In November 2001, Sports Illustrated magazine was covering the baseball World Series in which the Arizona Diamondbacks recovered from a slump to defeat the New York Yankees in the last inning of the final game. It started the editors thinking about the greatest comebacks in history. So, they produced their list of the “TOP TEN COMEBACKS OF ALL TIME.”
It was quite a broad list. Elvis Presley was on it, as a result of his TV special in 1968 that revived his sagging career. Muhammad Ali made the list when he returned from his forced seven-year exile from boxing to reclaim the world championship. Harry Truman made the cut, owing to his 1948 victory over Thomas Dewey when all the polls had him losing by a large margin. When Michael Jordan gave up baseball and returned to his first love of basketball, he found a spot on the top ten comebacks in history. Even humanity was on the list-after recovering from the Black Plague of the 14th century when 25 million Europeans died. Number two among the all-time comebacks was a tie between Japan and Germany, devastated in the Second World War but becoming world economic powers within a generation. And number one – named by the editors of Sports Illustrated magazine in the November 12, 2001, issue: the greatest comeback of all time … Jesus Christ. AD 33. Jesus Christ is number one because He confounds His critics and stuns the Roman authorities with His resurrection.
Watch this clip from the movie “Risen” (Projectionist play DVD Clip 2).
Last week we talked about the resurrection of Christ. We pointed out that there is no way to explain how Christianity began, how it spread so rapidly in the first century, how it even made it beyond the first century, apart from the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
We looked at the report written by Dr. Luke, a Gentile Physician by trade and investigative reporter by interest. We saw from testimony of one of the foremost archeologists of the 20th Century, Sir William Ramsey, that Luke’s words are, in his opinion, rock solid. If you weren’t here last week, let me just say that Dr. Ramsey actually approached the book of Luke initially hoping to discredit him. Instead, he concluded, that Luke’s writings, “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. . . .You may press the words of Luke in a degree beyond any other historians and they stand the keenest scrutiny and the hardest treatment.”
Italian scholars today consider Luke to be one of the most reliable authorities on first century history that we have. Sir Frederic Kenyon, one of the foremost experts on ancient manuscripts and their authority wrote, “The interval between the dates of original composition (of the New Testament) and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established.”
Dr. a. F.F. Bruce, head of the Department of Biblical History and Literature at the University of Sheffield, and author of numerous books, one being “The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?” wrote, “The evidence for our New Testament writings is ever so much greater than the evidence for many writings of classical authors, the authenticity of which no one dreams of questioning. . . If the New Testament were a collection of secular writings, their authenticity would generally be regarded as beyond doubt.”
We don’t believe the writers of the Bible because they are in the Bible, they are in the Bible because they have been proven believable. We talked about this last week. In fact, the evidences for the authenticity of these writings are overwhelming. The only basis anyone has for rejecting these accounts is simply the pre-determination that they will not believe them; a willful ignorance. Willful ignorance is the state and practice of ignoring any sensory input that appears to contradict one’s inner model of reality; one’s bias. A bias, by the way, is a view held with ardor but one that is not based upon personal investigation; it is a prejudice we hold toward something or someone.
Willful ignorance differs from ignorance. A person who is ignorant is simply unaware of something. A person who is willfully ignorant is a person who is fully aware of the facts, but they simply refuse to accept them. I like what Aldous Huxley said, “Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” Put another way, we have the right to believe whatever we want, but not everything we believe is right.
So, back to Dr. Luke. He writes, “In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and to teach . . . .” The former book is the Gospel of Luke, written in 60 AD. Theophilus is believed to be a Roman official, perhaps Luke’s employer, for whom Luke is looking into the reports—which, by the way, tells us that the report of the resurrection had reached Rome before 60 AD.
Luke continues “. . . until the day he was taken up to heaven, after giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen. After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.” (Acts 1:1–3, NIV84)
The words “convincing proofs” are taken from one Greek word: τεκμηρίος and it means literally, “legally admissible evidence.” You have to love Luke. He isn’t saying, “Hey, just believe!” He’s saying in effect, “Theophilus, my report is based on evidentiary law; this report will stand up in a Roman court of law.” Therefore, you can be absolutely sure of it! That’s good stuff!
Now, look at verse 3 again. Have you ever had one of those experiences where you thought something happened, was pretty convinced of it, then started thinking, “Wait a minute, was that real?” Then you are not really sure if maybe what you thought happened was real or just something you dreamed? I think most of us have had an experience like this at one time or another.
The great news of the resurrection is Jesus didn’t just make one appearance and we have to base our faith on that—He appeared to these followers for 40 days! He ate with them, let them touch Him, challenged Thomas of whom John reports, “Now Thomas (called Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe it.”” (John 20:24–25, NIV84). This is a very human, very reasonable response by Thomas. In John’s Gospel a week goes by after Thomas makes that observation before Jesus appears to the group again. Here’s what John reports, “A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!” Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”” (John 20:26–29, NIV84).
I am not a prophet, the son of a prophet or a mind reader, but I know what some of you are thinking right now. You are thinking, “See, if Jesus would appear to me like that, then I could believe.” And you know what? No, you wouldn’t. You’d find a way to explain it away. You would think that maybe you had something bad to eat and it produced a hallucination, or maybe you’d put it off to a dream. If you won’t believe the evidence that exists, you wouldn’t believe an appearance by the Lord Himself.
How do I know that? Even though Jesus had been appearing to these guys, He still has to come back and rebuke them. Here’s what Mark writes, “Later (this may have been another time altogether because nothing is mentioned about a meal in John’s account) Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen.” (Mark 16:14, NIV84)
It takes 40 days and multiple appearances of our Lord to seal the deal, so to speak. The Apostle Paul, late comer to the faith--in fact before his conversion he was trying to stamp out the faith; he was not friend to the faith, but something instantly and radically changed that. He is confronted by the risen Lord and the result of that confrontation is recorded for us in his letters and in the book of Acts. There is no way—no way—to explain the conversion of Saul of Tarsus into Paul the Apostle apart from the resurrection.
Here is how he describes his experience, “Now, brothers, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand. By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain. For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. For I am the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace to me was not without effect. No, I worked harder than all of them—yet not I, but the grace of God that was with me. Whether, then, it was I or they, this is what we preach, and this is what you believed.” (1 Corinthians 15:1–11, NIV84)
Luke calls it “many convincing proofs.” Some translators call it infallible evidence, and Luke says it is “legally admissible evidence.”
Let me get real practical here as I close. Jesus’ physical resurrection from the dead is the greatest comeback in all history. Because of that comeback, the disciples were able to come back from despair. That can be your experience as well. There is a lot of discouragement and despair in our society in general today, and many of you are struggling with your own despair. Belief in the resurrection can change that. It can give you new hope; new confidence; new power to carry on.
(Next slide) Because of Jesus’ comeback, the disciples were able to make their own comeback from doubt and defeat. Because of the resurrection, you can make your own comeback from your doubts and personal defeats. The resurrection changes everything—even when you don’t know what questions to ask, confidence in the risen Lord can get you through your personal valleys.
(Next slide) And because of the resurrection, we can even make a comeback from death! The final enemy has been defeated! Because of the Comeback, these early followers were willing to leave everything to take what they saw, what they experienced, what they knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, throughout the Roman empire and beyond.
They were willing to suffer hardships, beatings, jail, shipwrecks, and even martyrdom for the cause of Christ. Roman historian and Christian polemicist Eusebius born in 263AD and died in 339 AD reports that “The apostles and disciples of the Savior scattered over the whole world (and) preached the Gospel everywhere.” With the exception of the Apostle John, every one of Jesus’ earliest followers were willing to suffer and die because they were convinced of an event they had witnessed—the resurrection. Of Christ. Peter put it this way. “We did not follow cleverly invented stories when we told you about the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty.” (2 Peter 1:16, NIV84) Men will die for what they believe to be true; but no one will die for what they know is a lie. There is no way to explain these early followers of Christ, their sudden comeback from hiding in fear to being the fearless proclaimers they became apart from the resurrection of Christ. “We saw Him dead, and then alive and it changed us!”
And it can change you as well. The One who made the greatest comeback in history guarantees our comeback. Even death has been defeated. He said, “…‘I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies; and whoever lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?’”
(John 11:25–26, NIV84)
Even death has been defeated.
So here are my questions to you: “Do you believe this resurrection, do you believe in the evidence, are you making presuppositions or assumptions that the recounting is unbelievable?” It's your choice but your choice makes all the difference in this world as well as the next.
Let me pray for us.
