Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - This is the Craziest Thing You Believe... | The Gospels | Luke 24:36–53

Episode Date: June 10, 2026

What does the reality of the resurrection mean for our lives today? Is the goal of Christianity to leave this world behind? And what work has Jesus left us to do until his return? In today's episode, Jensen shares how Luke 24:36–53 reveals that Jesus's resurrection changes our hope, our purpose, and the way we see every person we meet. Read the Bible with us! This year, we’re exploring the Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—and it's never too late to join! Download your reading plan now. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it so that others can find it, too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter @TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passage: Luke 24:36–53

Welcome to 10-minute Bible talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jensen Holt McNair. What is the craziest thing that you believe? Hear me out. I'll go first. I'm pretty convinced that dinosaurs are mostly a hoax. Like, I don't disbelieve that some animal used to exist that doesn't exist today. But like all the books with the pictures and the facts about dinosaurs and what they were like and what they ate and what color they were and the names were. We give them. It's all fake news. Like, you got all that from some bones. Like, how do you know how

they're put together? It didn't they just come out and say that most dinosaurs actually probably had feathers? Like, come on, that's wild. If you're a paleontologist, I'm sorry, your work is probably actually really important and accurate. I'm just being dumb. But some people believe that we didn't go to the moon. Some people believe in ghosts. Some people believe in Bigfoot. Some people believe that birds aren't real. People believe all kinds of crazy things. But unless you go all out and become a conspiracy theorist who gives themselves over to the rabbit hole and makes it their entire personality, well, your belief about whether we went to the moon or not, or if dinosaurs once roamed the planet, probably won't change much of anything about your day-to-day life. Like, I love a good dino debate. Love to ruffle some feathers for fun.

But at the end of the day, I'll read a book about putting dinosaurs to bed with my kids without another thought. It's not life-changing stuff. The dino thing isn't even the craziest thing I believe. and whatever you thought of isn't the craziest thing you believe either. Because if you're a Christian, you want to know what one of the craziest things you believe is, it's the resurrection of Jesus. Because if you believe in the resurrection of Jesus, it means that you believe that God became a human 2,000 years ago, that he was crucified, laid dead in a grave for three days, then rose from the dead, and walked the earth in a physical body before he ascended back into heaven, where he sits on a throne

and rules over creation in his resurrected physical body. And not just that, but one day, he is coming back to raise all believers from the dead and give them the new, real, physical, redeemed bodies just like his. Wild. But here's the thing. This crazy belief, it isn't like the dynos or the space travel, this belief is a belief that if you believe it, really and truly, it will change everything for you. It asks you, it implores you, it demands you to dive headfirst all in. First Corinthians 15 tells us, but Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man, for as an Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.

What we learn here is because Jesus rose from the dead, we too will also be raised to life. He's the first fruits, the blueprint of what's to come for all who are found in Christ. Jesus was the first to be resurrected from the dead, given a new body, but he won't be the last. In today's passage, it gives us incredible insight into what the reality of his resurrection means for our lives, how it changes everything. So let's begin in verse 36. While they, the disciples, were still talking about this. They're talking about the story that Jesus appeared on the Amas Road. Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, peace be with you. They were startled and frightened, thinking they saw a ghost. He said to them, why are you troubled? And why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands.

my feet. It is I myself, touch me and see. A ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see that I have. So the first thing the disciples do is not actually believe that Jesus rose from the dead, because honestly, that's crazy. They think it's a ghost. He's dead, but his spirit is back to talk to them. But Jesus, he immediately dispels this idea. He tells his disciples not to doubt, but to touch his physical body, to see that he is a real physical being. To see that he is a real physical being. To further his point, he asks for food next. He takes a piece of broiled fish and he eats it. Now, it may seem silly, but Jesus is teaching his disciples and us something fundamentally important about the gospel. Our eternal future. Our eternal hope is not to be disembodied spirits floating in a spirit world. Note Jesus' resurrection, the blueprint for our resurrection, is a physical body, one that eats, one that can touch, speak, feel, walks on this earth. The hope that, You and I have for our eternal future is not fractured from this life we have on earth. The Christian faith is not one of escapism to escape the bad, the physical world, to escape the earth.

No, it's one of redemption. Jesus didn't flee his human body. He redeemed it, restored it, made it new and whole without blemish. And he promises to do the same for you and for me and for all who believe. But Jesus doesn't just make this point with the display of his physical body. He continues. He said to them, This is what I told you while I was with you. Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets, and the Psalms.

Then he opened their minds so they could understand the scriptures. He told them, this is what is written. The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all the nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things. I am going to send you what my first. father has promised, but stay in the city until you've been clothed with power from on high. So Jesus is saying that he's the one the scriptures foretold. His death and resurrection paved the way

for the forgiveness of sins, not just for Jerusalem, but for all nations. And this is the key point here. You are witnesses of these things. The disciples, the followers of Jesus, are to be witnesses. He says he is sending them what his father has promised. That's the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God, promised to emboldened and empower the spread of the gospel. And once they receive it, their call is clear to go out and spread the good news of the gospel to all nations. You see, when God became human, when Jesus was born, his ultimate goal was never to come and to take us away. Repeatedly in the gospels, Jesus tells us that his purpose is to preach the good news of the kingdom of God, to establish that kingdom. And where does he establish it? Here, on earth. And how is it? And how is

was he going to spread the boundaries of that kingdom through the witness of his disciples. See, Jesus appears to his disciples, shows them his physical body, opens their eyes to see and believe the reality of the situation, to understand how Jesus fulfills the Old Testament prophecy about the one who would come to establish a kingdom that would never end, to see that Jesus is the son of man who would rise from the dead, conquer evil, and offer forgiveness for the sins of the people, to recognize their place in the kingdom of God. Knowing that Jesus really and truly rose from the dead changes everything, because it clearly displays the reality that our life is built within. Jesus rose from the dead. He has power over death.

He has power to free you from sin. He has sent his spirit to endwell you and strengthen you. He has charged you to be as a witness to tell the nations that his kingdom is here. He is risen, and he's coming back. Not to take believers away, but to finish the work, to spread the boundaries of the kingdom here on earth. The new everlasting life that is promised to us will raise our broken bodies from the dead. The breath of God will revive us, restore us, give us physical bodies that do not decay. Bodies that will never die. Believing that Jesus died and rose again isn't just a fact that you believe. It's a belief that invites you to see your life inside of a larger story, a story that offers hope, offers purpose to your life today. Will you be a witness of

the resurrection? Will you take up the call to spread the boundaries of God's kingdom to allow the spirit to begin to transform your mind to be more like Jesus? When life feels untethered, when you hit a wall and you don't even know what you're doing anymore, when the pressure, the busyness, the expectations, the daily grind feel like too much and not enough at the same time will remind yourself of the resurrection and the life-changing reality that that belief brings to every area of your life. C.S. Lewis wrote that you have never met a mere mortal. Every person you interact with has an eternal future. Every person you speak to, the children whose diapers you change, the colleagues whose messes you clean up, the family members whose burdens you bear,

well, Jesus died for them. Your relationship with them, your time spent at work, spent at the gym spent in the mundane is an opportunity to be a witness, to show the love of Jesus to boldly proclaim the good news that Jesus is returning and he's offering new life. He made you. He died for you. He's called you to spread his kingdom and he has promised to return one day and breathe new life into your broken body. When Jesus explained this to the disciples, when they saw him ascend back into heaven, Luke tells us that they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem with great joy. They stayed continually at the temple praising God. In his second volume, the book of Acts, we see how that joy, that praising of God, grew from a small group of disciples in Jerusalem

out across the ancient world. Their belief in the resurrection in that room, their understanding of what it meant, their joy, that spurred them on to remain committed to the call, the call to be witnesses. And it's because of these 11 men's commitment to that call that every single person who's a Christian today has faith and knows about the resurrection. Praise God for the resurrection. Praise God for his kingdom. May we praise him, rejoice in the good news of the gospel, and be witnesses to the world so that one day when he returns and gives us new life, we will see the lives that we touched, the part that we played in spreading God's kingdom to the end of the earth. May it be so. Come, Lord Jesus.