If Jesus was not raised…
1 Corinthians 15:1-19
Easter Sunday - Jesus is risen!
A Sunday School teacher asked her class on the Sunday before Easter if they knew what happened on Easter and why it was so important. One little girl spoke up saying: "Easter is when the whole family gets together, and you eat turkey and sing about the pilgrims and all that." "No, that’s not it," said the teacher.
"I know what Easter is," a second student responded. "Easter is when you get a tree and decorate it and give gifts to everybody and sing lots of songs." "Nope, that’s not it either," replied the teacher.
Finally a third student spoke up, "Easter is when Jesus was killed, and put in a tomb and left for three days." "Ah, thank goodness somebody knows" the teacher thought to herself.
But then the student went on: "Then everybody gathers at the tomb and waits to see if Jesus comes out, and if he sees his shadow he has to go back inside and we have six more weeks of winter."
Some of us have some weird ideas about Easter. What does the Bible have to say about it? What’s Easter to you? What really happened? Why is it important for Christians, and what implications does Easter have for the world? Today the church of Jesus Christ all over the world celebrates the central event of Christianity. Today, wherever Christian churches are meeting they are saying “He is risen” and folks will reply “He is risen indeed!”
This is the big one event that makes or breaks the church of Jesus Christ! Without this event in history, Christianity will fall apart, as we read in our text this morning. It is of first importance… it is crucial … without this fact we are have a useless faith.
Read I Cor. 15:14-19 again.
The apostle Paul made it crystal clear that no middle ground exists. If you want to prove Christianity is a farce, a delusion, and a cop-out for millions, all you’ve gotta to do is prove the resurrection of Jesus Christ is a phoney as a 3 dollar bill. As u know there is no such a thing called a 3-dollar bill! Either there is a 3-dollar bill or there is no 3 dollar bill! So the Resurrection is history or hoax, miracle or myth, fact or fantasy.
A former sceptic by the name of Josh McDowell puts it, “After more than 700 hours of studying this subject, and thoroughly investigating its foundation, I have come to the conclusion that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is one of the ‘most wicked, vicious, heartless hoaxes ever foisted upon the minds of men, or it is the most fantastic fact of history.’” Hank Hanegraff who heads up CRI (Christian Research Inst.) wrote this: “The Resurrection is not merely important to the historic Christian faith — without it there would be no Christianity. It elevates Christianity above all other world religions. Through the Resurrection Christ demonstrated that He does not stand in a line of peers with Abraham, Buddha, Confucius, or Muhammad. Jesus Christ is utterly unique. He had the power not only to lay down His life, but also to take it up again.”
So what if the resurrection is true? 2+2 = 4. That’s true! So what? How does that alter my life? Well, if Jesus is able to rise from the dead… it can alter people like Raymond Martinot. It will have a profound effect on the decisions he made in life.
March 13, 2002, this was the story published in Toronto Star – out in SAUMUR, France (AP) — A court in central France ruled that day that the corpses of a dead couple who were frozen in hopes of one day being brought back to life must be removed from their cryogenic chambers and buried. The court in the central French town of Saumur ruled in favor of local authorities, who had argued that the continued refrigeration of Raymond Martinot and Monique Leroy was against the law.
But what made this couple want to do something like this? Reason: he hopes to rise again from the dead. Martinot was a doctor fascinated with cryogenics. Several years before Dr. Martinot died, he was interviewed by French television station M6 and said he was unsure that scientific advances would ever meet his goal but in the remote possibility that science can advance he chose to freeze his body along with Monique upon his death.
"It might be extremely long, because no one can predict what will happen in the future," he told his interviewer. "It might never be possible.’’
This is the hope of someone like Dr. Martinot, who would freeze his body upon death. Even he admitted it is might never be possible for the dead to rise again. He wants to conquer death, cheat death. But wake up, Martinots of this world, it MIGHT NEVER BE. In fact, French law will be pulling the plug on him.., it will never be!
However, with the resurrection of Christ what was impossible, became a possibility. The “might never be” is now translated to “He is risen!” The future is now predictable, i.e. we will not all end up in a six feet hole. We can rise up from the ashes. We can have the hope of resurrection. If someone like Martinot would trust the message of Christ, would build his hope on Jesus he will get what he longed for an hoped for. To trust in something that has yet happened i.e. technology, that has yet been invented, that has yet been proven is not the wisest thing. But to trust in a proven commodity, that has a lifetime warranty… no! an eternal life warranty, that has survived 2000 years of attack by the fiercest of opponents, that has survived the ordeal of the cross, died and rose again, that bled human blood and said “it is for the forgiveness of sins” is that not something that is wise. Jesus said “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.? (John 14:2-3, NIV).
What a hope! Hope that’s not wishing for something that cannot happen. Hope that is not mere wishful thinking. Hope that’s not a gamble, but a winning hand. O hope makes a humongous difference in the way one views life. Hope gives new energy and joy. Hope gives a blessing for the future. Hope will help us endure a world that is not perfect. Hope reaches out with news that though this world is threatening, filled with death, from the avalanche of death we have heard in the past weeks with suicide bombers in Israel, to Israel’s retaliation, bombs in Afghanistan, careless teens who race with fast powerful cars, crack houses in downtown Eastside, death is not the final episode. It is not our weakest link anymore. Hope informs us not to be deceived by humanistic notions, that this world, with its complex problems can be cured through better education, better hygiene, better antibiotics, better technology, better government. Hope tells us things will be better, there’s a heaven, there’s a God who cares. That we will be more than survivors, in fact according to the Bible “we will be more than conquerors …”
ROMANS 8:37-39 (NIV)
…we are more than conquerors through him who loved us.
38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, [13] neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,
39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
Can you see what is Possible When there is Hope?
Joyce Hollyday tells the story of a school teacher who was assigned to visit children in a large city hospital who received a routine call requesting that she visit a particular child.
The teacher took the boy’s name and room number, and was told by the teacher on the other end of the line, "We’re studying nouns and adverbs in this class now. I’d be grateful if you could help him with his homework, so he doesn’t fall behind the others."
It wasn’t until the visiting teacher got outside the boy’s room that she realized that it was located in the hospital’s burn unit. No one had prepared her to find a young boy horribly burned and in great pain.
The teacher felt that she couldn’t just turn around and walk out. And so she stammered awkwardly, "I’m the hospital teacher, and your teacher sent me to help you with nouns and adverbs." This boy was in so much pain that he barely responded. The young teacher stumbled through his English lesson, ashamed at putting him through such a senseless exercise.
The next morning a nurse on the burn unit asked her, "What did you do to that boy?" Before the teacher could finish her outburst of apologies, the nurse interrupted her: "You don’t understand. We’ve been very worried about him. But ever since you were here yesterday, his whole attitude has changed. He’s fighting back; he’s responding to treatment. It’s as if he has decided to live."
The boy later explained that he had completely given up hope until he saw the teacher. It all changed when he came to a simple realization. With joyful tears, the boy said: "They wouldn’t send a teacher to work on nouns and adverbs with a boy who was dying, would they?" (Donald William Dotterer, Living The Easter Faith, CSS Publishing Company,1994.)
This wonderful story invites us to celebrate the gift of life even when all we seem to see around us is pain and disappointment and brokenness. There is a gift of life … life of Jesus Christ. It shows us that on the other side of pain, there is resurrection. Life feels like a Good Friday, when Christ died, but wait, the story does not end there, life continues because there is a Sunday, because there is a resurrection. And today, Easter Sunday, reminds us of what is possible whenever there is hope.
You see, it was this Easter hope of resurrection, the empty tomb of Jesus that brought out the formerly cowardly disciples of Jesus who deserted Him on Good Friday to become lions of the Christian faith after the Resurrection of Jesus Christ on Sunday. Lions who faced execution, persecution, hardships, and death because they know if they die they will be in a better place with Jesus, who is Lord over all, who beat death!
Easter is No Mythical Metaphor
In recent years, the New Testament has been brutally attacked by radical scholars of the so-called “Jesus Seminar.” They regard all miracles, especially the Resurrection, as “mythical metaphors developed by the Early Church.” Some revisionist scholars have concluded that Jesus arose only in the sense that his spirit goes marching on, sort of like the way the spirit of Abraham Lincoln continues to influence America.
But William Lane Craig, perhaps the world’s foremost authority on Resurrection, dismisses such a theory. Dr. Craig is an English scholar with two earned doctoral degrees. Currently, he teaches at the University of Louvain near Brussels. Dr. Craig points out that it would have been a contradiction in terms for an early Jew to say that someone was raised from the dead but his body was left in the tomb.
Furthermore, Dr. Craig points out that numerous disciples were executed because they would not deny the Resurrection. No sane person would die for a mythical metaphor. That’s just right! Who would die for a delusion, or be tortured for a deliberate deception, for a hallucination. All the opponents of Jesus and Christians during the days of early establishment of Christianity wanted very much to stamp the spread of this good news. All they got to do was produce the evidence that Jesus was in fact dead. Bring the dead body out and Christianity would be thoroughly trounced, defeated and killed off.
Because at its core, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, is the event that defines the faith.
So opponents of Christian would offer different theories, most popular one is the swoon theory. That Jesus merely swooned or fainted… and then he was revived later. Hanegraff remarked: “…to believe that Jesus merely swooned stretches credulity beyond the breaking point. It means that Christ survived six trials, lack of sleep, the scourge, being spiked to a cross, and a spear wound in His side.
Adherence to some of the more implausible versions of the swoon hypothesis would take even more faith. It would entail believing that Jesus survived three days without medical attention; single-handedly rolled away an enormously heavy tombstone; subdued an armed guard; strolled around on pierced feet; and seduced His disciples into communicating the myth that He had conquered death while He lived out the remainder of His pathetic life in obscurity. “
I.e. somehow CPR was mysteriously applied in the tomb by Himself where Jesus laid, even Rambo would have been proud. But remember Rambo is fiction, so is the Swoon theory. It just does not work…
One lady wrote in to a question and answer forum. "Dear Sirs, Our preacher said on Easter, that Jesus just swooned on the cross and that the disciples nursed Him back to health. What do you think? Sincerely, Bewildered.
Dear Bewildered, Beat your preacher with a cat-of-nine-tails (that whip with thorns/nails, balls ) with 39 heavy strokes, nail him to a cross; hang him in the sun for 6 hours; run a spear thru his side...put him in an airless tomb for 36 hours and see what happens." Sincerely, Charles.
The swoon hypothesis is not the only novel notion critics of Christianity have used to explain away the Resurrection. Other hypotheses used to explain away the biblical account of the Resurrection emanate from world religions. One such theory is found in Islam. From a Muslim perspective, Jesus was never crucified and, thus, never resurrected. I know this, because I came from a Muslim country. This was offered as an explanation. As Christian philosopher Norman Geisler explains, orthodox Muslims have traditionally held that “God made someone else look like Jesus and this person was mistakenly crucified as Christ.” This Swap theory is good, until you look deeper and ask OK where is this body of the person that looked like Jesus. Where? If it was a mistake surely there is body then of a man, who looked like Jesus.
So as Christians, the Resurrection event is the glue that puts Christianity together. Take away that glue we will have nothing to prop up our faith. That’s why the challenge is in the Bible make the resurrection go away and we will have a useless faith. Hanegraff developed the acronym F-E-A-T, which I have valuable in remembering the essentials of my faith. Each letter in this acronym serves to underscore an undeniable fact of the Resurrection:
Fatal torment – Jesus DIED
Empty tomb – He was BURIED, and RAISED
Appearances – Jesus APPEARED
Transformation - Many were transformed by GRACE
FATAL TORMENT
Hanegraff wrote: “The fatal suffering of Jesus Christ is one of the most well-established facts of ancient history. Even in today’s modern age of science and technology, there is a virtual consensus among New Testament scholars, both conservative and liberal, that Jesus died on the cross, that He was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, and that His death drove His disciples to despair.10 The best medical minds of ancient and modern times have demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that Christ’s physical trauma was fatal.”
EMPTY TOMB
Hanegraff wrote: “In short, early Christianity simply could not have survived an identifiable tomb containing the corpse of Christ. The enemies of Christ could have easily put an end to the charade by displaying the body, as depicted in the medieval Jewish polemic, Toledot Yeshu.” Historians such as Josephus (c.37-110 AD), Ignatius (c.50-115 AD), Justin Martyr (c.100-165 AD) and Tertullian (c.160-220 AD) were convinced of the authenticity of the resurrection. Their writings validate the accounts of the Gospel writers, who, according to leading biblical scholarship, recorded the event as soon as 37 AD and no later than 64 AD.
In addition, other first and second century historians including Cornelius Tacitus, Suetonius, Plinius Secundus, and Lucian of Samosata acknowledged the impact this incredible event had on the people of the time.
Another writer noted: “Roman soldiers closely guarded the tomb where Jesus’ body was laid. Moreover, the grave’s entrance was sealed by an enormous boulder. The Roman guard, which was usually composed of 16 members, would have made it impossible for the disciples--who, by the way, were cowering in fear for their own lives--to steal the body. If, as some have claimed, Jesus was not dead, but only weakened, the guards and the stone would have stopped his escape. After being beaten and flagellated, hung on a cross for six hours, pierced by the spear of his executioners to ascertain his death, and wrapped, as was the custom, in 100 pounds of linen and spices, Jesus would have been in no shape to roll a two-ton stone uphill, outwit 16 Roman soldiers and then appear radiantly to his disciples.”
APPEARANCES
Hanegraff wrote: “In the Acts of the Apostles, Dr. Luke writes that Jesus gave the disciples “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 1:3). Likewise, Peter in his powerful Pentecost proclamation declared that many credible eyewitnesses could confirm the fact of Christ’s physical postresurrection appearances:
Brothers, I can tell you confidently that the patriarch David died and was buried, and his tomb is here to this day. But he was a prophet and knew that God had promised him on oath that he would place one of his descendants on his throne. Seeing what was ahead, he spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that he was not abandoned to the grave, nor did his body see decay. God has raised this Jesus to life, and we are all witnesses of the fact. (Acts 2:29–32; emphasis added).
Like the apostle Peter, the apostle Paul exudes confidence in the appearances of Christ.” So we read in our text this morning, his first letter to the Corinthian Christians he provides details and descriptions:
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. (1 Cor. 15:3–8; emphasis added)
One thing is sure. The apostles did not merely propagate Christ’s teachings; they were absolutely certain that he had appeared to them in the flesh. Although two thousand years removed from the actual event, we too can be absolutely confident in Christ’s post resurrection appearances.
Peter, Paul, and the rest of the apostles claimed that Christ appeared to hundreds of people who were still alive and available for cross-examination (1 Cor. 15:6).30 It would have been one thing to attribute these supernatural experiences to people who had already died. It was quite another to attribute them to multitudes who were still alive. Suppose I announced publicly that I played a private round of golf with Arnold Palmer at Bay Hill County Club in Orlando. During the round I hit the longest drive Palmer had ever seen, made a hole-in-one, and set a new course record. As long as Palmer was living, my credibility could easily be called into question. Likewise, Paul’s assertions regarding the eyewitnesses who had seen the resurrected Christ could have easily been refuted if in fact they were not true.31
No one has ever come up with a credible means to explain away the post resurrection appearances of Christ. Thus, skeptics are often reduced to pawning them off as mere hallucinations.
TRANSFORMATION
Hanegraff wrote this:
What happened as a result of the Resurrection is unprecedented in all of history. In the span of 300 years, a small following of seemingly insignificant believers succeeded in turning an entire empire upside down and conquering it. As has been well said, “They faced the tyrants’ brandished steel, the lions’ gory mane, and the fires of a thousand deaths” because they were utterly convinced that they, like their Master, would one day rise from the grave in glorified, resurrected bodies. While it is conceivable that they would have faced torture, vilification, and even cruel deaths for what they fervently believed to be true, it is inconceivable that they would have been willing to die for what they knew to be a lie.
Peter, who was once afraid of a maid, after the Resurrection was transformed into a lion of the faith. According to tradition, he was crucified upside down because he felt unworthy to be crucified in the same manner as his Lord.
James, the brother of Jesus, who once hated everything his brother stood for, after the Resurrection called himself a bondservant of Jesus Christ (James 1:1). He not only became the leader of the Jerusalem church, but in A.D. 62 was martyred for his faith. Eusebius of Caesarea describes how James was thrown from the pinnacle of the temple and subsequently stoned.
Paul likewise was transformed. Once a ceaseless persecutor of the growing church, he became the chief proselytizer of the Gentile Christians.
Peter, James, and Paul were not alone. As Christian philosopher J. P. Moreland points out, within weeks of the Resurrection not just one but an entire community of at least ten thousand Jews was willing to give up the very sociological and theological traditions that had given them their national identity.
To this day, Christ’s Resurrection continues to transform lives. Every day people of every tongue and tribe and nation are being baptized in the name of the risen Christ.
Yes, Christ is risen indeed! Keywords to remember… say it with me…found it our text this morning…
Died
Buried
Raised
Appeared
Grace…
The resurrection is central to the Christian faith. That’s my hope. I too was changed! If Jesus was not raised… It ‘s all a big fantastic lie. But if he was raised… wow! What will you place your trust in? Science, imperfect people’s opinions or God who loves you, died for your sins, saying “Not guilty” to you, O freedom in Him and is risen and alive.
