Luke 24:1-12
Projectionist: show video clip 3 of Risen DVD
We are in part 3 of our Easter series, “Risen” If you are here this morning and you are not a Christian, maybe because you know some Christians or maybe because you worked for one and it wasn’t a good experience, or maybe you used to be one but then something happened and you walked away and never looked back or maybe some of you simply stopped believing. Some of the things we Christian believe do seem pretty far out there.
If what we said so far describes you or maybe someone you know, you have picked the perfect day to be with us! Because I’m going to ask you to look at the One thing that seems to some to be the most unbelievable thing about Christianity, and when we finish, I’m going to ask you to believe it. Our topic this morning is The Resurrection: Myth or Miracle?
As we look at the various world religions, historians can trace roots and developments. Historians can study the development of movements and, looking at the political and cultural climate in which they developed, give reasonable explanations for how the movement gained momentum and traction. There is, however, one notable exception to this: Christianity. Historians agree, something triggered the birth of a worldwide movement two thousand years ago that “turned the world upside down” over the span of a few years. If Jesus wasn’t resurrected, what’s the catalyst for this world-changing movement? One scholar said, “The coming into existence of the Church rips a great hole in history, the size and shape of the resurrection.”
I want to state right up front that we don’t believe in the resurrection because the Bible says so; it is far better than that! We believe in the resurrection because of the ancient accounts of the eyewitness! We have eyewitness accounts that have survived the centuries and have been handed down to us in the Gospel accounts. These accounts are not credible because they are in the Bible, they are in the Bible because they are credible documents, a fact many never seem to grasp.
Think of it this way: when you were in college you probably read in English class a book that was a compilation of great short stories. They were not great because they were in that volume, they were included in that volume because they were already considered great. Same is true with the Bible.
Now some of you might want to take exception to this. You think that because these accounts are found in the Bible they are automatically suspect. I mean are the accounts written by His followers, and wouldn’t you expect them to say what they say? Well actually, you might be surprised to actually hear what they say.
This morning I want to look at Luke’s account found in Luke 24:1-12. A couple of facts about Luke’s Gospel before we look at what he wrote.
First, Luke is the only Gentile whose writings are included in the Bible. He was not a disciple of Christ as in the 12 or 72 or 120. He was a gentile physician by vocation and an investigative reporter by avocation.
Sir William Mitchell Ramsay is considered to be one of the greatest archeologists who ever lived. He was the first Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology at Oxford University. He started out very skeptical of biblical writings and made it a goal to refute the writings of Luke in particular. After a lifetime of study, he concluded that the book of Acts “could bear the most minute scrutiny as an authority for the facts of the Aegean world, and that it was written with such judgment, skill, art and perception of truth as to be a model of historical statement.” And about Luke himself, Ramsay wrote, “You may press the words of Luke in a degree beyond any other historians and they stand the keenest scrutiny and the hardest treatment.”
Scholars who study ancient literature date Luke’s account at about 60A.D.— That is 27 years after the event itself; not a century, not two centuries but 27 years; the eyewitnesses were still around.
So forget for a minute your objections to the Bible, all I am asking you to do today is give honest consideration to what you are about to hear.
Simon Greenleaf was a Jewish professor and one of the foremost authorities in the history of the United States on evidence. He is the man who made Harvard Law School what it is today. Once he was challenged by a student to investigate and apply the rules of evidence to the resurrection. As a result, he became a Christian.
Dr. Greenleaf wrote, “All that Christianity asks of people is that they would be consistent with themselves, that they would treat its evidences as they treat the evidence of other things and that they would try to judge its witnesses as they deal with their fellow men when testifying to human affairs and actions in human tribunals. The result would be an undoubting conviction of their integrity, ability and truth.”
So that is all I am asking you to do this morning. Put aside your prejudices for the next 20 minutes or so and the account speak for itself. You might be surprised at what you learn.
Before we delve into Luke’s account, let me remind you that he is only one of six accounts of the resurrection: Matthew and John were eyewitnesses, Mark reports what he learns from Peter, Saul of Tarsus is converted when he encounters the resurrected Christ and becomes Paul the Apostle, and Peter declares it himself in the second letter that carries his name. If it were only one guy, yeah, maybe there would be cause to pause and wonder, but six who speak about it and events that cannot be explained any other way but through a resurrection, that should cause you to pause and at least give it serious consideration.
Here’s what Luke’s investigation revealed about the resurrection: “On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb.” (Luke 24:1, NIV84). They weren’t expecting a resurrection, they expected to finish embalming the body of Jesus.
“They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were wondering about this, (they didn’t assume a resurrection; they just knew the body was missing ) suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, ‘Why do you look for the living among the dead? He is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: ‘The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.’ Then they remembered his words.” (Luke 24:2–8, NIV84).
It is only after the resurrection that His followers came to believe in the resurrection. The only people who took His words to heart prior to the event were His enemies—the guys who conspired to put Him in the tomb. Not only did they conspire to put Him in the tomb, they conspired to keep Him in that tomb! Setting a guard to make sure the body didn’t disappear! And again Josephus—who was not a Christ follower--puts that guard at 1,030 men strong.
“When they came back from the tomb, they told all these things to the Eleven and to all the others. (the eleven and the 120) It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and the others with them who told this to the apostles.” (Luke 24:9–10, NIV84).
You have got to love Luke’s detail here. He names the women involved, so he’s in fact telling his audience, here they are, ask them yourself.
Now, let me pause here for a minute and recognize a common misconception that people sometimes have when it comes to the resurrection accounts. There are differences in the accounts given by the four Gospels. They all agree on the main issues, but there are differences in their testimonies. This leads some to question the accuracy of these reports, when in reality they give evidence to the validity of the testimony.
If you were making this up, one, you wouldn’t have women as the initial witnesses to the resurrection. In the culture women were not considered reliable witnesses. In fact we catch this even in Luke’s report, “But they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense.” (Luke 24:11, NIV84). Nobody believes these women. If you were making this up, there would have been a celebration at this point, not a dismissal to their testimony!
But the major thing to consider is that if you have the testimony of four different people, if they all say exactly the same thing, you are going to suspect collusion; that they got together in the back room and said, hey, let’s all get our stories straight. You don’t see that here. What you see is exactly what you would expect it they were in fact testifying in a court of law. Agreement on the major facts, differences in details. The differences we see actually strengthen the case for their honesty, it doesn’t lessen it.
The women report, the group thinks that they’re so grief stricken that they aren’t thinking clearly, but Peter (and John’s Gospel tells us John as well) decide to look into this a little further. “Peter, however, got up and ran to the tomb. Bending over, he saw the strips of linen lying by themselves, and he went away, wondering to himself what had happened.” (Luke 24:12, NIV84).
You have to consider this. Peter now sees the empty tomb and he doesn’t jump up and shout, “Whoo-Hooo! He’s alive! No, he leaves the tomb wondering what has happened here!” The idea that all these guys were ignorant men who were prone to believe unfounded superstitions just doesn’t fit with the facts. In fact John remarks here, “(They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the dead.)” (John 20:9, NIV84)
There is no way to explain the transformation of the 12, the conversion of Saul of Tarsus and the belief of Jesus’ half-brothers, James and Jude, same mom, different dad, apart from the resurrection.
The message of the early church wasn’t what they heard Jesus say, but what they saw; what they experienced after His crucifixion.
When one studies the early documents of the Christian faith, one quickly discovers that the core of Jesus teachings were not religious, ethical teachings, but they were about Himself. Historians who recognize this fact have for centuries set out to try to disprove the known facts. It began in earnest with Rudolf Bultmann who began a movement to find “the historical Jesus.” It continues in our day with the work of organizations like the “Jesus Seminar” who are desperately trying to separate the man Jesus from what they feel are the legends that rose up around Him.
The problem is the resurrection. Everyone knows that the dead don’t come back to physical life, and yet the account of a miraculous resurrection is front and center in the teachings of this early movement. In fact, there is no way to explain how Christianity gained traction in the first three centuries without fact of the physical resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
Greek scholar Canon Westcott, from Cambridge University wrote regarding the resurrection “Indeed, taking all the evidence together, it is not too much to say that there is no historic incident better or more variously supported than the resurrection of Christ. Nothing but the antecedent assumption that it must be false could have suggested the idea of deficiency in the proof of it.” An antecedent assumption means simply making up your mind prior to looking at any facts that what you are about to see is false. In other words, the only real argument against the resurrection is one’s own choice to deny the resurrection.
Years ago Hugh Schonfield wrote a book entitled The Passover Plot, in which he described Jesus as a self-styled Messiah who manipulated facts and circumstances to make it look like He was the Jewish Messiah. In that book he popularized a theory that Jesus never really died but only swooned on the cross, and in the coldness of the tomb revived & claimed a miraculous resurrection.
In a lecture Schonfield described Jesus as a Jewish magician who planned to rig the crucifixion, take a medicine that made him appear dead, but that he had not planned for the spear-thrust to the side. Schonfield admitted that he has no explanation to how Jesus would have survived that, admitting that the resultant water and blood was a sure indicator of the fact that He was indeed dead. What Schonfield also can’t explain is how his cleverly deceptive Jesus would have missed somehow the fact that every crucified person was pierced through the side and into the heart before their removal from the cross. It was standard operating procedure for Rome. Schondield is a perfect example of one whose antecedent assumption that the resurrection must be false informs his views today.
There is no way to explain the formation of Christianity apart from the resurrection of Christ.
What was it that changed a band of frightened, discouraged, depressed followers into people of courage and conviction? What was it that changed Peter the cowardly into a confident communicator? What was it that replaced Thomas’s doubt with a firmly held faith that went with him to the grave?
• One minute they’re defeated . . . the next they’re dynamic.
• One minute they’re crushed . . . the next they’re confident.
• One minute they’re having a pity party . . . the next they’re taking on the world.
• One minute they’re paralyzed with fear . . . the next they’re filled with faith.
John R. W. Stott an Anglican Cleric and prominent Christian leader wrote, “The transformation of the disciples is perhaps the greatest evidence of all for the resurrection.”
Here’s the bottom line, “In the past, God forgave all this because people did not know what they were doing. But now he says that everyone everywhere must turn to him. He has set a day when he will judge the world’s people with fairness. And he has chosen the man Jesus to do the judging for him. God has given proof of this to all of us by raising Jesus from death.” (Acts 17:30–31, CEV).
The mystery that changed all history—every time you write the date you are giving silent witness to the event that changed even how we track time—and that mystery can change your history as well. It can change you past history, and you can have forgiveness of sins and it can change your future history—where you will spend eternity. And it all hinges on the resurrection of Christ. The Apostle Paul put it this way, “And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.” (1 Corinthians 15:17, NIV84). The cross without the resurrection would be meaningless. But here’s the thing: if the resurrection is true, all other options are false. Peter’s words are true: “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved.”” (Acts 4:12, NIV84). In fact, Paul is absolutely right when he said that the resurrection is proof—you don’t often hear that when it comes to religious discussion—it is not a possibility but proof that what we believe as Christians is true.
If you are not a Christian, I can’t think of a better time to change that than right now.
If you are a Christian, the resurrection is proof positive that you have not placed your faith in a “maybe” or “I certainly hope so,” but in a certainty. Live confidently! Consider again the disciples. They went from cowering in fear to the courageous proclamation of Jesus as Lord. The resurrection did that—take away the fear of death, and you become fearless.
The Apostle Paul after writing about the implications of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15 concluded, “Therefore, my dear brothers, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.” (1 Corinthians 15:58, NIV84)
