The Bondage Breaker

“The Bondage Breaker: The Easter Rout!”

www.pmchurch.tv

• □  The Resurrection
  • Matthew 28:1-6
  • Frederick Buechner: “If we are to believe [Christ] is really alive with all that that implies, then we have to believe without proof. And of course that is the only way it could be. If it could be somehow proved, then we would have no choice but to believe. We would lose our freedom not to believe. And in the very moment that we lost that freedom, we would cease to be human beings. Our love of God would have been forced upon us, and love that is forced is of course not love at all. Love must be freely given. Love must live in the freedom not to love; it must take risks. Love must be prepared to suffer even as Jesus on the Cross suffered, and part of that suffering is doubt.” (The Magnificent Defeat)
• □  The Evidence
  • #1—The of Jesus (Matthew 20:17-19; Mark 10:32-34; Luke 18:31-33; John 2:19-

    22)
     It was common knowledge in Jerusalem that this Man predicted He would rise from the dead

    (Matthew 27:63).

  • #2—Many “” proofs (Acts 1:3; 1 Corinthians 15:5-9)

     The NT records at least 10 such appearances

  • #3—The conversion of witnesses—James and Paul

     James, the step brother of Jesus, publicly declared that Jesus was “out of His mind” during Christ’s ministry (Mk 3:20-21—but see Acts 1:14).

     Saul/Paul was the archenemy of the infant church (Acts 9:1; but see 9:22).

  • #4—Fearful to
  • #5—The tomb

     Even the soldiers, assigned to guard that tomb, testified that it was empty—to which the chief priests concocted the lie while the soldiers slept Jesus’ disciples had stolen the body (but how would a sleeping soldier know who had stolen the body?).

  • #6—The existence of the (Acts 2:23-24; 3:14-15; 4:10-12; 4:33; 5:30-31, et al)  Tim Chaffey: “The reality of the Resurrection was central to the message the apostles

    preached. The book of Acts, almost universally recognized as reliable history of the period,

    claims that these men spoke about the Resurrection repeatedly.” (Answer April-June 2014)

  • #7—Principle of

     Why would writers of history invent details that do not seem to help their cause?
     Tim Chaffey: “Either the writers were quite foolish or exceedingly clever or they wrote

    precisely what happened.”

  • #8— hearts in later generations
• □  The Change
  • Ephesians 1:18-20; 2:1, 4-5
  • Paul’s inescapable point: The power that freed Christ from His is the identical power

  that can free us from our .
  • The devil can no more hold you in your sepulcher of than he could hold Christ in the

  tomb of .
  • “Christ’s death and resurrection have opened before every soul an unlimited source of

  from which to draw.” (RH 11-5-1901)

  Unlimited!