Everything that needed to be said had been said and everything that needed to be done had been done. In the span of a week their world had crashed down around them and now all there was to do was pick up the pieces and try to put a semblance of their lives back together.
A week ago they had followed Jesus into Jerusalem basking in the overflow of the adoration that the people had showered on him. This was it, the culmination of three years of following Jesus, of listening to his teaching and watching the miracles he performed. The people of Jerusalem finally seemed to get it, this was God’s chosen one the Messiah the one who would deliver them from their oppressors.
But that was Sunday, and somehow the tide had turned between Sunday and the wee hours of Friday morning when they came in the dark to arrest him in the garden. The events that happened after that were like a nightmare that swept down on them like a whirlwind from hell. Jesus was taken to the High Priest where he was charged with blasphemy, blasphemy? Blasphemy Jesus would be the last person in the world that would blaspheme the Father. And when he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of giving in they had him beat and then turned him over to Pilate where it went from bad to worse.
The Governor knew that it was all a farce to appease the Jewish leaders who felt threatened by Jesus and his teaching, but what could he do? The High Priest and his cohorts could make Pilate’s life miserable. He tried for a compromise, actually a couple of compromises. First he sent Jesus to Herod in hopes that Herod would release him, but Herod sent him back. Then he appealed to the crowd offering to free one prisoner, hoping beyond hope it would the one they had welcome just the Sunday before, but instead the chose the terrorist Barabbas. And finally Pilate had Jesus flogged trying to appease the crowds blood lust, but still they demanded the crucifixion of the Galilean carpenter. And so Pilate relented, washing his hands of the sordid mess he turned Christ over to his soldiers to be executed and turned his back on the entire affair.
And so Christ who had a lived a perfect life was hung on a cross and died like a common criminal. And the one who claimed to have created the world was laid in a borrowed tomb. And it was finished just as he had cried out with his dying breath on the cross, and everything that needed to be said had been said and everything that needed to be done had been done.
On Saturday they had tried to understand all that had happened, they had told stories of their time with Jesus, remembered the good times and tried to shut out the horror of Fridays events and now on Sunday Morning they were collecting their thoughts and collecting their lives and were ready to walk away. Walk away from Jerusalem, walk away from their dreams from the past three years and their nightmares from the past three days. It was done, it was over it was finished.
And just when they had made up their minds the women came bursting through the door. There was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James and a couple of others and they start babbling about Jesus’ tomb being empty. Like that was going to happen it was just wishful thinking.
If we had of kept reading In the scripture that Kim read earlier, the ladies returned to where the disciples were staying to tell them what happened and the disciples reaction is found in: Luke 24:11 But the story sounded like nonsense to the men, so they didn’t believe it. It’s interesting to note that this is Luke’s account of the resurrection and you may recall that the scholars tell us that Luke was a doctor and that the term that Dr. Luke uses that the NLT translates nonsense was actually a medical term meaning hysteria, almost akin to babbling. Now I know that you are probably thinking “Those jerks, why wouldn’t they believe the ladies?” And I know that you would be the first person to believe that someone you had seen crucified was actually alive and well.
So why did the apostles feel like women were hysterical and couldn’t be believed? Probably for the same reasons that people today feel that the resurrection is simply a myth. So this morning we are going to look at some of the objections there are to the resurrection as well as explanations that are sometimes offered up to explain away the resurrection and answers to those objections and explanations.
And the issue of the resurrection isn’t just one of those doctrines that we can accept or not accept it is at the very core of who we are as Christ Followers. Paul told the early believers in the Corinthian church 1 Corinthians 15:17 And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins. My question would be: If you don’t believe in the resurrection, why would you call yourself a Christ Follower?
1) The Resurrection is Impossible. On the face of it this is probably the most common objection to the resurrection. Dead men aren’t alive they are dead. And I will be the first to admit, it is impossible. But then again if it wasn’t impossible it wouldn’t mean a whole lot would it. Within the scope of things Christians have never denied this point as a matter of fact it is the foundation of our faith.
Our faith acknowledges that a person cannot come back from the dead, but our faith doesn’t believe that Jesus was just a person; instead we believe that he was God. And if God put the rules of nature into force then God can step outside the rules of nature. We see that time and time again throughout the bible, they are called miracles and you either believe in the supernatural or you don’t.
And we believe it not just because one person said it happened but because the bible records numerous people who witnessed it. The first were the ladies who are mentioned in this account, and then we read that Christ appeared to the 11 remaining apostles and then other disciples. Paul spells it out for us in 1 Corinthians 15:4-7 He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said. He was seen by Peter and then by the Twelve. After that, he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles.
And perhaps you are thinking: Ok, I’ll buy into the fact the tomb was empty, so what? There could be other explanations. And there have been various theories presented thought the years.
2) Maybe The Women Went to the Wrong Tomb. Obviously the women were upset, they had witnessed the brutal execution of a close friend, it was early in the morning and maybe in their confusion and in the dark they arrived at a tomb that hadn’t been used yet and thought that it was the tomb that Jesus should have been in but wasn’t.
But let’s think it through, Jesus wasn’t buried in an unknown tomb, two thousand years later we even know the name of the man who donated the tomb, it was Joseph of Arimathea. And we are even told in Luke 23:55 As his body was taken away, the women from Galilee followed and saw the tomb where his body was placed. They had been there just two days before and even if they had gotten mixed up and went to the wrong tomb don’t you think Joseph or someone else would have pointed out their mistake? Instead we read that Peter went to the tomb and it was empty.
And if this was indeed the wrong tomb then logic would tell us that there had to be a right tomb, a tomb with Jesus body in it. And if there was a right tomb with a body then it would have been a relatively simple thing for the Jewish leaders and Roman authorities to say “Hey dummies, you went to the wrong grave, here’s the right grave with the body of Jesus right where it’s supposed to be.” But they didn’t, why? Because the woman had gone to the right grave and there was no body in it.
3) Some Object Because the Resurrection Accounts are Contradictory. And if we read the accounts in the four gospels they do all contain different details. But if they were all the same their objection would be that they were obviously just copying one another.
The question should be are the key elements the same? And they, they went to the tomb and they found it empty. Who arrived there first or second is really irrelevant, were there angels inside or outside, depends on who you ask and when they got there. If you were to ask the five of us who went to Africa about our trip you would hear things from me that you wouldn’t hear from the other four and vice versa does that mean those things didn’t happen? No, it means that event had more meaning for some of us, or we noticed something that others didn’t. I saw a monkey run across the road, the two guys in the backseat missed it and the monkey was gone when the other vehicle passed by, does that mean that there was no monkey? I asked our driver what type of monkey it was and he said it had to be a fast monkey because the rebels had eaten all the slow monkeys.
The Nason’s are away this weekend. So if I tell someone that Reid is in New Brunswick and someone else that Vashti went to the Miramichi and a third person that Reid and Vashti took the boys to their Grandparents which statement is true? The answer is: all of them. Just because there are different details doesn’t mean they contradict each other. In fact, they compliment each other
4) It was the Right Tomb but the Body Had Been Removed. Ok, the question then begs to be asked, Who stole the body? A) The Romans B) The Jews or C) the Disciples.
Well we can deal with the first two together because the Romans and the Jews had nothing to gain by removing and hiding Christ’s body and everything to lose. The Jews and the Romans didn’t want an empty tomb to bolster the claims of the Christ Followers, they wanted a body. They wanted to be able to say “Hey look everyone, Jesus didn’t rise from the dead here’s his body and he’s still dead.” But they couldn’t do that because they didn’t have a body.
Instead we read this account of what happened after the tomb was found empty Matthew 28:12-13 A meeting with the elders was called, and they decided to give the soldiers a large bribe. They told the soldiers, “You must say, ‘Jesus’ disciples came during the night while we were sleeping, and they stole his body.’
So maybe the disciples did steal the body. But why? When Christ was arrested the apostles all scattered. We only hear about two of them actually following Christ and John hid in the shadows and Peter denied that he even knew Jesus.
So all of a sudden this sorry lot become ninja’s sneaking up on a group of highly trained Roman soldiers, roll aside the stone that sealed the tomb and disappeared into the night carrying the body of their friend. And then they use this act of deception to found a religion based on a high moral code of integrity and honesty. Seems a little far fetched to me. But there is no record of the soldiers being punished for falling asleep on duty, no record of the apostle’s being forced to tell where the body was hidden.
Add to that the fact that every one of the disciple eventually faced persecution and death for their faith and not one of them broke and admitted where they hid the body. They were a braver bunch then I would have been.
I know that there are all kinds of people who are willing to die for what they believe in, remember 9/11 and all the suicide bombers we hear about on the news. They are willing to die for their faith because they believe that it is true, but if the apostle had of stolen the body of Jesus they would have been willing to die for something they knew was false.
5) Jesus Wasn’t Really Dead and it was all a Ploy Some people have called this the swoon theory. There are some people and even some churches that teach Jesus was dead but he was simply unconscious and in the coolness of the tomb he revived and people thought he had been raised from the dead.
If you understood the reality of the crucifixion you would realize just how implausible this theory is. The Romans crucified people all the time, and it was done to kill people not just render them unconscious.
Think about it, by the time he got to the trial he had already been awake for 24 hours, then he was repeatedly beaten, flogged by a Roman soldier, forced to carry a cross to his place of execution, had a crown of thorns pressed into his head, was nailed to a cross and left for hours in the Palestinian sun and then had a spear thrust into his side.
A Roman centurion who supposedly had all kinds of experience at this kind of thing pronouncing him dead, he pulled down off the cross and stuck into a cold tomb where apparently with no medical help he spontaneously revives, moves the rock in front of the tomb, slips by the Roman Guard and then this half dead bedraggled man in desperate need of medical help convinces his apostles that he is the risen Lord and conqueror of death.
And the reason people teach this is because they find the resurrection hard to believe. OK.
So where are you at this morning? There are two questions that you need to answer before you leave here today. The first one is “Did Jesus truly rise from the dead?” and remember the scripture that we started with 1 Corinthians 15:17 And if Christ has not been raised, then your faith is useless and you are still guilty of your sins.
The second question of course is even more important and this is “If Jesus truly did rise from the dead what does that mean for me?” It’s not enough to believe here, in your head if you don’t do anything with it here, in your heart.
A lot of people are going to miss Heaven by a matter of inches. They’re good people, maybe attend church weekly, and have even read the Bible and agree with it all. But they’re still going to miss Heaven by a matter of inches, because they believe in their head but they haven’t received in their heart. They have a knowledge of who Jesus is but they have no experience of Him. And that’s tragic.
It’s resurrection Sunday and it’s a good time to again publicly state what we believe so let’s stand together and read the Apostle’s Creed.
PowerPoint may be available for this message email me at denn@cornerstonewesleyan.ca
