking at essentially the fundamentals of the Christian faith. We've seen that Christianity at its heart is centred around not a philosophy or a moral code or a way of wisdom, but it's centred around the person of Jesus Christ. We've looked at the case that Jesus really was who he said he was. This man really was the same God that flung stars into space, that created the universe and us and everyone. And we said, well, if he really was that God, then why did that God come in Jesus?

And why did he die? We've seen the claim in the Bible that all of the world's problems at their heart, due to a break of relationship between humanity and God, we rebelled against him, but Jesus came to live the life we should have lived. He came to love others and to love God perfectly. He came to die in our place. He came to pay for the wages of sin and death.

Jesus came to offer us a way back to God through his sacrifice on the cross. And now the barrier, the only barrier, first getting to know him is ourselves, is a decision that we have to make. But before we start to think about that decision, there's more questions we're going to ask of the Christian story. And tonight we're going to think about why did Jesus rise? We have why did Jesus die last week?

And now why did Jesus rise, if indeed he did? Because that's the next chapter in the Christian story. Jesus died on the cross on Good Friday, and then on a Sunday, he rose again. And the claim of Christianity is that Jesus rose again because our biggest enemy is death. Because death is the most serious and final consequence of humanity's rejection of God.

And that through Jesus, there's not only forgiveness of sins, but there is hope of eternal life. The Christian story, this gospel claims that Jesus is the first one, the first person to go through death. And out the other side, he wasn't simply revived from death. Jesus actually died. He actually came back to life.

And because of that, Jesus holds the key to life and death and the hope for humanity. That's what we're going to be looking at tonight. Shall I pray for us before we dive in?

Dear Lord Jesus, we thank you that you have spoken by coming down to us. Lord Jesus, we thank you that you came and told us about your mission. You told us about why you came. We thank you that you died. And, Lord, we want to pray that as we examine what your disciples, what the records say about what happened next.

Lord God, we pray that you would help this gospel to come alive in our hearts, help its meaning to become relevant as we sit here on a Sunday night. Lord, by your spirit, come and speak. We pray. Amen.

Eternal hope. I want to talk about three things in answer to the question, why did Jesus rise? I want to talk about our need for eternal hope. I want to talk about the evidence that Jesus rose, and I want to talk a little bit about the nature of Christian hope.

There's a piece of ancient literature in scripture and it says this, that God has set eternity in the human heart. There is an inbuilt yearning for an eternal future in the hearts of humanity. And even in a sceptical sort of quotes, progressive society, it can come out in the way we tell stories. We still can't help a resurrection story. And one of the notable examples of this, many of you will have seen when it came out, James Cameron's Titanic.

It was a long time ago, 1997, and you remember there was an argument about the ending. But the argument about the ending wasn't where I would have thought the argument about the ending was. The argument about the ending was, if only Rose had just moved over a little bit and Jack had sat on the door, he wouldn't have died. Sorry. Spoilers alert.

The ship sinks. And people still argue about that to this day. But interestingly, people don't argue about what comes right at the end, where the ship having sunk, where tragedy has struck. There's this peculiar scene at the end where we see Jackha's alive again and the ship has come back up, and all the people that were on the ship, the ones that we like anyway, are all there celebrating. It's this resurrection scene, but it kind of goes from this kind of almost real life biopic of a thing that actually happens to this sort of myth, this make believe scene.

It's all happening in the imagination. And there was one writer who wrote recently about this, the magic of Titanic's ending. 20 years later, they wrote in the Atlantic, said, it'S hard to overstate just how weirdly daring Titanic's conclusion is. Even 20 years on, Cameron conjured a doomed love affair that had its cake and eat it, too, both killing Jack and bringing him back to life. And yet neither of those choices felt forced.

Yes, Rose's reunion in her mind, is a fantasy, but it's one that's baked into the grand, nostalgic storiestelling style throughout the film. A fully earned postcreDits, a love found and lost but never forgotten. Multiple times, I've watched dozens of people, many of whom who have seen the film before, whooping and cheering at the sight of Jack atop that staircase. God has set eternity in the human hearts. JR Tolkien wrote an essay on why we tell stories, and in it, he says, modernity has not been able to extinguish the oldest and deepest desire to escape death itself.

God has set eternity in the human heart. But we see this not only in the yearnings that we positively hope for, but also when we consider our deepest fears. The claim that death isn't really a big deal, as has sometimes been made by secular writers, humanist writers. It's hard to maintain, and it's hard to maintain from the point of view of human psychology. Let's be blunt for a second.

If I took you on a spaceship up to the moon, put you in the airlock, and I'm about to dump you on the moon without any protective equipment whatsoever, you would die very quickly because that atmosphere does not have enough, cannot support your life. And that would be a terrifying thought. It would be a terrifying thought to land on the moon without protective equipment. The atmosphere cannot hold life.

The same is true of Earth. It's just the difference is it takes 80 years longer, right? This world cannot hold our life. The only difference is we have a little bit longer to distract ourselves from that fact. But death ought to be terrifying.

We have the creativity to kid ourselves that it's not coming, really to pretend that everything is all here forever. Throughout this course, we're looking through the Book of Mark, and we'll get to our reading in a second. But in the meantime, there's a curious little conversation that happens at the beginning of Mark, chapter 13. It's in the lead up to Jesus' death. And Jesus and his followers are coming out of the temple, and there's a curious little conversation.

A disciple who shall remain nameless says to him, says, look, teacher, what massive stones. What magnificent buildings. Looking at the temple. Why do we love beautiful, big buildings? They inspire us.

They talk about identity and meaning and purpose. They're wow. But also they're made of stone. They're meant to be there forever. We get this sense of something that is going to endure, that our soul really enjoys.

But in this moment of awe and wonder, Jesus rather punctures this disciple's enthusiasm, says, do you see? All these great buildings? Not 1 st here will be left on another. Everyone will be thrown down. Now, that would be a shocking and unbelievable thought to the disciples.

My grandfather made a career as a banker in the City of London. For the last three years of his life, he suffered from progressive dementia. But the onset of that dementia happened shortly after 911, after the twin Towers collapsed. Now, my mum is of the conviction that seeing those towers fall and what that symbol of the banking industry, those towers that none of us thought would fall, was, what precipitated this psychological downfall. Now, whether or not my mum is right, the collapse of the Twin Towers, those symbols of what we thought would stand forever, was just as shocking as what Jesus is saying here.

And as Mark 13 goes on. Jesus describes an era of crises, an era where the world is constantly hearing about wars, where famines seem to be increasing, where people are afraid to have children. And I'd love to talk more about Mark 13 and where our culture is at. Jesus describes a permacrisis, which was the Collins Dictionary, 2022, word of the Year, a permacrisis, the sense that we're always in Cris. But tonight I'm not talking about the state of the world.

My point is to talk about what the loss of eternal hope does to our psychology. Because when our enduring symbols are torn down that shield us from the terrifying reality that one day we are going to die, our fears are laid bare for what they are. And far from creating an atheist society where everyone goes, well, never mind, death is coming. We always knew it was coming. And never mind.

Actually, people start getting religious in all directions. And Jesus says, in this time of perma crisis that is coming, watch out that no one deceives you, because many will come in my name. Many will come preaching the same hope, saying, I am he and will deceive many. When you hear of wars and rumours of wars, do not be alarmed. Such things must happen.

But the end is still to come, when we're unable to distract ourselves any longer, unable to distract ourselves on things that feel like they last forever but don't. The soul is no longer shielded from its ultimate reality of hopelessness. And we don't live in a secular society, except we live in a godless society. We actually live in a pagan society where people worship. I mean, we all sort of thought in our minds that the Queen would last forever.

Did you see that religious outpouring from a supposed nonchristian, nonreligious culture?

The reality of death creates a crisis of hope, and a cris of hope becomes a crisis of meaning, and a cris of meaning creates a crisis of psychology. And to claim that death isn't a problem just doesn't work in practise. We need to know that there is a kingdom that will last forever, and we need to know that we can find a way to that kingdom. And I want to put it to you tonight that if you are not a Christian but you feel hopeful, you got hope for the future, you are thinking much more like a Christian than perhaps you think you are. We need an eternity, and we need an eternity that we don't fear we have.

Why did Jesus die last week? We had, why did Jesus rise this week? And there's a TV clip that kind of really speaks into both of those questions from a few years back. It's an American hospital drama called ER and in the Clock. I'm going to show you.

An old man comes into the ER and he's dying. He's a doctor, but his career was as a doctor on death row. And as he's dying, he calls for the prison chaplain because he needs to have a talk before he dies. Let's watch. Convicted of killing a cop.

See his family? Pleading, praying. I injected the drugs, and he didn't die. He lay there awake, quivering. Lethal doses of three different agents, and he was still alive.

Parents were crying, claiming a miracle. What happened? The IV infiltrated. The drugs pooled in his soft tissues. Instead of going into his bloodstream, though, I placed another IV, drew up another round of meds, and pushed.

And this time, it took him 90 seconds to die.

Seven months later, a police officer came forward. The boy was framed for the murder.

He didn't do it.

You couldn't have known that. God tried to stop me from killing an innocent man, and I ignored the sign. How can I even hope for forgiveness? I think sometimes it's easier to feel guilty than forgiven.

Which means what? That maybe your guilt over these deaths has become your reason for living. Maybe you need a new reason to go on. I don't want to go on. Can't you see I'm old?

I have cancer. I've had enough. The only thing that is holding me back is that I am afraid. I'm afraid of what comes next. And what do you think that is?

You tell me. Is atonement even possible? What does God want from me? I think it's up to each one of us to interpret what God wants. So people can do anything.

They can rape, they can murder, they can steal all the name of God, and it's okay. No, that's not what I'm. What are you saying? Because all I'm hearing is some new age, God is love, one size fits all crap. Hey, Dr.

Truman. No, I don't have time for this now. Greg, it's okay. I understand. No, you don't understand.

You don't understand. How could you possibly say that? No, you listen to me. I want a real chaplain who believes in a real God and a real hell. I hear that you're frustrated, but you need to ask yourself.

No, I don't need to ask myself. I need answers. And all your questions and your uncertainty are only making things worse.

I know you're upset. God, I need someone who will look me in the eye and tell me how to find forgiveness because I am running out of time.

I'm trying to help. What? Don't. Just get out. Get out.

Get out.

Julia, come on. Listen. Come on. Come on. The guy's just freaking out.

He didn't mean what he said. Yeah, he did. He absolutely did.

Jesus died that we might be forgiven. Jesus Rose again, that we might have eternal hope, but also to show us that this gospel, this story, in this Jesus is the certain hope that we can rest on. What is the evidence that Jesus rose? What firm foundation has Jesus given us? It's all very well wishing it were true.

But is it true? And here's where we turn to the reading which Janet brought us earlier at the mark back end of chapter 15 and through to 16. On Easter Day this year, I preached through a very similar passage in one of the other gospels. And in that sermon I laid out three pieces of evidence through a kind of collective of three pieces of evidence, which mean that any sort of other theory that tries to claim that Jesus did not rise from the dead, it is just quite awkward to fit into the facts that we read in these gospels that try to discredit the reality of Jesus' resurrection. I'm going to run through those three points again quickly here, but there's a longer version on our website from Easter Day in the evening.

Firstly, it is difficult to claim that Jesus never died. Jesus' death and his confirmed death is the first piece of evidence, verse 44. It says, Pilate was surprised to hear that Jesus was already dead. Summoning the centurion, he asked him if Jesus had already died. When he learned from the centurion that it was so, he gave the body to Joseph.

It's hard to claim that Jesus never died because Jesus was killed by professionals, people who were very experienced at what they did and people who had no motive for trying to create a cover up. And in this passage, we see Jesus' death is verified by a centurion. It is difficult to claim that Jesus never died. Secondly, we have the empty tomb. Verses four to six.

Mary, Mary and Salome come to the tomb. And the passage says, when they looked up, they saw that the stone, which was very large, had been rolled away. As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side. And they were alarmed. Don't be alarmed, he said.

You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene who was crucified. He has risen. He is not here. See the place where they laid him. We have an empty tomb and neither has the body ever been produced and you say, well, maybe there was a cover up, and say, okay, well, if there was a cover up, who took the body?

Makes no sense to say the Romans took it or the religious leaders took it, because they were the ones that wanted to discredit this Jesus movement. They would have just produced the body. And if the disciples stole it, you had to ask, would these disciples really be ready to die and be tortured and martyred for a story that they knew was fake? It's difficult to say that there was a body or there was a cover up or the tomb wasn't really empty. And thirdly, Jesus' appearances.

It is very difficult to discredit all of Jesus' appearances. And we have allusion to this. In this passage in verse seven, the angel says, go tell the disciples, and Peter, he is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him. There you will see him.

Just as Jesus told you. Jesus appeared to many people after his tomb was found empty. We're going to look at one of those appearances in a second. But Paul records in one Corinthians 15, he says, look, Jesus appeared to over 500 people, and most of them are still alive. And you can go and ask them, and this is in one of the earliest letters.

It would have been an astounding claim for Paul to say, over 500 people saw him and they are still alive, and you can go and ask them yourself. The Church believed this from the very beginning of its conception. And it's very hard to think that this became an inspirational myth a few hundred years later, as some claim. There's much more that we could say about the evidence for the resurrection. They're three really quick points.

If you're sceptical tonight, I want to say to you, so were the people that actually longed for Jesus to be alive, actually, even those who were Jesus' disciples found this hard to believe, despite the fact that Jesus told them again and again this would happen. We have three places in Mark's Gospel. Mark, chapter eight. Mark, chapter nine. Mark, chapter ten.

Jesus keeps saying, the Son of man must be killed. And after three days, rise again. They will kill him. And after three days, he will rise. The Son of man will be delivered over the chief priest, who will kill him.

Three days later, he will rise. Jesus keeps saying, this is going to happen. This is going to happen. And yet the women are still not expecting it. They come to the tomb with their spices, expecting to see a dead body.

And even then, they are bewildered. It is far too fantastical to believe, even from the ones that wanted to believe it. But my invitation to you is go and cheque out the evidence for yourself on the basis that this is surely too important a question to leave hanging. The 17th century mathematician Blaise Pascal, he came up with a thought experiment you might have heard of called Pascal's wager. And Pascal said this in light of the claim of Christianity, there's a choice.

If somebody decides to believe in the Christian story and then say it turned out it wasn't true, they may have dedicated a finite life to that thing that wasn't true, and it's a finite loss. But if somebody decides to reject the claims of Jesus, and it turns out it is true, then you have lost an eternity. It is infinite loss. Now, Pascal knew that was a terrible way to convince someone to believe in Jesus. It's not an evangelistic technique.

But what Pascal was saying is surely, given what is at stake, the burden of proof is very much on those who are claiming absolutely with certainty that this did not happen. The stakes are too high not to consider this question very thoroughly. You can listen to my sermon from Easter Day. You can read the Gospels for yourself. One really, really good book, if you want to research this for yourself, is one called the Case for Christ by Lee Strobel.

Lee Strobel was an investigative journalist. Still is an investigative journalist. One day his wife comes home and says, I've become a Christian. He wasn't a Christian. He said, I am going to use all my investigative skills to find out whether this is true.

And the book details his journey, talking to experts, the people that really, really know their stuff. And at the end, he becomes a Christian. He judges the evidence to be reliable. Cheque it out for yourself. We've looked at humanity's need for this eternal hope.

We need to believe that there is another world. We've looked briefly at the evidence, and finally, I want to very, very quickly look at the nature of this hope. And maybe you're thinking, okay, death is bad news, and Jesus claims to hold hope. But what sort of eternal hope is this? What reality is this hope?

Is it like those Eastern religions that say, will become one with the cosmos? Will we just be disembodied spirits? Will we be playing harps in the eternal church service in the sky? What does this eternal hope look like? We're quickly going to look at one more account of a resurrection sceptic.

This is from John, Chapter 20, another gospel. It says, now, Thomas, one of the twelve, was not with the disciples When Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, we've seen the Lord. But he said to him, unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were and put my hand into his side, I will not believe. And a week later, his disciples were in the house again.

Jesus came and stood among them and said, peace be with you. And then he said to Thomas, put your finger here. See my hands? Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.

And Thomas said to him, my Lord and my God, what sort of life does Jesus prepare for us? What significance is it that Jesus' resurrection is physical? That Thomas can put his fingers into the hands and sides of Jesus Christ? It shows us that the reality Jesus is preparing us for is a redemption of this world. Jesus is making this world new again.

And not only that, but he promises that our losses and our pain and our trauma will not only be recompensed, but they will be redeemed. In other words, the life to come is one where not only is evil and death and sorrow eradicated, but one where the victory is greater than if all those terrible things had never happened in the first place. Paul writes in one Corinthians 15, he says, death is swallowed up in victory. In other words, the victory of Jesus through his resurrection is made fuller and greater and more wonderful, because in Jesus, evil and death and sorrow only nourishes what is to come. When you swallow something, it nourishes you.

This is redemption that no other belief system or philosophy offers, my friends. And this is the hope that is in Jesus. You want to know what it might be like? The Bible says, no eyes see, no ear is heard. It's really hard for us to kind of comprehend.

Here's one way you could go about it. You could watch the end of Titanic, get all the feels of that redemptive story, multiply that by a million, and then read the resurrection hope in scripture and ask yourself, could this be the story to which all the other stories point? Could this be the one resurrection story that actually came into human history? Could this be the resurrection story upon which I can finally rest the hope of my soul and be at peace because I am forgiven and Jesus welcomes me into his kingdom.

You might ask if I believe what you're saying. How do I receive this gift? You might be sitting here tonight intrigued, but scared like those women were. And scared because you realise actually you're in the presence of something much more, much bigger and more powerful than yourself. It stands to reason that to beat death, it needs to happen with something a lot bigger and a lot more powerful than you or me.

But that is frightening. And to you I say, hang on for next week, because next week we're going to be looking at the grace that is in the Lord Jesus Christ. There is an old hymn that says, it was grace that taught my heart to fear and grace, my fears relieved. And we're going to be talking about how we can accept this amazing gift of forgiveness and eternal life that is in Jesus Christ. But for now, let's pray.

John says in Revelation, I saw a new heaven and a new earth. And a loud voice from the throne saying, look, God's dwelling place is now among the people. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.

Christ has died. We are forgiven and Christ alive. We are the risen. And Lord Jesus, we praise you for this gospel, for this story. And Lord Jesus, we thank you that in your resurrection and the testimony of those who wrote down the events so many thousand years ago, Lord, we can place our hope in you.

We thank you that as the world gives way, you are an anchor for the soul, a rock upon which we can base our lives as we look towards that great day, that great era where we get to live with you forever at the redemption of all things and where you place all the enemies under your feet. Lord Jesus, help us be eager for that day. And, Lord, for those who are still working out whether to place their trust in you, Lord, work in hearts. Tonight we pray, open eyes and soften minds. Amen.