The Case for Christ, Sermon 15 — Closing Argument

Sunday, September 13, 2026: Open Door Christian Church

Picture the last day of a long trial.

The witnesses are done. The exhibits are stacked on the table. The lawyers have said everything they are going to say. And the judge turns to twelve people who have not spoken a word in weeks and tells them it is their turn.

They walk into a small room with a table, a pitcher of water, and a door that closes. Nobody testifies in that room. Nobody brings in anything new. The only thing that happens in there is a decision.

We have been in the courtroom since the last day of May. Fourteen Sundays. Thirteen expert witnesses. Eleven exhibits, lettered A through K. Last Sunday the prosecution rested.

This Sunday the door closes, and the jury decides.

Two things are true about a verdict, and both of them matter this week.

A verdict is not certainty. No jury is asked to be certain. The standard is beyond a reasonable doubt, and a juror is allowed to have a question or two left over. What he is not allowed to do is refuse to decide because the picture is not perfect.

And there is no such thing as a juror who does not vote. "I can't decide" is a vote. Not deciding is a decision. It just does not feel like one.

Paul learned both of those things on a rock in Athens. He preached the resurrection to the sharpest audience in the ancient world, and Luke tells us exactly how it went (Acts 17:31–34). Some sneered. Some said, "We want to hear you again." And some believed, and Luke wrote their names down. Those are the only three verdicts there have ever been.

Sunday we will walk the whole case one more time, the way a closing argument does: one line per exhibit, nothing new, everything at once. Then we will hear the one piece of evidence that has been held back since Dr. J.P. Moreland's interview: the experience of Christians, and why it is the weakest exhibit standing alone and the strongest standing on top of the other eleven. A man born blind will show us what that looks like (John 9:24–25).

And then we will watch one juror decide.

Lee Strobel, legal affairs editor of the Chicago Tribune, an atheist who put Jesus on trial to prove his wife wrong. Twenty-one months. Thirteen experts. On the night of November 8, 1981, he sat down alone with his notes and reached his verdict, and then discovered something almost nobody talks about: reaching the verdict was not the end. His wife handed him a verse, and he found three verbs in it that add up like an equation.

Believe. Receive. Become.

That verse is John 1:12, and it is our anchor and our memory verse this week. Read it before Sunday.

There will be a card in the bulletin. Two sides. On it are the eleven questions a skeptic is going to ask you, and the answer to every one of them: fourteen Sundays on one card. It is not for taking notes. It is for keeping.

The evidence has been presented. The witnesses have been heard.

Sunday, the case for Christ closes.

Join us at Open Door Christian Church this Sunday, September 13, for either morning service. Bring a friend who has been waiting to hear how the case ends.