Four Facts about the Resurrection [B]

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Transcript:

This morning we’re going to be in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, again like last week. Last week I began sharing with you four facts about the resurrection. And some of this is going to be history, some of this is going to be science, some of it’s going to be Bible, and you know what, they all fit together.

Because the point of this is to show you that the Bible is trustworthy, that there are historical and scientific reasons to believe what the Bible says. Now, for me, I believe what the Bible says. I was raised in church.

I was raised on the Bible. I learned how to read out of the Bible. Not just I learned how to read the Bible.

This is the book that I used in learning how to read. So I was raised up on this from a very early age, but there came a time in college where I realized I need to know why I believe these things and whether they’re true and find out for myself. And honestly, the resurrection, if you weren’t here last week, I shared that a professor asked us, is there anything, whatever your view is, if there’s not anything that could disprove it to you, then you really don’t have a belief so much as you have blind faith.

Because the question was asked, is there any evidence that could be presented to you that would change your mind? And at first my thought was, no. No, there’s nothing that could change my mind about Christianity. And I got to thinking, that’s the kind of blind faith that cults, honestly, expect you to have.

The Bible spells it out here in 1 Corinthians chapter 15. If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain, ye are yet in your sins. The Bible answers that question and says, absolutely, if the resurrection is not true, then Christianity is not true.

And I had to come to realize, okay, if evidence was presented to me that the resurrection never happened, then there’s no point to any of this. But the more I studied it out, the more I read books, the more I looked at arguments from people who believed in the resurrection and people who disbelieved the resurrection, the more I came to the conclusion that the resurrection is rooted in historical fact. It’s true.

And there are four facts that if these facts are true, then the resurrection is true as the Bible presents it. And if the resurrection is true as the Bible presents it, then Jesus Christ is the Son of God as he claimed to be. And if Jesus Christ is the Son of God, as he claimed, then the Bible’s true because the Son of God taught from it and championed its authority.

If the resurrection is true, folks, it’s sort of the foundation everything else is built on. If the resurrection is true, then our faith is as solid as a rock. If the resurrection is untrue, then we just need to board up the doors and go home.

The resurrection is that central to everything we believe. That’s not me saying it. That’s the Apostle Paul speaking under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God, saying, if Christ is not raised, your faith is back.

But folks, there are four facts, and I started talking to you about them last week. The first one, really, we only got through fact number one last week. And that’s that the, I want to get it worded exactly right if you’re following along in those notes.

Jesus’ existence and death are historically verifiable. Okay, we talked about that last week. I shared with you what modern scholars say, that there are very few reputable historians who say, no, Jesus didn’t exist at all.

Most of them, even atheist scholars, usually, and I’m talking scholars, not people you read on Facebook or the comments section of YouTube. Most reputable historians say, yeah, Jesus Christ was a real person. Whether they believe he was the Son of God or not, they believe he was a real person.

We talked about what modern scholars say. I took you through about seven or eight quotes from ancient documents from around Jesus’ own time that talk about. .

. And folks, we didn’t even really get into the Gospels. These are people who did not believe he was the Son of God, but still admitted that he lived and he died.

He was a real person. And why is that important? Fact number one is important because if Jesus Christ didn’t really exist, then he couldn’t have died and he couldn’t have risen again.

So it’s important to establish that he was a real person, that he lived, that he did the things the Bible said he did, and that he died. So we went through that. What did the historians say from his own time?

We talked about some of the medical evidence, some of the scientific evidence, the historical evidence for his death. You know, the Bible says that he was crucified. Some people have said, no, no, crucifixion was pretty rare.

Now, we know that crucifixion took place a lot. We know that these beatings took place routinely, especially for somebody who, like Jesus, was not a Roman citizen, and somebody who, like Jesus, was considered one of the worst criminal offenders against the Roman Empire as somebody who would have been considered a rebel against Rome’s authority. It’s not like he you know, it’s not like he jaywalked or something.

They considered him to be a rebel. Somebody who was opposing their authority. We know that, you know, he would have said things like, I thirst. He would have known that the end was coming based on his heart rate and these things.

Everything medical science says to expect about somebody undergoing crucifixion, we see as these little details, these little details just thrown into the story, thrown into the story by the gospel writers, and that’s important because these are not guys who would have known, hey, we need to make up these details and put them in here so 2,000 years later, once there are advances in medical science that we’ve never heard of, they’ll think it’s true. No, they were recording it as it happened, and everything that medical science tells us to explain, We see from the blood loss to the shock to the ability to bleed out of one’s, to sweat blood. I’m trying to think of the words here.

We see all of those things. And they really back up this first fact that Jesus’ existence and death are historically fearful. Today we’re going to go through facts 2, 3, and 4.

Fact 1 was a lot longer than any of these. So starting today, fact two, Jesus was buried, but his tomb was empty after three days. Fact number two is that Jesus was buried, but his tomb was empty after three days.

And it’s only fairly recently that I’ve heard any kind of discussion about whether or not he was buried. But it makes sense, doesn’t it? Because we know the story that is always talked about on Easter, that the women went to his tomb and it was empty.

And then they went and got the disciples, and the disciples came and ran to the tomb, and it was empty. Excuse me. And we hear this story, well, the empty tomb is not all that impressive if he wasn’t actually buried, is it?

It’s not proof of anything if he wasn’t actually buried, except that the tomb is empty because it always was empty. But 1 Corinthians chapter 15, which we’ve already started looking at, Paul lays out the historical basis of the gospel message and says in verse 3, For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how 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. The burial itself is important.

If he was not buried, then the empty tomb means nothing. His body was just somewhere else dead. And some people will say, well, the whole story has to be made up because somebody who was killed like Jesus would not have been buried.

Now, when you think about crucifixion being reserved for the worst of the worst criminals, the most vile, and not even Roman citizens could undergo crucifixion, somebody with no rights who did not matter at all in society would be crucified, then surely they would not be allowed a burial. They would be thrown to the dogs. They would just be thrown into a trash heap and where the dogs and birds and things could pick them apart. And so some people say, well, this is clearly a made-up story Because in history, we know that crucified people were not buried.

Well, as usually happens, archaeology steps in. And archaeology sets the record straight. In 1968, there was a Greek archaeologist named Basilis Seferis.

And he was digging in Jerusalem, and he was digging in the tomb of a wealthy first century Jewish man named Yehoanon ben Hakkul. And I’m not going to, if you want the spelling of that to look it up later, I can give it to you. He had been crucified and then buried.

And they know this because they found in the tomb, they found a heel bone with the Roman spike still stuck in it, still stuck through the bone. So the man had been crucified, and he had been taken off the cross, and because of a hook that hit a knot in the wood, some of the wood, I think, was still attached. Normally, you know, those nails would have been expensive, and so they normally would take them out.

That’s why we don’t see a whole lot of evidence of crucifixion and burial. But this particular nail, if memory serves, had hit a knot in the wood and had kind of curved, and they couldn’t get it all out, and so they just put his body in there with that little piece of wood and the nail still attached. And so his body, 2,000 years later, is found with the nail, with the Roman spike, still going through his heel bone and into the wood. Somebody who had been executed by crucifixion who was still afforded a proper burial. Now, it was rare.

I’ll tell you, for somebody to be crucified, like this Yehohanan guy, or Jesus, to be crucified as the worst of the worst, and then to be given a dignified burial would have been very rare, but we know from archaeology from this one case that it did happen sometimes. It’s not impossible. So the idea that it’s impossible because he was this terrible criminal on the cross and would have had to have just been thrown into the garbage heap, we know it was not impossible.

We also know about the burial and the empty tomb because the earliest Christian sources testify that Jesus Christ was buried. The earliest Christian sources testify that Jesus was buried. What we’re reading, what we’re looking at today in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, Paul wrote this letter to the church at Corinth about the year 56 AD.

And he said Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures and he was buried. Now, some people will look at that and say, well, that’s something Christians made up. Okay, fine.

He wrote that in 56 AD. It’s believed by experts that this is part of an early creed that they would recount and repeat. Now, we’re not as familiar with creeds in Baptist churches, but you might have heard things like the Nicene Creed or the Apostles’ Creed, I believe in God the Father, the Almighty, the Maker of Heaven.

You know, basically a summary of what is believed by a group of people that’s memorized and repeated, and you sort of test things against it. Well, as an early creed, this passage in verses 3 and 4 of 1 Corinthians chapter 15 is something that Paul had learned from the apostles in Jerusalem. Now he records in Galatians that he met the apostles in Jerusalem three years after his conversion, which would have been around A.

D. 37. I know I’m throwing a lot of dates and things at you here.

But even though he wrote this in the 50s A. D. , he would have learned this in the 30s A.

D. What else happened in the 30s A. D.

that we’re talking about? Anybody? What did Jesus do in the 30s AD?

Died and rose again? That’s the traditional dating of the resurrection is around 33 AD. So within four years, within four years of Jesus’ resurrection, there was already, if we’re skeptical, his alleged resurrection, within four years there’s already this creed where the Christians are saying this is the bedrock of our faith so much that we’ve said this, We’ve set it out.

We’ve committed it to memory. We repeat it. This is the basis of our faith.

This little part of this passage here is something that he would have learned from them as an early creed within four years. So within four years, they’re already saying, and probably earlier, but we know as early as four years, they’re saying, no, he rose again from the dead. He was buried, and he rose again from the dead.

And so this means that as early as four years after the fact, Christians who watched the events, who watched all this unfold, they were the eyewitnesses. They believed that he had been buried and that he’d risen again. And all four of the Gospels, you know, people want to talk about the contradictions in the Gospels.

I don’t think the contradictions they look at actually are contradictions. They can be explained. But even if there were contradictions, there are so many more points of agreement among the four Gospels than there are any alleged contradictions.

And one thing that all four Gospel accounts agree on is that Jesus Christ was buried. They all four agree on it. and they were all written down within 25 years.

If you weren’t here last week, you may be thinking, 25 years, big deal. In ancient history, that was just a small span. We don’t have anything about anybody of any significance written in shorter amounts of time. Things about Julius Caesar were written hundreds of years afterwards, and nobody questions those.

And that really is sort of the point of all of this, this evidence for the resurrection. Do I have videotape? No.

Do I have forensic and DNA evidence? Do I have something that they would find on CSI? that would prove to you beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus Christ rose again from the dead?

No. But by ancient standards, we have pretty good evidence. We have more evidence of the resurrection than almost any other event in ancient history.

And yet we don’t question Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon. We don’t question the invasion of Gaul. We don’t question any of these things.

And so why do we question the resurrection? We have better evidence for that. Also, belief in the empty tomb, this kind of ties into the last one, belief in the empty tomb came too early to be a legend.

Do you hear sometimes, oh, Christianity, it’s just a legend. Jesus didn’t really even claim to be the Son of God. He didn’t really rise from the dead.

These are just legends that people made up later. I’m sorry, they came too early. There are eyewitness accounts in the Bible, in several books, in Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, and 1 Thessalonians.

They all talk about the burial and the resurrection. All of these were written within 30 years of the events they described. The books of the New Testament were not written down hundreds of years later, or they were not written down and then changed hundreds of years later to reflect this.

We have, in some cases, copies of the New Testament manuscripts going back to within a generation of the originals. There have not been changes over time, and at some point I may spend more time talking to you about that. There haven’t been changes over time.

These things were written down within 30 years of the crucifixion and the resurrection. That was not enough time for a legend to develop. You know, there are all sorts of legends that have developed about George Washington over 200 years.

I’m not sure that people who knew him believed the cherry tree story. I hated to find out that that was probably not true. I was taught that in school.

It illustrates the character of the man pretty well, but it probably didn’t happen. Okay, we believed that. I believed that growing up in school in the 1990s.

I’m not so sure that people in the 1790s believed the cherry tree story. It was too early for a legend to have grown up around it. Same thing.

When all of these books were written down within 30 years, it was too early for there to be a legend that grew up around it. This is one of my favorites. The story of the empty tomb is way too inconvenient to be a lie.

It’s way too inconvenient to be a lie. You’ve heard the global warming book, An Inconvenient Truth. The resurrection story would be an inconvenient lie.

The apostles, if the apostles were going to make up the story of the empty tomb, they went about it in a really stupid way, if we’re quite honest. They went about it in a really bad way. If you’re going to lie and make up a story about what happened, aren’t you going to make yourself look good? People generally lie to make themselves look better.

The apostles, the story they told about the empty tomb made them look pretty bad. I mean, they do not come off well. I’ll put it this way.

They don’t come off as the heroes of the story. And there are three places where we see that. First of all, the earliest witnesses to the empty tomb were women.

Now, I am not saying this. This is the ancient mindset 2,000 years ago. Women were considered inferior to men.

I don’t believe this. I just want to make that clear. So nobody jumps on me at the door.

Women were considered inferior. Their testimony was not valid in court. I mean, you couldn’t have a woman witness in a trial under most circumstances.

And when you did, you needed multiple to even counteract the testimony of a man. And yet the earliest witnesses of the empty tomb were women. If you were making up a story 2,000 years ago and wanted it to be credible, Those who discovered the empty tomb would have been Peter, James, and John.

Not Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, Mary, and Mary. As you’ll read through the Gospel accounts, you’ll see that there were a lot of Marys at the empty tomb. If they were going to make it up and try to make it sound credible, and say we’re going to invent a lie here, and we’re going to try to convince everybody, saying it was the women who discovered the empty tomb was not the way to go.

It’d be like me saying something miraculous happened, And by the way, it was the town drunk who sees UFOs all the time who saw this. Okay, I’m not going to make that up and use them as the credible witness. I would say me, or I would say the mayor, or somebody that people might, I’m assuming you might listen to me, you’re here listening to me now.

But they were considered the lowest rung in first century Palestine. So if you’re going to make it up, you wouldn’t use women. So the fact that women were the first witnesses is just too inconvenient to support the idea that they lied about this.

Second of all, a Jewish leader stepped up for Jesus. A Jewish leader stepped up for Jesus. The early Christians did not have warm, fuzzy feelings about the Jewish leaders.

I’m not saying they hated the Jewish people, but did not have warm, fuzzy feelings about the Jewish leaders. Because who was it? Who was it who met in secret?

And who was it who broke their own laws to hold a trial and hold him overnight? And who was it who got people to lie and make up accusations against Jesus? Who was it who went through all of this to get the Romans to condemn him to death?

It was the Jewish leaders. And yet one of the heroes of the story of the empty tomb is a man named Joseph of Arimathea. We talk about the tomb that he was buried in.

That was borrowed from a wealthy Jewish leader named Joseph of Arimathea. He was a member of the ruling council that condemned Jesus to death. He just was not there when the vote was taken.

But he was a member of this ruling council that condemned Jesus to death. And yet when Jesus died and it was time for them to decide what to do with the body, the disciples ran. The disciples hid.

They denied knowing him and they went and fled and hid. And it was Joseph of Arimathea. It was this member of the hated Jewish ruling council who stepped up and went to Pontius Pilate and said, can I have the body?

so that I can bury him. One of the heroes of the burial part of the story and the empty tomb part of the story is this man named Joseph of Arimathea. Why, if you were going to make up a lie, would you make one of your heroes of the story part of this group that you would have despised?

You wouldn’t do it. And then the disciples themselves, the disciples fell apart. The disciples fell apart.

They were not the heroes of the story in any way, shape, or form. We look at the women. They were the first to go and see the empty tomb.

They were the first to talk about his resurrection. Joseph of Arimathea took care of the Lord and loved the Lord and took care of his body after he died. The disciples, as I said, ran.

Peter denied him three times. The others ran and hid. Thomas, and we may be too hard on Thomas, but we know that Thomas doubted.

He said, I’m not going to believe it. Even though Jesus had said, destroy this temple and I’ll raise it again in three days. Thomas said, I’m not going to believe it until I see the nail prints.

The disciples, you read the story, and again, I say we may be too hard on them because we probably, a lot of us probably, would have done the same things they did. But you read the story and they don’t come off well. They don’t look good in their account.

Why on earth would they make up a lie that makes them look so bad? You know what? I will admit to you, I’m not an expert.

I’m not a scientist. I’m not a psychologist. But everything I know about human behavior says the only reason they would have written it down this way is because this is the way it actually happened. This story is just way too inconvenient for them for it to be a lie about the empty tomb and the burial. The accounts of the empty tomb, folks, leave no plausible suspects to fake it. You think about it like a crime.

Who took the body? Who got the body out of the tomb? What suspects are there that could have possibly done it?

Because they’ve said from the very beginning, they said they were worried about the disciples coming and stealing the body. And people today who claim that the resurrection never happened say, well, somebody came in and stole the body. The disciples stole the body and made it up.

Okay. There’s no explanation that makes sense. There’s nobody, there’s no suspect who could have stolen the body where this story makes sense.

The Roman soldiers would not fake it. The Roman soldiers would not fake it. They had no reason to.

Their purpose there was to keep the body secure and to keep order. The Romans did not like disorder. And if the body left that tomb, then there was going to be a religious ruckus breakout in Jerusalem between the followers of Jesus and the opponents of Jesus.

They did not want that. The Romans had no motivation. They had no motive to steal the body.

They wouldn’t have faked it. And quite honestly, the Roman soldiers who were derelict of duty could have been put to death. They had no reason to fake this and say, oh, we fell asleep.

The disciples did not fake it. They’re the suspects most frequently accused. But they didn’t fake it.

And the reason I know that is because people will die for a lie, but they won’t usually die for what they know to be a lie. The disciples all died as martyrs, except for John and Judas. Ten of the eleven died as martyrs rather than deny the empty tomb.

Well, how do you put that with followers of other religions who die as martyrs? Well, they weren’t there at the founding of the religion. They’re not eyewitnesses.

Somebody straps a bomb to their chest and blows themselves up in a marketplace in Jerusalem as a martyr doesn’t impress me about their faith. Because, yeah, they’re willing to die for it, but they weren’t there when Muhammad wrote the things down. They didn’t see the beginning.

They weren’t eyewitnesses. They don’t know based on their own eyewitness account whether it’s true or not. These men were there and said they saw Jesus again alive.

They said they saw the empty tomb. They said they knew this firsthand, and yet they were killed rather than deny it. And you would think at some point, if there was some grand conspiracy where they all got together and said, let’s steal the body, let’s steal the body and make up the greatest story anybody’s ever heard and will be famous, you would think under the kind of torture that the Romans and the Jews and everybody else would have put them through, you would think under that kind of torture, somebody is going to break, and somebody’s going to talk, and somebody’s going to deny it.

But none of them ever did. Judas went and killed himself before this ever took place, and 10 of the remaining 11 except for John died as martyrs, and John even spent the rest of his life in persecution rather than deny it. It’s a man named J.

P. Moreland, who’s a seminary professor. And he wrote that Muslims might be willing to die for their belief that Allah revealed himself to Muhammad, but this revelation was not done in a publicly observable way.

So they could be wrong about it. They may sincerely think it’s true, but they can’t know for a fact because they didn’t witness it themselves. However, the apostles were willing to die for something they had seen with their own eyes and touched with their own hands.

That’s the difference. And there wasn’t fame, there wasn’t money in it. you might think, well, if they had a strong enough motivation, I don’t know that there’s anything strong enough to motivate me against the kind of torment that we talked about last week.

But he writes, it’s not as though there were a mansion awaiting them on the Mediterranean. They faced a life of hardship. They often went without food, slept, exposed to the elements, were ridiculed, beaten, imprisoned, and finally most of them were executed in torturous ways.

For what? Good intentions? No, because they were convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt that they had seen Jesus Christ alive from the dead.

There is no other adequate explanation. I would agree with that. There’s no other explanation for them dying the way they did for what they saw.

So the disciples, come on, it’s not even a question. They didn’t fake it. The Jews would not fake it.

Why would the Jews steal the body? They wanted to prove that he was still dead. It makes no sense for them to steal the body and start the rumor.

And even if they had, they could just produce the body and say, see, he’s still dead. That one makes no sense. The Roman authorities, just like the Roman soldiers, the Roman authorities would not fake it.

They had no motive. It would have caused an uproar, and they wanted to keep that from happening. The women could not fake it.

This idea that the women overpowered the Roman guards and rolled that big rock away from the entrance is. . .

They were not Charlie’s angels, okay? These were regular women. They could not fake it.

And believing Jesus faked it takes even more faith than the resurrection.

believing that Jesus faked it takes even more faith than the resurrection there’s this idea that grew up in the late 1800’s early 1900’s called the swoon theory and the idea was that Jesus didn’t really die on the cross he just sort of went into a comatose state and then they stuck him in the tomb and he laid there and he revived in the peace and quiet of the tomb his condition improved and he walked out three days later that is insane I’m sorry I know I know that’s not much of an argument to just call it a name but that to me is insane and yet it’s brilliant people from a hundred years ago who thought this here’s the problem we know that he was beaten so severely that he’d lost huge quantities of blood you don’t just get better from that on your own without medical attention huge quantities of blood hypovolemic shock he would have been incredibly weak if not killed just from the lack of blood alone it would have killed him without medical attention.

Plus we know that he was stabbed through the heart with a spear. We’re going to talk about that later. This swoon theory says that Jesus wasn’t God enough to rise from the dead.

He wasn’t powerful enough to rise from the dead. But it has no problem assuming that he was strong enough to survive the shock, the suffocation, the cardiac arrest, and just pass out and wake up in a dark, damp cave alone without medical attention. and thinks that with that he was strong enough to single-handedly roll back the massive boulder from the doorway, overpower the detachment of Roman soldiers, and present such a triumphant appearance that he convinced his followers that he was actually alive again from the dead.

I’m sorry, is there a gas leak in the universities in this country that people actually believed this idea? That takes more faith than believing he rose again from the dead. You’ve got to be more impressed with the power and the might of Jesus Christ with that story than believing he rose again from the dead.

I mean, at that point, no wonder the centurion said, surely this is the Son of God. Okay? That didn’t happen.

There is no.. . I’m sorry, I will tell you, I do not have enough faith to believe that Jesus didn’t actually rise from the dead.

It takes more faith to believe that story than to believe the actual resurrection. The authorities couldn’t deny the empty tomb. They couldn’t say, well, everybody knew where Jesus had been buried.

Okay, something like that happens. Everybody’s going to know where it took place. They knew where he was buried.

But they never even tried to deny the empty tomb. They never came out and said, no, the tomb is not empty. That would have been so easy.

Think about how easy it was if everybody just got confused and the story went around that Jesus rose again from the dead and he really didn’t. Could the authorities not just come and show everybody the right tomb? Here’s the tomb.

Here’s the body. That would have shut all of this down. but the problem for them was there was no body to produce there was no body to produce that’s why they never produced one because the tomb was empty there was no body do you hear me on this?

there was no body in the tomb and we see that there was a cover up instead of a denial they never denied it they never said the tomb’s not empty they just said well let’s come up with another story about it if you look in in Matthew chapter 28 verse 13 the Jewish leaders tried to bribe did bribe the Roman guards and they said, say ye, his disciples came by night and stole him away while we slept. The Jews and Romans tried to cover up. They tried to come up with another explanation for the empty tomb but they never tried to deny it.

They just, the Jewish leaders said, 

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