Lee Strobel was a staunch atheist and an investigative journalist for the Chicago Tribune when his wife suddenly changed. She “got religion,” as they say.
At first, he was angry—at her, at Christianity, at his life being turned upside down—so he set out to prove Christianity wrong.
In his research, though, he not only concluded that Jesus of Nazareth really had died, but that his followers really believed he rose from the dead. He couldn’t prove it—he wasn’t there to see it with his own eyes—but the evidence was too great to ignore. If they believed it deeply enough to die for it, it must be true.
Finally, after two years of struggling with his beliefs, he repented and turned to Christ in faith. It was not a “blind faith,” as some skeptics would say, but a reasoned faith of a trained journalist that could not ignore the evidence.
I thought about using today’s sermon to try to bring all the evidence, but instead, I wanted to focus on what it means for us today.
If Jesus did not rise from the dead, church today is pointless. Go home. You’re wasting your time.
But if Jesus did rise from the dead, then the non-Christian, the backslider, and the believer can all grow from this message.
It’s the GOSPEL—good news… the best news in the history of the world!
1 Corinthians 15:3-4 “…Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; And that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures.”
–Pastor Ryan