For believers, the death and resurrection of Jesus grants us the promise of an eternal home with heaven. But what does it mean for our lives right now?
Rebuild and form a life of
sustaining faith and intimacy
with God.
Begin your journey today.
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male announcer: “In Touch” with
Dr. Charles Stanley,
celebrating 45 years
of God’s faithfulness
and sharing the
gospel worldwide.
Next on “In Touch,”
“Because He Lives.”
Dr. Charles Stanley:
Jesus was crucified,
and those who stood around
Him knew that He was dead.
No question in their
minds about it,
He was a dead man.
Nobody expected Him to
rise from the grave.
He was a dead man, crucified.
So, Joseph, who was
one of the Council,
came and asked for His body,
and the body was given to him.
And the ladies came bringing
their spices and perfumes and so
forth to wrap His body.
And anybody who thought
about a resurrection
said it was nonsense.
In fact, that’s
what the Bible says.
For example, “For these words
appeared to them as nonsense,
and they would
not believe them.”
And we live in a world where
many people still think
today that it’s nonsense.
Why do you and I get together
and talk about a dead man?
We get together and know in
our heart that He’s not dead,
that He’s alive, that
He’s living within
every single one of us.
So, I want you to
turn, if you will,
to this twenty-fourth chapter of
Luke, and it’s always good
to be reminded scripturally
of what’s happening.
Twenty-fourth chapter of Luke,
beginning in the first verse,
“But on the first
day of the week,
at the early down, they came
to the tomb bringing the spices
which they had prepared.
And they found the stone rolled
away from the tomb, and when
they entered, they did not
find the body of the Lord Jesus.
And while they were perplexed
about this, behold, two men
suddenly appeared and
they were in dazzling clothes.”
They had to be angels.
“And as the women were terrified
and bowed their faces to the
ground, the men said to
them, ‘Why do you seek
the living among the dead?'”
Because they didn’t
expect Him to be alive.
“He’s not here,
but He has risen.
Remember how He spoke to you
while He was still in Galilee,
saying that the Son of Man must
be delivered into the hands of
the sinful men,
and be crucified,
and rise on the third day.”
Think about how many times
He talked about all this,
they didn’t get that part.
They got the part
about Him being crucified,
and they didn’t like that.
The whole idea of rising
from the dead was a totally
unknown, unbelievable fact.
And even when the Son
of God walked with them and
explained to them carefully,
they still didn’t believe it.
And then the scripture says,
“And they remembered His words,
and returned from the tomb and
reported all these things to the
eleven and to all the rest.
Now they were Mary Magdalene and
Joanna and Mary the mother of
James, also, the other women
with them were telling these
things to the apostles.
But these words
appeared to them as nonsense.”
They walked with Him, listened
to Him, watched Him heal,
watched Him do all–watched
Him raise Lazarus from the dead.
“But Peter got up
and ran to the tomb;
and looking in,” and
John’s account of this,
Peter ran, he
outran him, looked in,
Peter walked in to find
out what was happening.
So, you and I might
ask the question:
So, what does that mean to me?
And I would ask you this
question: Do you really and
truly believe that Jesus
Christ, the Son of God,
was buried, and then
walked out of the tomb?
Most people still
don’t believe it.
A majority of people in the
world absolutely do not believe
that somebody could be
crucified and really die,
and then come back alive
and be seen and heard.
But you and I believe it
because, not only the Word
of God says it,
but He lives within our heart.
And in our life, we sense
His presence and power.
And so, I would just like to
answer the question, because He
does live, what does it
mean to you and me personally?
So, I would just simply begin
by saying because He lives,
we don’t have to live with
loneliness in our heart.
We can live with the absolute
assurance that Jesus Christ is
alive and living within us.
It’s exactly what He promised.
He said to His disciples,
for example, before He left,
He said, “I’m not going to
leave you as orphans.
I will come again to you.”
And so He said, “The Holy
Spirit, the third Person of the
Trinity, He’ll be in you,
with you, and upon you.
And He will enable you to do the
things that I’ve called you to
do, but primarily, I’m
going to be there with you.”
So, I’d ask you this question.
If you don’t believe that Jesus
Christ is the resurrected
Lord, who’s with you?
Who can promise you that
they’ll never leave you?
Nobody.
Only the Living Christ
could make that promise.
So because He lives
and He’s not dead,
you and I don’t
have to live alone.
And when He made them a promise
that He would never leave them
nor forsake them, that’s a
promise that belongs to every
single child of God.
And all of us have been through
situations and circumstances
where we may have felt
alone, wondered where God was.
He’s exactly where He said He
would be: living within us in
the presence and the
power of the Holy Spirit.
So therefore, because He
lives, I don’t have to be alone.
I don’t have to live alone.
And many of us live
by ourselves alone,
but we’re not alone because
the resurrected Jesus is alive
within you, you
can never be alone.
The second thing that I think
is important because of the
resurrection is this: we don’t
have to worry about whether God
will provide for us or not,
because He promised to do that.
Now, if He had promised
it and stayed on the
cross, it’d be meaningless.
He promised it,
said to His disciples,
for example, He said He
would provide for them.
And in that sixth
chapter of Matthew,
for example, when He was
assuring those early disciples
of what He would do for
them, making provision for them,
no matter what was going on.
He made that promise to them.
He said as the Father takes
care of the birds of the air,
the grass, the
flowers, and all the rest,
that He would
provide for our needs.
And I wonder how often you and
I have needs and we hassle with
them, we argue about them, we
tell other people about them,
but we don’t turn immediately to
the resurrected Christ who made
you this promise that
whatever need we have,
He will provide that need.
Because He doesn’t do it exactly
when we think He ought to,
because He doesn’t do it exactly
the way we think He ought to,
we think, well,
God where are You?
He’s where He’s always been.
Would you not agree that
Jesus would never fail
to keep a promise?
He is God who came in the
human flesh in order
to reveal Himself to us.
Therefore, this is not just
another man making a promise,
this is Holy God
making a promise.
And so, when I think about the
very idea of the resurrection,
and the fact that He’s
taken away all the uncertainty,
Jesus is alive, seated at
the Father’s right hand,
ready to make provision for
everything you and I need.
Because He lives, you and I
can pray with confidence.
And a lot people
pray and say words,
but they don’t
pray with confidence.
They pray and hope God listens.
They hope things are
going to work out better.
They hope, hope, hope, hope,
but no confidence, no assurance.
And one of my favorite passages
of scripture the Apostle John
wrote in that First John, little
First John book at the back of
the Bible, when He said, “This
is the confidence that we have
in Him, that if we ask
anything according
to His will, He hears us.
And if we know that He hears
us, we know that we have the
petition we desired of Him.”
And remember what Jesus said.
He said, “Ask and it
shall be given you;
seek and ye shall find; knock
and it shall be opened to you.
For everyone who asks, receives.
He that knock,
it’ll be opened.”
And listen, and He says every
single thing that you and I ask
in prayer according to His
will, He’s going to provide.
And I think how many times
people pray with no expectation.
If you pray with no expectation,
there’s something wrong because
that prayer has a great
crack right down the middle.
We’re to pray with confidence.
And you see, the only way you’re
going to pray with confidence is
to believe that Jesus Christ,
who went to the cross and paid
your sin debt in full,
ascended to the Father,
is seated at His right hand
to make intercession for us.
That’s what He says.
If you don’t believe that,
then praying is sort of futile.
The answers to our prayer, the
confidence we have in prayer,
is based on the fact that
not Jesus was crucified,
but based on the fact
that He rose from the grave,
was seen and, listen, heard,
and ascended to the Father.
And He says in Hebrews, He sits
at the right hand of Almighty
God, that’s who He is.
But if you don’t believe that,
you haven’t–in other words,
when you pray,
what do you think?
And so many people say, “Well,
I pray and nothing happens.”
You know why?
Because nothing happens because
you do not believe and expect
and anticipate and look for an
answer given to you not by your
good works but by
the Living Christ.
Because He lives,
everything is different.
But it isn’t just because He
lives, it’s because He lives
and I believe He lives
and I’m committed to that.
And then, I think about
what He said in–also
in the Sermon on the Mount.
Because He lives, that
you and I can have a godly,
powerful influence in
the lives of others.
And you’ll remember He used a
couple of illustrations here
in this Sermon on the Mount.
And He said, for example, “You
are the light of the world.”
He’s talking about
us, His children.
“A city set on a hill cannot be
hidden; Nor does anyone light
a lamp and put it under a
basket, but on the lampstand,
and it gives light to all
who are in the house.”
Listen to this, “Let your light
so shine that those,” listen,
“who see your good
works, will glorify your
Father who is in heaven.”
What is He saying?
God intends for us to
live the kind of life,
watch this, in this
spiritually very dark world,
that you and I would be lights.
And there are people today who
would like to put out our light.
The one thing about our
relationship to Jesus Christ,
nobody can put that light out
because that is Christ living on
the inside of you
through the Holy Spirit.
And He intends for us to
live the kind of life
that we influence others.
He said the light of the
world, the salt of the earth.
And because He, listen, not
because He was just crucified,
but because He was
crucified and lives within us.
It’s not our
life, it’s His life.
And the resurrection
of Jesus Christ
made all of this possible.
And then I think about this.
I think about the fact
that because He lives,
we experience the
Holy Spirit within us.
When you trusted Jesus
Christ as your Savior,
it was because the Holy Spirit
was doing His work in your life,
opening your eyes,
opening your ears,
opening your understanding to
understand what it means for
Jesus to die a
substitutionary death,
which meant He was
your substitute.
God placed upon Jesus all
of your sin and your guilt.
He was your substitute so that
you’d not have to pay the price
of eternal separation from God.
And now, what did He do?
He sealed every
single one of us.
When you trusted
Christ as your Savior,
the Holy Spirit didn’t
just come into your life.
The Bible says in
Ephesians twice,
He came into your life to
seal you as a child of God.
And listen carefully, you may be
one of those persons who’s been
saved, and you think,
well, I used to be saved.
No.
You either weren’t
or you still are,
because God’s seal
cannot be broken by anything.
It’s the resurrected Christ who
makes our salvation so certain,
so absolutely
secure, so unbreakable.
The salvation that He died
for is not something we
have to work at keeping up.
Sealed, the Bible says.
Well, how long?
Unto the day of
redemption–ultimately,
until He comes again–we
are sealed as His children.
And because He lives, I
know that that’s true.
And you and I can count on it.
We’re not saved for a season.
We’re not saved if, we’re
not saved when and but,
we’re saved by the grace of God,
the third Person of the Trinity
seals us forever as
one of His children.
So praise God we can sing.
Because He lives, we can
face all kinds of tomorrows.
Then I think about it in this
light, and that is, because He
lives, we can be at peace in
the midst of the most difficult
times in our life,
the most difficult times.
He said, “My peace,” watch this,
He said, “My peace
I give unto you;
not as the world
gives, give I unto you.
Let not your heart be troubled,
neither let it be afraid.”
Now, what kind of
peace does the world give?
Well, I can tell you
what some folks try.
Some people, when they going
through difficult circumstances,
they decide to drink.
And they think if
they drink enough,
they’ll drink
away their sorrows.
No, you can’t.
Or they’re on some other kind of
drug, or all kinds of immorality
and all kinds of situations and
circumstances, doing their best
to forget their circumstance, to
overcome it by being totally
obnoxious in their
attitude and their conduct.
No, when the
scripture says peace,
it’s the peace that He gives
that’s able to sustain us.
That is, when you’re going
through the most difficult
times, He is your anchor, that
nothing can blow you away from
the anchor, the
Lord Jesus Christ,
because remember who He is.
This is God who came in the
flesh to reveal the Living God.
And He’s seated at the
Father’s right hand.
And He says, “My
peace I give unto you.”
The world’s got all kind
of approaches for peace.
Most of it’s in a bottle
or most of it is
in some kind of container.
The peace that He gives
cannot be contained by anything,
because it’s the peace
of Almighty God.
But if you don’t have
Him as your Savior,
you don’t have anything.
Let me ask you this.
What assurance do you have about
anything in your life if you
reject the Son of God, the
Savior, the Lord, the Master?
If you reject Him and refuse
to accept Him into your life,
what assurance do you have?
Don’t fool yourself.
You can’t have enough money.
You can’t have enough things.
You can’t go enough places.
You can’t control enough.
You can’t be big enough
in the eyes of people,
because you see, you don’t have
anything in reality until you
find Jesus Christ as your Savior
and you trust your life to Him.
He came to give us life, and
He calls it the abundant life.
That’s a life man can’t create.
It’s a life man can’t destroy.
It is the life of Almighty
God, the resurrected Christ,
because He loves us.
And that’s a–that’s
the reason we can sing,
“Because He lives, I can face
tomorrow,” and tomorrow
and tomorrow and tomorrow.
All the days of our life, we
can face when we know that Jesus
Christ is our
Savior and our Lord.
Then I think about all
of us are going to face
death one of these days.
And because He lives, we
can face death courageously,
boldly, and confident
that what He said was true.
“Absent from the body,
present with the Lord.”
The only people who can really
and truly believe that are those
who have received
Christ as their Savior,
because He’s the
source of your life.
And we can sing and praise God
and shout, do whatever we
choose to do to express our
gratitude to Almighty God.
But He’s the One
who is our life.
And so think about this.
The truth is there’s
no end to your life.
When you trust Jesus
Christ as your Savior,
the gift of eternal
life becomes yours.
It is a life that cannot be
ended under any condition.
Because He lives, you
and I can live forever.
Now, there’s a passage of
scripture I want to turn to
that–to make all
this a reality,
and that is Romans chapter ten.
There are two verses in
this passage I want you
to listen to carefully.
Because Paul says in these two
verses–there are many others,
but I just chose these two.
Listen to this, “That if you
confess with your mouth Jesus as
Lord, and believe in your heart
that God raised Him from the
dead, you will be saved.”
What he’s saying is if you
verbally say what is true in
your heart: I believe that Jesus
Christ is the Son of God and I
believe that He’s
risen from the dead.
Notice he says, “If you confess
with your mouth Jesus as Lord.”
You say, “Well, I
believe about Jesus,” no.
Do you believe that Jesus
Christ is the Son of God?
Do you believe that He’s
a Person of the Trinity?
Do you believe He came to
earth, died on the cross as a
substitute for you,
taking all of your sins,
bearing them Himself, in order
that you might be forgiven and
cleansed of your sin?
Do you believe that’s who He is?
Do you believe
that’s what He did?
Not just
believing about Him, but,
“If you confess with your
mouth Jesus Christ as Lord.”
You have accepted
Him as your Savior.
You believe that
He’s the Son of God.
You believe He indwells you.
Can you say that?
Notice what he said, “If you
confess with your mouth Jesus as
Lord, and believe in your
heart that God raised
Him from the dead.”
Those two things are
absolutely essential.
You must be willing to confess
Him as Lord and you must be
willing to believe that
Jesus Christ rose from the dead.
So, when people
say, “Oh, I–gee,
I believe about
Jesus,” that’s not it.
“Oh, I don’t doubt maybe He
could’ve risen from the dead.”
No, “If you confess
with your mouth.”
You make a
confession, a commitment.
I do believe that
Jesus Christ is the Lord.
He’s the Sovereign
God of this universe.
He’s the Savior
and the only Savior.
He’s seated at the
right hand of the Father.
“If you confess with your mouth
Jesus as Lord,” and you believe
that He, Jesus, who was
crucified and buried also rose
from the dead and is seated
at the Father’s right hand,
do you believe that?
If somebody says, “Well,
I don’t know about that,”
then you’re not saved.
Paul makes it very clear
in just that one verse.
Then he says, “For with
the heart a person believes,
resulting in righteousness,
and with the mouth he
confesses, resulting
in salvation.”
He made it very clear
what salvation’s all about.
He didn’t say anything about
going to church to be saved,
though we come to celebrate Him.
He didn’t say anything about
good works to be saved because
he says, “For by grace are ye
saved,” My undeserved love and
favor, “For by grace are
ye saved through faith;
that not of yourselves”: that
faith is the gift of God: “lest
any person should boast.”
Our salvation is wrapped up
in His awesome love and power,
not in our good
works, not what we do,
not what we say
we’re going to do,
but just the fact that He is the
living resurrected Christ, Lord.
Have you ever done that?
Have you ever come to the
place in your life where you
acknowledged I’m a
sinner, disobeyed God,
rebelled against
God, had my way.
Have you ever done that?
And then ask Him to forgive
you, not on the basis of looking
around to see how
good you’ve been,
but looking at the cross and
recognize His death was not
simply the death of a man.
It was a substitutionary death.
He took your place.
Now, watch this.
Only God could die for the
sins of the whole world.
Only He could take upon
Himself all the sin of all
mankind for all of time.
That’s who He is.
And so therefore, our salvation
depends upon our relationship to
Jesus Christ, the Son of
God, the second Person of the
Trinity, the Living God
who lives within you.
If you are going to
heaven, there’s only one route,
and that’s faith in
the Lord Jesus Christ,
confession of Him
as your Savior,
and believe that He is
the resurrected Lord.
And I would simply ask you:
if you have never done that,
one of these days
you’re going to die
and then it’s going
to be too late.
And you say, “Well, I
think I’ll be okay.”
That’s the devil’s lie.
You will not be okay.
Only, listen to this, the
substitutionary death of Christ
on the cross, who
rose from the grave,
that is man’s only hope.
Listen to this.
If you think salvation
comes any other way,
what other way is there?
It means that you’re going to
depend on something you do.
Thank God, He made it possible
only by something He does,
not by something we try to do.
Because how much
are you going to do?
How long are you going to do it?
No.
Somebody says, “That’s
being narrow-minded.”
Yes!
Very narrow-minded, because He
didn’t want us to be confused.
He wanted us to realize there’s
the cross and the empty tomb.
Anybody can understand those two
things if they’re willing to,
and willing to
surrender your life to Him.
And that’s my prayer for you.
Stop fiddling around fooling
yourself, trying to think that
God’s going to accept you
because you’ve been so good.
If you could see
yourself the way God sees you,
you wouldn’t like that at all.
He’s willing to cleanse you,
make you a brand-new person.
Listen to this, and He says
in His Word concerning death:
“Absent from the body,
present with the Lord.”
And listen, there is
no hope without Jesus.
And there’s all the
hope for all eternity
with Him as your Savior.
And that’s my prayer for you.
And Father, how grateful we are
You made Your message so simple,
trusting You, trusting in
what You did at the cross,
believing what You left us,
an empty tomb, and the awesome
assurance that
You’re the Living God.
We say thank you
in Jesus’s name, amen.
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