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HopeLives365

Mark Finley

Confounding the Skeptics: The One Question the Skeptics Cannot Answer

The Lord to give you those creative talents to be able to bless others with your music.

Father, as we study your word today, I pray that you would come, Open our eyes, anoint us with the Holy Spirit.

As we talk about the resurrection of Christ, I pray that the impact of his resurrection would touch us deeply and lead us to make eternal decisions.

I'd like you to imagine with me this morning that an intelligent being, an alien, now this is an imagination.

Do you have your imagination ready to go?

All right, so you're imagining that an intelligent being, an alien from a foreign planet, descends in a spacecraft to Earth.

Now before you write me off, don't, let me go through the story, would you?

Now his mission is to spend 1 year on Earth, tour everything about us possible.

Now to accomplish this task, this alien is going to tour the globe.

The purpose of his visit is to analyze Earth beings, to survey the state of life on planet Earth.

What kind of quality of life do these Earth beings have?

Now, he's going to have 2 guides that take him and both of these guides are non-Christian guides.

So they can only show him the secular part of life.

The Bible and all Christian books and all radio broadcasts are deliberately withheld from him.

All contact about Christianity and all data about Christian history would not be explained to this alien.

What would he conclude from his observations?

He has absolutely no contact with any influence of Christianity.

He sees fragmented societies in which people pursue their own self-interest.

He witnesses people saturating themselves with pleasure and entertainment while they ignore the needs of poverty around them.

They fail to maintain good relationships.

They seek deeper and deeper into immorality.

He sees grand mansions in gated communities with inhabitants looking over massive slums dominated by hopelessness and poverty and squalor.

He sees growing dishonesty in all strata of society.

He sees rampant drug use and homicides in every city.

He travels to Africa and this alien tours countries where masses of people are starving and children are dying every day.

He finds whole nations where young people are dying of AIDS.

In the Middle East he sees murderous repression of religions.

But he sees cultures with this incredible oil youth, oil wealth that are spending it on themselves.

In the Far East, he sees government tyranny, repression, and mass genocide.

In India, he finds object poverty and hopelessness.

He sees wars, small and great, costing the lives of uncountable people, devastating societies for generations to come.

He sees repeated epidemics of disease spreading across continents, wiping out whole populations.

This visiting an alien who's had no contact with Christianity, gets on his spaceship and travels back to this far-realming imaginary world in space, saying there is no hope for these Earth beings.

He's forgotten that a divine, heavenly being came to earth.

Jesus Christ, who tabernacled in human flesh, who lived the life we should have lived, who died the death we should have died.

There's 1 thing this imaginary alien never saw.

He never heard the voice of the angel saying, son, thy father calleth thee.

He never saw the glorious hope of the resurrection.

And it is the hope of the resurrection that brings hope to this planet.

There is hope for our weary, war-torn planet.

There is hope for our polluted, poverty-stricken planet.

There is hope for this confused, chaotic planet.

There is hope for this disaster-riddled, disease-plagued planet.

There is hope for this shattered, suffering planet.

Take your Bible, please, and turn to 1 Peter 1, verses 3 and 4.

Without Christ, His death and resurrection, there is no hope for this ball of mud that is spitting in space.

But in Christ, through Christ, because of the living Christ and the resurrection of Christ, this world has hope.

1 Peter 1, verse 3, verse 4, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy has begotten us again to, what has he begotten us again to everybody?

How has he begotten us to the living hope?

Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled that does not fade away reserved in heaven for you." Now notice, Peter says, blessed be God the Father of Jesus Christ.

Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

And he gives us an inheritance that's incorruptible, undefiled, that's reserved in heaven.

You see, if Christ did not rise from the dead, his death on the cross is pointless.

What if the last scenes that we see of Christ are his broken, bruised, bloody body being taken off the cross.

What if he was put in the tomb and the stone sealed the tomb?

We might say he was a martyr dying for a good cause.

We might say he was a good moral ethical leader.

But if he doesn't rise from the dead, certainly not the Son of God.

You see, if Christ doesn't rise from the dead, we have absolutely no hope beyond the grave.

If Christ didn't rise, life itself is meaningless.

The grave simply is a long night without a morning.

Now this is the Apostle Paul's point in 1st Corinthians chapter 15.

So take your Bible, turn over to 1st Corinthians 15.

This is Paul's point, that the resurrection is not a nice add-on after Christ dies on the cross.

But the resurrection of Christ is a dynamic event that is life-changing for the believer if we fully understand it.

1 Corinthians chapter 15, verse 17 to 19.

Without the coming of Christ, his death is pointless.

Yes, and we've found ourselves false witnesses.

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Confounding the Skeptics: The One Question the Skeptics Cannot Answer

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