I) [Introduction to Lord’s Super.] Easter, the day that many celebrate the resurrection of Christ, is right around the corner. While we do not celebrate this holiday, because God did not ask that we do so, the resurrection is nevertheless certainly an essential part of our faith.
A) Paul reminds us in Rom 8:11 of the link between the resurrection of Christ and our own resurrection. “But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you” [NKJV]. It is His resurrection that gives us hope, demonstrating that God can raise to immortality we who have been dead in sin, just as He raised Jesus when He died for our sins.
B) Paul goes on to explicitly say in Rom 10:8-9 that we must believe in Christ’s resurrection in order to be saved, that is, in order to be resurrected ourselves. “But what does it say? 'The word is near you, in your mouth and in your heart' (that is, the word of faith which we preach): that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.” He says if we confess Jesus as Lord, and if we believe God raised Him from the dead, then we will be saved.
C) Thus Christ is described in 1 Cor 15:20-23 as “the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.” “But now Christ is risen from the dead, and has become the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since by man came death, by Man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ all shall be made alive. But each one in his own order: Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming.”
Just as man made us subject to death, when Adam sinned, so Man (Christ in the form of man), introduced resurrection, through which we will again live. Christ is then just the first of those to be raised from the dead. Just as the first fruits of the field that were offered to God as sacrifice were a sign of the fuller harvest to come (Prov 3:9-10), so Christ is the first of many to be raised. Who then is to be raised? “Christ the firstfruits, afterward those who are Christ’s at His coming” [verse 23].
D) While we do not celebrate Easter annually, we do eat of the Lord’s Supper every week. When we do so, we are primarily remembering Christ’s sacrifice for us, His death. But there is also inherent in that weekly observance anticipation of Christ’s return and with that return our own resurrection, for God directs us in 1 Cor 11:23-26 to continue that memorial “till he comes.” “For I received from the Lord that which I also delivered to you: that the Lord Jesus on the same night in which He was betrayed took bread; and when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.’ In the same manner He also took the cup after supper, saying, ‘This cup is the new covenant in My blood. This do, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me.’ For as often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death till He comes.”
As we eat of the Lord’s Supper now, let’s remember the loving sacrifice of Christ allowing His body to be broken for us, remember the sacrifice of His blood being shed so that we could be purified and made suitable to enter a new covenant relationship with God, and fix our hope upon the day of His coming again, when all who are His will be raised from the dead.
[Serve the Lord’s Supper.]
II) [Sermon introduction] As we saw a moment ago, belief in the resurrection of Christ is an essential part of our faith.
A) Returning again to 1 Corinthians 15, in the first few verses of the chapter Paul includes the resurrection as an element in the basic gospel. “Moreover, brethren, I declare to you the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received and in which you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast that word which I preached to you—unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve” [1 Cor 15:1-5].
He says in verse 1 that he preached the gospel to them. He goes on in verse 3 to describe the essence of the gospel that he delivered: that Christ died for our sins, was buried, and on the third day rose again, all in accordance with scripture. So the resurrection is an inextricable part of the gospel, and it is by the gospel that we are saved (verse 2).
B) In verses 14-19, Paul considers the implications of denying the resurrection. “14 And if Christ is not risen, then our preaching is empty and your faith is also empty. 15 Yes, and we are found false witnesses of God, because we have testified of God that He raised up Christ, whom He did not raise up—if in fact the dead do not rise. 16 For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen. 17 And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! 18 Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. 19 If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable” [1 Cor 15:14-19].
Without the resurrection, all we believe becomes meaningless (14). The apostles were then merely liars (15), and their promises to us just lies and deception. Without the resurrection, there has been no sacrifice for our sin, and we are hopelessly subject to judgment for our guilt (17). All of those who dedicated their lives to Christ and then died are just dead (18). And if the resurrection of Christ never happened, we are to be pitied for our lifestyle (19), for we are then truly just ignorant people ruled by superstition. We have wasted our time, wasted our worry, wasted our money, and needlessly abstained from so much the world has to offer.
C) The historical truth of the resurrection is fundamental to everything else in the Bible.
III) Yet we live in a world where few accept the resurrection as history. Polls show that even among those who believe that Jesus was a historical person and call themselves Christians, perhaps as many as 30% do not believe that He was physically resurrected.
A) In a world ruled by faith in science, many believe the account to be myth and believers to be ignorant and superstitious. Two factors encourage this attitude. Firstly, we are taught to respect science to the extent of rejecting anything that can’t be proven by the scientific method. Secondly, belief is inconvenient, requiring time, uncomfortable introspection, changed lives, and constraints on our daily lives and choices.
B) Of course, the inclination of the world to reject the truth of the gospel doesn’t prove that it is false. A unique one-time intervention by God, not repeatable by man, is impossible to prove or disprove by scientific methods. In fact, Paul warned us to expect the world to consider believers to be fools (1 Cor 1:18). “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.”
C) But neither that nor the immensity of the consequences of the resurrection being actually myth prove that it is fact and that we are not fools. So how do we decide which is the case?
IV) In order to answer that question, we first need to ask ourselves if we know for sure what was originally written in the gospels. How much confidence can we have that they were written when they claim to have been, and that what we have are accurate representations of what was originally written?
A) In Dan Brown’s book The Da Vinci Code, the attitude of many is expressed: “The Bible is a product of man . . . . Not of God. The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds. Man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions. History has never had a definitive version of the book.”
B) However, research tells a different story. The gospels as we have them are corroborated by thousands of existing manuscript fragments, the oldest dated to within two generations of Christ’s death. The significance of this is shown by looking at what we have in the way of manuscripts for equally ancient histories that are routinely accepted as accurate. Consider the writings of the Jewish historian Josephus, Roman historians Tacitus and Seutonius, and classical historians Herodotus and Thucydides. In each case, the earliest manuscript copies we have were written 500 to 1000 years after the original, yet considered authoritative. For each of these historians, we have from 20 to 200 manuscripts. In contrast, for the gospels, we have far more manuscripts, that are immensely closer in time to the originals, as well as hundreds of thousands of quotations from them in the writings of early church leaders. We can have more confidence in the authenticity and accuracy of the gospel manuscripts than virtually any ancient historical document.
V) A common theory is that the resurrection story was a myth, later added to the scriptures by the church in order to glorify a dead hero.
A) But the timing of the rise of Christianity does not seem to support the creation of a myth. Even without the Biblical accounts, secular historical records tell us that Christianity came into existence during the reign of Tiberius, whose rule ended AD 37. The same records tell us that the thing that brought Christianity into existence was the belief that Jesus had risen from the dead. There is nothing close to enough time for a myth to have developed between His death in 33 and the virtually immediate rise of the church no later than AD 37. Myths take time to develop! The sudden appearance of the church requires a sudden belief in His resurrection, for the very existence of the church makes no sense if Jesus did not arise from the dead. Without the resurrection, there would have been no New Testament and no church.
B) Nor do the simple gospel accounts show any of the signs of legendary development. Compare, for example, the forged Gospel of Peter from AD 125. That forgery tells how Jewish leaders, Roman guards, and many people from countryside gathered outside the tomb and witnessed the resurrection. It then goes on to tell how three men come out of tomb whose heads reach the clouds, followed by the emergence of a talking cross. In stark contrast, the gospel accounts remarkably reserved and restrained.
C) We also need to consider that myth would have been squashed by the living witnesses. The four gospel accounts were being circulated within the lifetimes of men and women alive at the time of the resurrection, who could have easily confirmed or denied the accounts.
The gospels record appearances of Jesus after His death on at least ten different occasions. Paul appeals to this very fact when he writes, less than 25 years later, in I Cor 15:3-8. “3 For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, 4 and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, 5 and that He was seen by Cephas, then by the twelve. 6 After that He was seen by over five hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain to the present, but some have fallen asleep. 7 After that He was seen by James, then by all the apostles. 8 Then last of all He was seen by me also, as by one born out of due time.”
Paul essentially says, “If you don’t believe me, ask them!” Over 500 had seen the risen Jesus, most of whom still lived and could be questioned. How does a lie or myth gain popular acceptance in that environment? It would be like me trying to publish a history of my father’s adventures as an astronaut.
Consider also that the resurrection was preached in the same city where Jesus had been buried shortly before. The disciples didn’t begin preaching in some distant place where nobody had ever heard of Jesus or the events surrounding His death. It would have been impossible to sustain a false story of his resurrection for even a day when people could easily go view His sealed tomb or talk to the supposed witnesses. The 2016 movie “Risen” tells the fictional story of a Roman soldier who investigates rumors of the resurrection of Jesus. The story in the movie is fiction, but clearly illustrates the simple fact that the truth of the resurrection could and would have been easily investigated by many.
VI) Another element in favor of the historical authenticity of the gospel accounts is the nature of some of the witnesses, very different from the obscure supposed witnesses of typical myths.
A) Consider Joseph of Arimethea, the one who gave his tomb for Jesus’ burial. In Lk 23:50, we see that he was a member of the Jewish Sanhedrim, therefore well-known and easy to find for confirmation. This is not a story told by some obscure person in a distant land who nobody has ever met (“a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away”). And Joseph, as a member of Sanhedrim, would be one who would aggressively refute the story if it were false.
B) Consider also that the empty tomb is first discovered by women. Though the reason might not be readily apparent to you, this would not be the choice for a made-up story. Why not? In 1st-century Jewish culture, the testimony of women was considered as worthless. A man could not be convicted in court on the basis of testimony from women alone. So why choose women to testify to the empty tomb in the story, unless it inconveniently actually happened that way?
C) The greatest testimony to the truth of the gospel account is the changed lives of the early Christians. If this was all a lie, what did they have to gain by going everywhere telling this story? Prestige? In Jewish culture, they became outcasts. And why describe themselves as fleeing cowardly if they sought prestige? Wealth? Most of them lost everything. By all accounts, they were beaten, stoned to death, thrown to the lions, tortured, even crucified for their insistence on continuing to spread their message.
Compare that to the witnesses for the Book of Mormon. In the front of the Book of Mormon is the testimony of 3 witnesses who saw an angel deliver the text of the Book of Mormon to Joseph Smith. Yet, even 200 years later, I can provide documentary evidence that each of them eventually recanted his testimony. Even without the degree of persecution that the apostles suffered, the Mormon witnesses could not maintain the lie. Yet not one apostle ever “outed” the lie.
If the apostles lied about the resurrection, then we must say that as unscrupulous con men they still created what was to become the gold standard for morality for the next 2,000 years. How could that be? But if they didn’t lie, then there are only two other possibilities. Either they thought their testimony was true because they were crazy, and then went on to draft manuscripts that meticulously correlated with hundreds of prophecies, without the benefit of education, or else they related things that had actually happened.
VII) Ignoring the testimony of the witnesses, many have suggested and most believe that there must be another explanation for the empty tomb. That the tomb was empty is well established as a historical fact. After all, he story could never have gained any traction if the tomb were not empty. In Matt 28:11-15, even hostile witnesses such as the Roman guards admitted that the tomb was empty. Early Jewish writings, from as early as the early 2nd century, confirm the tomb was empty as they try to explain it away. We also see that the tomb was never venerated as a shrine, though the common practice of the day was to set up shrines at the place of burial of the bones of holy men. Over 50 such shrines existed in Jerusalem at that time. So what else might have caused the tomb to be empty?
A) Kirsopp Lake, a Bible scholar from the Harvard Divinity School, has suggested that the women simply went mistakenly to the wrong tomb.If so, then the disciples who ran to check did so also. What of the Roman guards, who were stationed at the tomb entrance? Did they get confused on which tomb with an official seal they were standing guard over? If the witnesses had simply gone to the wrong tomb, Jewish authorities would have quickly produced the body from the proper tomb to squash the resurrection story for good.
B) Others suggest the body was stolen. By who? The Jews and Romans wanted to suppress Christianity, not encourage it. As pointed out in Matt 27:62-66, it was to prevent that very thing that they sealed the tomb and set the guard, so they certainly did not want to steal the body themselves. But if they had stolen the body, why would they not produce it when the resurrection began to be preached?
Perhaps the disciples took it. And then suffered torture and death to sustain a lie? This assumes that the same disciples who had deserted Jesus out of fear and depression just days before, now suddenly had the courage to face and trick the armed Roman guards. And to what end?
C) Maybe Jesus merely swooned. This theory was popularized by theologian Karl Venturini in about 1800. His theory says Jesus didn’t die on the cross at all, but fainted and was then mistaken for dead. If that was the case, how did He move the stone, that typically weighed about a ton, had to be rolled uphill, and took several men using levers to manipulate? Consider His weakened state after having been flogged and crucified. Flogging used leather strips imbedded with metal on the ends. It often killed people, and at best left them severely maimed. Crucifixion involved nailing Him to a cross with the equivalent of modern-day railroad spikes. How would Jesus then afterward have the strength to arise, remove the stone, get past the guards, and move about the city appearing to people and convincing them that He was deity? It is simply not believable.
D) Or was the resurrection a mass hallucination? This would require a large number of people to experience the same hallucination, and all resulting in a consistent yet complex story. And again, why would the authorities not then simply produce the body?
VIII) As strange as the resurrection story is to our ears, it is well-authenticated history and is not only the best, but the only, explanation that fits the historical facts. Yes, we should expect that the world will think us crazy to believe, but we have no reason to doubt the gospel accounts. But we can respond to the world like Paul as he stood before Festus in Acts 26:22-26. “‘Therefore, having obtained help from God, to this day I stand, witnessing both to small and great, saying no other things than those which the prophets and Moses said would come—that the Christ would suffer, that He would be the first to rise from the dead, and would proclaim light to the Jewish people and to the Gentiles.’ Now as he thus made his defense, Festus said with a loud voice, ‘Paul, you are beside yourself! Much learning is driving you mad!’ But he said, ‘I am not mad, most noble Festus, but speak the words of truth and reason. For the king, before whom I also speak freely, knows these things; for I am convinced that none of these things escapes his attention, since this thing was not done in a corner.’”
We are not crazy. And this wasn’t done in a corner, where none could check the details of some absurd story. The testimony of the witnesses is authentic and can (and must) be believed.
