The Credibility of the Cross

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Well, when I was a kid, one of my favorite songs that we would sing in church, usually we would sing around Easter, and the chorus would end by saying, you ask me how I know He lives. He lives within my heart. I love the song.

I love the message of that song, but somewhere along the way, I realized that’s not enough because we can feel all sorts of things in our hearts and they can be wrong. I mean, if it’s just all about our subjective feelings, what’s to say those don’t change when life gets difficult, when we need hope, when we need something that we can actually hold on to. You know, when you’re facing a lost job and a foreclosure, you need to know that there’s hope beyond just what you feel in your heart.

When you are diagnosed with cancer or you’re watching a loved one at the end of their life, you need hope beyond just a feeling that you hold in your heart. when relationships fall apart, when life gets messy, when life gets hard, you need something that you can actually hold on that is an anchor, that is a rock. You need actual hope and not just a feeling.

You need to know that there’s somebody who’s there for you. And you need to have some reason for why you believe that. Over the next few weeks between now and Easter, I want to talk to you about some of the evidence for how we can be sure that Jesus actually rose from the dead, just like he said.

When we say that our hope is in Jesus Christ, when we say that our hope is in a Savior who conquered death, who conquered hell, who conquered sin, who conquered the grave, who conquered all of these things that plague us, when we say that our hope is in that risen Savior, you need to know in those dark times in the middle of the night when you’re all alone, when you’re facing something you can’t handle, that that hope in Jesus Christ is more than just a fairy tale. And it seems like hardly a week goes by that I don’t hear some commentary from somebody, whether it’s a talking head on TV or a smart mouth on the internet, or even just somebody I’m having an actual conversation with that will say that Christianity is a fairy tale. They’ll say that everything we believe is, you know, it’s just made up stories about somebody in the sky.

Folks, I am as convinced, I’ve told you before, I’m a fairly skeptical person. I want to see evidence. I want to hear the arguments.

I’ve looked at it, and I am as convinced of the resurrection of Jesus Christ as I am of any other fact in ancient history. And I want to, over the next few weeks, I realize this is a topic that we could delve into for years.

Over the next four weeks, I want to scratch the surface with you of a case for the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and give you some of the evidence, and hopefully help you be persuaded in your own mind that it’s more than just something we know is true in our hearts, but that it’s something that’s actually true in the real world, that it’s actually a historical event, something we can hold on to, and maybe give you some evidence that you can present, not to win an argument, not to twist somebody’s arm and browbeat them into heaven, but for those you encounter who genuinely wonder, how do you know that you can give them something to think about that the Holy Spirit can perhaps use to point them toward the risen Savior. And so I want to share some things with you over the next four weeks.

And the case for the resurrection starts with the death of Jesus Christ. I mean, that’s just basic logic, right? He can’t have risen from the dead if he never died, right? He’s just still alive.

For him to come back from the dead, he has to have died. And there are people out there who will say he never existed and he never died. Because also you have to exists to die, right?

There are people that say he never existed and that he never died. By the way, most of those people are not scholars who have studied the subject. Almost all of the scholars that look at this, the historians, even those who don’t believe that he was the Son of God, will acknowledge that he was a real historical person who died just as the Bible said he did.

And we’re going to look at some of the evidence for that today. It starts with the death of Jesus Christ. And His death is important. The fact that the crucifixion is a historical event, it matters to us today.

You may be saying, I didn’t come here for a history lesson. I didn’t come here for a study of evidence and forensics. I didn’t come here for that.

What does this have to do with what I’m going through today? The fact that the death of Jesus Christ is a historical event matters because He foretold His death during His life. He is recorded by His followers as having foretold His death, and he said that when he died, it was going to be for us.

And so if we can conclude on the basis of evidence that Jesus Christ really did die, then it has implications for whether we believe there is a sacrifice for our sins, whether or not we believe that there is a way to be reconciled to a holy God, whether or not we believe there’s any hope for us today. He told us that he would die and that his death would be the payment for our sin. He said, and this is just a couple of the places that he’s recorded to have said things like this.

In Matthew 17, he said, the Son of Man is about to be trade into the hands of men and they will kill him. And the third day he will be raised up. He told his disciples that on the third day, I’m going to be killed.

I’m going to die and I’m going to be raised again. And he said, he explained the reason why he would die, why he would be killed by the hands of these wicked men. He explained this in Mark chapter 10, when he said, the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve and to give his life a ransom for many.

He said, when I die, When I give my life, it’s going to be as the payment for your sin. And if Jesus didn’t die on the cross, then he didn’t rise from the dead. If he didn’t die on the cross, then our sins are unforgiven.

The resurrection itself is a fictional story. And we have no hope for eternal life, and there’s no basis whatsoever for Christianity. Everything falls apart without the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And John 19.

31, which we’re going to look at this morning, 19. 31-37, outlines some of the reasons. Again, I want to be very clear in case you walk away saying, that’s it?

That’s all the evidence? No, it’s not. But it outlines some of the evidence for Jesus’ death and why we can have certainty that Jesus died and died for our sins.

John 19, starting in verse 31. If you would stand with me as we read together from God’s Word. John 19, 31 says, Therefore, because it was the preparation day, that the bodies should not remain on the cross on the Sabbath, for that Sabbath was a high day.

The Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away. Then the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first and of the other who was crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs.

But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and immediately blood and water came out. And he who has seen has testified, and his testimony is true. And he knows that he is telling the truth so that you may believe.

For these things were done that the scripture should be fulfilled. Not one of his bones shall be broken. And again, another scripture says, they shall look on him whom they pierced and you may be seated.

So I want to be very clear this morning that Jesus’ death on the cross is not a fairy tale. It’s a fact. When you want to know the reason why we believe what we believe and why we do the things we do, it all centers around Jesus’ death and resurrection.

They are not a made up story. they are fact. And I’m going to give you some of the reasons why this morning.

We need to know, first of all, that God promised Jesus’ death. God promised it before it ever happened. I met a lady one time who said, I believe Jesus died, but I don’t think it was God’s plan.

I think God just looked at it and said, oh, well, I can make something good come of that. Let me tell you what, God never wakes up in the morning and says, oh, that caught me by surprise. Didn’t see that coming.

Never happens. First of all, God doesn’t sleep to wake up in the morning. But God never looks at the circumstances in our lives and says, oh, I did not see that coming.

And God certainly didn’t look at the life of Jesus Christ and say, wow, who anticipated that? And this was part of God’s plan. It was part of what he promised all along.

And to say that Jesus never died is to ignore thousands of years of scriptural evidence leading up to that point. Even John here in verses 36 and 37, says that his death was the fulfillment of prophecy. And says even the minute details of his death fulfilled prophecy.

He acknowledges two of them here when he talks about the bones not being broken. You see, when Jesus died and they came to make sure that these men were dead so that they could take the bodies down off the cross not to offend the Jews by leaving bodies up there on the Passover, they came to break the legs to hasten the death and they realized Jesus was already dead. they ended up not breaking his legs.

And there was a prophecy, there are pictures and prophecies throughout the Old Testament, talking about how salvation would come from someone whose bones were never broken in the process. Exodus chapter 12 and Numbers chapter 9 describe the Passover lamb, and Jesus is described in the New Testament as being our Passover lamb and being offered at Passover. They said that the bones of the Passover lamb could not be broken.

If you broke the bones in the process, that could not be your Passover lamb. And so Jesus, to be our Passover lamb, it’s fitting that his bones wouldn’t be broken, but the scriptures go a step forward beyond that when it applies the same thing to the Messiah in Psalm chapter 34, and says that his bones would not be broken. And John throws that in there, so we understand that even that little detail is consistent with what God had said all along about the Messiah.

His betrayal, and this is just a few of the places where God promised the death of the Messiah, promised the death of Jesus. In Psalm 41, in Zechariah chapter 11, it was foretold that he would be betrayed by someone very close to him. As a matter of fact, I believe it’s Zechariah who says that he would be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver.

It’s no accident of history that that’s the exact amount they paid Judas to betray Jesus. The brutality of the crucifixion was foretold in Psalm chapter 22 and Isaiah chapter 53. As a matter of fact, if you read Isaiah chapter 53, you’d almost think it was written about Jesus after the fact.

But there’s evidence from the texts going back hundreds of years before Jesus, confirmed in things like the Dead Sea Scrolls, that the book of Isaiah was written 700 years before Jesus, describing his crucifixion to the letter, and by the way, before crucifixion was being used in Israel. There were other cultures that might have nailed people up on cross-shaped objects before that. but the Romans are the ones who brought it to Israel.

For Isaiah to know about it ahead of time, pretty spectacular. When you realize Isaiah 53 was written 700 years before Christ, and it describes the crucifixion in great detail. And then Psalm chapter 22 is similar.

There are pictures of Jesus all throughout the Old Testament. There are pictures of a Savior who would be sacrificed for His people all throughout the Old Testament. The Passover lamb, again, He’s pictured in the Passover lamb.

He’s pictured in the sacrifices. The book of Hebrews talks a great deal about how the sacrifices apply to Jesus Christ, about how the sacrifices set the stage for us to understand Jesus Christ. He’s even pictured in the Garden of Eden when God told Satan that he would be at war with the seed of the woman. By the way, Jesus is the only person who’s ever claimed to be biologically descended from only a woman and not a man.

Jesus is the seed of the woman. And God told the serpent, God told Satan, that his seed would be at war against the seed of the woman. He would strike at his heel, but the seed of the woman would crush his head.

And at the cross, Satan thought he inflicted a fatal blow on Jesus, but it really was the destruction of Satan’s plans for us. Now, he’s pictured all throughout the Old Testament, where God promised his death. There’s no neon sign.

Some skeptics have said, well, why didn’t God make it any clearer? Why didn’t God put a neon sign in the sky that says Jesus saves? First of all, if God did that, they’d find some reason to explain away why it’s there on its own, there by natural purposes.

But I think there’s a simpler reason why there’s no neon sign pointing to the crucifixion and pointing to Jesus. If God had made it that clear leading up to all these events, if God had made it that clear and unmistakable that Jesus was his son and that Jesus was coming to be our Savior, it might have interfered with the crucifixion. That’s why Jesus told His disciples so many times, don’t tell anybody what I just did.

Don’t tell anybody the miracle I just performed. Because for this plan to come off, He needed enough people to reject Him so that He could be crucified for us. So there was no neon sign that would have interfered with God’s plans, but there was enough evidence for those who were paying attention.

People like Simeon and Anna, those people early on in the temple when Jesus was about 40 days old and was brought in to be dedicated to the Lord, and they recognized him as soon as they saw him, that he was the Messiah. People that were searching the scriptures diligently and understanding properly, they knew who Jesus was because they were familiar with the promises of God. We need to understand that when Jesus died, it wasn’t an accident of history.

It wasn’t just some random event that came out of nowhere. it was the fulfillment of thousands of years of what God had been promising to his people. And John alludes to that with these prophecies in verses 36 and 37.

It wasn’t just something the disciples made up. That’s why it’s important. If you’re wondering, why is it important that we know that he pointed to this, that he promised this?

Because you need to know that his sacrifice was rooted in thousands of years of prophecy. It wasn’t just something the disciples made up. Not only did God promise Jesus’ death, but the Romans ensured Jesus’ death.

They made sure. They made absolutely sure he was dead. Verses 31 and 32 tell us that the Romans knew how to speed up the deaths of their prisoners.

With crucifixion, we think you’d die from blood loss. Really, you’d die from suffocating because your body would. .

. I can’t even do it in a suit. And I moved a bunch of firewood yesterday.

I’m not sure I could do it anyway. I’m already sore. But you’d be put in a stress position with your arms behind you and up over your head that would put pressure on the diaphragm and make it difficult to breathe.

And after a while, you would eventually weaken where you could no longer pull yourself up and you would suffocate. So what they would do as the Sabbath was approaching, as sundown was approaching, they would come and break the legs of the prisoners so they could no longer push up on this bottom nail and raise themselves up to breathe. And they would die a lot more quickly.

They were very good at their jobs. Their jobs were torturing people right up to the point of death without killing them and then killing them when it was time. And they were very good at their job.

But verse 33 tells us they didn’t break Jesus’ legs, which we’ve already talked about. He was already dead. Or they said he appeared to be dead.

They wanted to make sure. The Romans made sure. And that’s why it says in verse 34, but one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear.

And immediately blood and water came out. Now John was describing what he saw. It wasn’t literal water.

That was his descriptive word for what he saw. What he was describing here are what medical experts have explained to be the blood, the pleural effusion, that means the fluid around the lungs, the pericardial effusion, that would be the fluid that collects around the heart. It would be the combination of those things that would have been released when that spear was thrust up through his right side, through his right lung, piercing the right lung, piercing the pericardium, and rupturing the heart.

Those things would have come out. Why does that matter? I’m not going to camp out here too long.

But why does that matter? Number one, because John, it tells us that John was writing accurately things that he saw. Because a fisherman in his day wouldn’t have necessarily had a lot of medical expertise.

I don’t even have a lot of medical expertise. I’ve just read books. But he wouldn’t have known that because of the stress position, the fluid is going to pool in these areas.

He couldn’t have made that up. He didn’t have access to medical journals to study what would have happened in a hypothetical crucifixion. And they didn’t stab people with spears every time at the end of a crucifixion.

We see they broke the legs to hasten death. The fact that he records the blood and water without really understanding what he’s recording tells us that he wrote down accurately. I mean, it’s just one piece of the, one little brick in the wall, but it points toward him recording accurately what he saw.

And the reason, the even bigger reason why it’s so important that we understand this about the Romans and them ensuring his death is because there has been a theory floated around for about the last 200 years that somehow or another Jesus survived the crucifixion. They say, oh, no, we don’t believe in the resurrection. We’ve got to find some natural explanation.

So how about this? Some variations of this are called the swoon theory. The idea that Jesus appeared to be dead.

He was close to death. And they took him down thinking he was dead, put him in the tomb, and left him there for three days where he kind of revived. He came out of that swoon.

And three days later, he came out of the grave. Somebody was going to be beaten and lose that much blood and be in that condition and lay there in a dark, damp cave for three days with no medical attention and walk out and be robust enough that anybody thought He was the risen Son of God, that just defies. .

. I’m too skeptical to buy that. I’ll just put it that way.

There’s no way that Jesus survived the cross. And we know that because there’s no way for somebody to survive the injuries that John describes. The Romans knew how to make sure He was dead, and they made sure he was dead.

It’s impossible for him not to have been dead when he came down off the cross. God promised Jesus’ death. The Romans ensured Jesus’ death, and history confirms Jesus’ death.

John tells us that he saw these things with his own eyes. They’re not something somebody made up. They’re not something that he heard secondhand or thirdhand.

He says, I saw these things. The one who writes to you. John always seems to write in the third person.

We think that’s because he was writing years later, And it’s how he’s remembering what he saw. But he describes himself as the one who saw these things. He describes himself as that disciple or the disciple whom Jesus loved.

When he says the one who saw these things, he’s talking about himself. He said in verse 35 that he saw these as an eyewitness. The fact that he accurately recorded what would have happened when they thrust the spear up through the side tells us that he was doing his best to write an accurate account.

As a matter of fact, there are numerous other instances throughout the book of John where they’ve been able to look at little details in his story, what they call corroborating evidence, and have been able to confirm those little details, place names, descriptions of places, people, stuff going on in the community. They’ve been able to confirm these things through archaeology, through historical record, that all of these things don’t prove the gospel of John is true, but they point to the fact that John was writing down accurately what he saw. What we have here is an eyewitness account.

He says, this is what I saw. But maybe you’re still skeptical. Maybe some of you in this room or some of you watching online are still skeptical about the validity of John’s account. Now, I believe every word of this book.

But I understand not everybody’s there. The scriptures record at least seven other named eyewitnesses who saw Jesus dead and taken off the cross. That’s not even to mention all the unnamed ones where they talk about the priests and the scribes and the Roman soldiers.

The people we have that could have in that day been identified and could have been asked, there are at least seven others who said they saw the same thing. Jesus’ mother Mary was there. Her sister was there.

Now, I know she’s not named, but anybody in that day could have said, who is Mary’s sister, and then gone to her. So Mary, her sister, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James was there. Salome, the wife of Zebedee was there, and the wife of Cleopas.

The Gospels record that all seven of these, in addition to John, were there and saw Jesus come off the cross. They were eyewitnesses to all the things that John writes about. There were enough witnesses at that time that historians of that time regard the crucifixion as a fact.

If you’re still skeptical about what’s written in the Scriptures, there’s outside confirmation that Jesus died. I’ll just give you a few this morning. the Roman historian Suetonius, admits that Jesus was a real person and he didn’t like him from what he knew about him, from what he’d heard, described him as an instigator of disturbances.

Kind of, in a good way, but kind of. The Roman historian Tacitus wrote about Jesus and he recorded that Jesus was executed by Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius, another one who confirms that Jesus existed and died on the cross. The Jewish Roman historian Josephus records that the Jewish collaborated with Pilate to have Jesus executed on a cross.

These are all three men who we don’t doubt anything else really that they recorded about the time period. I don’t see any reason why we should doubt what they recorded about Jesus. Because these men were studious historians who did their research, who wanted to make sure that what they recorded was true.

And they said that Jesus was a real person who died as the scriptures record that he died. And then there were Christian creeds that are dated to no later than A. D.

35. So within two years of the death of Jesus, the Christians were already recording as the cornerstone of their faith the fact that Jesus Christ died on the cross. Within two years.

There’s almost nothing else from ancient history that compares as far as time span and being able to. . .

Two years is not enough time for it to be a legend. If somebody came and tried to tell you about something that happened a year or two ago, would you say, no, that’s not the way it happened. Say next year somebody comes to you and says, tell me what it was like when COVID-19 started.

Do you remember the aliens brought it down and they told us, you know, you all have to go into quarantine or we’re going to vaporize the planet. We’d all say, that’s not how it happened, right? We don’t forget and have time for legend to develop in two years without somebody being there to set the record straight.

And within two years, history tells us that the Christian church was already basing its faith on this creed that says Jesus was a real person who died and rose again, which we’ll talk about in coming weeks. But there is plenty of evidence that says Jesus died as the Bible records. Now sometimes skeptics will say, why isn’t there more?

And there is more we could talk about, but why isn’t there more historical evidence? Why isn’t there more archaeological evidence? Guys, look, Jesus never commanded an army.

He never ruled over a country. He wasn’t born into wealth and privilege. As far as the world was concerned, I mean, we look back and see who he is, but as far as the world is concerned, he was just a carpenter from some backwater podunk town on the fringes of the Roman Empire.

How much would we expect to be recorded about him? How many monuments would we expect to be built? I can look at even my great-grandparents and doing genealogical research.

Just a hundred years ago, there’s very little written record. There’s a tombstone, and maybe a couple census records. There’s more record of the life of Jesus than there is my own great-grandparents in some cases.

It’s only been in the last 15 years or so that we felt it necessary to record everything we were doing for posterity, every meal we had on Instagram, right? They didn’t do that. The amazing thing is not that there’s so little evidence of Jesus, but considering who He was at that time in history who the world considered him to be.

The amazing thing is how much evidence that there is. Tell me any other carpenter from Galilee 2,000 years ago who anybody remembers his name. There’s plenty of evidence if we’re just willing to look and see it.

Jesus Christ died on the cross just as he said he would. That’s my position anyway after having looked at the evidence. But each of us has to consider for ourselves whether or not we believe that Jesus actually died.

Did he die on the cross as the scriptures say he did? Did he die on the cross as prophecy indicates ahead of time he would? Did he die on the cross as they describe in a medically accurate way that he did?

Did he die on the cross as the historians record that he did? Or are we just going to refuse to see the evidence? I can’t answer that question for you.

That’s something you have to consider for yourself. Think for yourself and reason through the evidence. Did Jesus die as God’s word said he did or not.

Jesus said his body and his blood would be sacrificed for us. And what I’ve presented to you this morning is just a small selection of the evidence. But here’s why it matters, folks.

Because if Jesus died, as he said he would, if he died as the evidence indicates that he did, then you now have a choice to make. You now have to decide whether or not you believe his claim that he died for you. If he died, do you believe that he died for you?

Do you believe what he said? about the reason for it. Those who knew him best were not in doubt.

Now let me be clear, they had their moments of doubt, as probably many of us would, or most of us would. They had their moments after the crucifixion when they thought this is all over. They went and hid.

They weren’t planning a hoax. They were trying to figure out how do we get ourselves out of this situation? Everybody wants to kill us.

How do we put this behind us? They went and hid. They denied him.

Even when the story went out that the tomb was empty and he was alive again, they didn’t believe it. But afterwards, they saw him alive again. Which again, I know I’m getting ahead of myself.

We’ll talk about this in coming weeks. But they saw something miraculous enough to change their entire perception. And they remembered what they had seen of his crucifixion.

They remembered what he had told them that his death would mean. And after seeing him alive again, they were in no doubt about that death. And that’s why the writer of Hebrews, who’s one of the apostles or one of their close associates, said, as it is appointed for men to die once, but after this the judgment, so Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many.

That just as Jesus died, he died to bear our sins. He died to pay for our sins. He died so that those sins could be forgiven.

He was bearing the punishment that we deserved. And you have to decide, if he died, do you believe that it was for you? The writer of Hebrews also says, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation?

If we look at all the evidence and we conclude that, yeah, he died, and I still can’t buy the story that was for me. Tell me, if we can’t take him at his word, who can we believe? Where can we find salvation?

Where can we find hope? I submit to you that not only does the evidence show that Jesus Christ died as he said he would, but I think that gives us all the reason in the world to believe what he said about the reason why He would die. He died to pay for your sins.

And this morning, if you believe that, if you’ve never trusted Christ, but you realize that He died and He died to pay for your sins, it wasn’t an accident of history, it wasn’t something that He got Himself into, it wasn’t something He was paying for something He did wrong, but if you realize that He was on that cross because He was bearing responsibility for your sins so you could be forgiven, then this morning, all there is for you to do to have that salvation, to have that forgiveness, is to cry out to God, admit to Him that you’ve sinned, that you’ve disobeyed Him, and that you need a Savior because you couldn’t save yourself. Acknowledge to Him that you believe Jesus died for your sins and rose again, and then ask His forgiveness, and He’s promised it.