“Experience Eternal Life”
John 20:1-18
Introduction: It was the night of October 31st, 1936. Halloween night. A group of men and women sat with their hands joined at a round table. They awaited the message – the same message they had hoped to receive for the past 10 Halloweens. But the message did not come.
Finally, one woman rose from the table and announced to the others – and to a listening radio audience – “Houdini did not come through. My last hope is gone. I do not believe that Houdini can come back to me, or to anyone… The Houdini Shrine has burned for ten years. I now, reverently… turn out the light. It is finished. Good night, Harry!”
The woman was Bess Houdini, wife of the famed magician and escape artist. And this was the last séance she would participate in to try to contact her dead husband. Houdini was known as “The Man No Jail Could Hold.” But he couldn’t escape from death.
This morning we’re finishing our series inspired by Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ. Do you remember how the movie ends? Jesus dies. The screen fades to black. You think the credits are going to roll, but an image flashes back on the screen. It is Jesus – resurrected, flawless, and glorious. He has escaped death. He’s back and He’s alive!
Is this something we should really believe? Did Jesus really rise from the dead or is it just a Hollywood ending? Is there any evidence or is this just a matter of faith? And, what does the resurrection of Jesus mean for us today?
Resurrection: True or False
There are, of course, a lot of people who don’t believe, who don’t think Jesus really rose from the dead. In an attempt to debunk the resurrection over the years several theories have been developed. Let’s begin by looking at three of these theories that try to explain away the resurrection.
Stolen Body. The first theory says that Jesus’ body was stolen. Now we know the Romans wouldn’t have taken the body – they wanted Jesus dead. The Jewish leaders wouldn’t have taken the body – they wanted Him to stay dead. Skeptics believe that Jesus’ disciples stole the body.
The Gospel of Matthew tells us that this theory was concocted by the Jewish religious leaders and spread by the Romans. Here’s what the Gospel of Matthew says in chapter 28:12-15: “When the chief priests had met with the elders and devised a plan they gave the soldiers a large sum of money, telling them, “You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ If this report gets to the governor, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So the soldiers took the money and did as they were instructed.”
But there are some problems with this theory. The disciples had nothing to gain and everything to lose by stealing Jesus’ body. Why would they want to live a life of deprivation and suffering and then be tortured to death for a lie? Besides, the disciples were confused and didn’t understand that he was going to die, let alone that he was to be raised. They never anticipated a resurrection. And if they had stolen his body then how do you explain the fact that this group of men who had scattered and hid in fear suddenly became bold, outspoken preachers, most of whom were brutally killed because they were preaching that Jesus was alive? People will sometimes die for what they think is true, but they won’t die for what they know is a lie.
The greatest problem with the theory that the disciples stole the body is that there were over 500 witnesses that Jesus appeared to after his resurrection. I was in court a few weeks ago as a witness and the other side had 11 witnesses! It took forever for all of them to be examined and cross examined. Can you imagine 500 witnesses? If we were to hold a trial to determine the facts concerning the resurrection, and if we were to call the witnesses to the stand and examine them each for only 15 minutes, if we went around the clock without a break, how long do you think we’d be here? – 128 hours! That’s 5 days straight!
The evidence seems to indicate that it’s impossible that Jesus’ body was stolen.
Jesus Never Really Died. The other leading theory among skeptics is that Jesus never really died. In fact, that’s what many Muslims are taught. It’s called the “swoon theory” – Jesus fainted or took a drug that made him appear to die, and then the cool air of the tomb revived him. If you saw the movie The Passion of the Christ you already how impossible this theory is. Jesus was tied to a post and beaten at least 39 times – and probably more – with a whip that had jagged bones and balls of lead woven into it. Undoubtedly, Jesus was in serious to critical condition even before the crucifixion began. And the crucifixion was a horrific form of torture and execution by itself. It was so bad that a new word was coined to describe it – the word “excruciating,” which is Latin for “out of the cross.”
One of the reasons we know that Jesus really died is that when the soldiers came to Jesus to hasten his death they discovered that he was already dead and to confirm it, they plunged a spear between his ribs which literally punctured the sac around the heart and the heart itself.
Nobody came down from a cross alive – that included Jesus. An authoritative article in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Society concluded: “Clearly, the weight of historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead (even) before the wound to His side was inflicted…Accordingly, interpretations based on the assumption that Jesus did not die on the cross appear to be at odds with modern medical evidence.”
The evidence clearly refutes the “swoon theory.” There’s no doubt… Jesus did die.
Jesus’ Resurrection was a Hallucination. There’s one more theory that’s very common among skeptics: it’s that Jesus’ resurrection was a hallucination. That people thought that Jesus kept showing up alive, but that they were actually hallucinating because they wanted to see him alive.
The major problem with this is that psychologists tell us that hallucinations are like dreams – they’re individual events that can’t be shared between people. It would be like you asking me, “Did you enjoy the dream I had last night?”
But what if these weren’t hallucinations, but instead an example of what psychologists call “Group think” – a kind of wishful thinking where people in a group subtly encourage one another through the power of suggestion to see an image? The problem with this is that the circumstances were all wrong for anything like it to happen.
For instance, the disciples weren’t anticipating a resurrection. They didn’t believe he would come back. They thought he was dead and gone. This was totally contrary to their Jewish beliefs. And so they weren’t primed for this sort of thing to happen. Besides, Jesus ate with them, he talked to them, and he appeared numerous times before all kinds of people in various settings – all of which run contrary to this “Group think” theory.
Besides, what about the empty tomb? Where was his body? If they had been hallucinating, don’t you think the Romans would have produced the body eventually to disprove this theory?
The Reality
The reality is - Jesus did die, and rather than his body being stolen, he rose from the dead an event which revolutionized the lives of those who he encountered. His resurrection changed the course of history and is the reason we’re here this morning. It’s what our faith is all about. You see the resurrection of Jesus Christ is what sets Christianity apart from all other religions, and what sets Jesus apart from all other religious leaders who ever lived. Every other human being is powerless to death. But Jesus had power over death.
A few minutes ago I told you about Houdini’s failed attempt to slip the shackles of death and communicate with his wife Bess. Shortly before his death, Houdini made a pact with Bess that if he could, he would return and make contact with her from the other side. They devised a coded message that only he and Bess knew; this would prove that it really was Houdini breaking through from the afterlife. But after 10 séances in 10 years, Bess had not received her beloved husband’s personal message.
The message was based on word combinations that corresponded to a secret spelling code. The Houdinis’ secret phrase spelled out one word – “Believe.”
Jesus did more than just communicate from the grave – he rose from the grave. He gave proof that he was alive. Do you remember what he said to “doubting” Thomas? “Put your finger her, see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
You and I can’t see Jesus, but we’ve heard the evidence. We can’t see Jesus, but we can believe. We can believe that because of Jesus’ victory over death we can not only be forgiven and given complete lives but we can look forward to everlasting life – to being reunited with loved ones after death and even getting to see Jesus face to face.
I want to close this morning with a story made up by Alfred Hitchcock and recounted in a recent book by David Jeremiah. It’s not a true story, but it is a story with a lesson.
It’s the story about a woman who murdered her husband years ago and was sentenced to life in prison. She vowed, that somehow, some way, she’d escape.
As her prison bus approached the penitentiary, she saw an old man, another prisoner, covering up a small grave in a small cemetery outside the prison walls. Right then and there, she hatched a plot.
Once inside, she befriended this prisoner. He was going blind and needed cataract surgery. “I’ll give you the money for your surgery if you’ll help me escape,” she said. And he agreed.
Here was the plan: the next time she heard the bell toll, which indicated an inmate had died, she would sneak down to the workroom where he made the casket and slide inside with the body and pull the covering closed. He would wheel the casket out to the cemetery, lower it into the grave and cover it with dirt. But that night, when nobody was watching he’d return and dig up the casket and set her free.
Late one night, the bell tolled. The woman sneaked down to the workroom. It was dark, but she found the casket, lifted the lid, slipped inside next to the body, pulled the cover over her – and waited.
Sure enough, a few hours later she felt the casket being rolled toward the grave site. She smiled as the casket was lowered into the hole. She heard clumps of dirt hitting the casket and covering her up. She had done it! She could barely contain her excitement.
Silence followed as she waited in the dark. Time began to drag. Hours passed, then more hours. Finally, she began to worry. She broke out in a cold sweat. Where was that old man? What was keeping him? Can you imagine the emotions that would have coursed through her?
In a moment of panic, she reached into her pocket and took out some matches. As she lit one, she glanced at the corpse beside her – and saw that it was the old man himself.
Her only hope lay buried right next to her!
The lesson is obvious. The woman had put her faith in another human being who she thought would be able to save her – but he went to his grave and ended up taking her with him.
Every single religious leader in history is in their grave right now – except one, Jesus Christ. His tomb is empty because he had the power of God to overcome the grave.
Let me ask you: Who are you going to put your hope in to help you overcome the grave? You’ve heard the evidence. It’s overwhelming. Listen to what Jesus said in John 11:25: “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will live, even though he dies.”
Will you bow your heads with me…
