PM Sermon – Richard Sutton
Teachers
Lesson Summary
In this Thanksgiving‑tied class, the teacher opened by urging the congregation to thank God for both material provision and the supreme spiritual blessings of redemption, adoption, and the promise of eternal life. He then revisited recent lessons on the resurrection, warning listeners not to be complacent but to investigate the core claim of Christianity. The sermon presented three lines of evidence for Jesus’ resurrection. First, it highlighted Jesus’ multiple, detailed predictions that he would be betrayed, crucified, and rise on the third day, citing Matthew 16:21, 17:22‑23, 20:18‑19, 26:32, and 27:62‑64. Second, it emphasized the eyewitness testimony recorded by Paul in 1 Corinthians 15:3‑8, noting appearances to Peter, the Twelve, over five hundred believers, James, and Paul himself. Finally, the teacher contrasted these specific, fulfilled prophecies with vague predictions from figures like Houdini, Nostradamus, and horoscope columns, concluding that the resurrection remains the most credible and transformative historical fact. The class closed with an invitation to carry gratitude for these truths into the Thanksgiving celebration and to continue examining the resurrection as the foundation of the Christian faith.
Key Scriptures
From that time on, Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests, and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day raised to life.
When they came together in Galilee, he said to them, the son of man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him on the third day, kill him. And on the third day, he will be raised to life.
We are going up to Jerusalem and the son of man will be betrayed to the chief priests and the teachers of the law. They will condemn him to death and will turn him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified. And on the third day, he'll be raised to life.