Today we come to the most important subject in the whole of Christianity- the Resurrection of Jesus!
For sure, everything else we have looked at over the course of this study, from His Origin in heaven from before time began, to His humility at His Birth, the perfectness of His Life and His radical Teachings, to His Death and why He had to die are all important, but without the Resurrection they mean nothing!
Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15 says that if Jesus didn't rise from the dead then we Christians, above all men are foolish and we are still dead in our sins!!!
It is the Resurrection of Jesus that separates Christians from the rest! Many people believe that Jesus was a good man, a prophet who did some great works and greater miracles, but at the resurrection they disagree. The Muslims, Jehovah Witnesses, and Judaism for example believe Jesus to be one of the greatest of the prophets but He didn't resurrect!
And because the Resurrection is so fundamental to our faith we shall spend our time today examining it, looking at some of the arguments against it and some of the evidence for it and next week we shall talk about what the Resurrection means to us Christians.
So the first thing we must do is clarify what we mean by Resurrection. Resurrection doesn't just mean a coming back to life. This is resuscitation, and we see this throughout the Bible history and even in modern history how people have died and have been resuscitated, they come back to life.
We see this with Elijah, Elisha, Jesus, even Paul, they've all brought people back from the dead. But they all came back with their same bodies, with their same limitations and ultimately they died again.
But the Resurrection speaks of more than that. It speaks of a change, a new body, a glorified body. A body free from sin, sickness and death. This is the eternal body!
And it's this glorious body that awaits us in the future, but we'll speak more about that next week.
The next thing we need to do it look at some of the major arguments against the Resurrection. And because the Resurrection is so important to us, many have attacked it and argued against it!
And one of those arguments is that Jesus didn't really die on the cross. They say He just passed out and when He was put in the cool damp tomb that He regained consciousness and was able to walk away.
Now there are many holes in this argument. Firstly is the fact that the cross, as we looked at in detail last week, was designed to kill! It was designed to cause death! And the Roman executioners knew exactly what they were doing!
You remember the account of Jesus' crucifixion where the Romans didn't want to leave the bodies up on the cross over the Jewish festival so executioners were sent out to break the legs of those on the cross to speed up death. When they came to Jesus they found Him already dead but still stuck a spear through His side into the heart area and blood and water came out! A sure sign of death!
On top of that you'll remember Jesus suffered a terrible beating before He even got to the cross which in itself had been the cause of death for many before.
And on top of that, when Jesus was taken down from the cross and taken to the tomb He was wrapped in bandages, about 100 pound of it, from head to toe! Surely it wouldn't take long for a man to suffocate after being wrapped up like that!
Then, in His beaten and crucified condition, remember those nails through the hands and feet, He would have had to somehow unwrap Himself from those bandages, roll the huge stone that covered the entrance of the grave away, overpower and beat up the guards, the elite guards who were guarding the tomb and make His escape and then appear to the Disciples and the 500 plus other people and convince them there were no ill effects!!
Another argument is that the Disciples lied about the Resurrection of Jesus. That they all conspired to tell everyone that Jesus rose from the dead and that they had seen Him on different times over a period of 40 days and then He ascended into heaven.
Now the question that arises from this is 'Why?' 'Why would these people lie?' 'What is the benefit to them of lying?' Read through the book of Acts. Read the Foxes Book of Martyrs. Look up some history and see what happened to these people! Hated! Persecuted! Beaten and murdered! ALL the Apostles were murdered except for John, and him they boiled alive in oil! He just didn't die!
The early church lost everything and were scattered! Pursued by Paul unto death, under Emperor Nero Christians were thrown in the Coliseum to be killed by the gladiators. Some were sown into to animal skins and thrown to the lions and other wild animals to be savagely killed! And others were doused in pitch, impaled on spikes and set on fire in Nero's garden just to give some light to his parties!!
If the Resurrection was a lie surely someone would have cracked! Surely someone would have said 'Wow, wow, wow! Hang on a minute!! Don't nail me to that cross or set me on fire! We lied!!! We lied!!!' but no one did! And when you think about it, when you consider the arguments against it then there really isn't any other explanation!
And then there are the evidences of the Resurrection that we can examine. Like His birth, life and death, the resurrection of Jesus was prophesied hundreds of years before Jesus was even born, and Jesus Himself said on a number of occasions that He would die and on the 3rd day rise from the dead, and at the time the concept of the resurrection of an individual was unheard of!
Then you have the testimonies of those who saw Him. Named and still alive for people of the time to go out and speak with and see for sure if they really did see Jesus alive again or not.
Then you can look at the lives of the Disciples and the great change we see in them. Remember how they all scattered from the garden the night Jesus was arrested and how Peter denied and even cured at a little girl who asked if he had been with Jesus.
And then after they meet the risen Lord how bold they become! Even going to their deaths proclaiming the Risen Lord! Peter even asking to be crucified upside down because he didn't want to be associated with Jesus' death!!!
Where did this boldness come from? It came from seeing in the Resurrection that Jesus was exactly who He said He was -- God! And that He has conquered death and there is nothing for us to fear for in Jesus they saw what awaited them!
That's why Paul could say 'to die is gain'.
Then we can look at Paul and ask 'How could a man with such a hatred for Jesus and His followers, who sought them out and persecuted them change to worship Jesus?' it was because He met the Risen Lord Himself on the road to Damascus!!
And what changed His family to worship Him as God? If anyone knew Jesus it was His mother, brothers and sisters. And at one point in the Gospels we read that they came to take Him home because they thought He'd gone a bit crazy, but they changed! So much so that 2 of His brothers became prominent men in the early church and wrote between them 2 books of the Bible! What could have changed them other than seeing their dead brother brought back to life in a glorified body just as He prophesied during His life?
And we could go on and on, but time has gone from us. But there can be no doubt that Jesus rose from the grave. There can be no doubt that that this proved all that He said about Himself was true! And what He said was this '"I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me will live, even though they die; and whoever lives by believing in me will never die. Do you believe this?"'
