Message Information
- Key Scriptures: 1 Corinthians 15:14-20, NASB
- Series: Individual Messages (2023), no. 2
- Date: Sunday, April 9, 2023 (Morning)
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
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The Question of Evidence
We spend a lot of time at our house talking about evidence and reality, probably because Charla and I are a little warped in that direction. We are probably warping the minds of our kids too. It can be as mundane as asking who broke the lamp. Of course, everybody blames Nobody and Not Me. They are our worst children, Nobody and Not Me. Next thing you know, Charla is cross-examining everybody, and I am making charts and timelines.
It is not because we are that worried about the lamp. We just want to know the story of what happened. We want to know what really happened. It can be something that mundane, or it can be something as consequential as trying to help one of our children navigate the waters of how we can tell him monsters are not real because he cannot see them, while also telling him Jesus is real even though he cannot see Jesus. So we try to talk on a very child-friendly level about evidence.
We talk about evidence. We talk about reality. I do not know about you, but I do not want to believe a lie. Sometimes we might find it a little comforting to believe a lie in the short term, but in the long run, I would rather be comforted by the truth, even if the truth is a little uncomfortable at first.
One of my greatest obsessions in life is the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. That goes back to going off to college when I was eighteen years old and walking into a freshman philosophy class because that was all I could get into. Everything else was booked. That should have been my first clue that this was not going to go well.
I walked into one of those classes thinking I knew everything, and that professor ate me alive, along with so many others, by talking about how Christianity is a fairy tale. He said all religions are fairy tales. They are all just based on feeling. There is nothing in them that you can evaluate to see whether they are true. It is all subjective and non-factual. There is no way you could ever know if it was true, so you might as well move on from this nonsense.
I thought, “That does not sound right.” As I studied further, I realized Christianity comes with its own test baked right in. There is something that separates Christianity from every other religion and every other philosophy, and I believe it is the key to knowing that Christianity is the truth. That key is the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Why the Resurrection Matters
It is not my opinion. It is not just this church’s position. It is in God’s Word: if the resurrection did not happen, there is no point to any of this. We can pack it up and go home.
First Corinthians chapter 15 is where we are going to start this morning, and it is where we are going to finish up. One of the things Paul points out in 1 Corinthians 15, as he explains the importance of the resurrection, is that the resurrection is either true or it is not. If it is true, then Christianity is true, and you better take Jesus seriously. If it is false, then none of this has any meaning.
This morning, I want to go through a little bit of the evidence. It is all circumstantial, and I will grant you that. Unfortunately, we do not have video of the empty tomb. They did not have that in that day. Historical records are a little sparse, but historical records are sparse for just about everything from the ancient world.
Still, there is a ton of evidence that leads us to the empty tomb. I do not have time to go into all of it this morning. A couple of years ago, I spent four consecutive Sundays talking about the evidence and still did not get to the end of all of it. I have written my dissertation on evidence for the resurrection. I am in the middle of writing two books on evidence for the resurrection because one was not going to be enough.
I do not say that to say, “Look at me.” I say that to tell you, “Look at all the evidence there is.” We cover some of that from time to time as it comes up. But today I want to look at three overlooked clues that give us reason to think the resurrection is true. These are three historical pieces of evidence that point to the truth of the resurrection.
We begin in 1 Corinthians chapter 15, where Paul talks about the importance of the resurrection. Starting in verse 14, he says, “And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is vain, your faith also is vain.” That word “vain” means empty or meaningless. I am telling you, not because I say so but because the Bible says so, that if the resurrection is not true, then everything we are doing here is meaningless.
Paul continues, “Moreover we are even found to be false witnesses of God, because we testified against God that He raised Christ, whom He did not raise, if in fact the dead are not raised.” Paul says that if Jesus did not rise from the dead, then we are false witnesses about what God has done. We are telling lies about God. “For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised; and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.”
He goes on: “Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If we have hoped in Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied.” He says that if Christ is not raised, then those you know who have gone on before have just died. They have just ceased to exist. And if the only hope we have in Christ is in this life, if the only point is that he sets a good example and teaches us how to live and be nice, then we are the most miserable of all men.
Then he says in verse 20, “But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep.” You may be sitting there saying, “Where is the evidence in that?” That is not the evidence. That explains why all of this matters. Without the resurrection of Christ, Christianity is little more than a self-help program from some guy who got himself killed.
I think it is important that we go over this because our world has grown increasingly hostile toward Christianity over the last couple of generations. There was never a golden age when everything was perfect, but over the last few generations, our world has grown more openly hostile. I think churches, by and large, have let these things go unanswered too often when there are answers to the objections. We have let the world around us think Christianity is just a subjective faith, something we believe because we feel it.
Some of you may be Christians because you feel it is true. I am glad you are here. I am glad you think it is true. But I do not want you to leave here merely feeling like it is true. I want you to know that it is true. Insofar as we can know anything from 2,000 years ago, I want you to know it is true. I want you to have reason for why you believe it is true.
Maybe you are here this morning because you do not particularly believe in Jesus, but somebody dragged you here, and you came along just to humor them. We are glad you are here too. I want to give you something to think about. It may not fully convince you, but if it convinces you that there may be more to this than you have considered before, then I have done my job.
These are not the only pieces of evidence. But I think these three are fairly compelling, and they are all too often overlooked.
The First Clue: Peter’s Transformation
These are pieces of evidence that almost all historians agree are true. Dr. Gary Habermas, who teaches at Liberty University, is one of the foremost experts on the resurrection. I want to be him when I grow up. He has compiled a database of every scholarly piece of writing on the resurrection since 1975. He talks about how these facts, along with others that make up what he calls the minimal facts argument, have been agreed upon by virtually every scholar of virtually every viewpoint. Evangelical, liberal, atheist—it does not matter. They generally agree that these facts are basically historically accurate.
The first one I want to take you to is the transformation of Peter. The Apostle Peter’s entire life was turned upside down. That is not simply taught in the Bible; it is agreed upon by historians. We do see evidence of this in the Bible, which is our primary source, although there are other historical records from church tradition and other sources that deal with Peter.
As we have studied through the book of Mark, we have already seen some of the things that took place in Peter’s life and what kind of man he was initially. He thought he was a brave man. He wanted to be a courageous man. But all too often, he fell short of that. When he was challenged, he would fold and cower.
He boasted to Jesus at the Last Supper about his courage. Even after Jesus warned him that he would not be able to withstand what was coming, Peter boasted and said in Matthew 26:33, “Even if they all fall away because of You, I will never fall away.” When Jesus said, “I am going to be betrayed, and you are all going to scatter,” Peter looked at everybody else in the room and said, “They will all deny you, but I never will.”
Then almost in the next breath—not literally, because it was a few hours later, but not days or weeks down the road—Jesus was arrested. They all scattered like Jesus said they would. Peter followed at a distance to the place where Jesus was being questioned before the official trial. Three times, just like Jesus said he would, Peter denied Jesus.
Peter was the man who had said he would be courageous and would go and die with Jesus. But then he cowered in fear at the mere suggestion that he even knew Jesus. Matthew 26:70 says, “But he denied it before them all, saying, ‘I do not know what you are talking about.’” They said, “You know Jesus, don’t you?” He said, “I do not know what you are talking about.”
Then again, in Matthew 26:72, he is asked a second time about it. I think there was probably a lot of chaos going on at this pretrial. Different groups of people were around, and Peter was moving around the room. He would get in the midst of a group, and three or four or five people might ask him questions at a time. “Wait, are you one of them? You are one of them too, aren’t you?” And he thinks, “I have been spotted over here,” so he goes to mingle with another part of the crowd.
He comes to another part of the crowd, and they ask him, “Don’t you know Jesus?” At one point they even say, “We can tell you are with him because you have a Galilean accent. It gives you away.” Again, he denied it with an oath: “I do not know the man.” The idea of an oath means he was swearing. “I swear I do not know him. I pinky promise I do not know the man.” He is trying to save his skin.
Then, a few verses later in Matthew 26:74, they ask him a third time, “Do you know Jesus?” It says he began to curse and to swear: “I do not know the man.” He is bringing out the big words to let people know he is serious that he does not know Jesus.
Later, after Jesus has been crucified and his body is being taken down for burial, Peter is nowhere to be found. He is nowhere mentioned in any of the accounts of the burial. The people we know were there include Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and a group of women led by Mary Magdalene, some of whom are named. Peter is nowhere to be found. Jesus is dead, and Peter is off hiding somewhere.
John 20:19 tells us that Peter was later hidden away in a locked room with the other disciples because of fear. In the days after the crucifixion, Peter hid. The others did too, but this morning we are talking about Peter. He hid. They locked themselves up because they were afraid.
Please do not think I am knocking Peter here, because any of us could have just as easily been in that situation. But I want you to see where he was before so you understand the transformation that took place. When Jesus rose from the dead and the story began to get out that the tomb was empty, nobody had seen his body yet, but the tomb was empty and the angel had spoken to the women and told them that he was not there. The word starts to get back to Peter, and Peter does not believe it.
Luke 24 says, “These words appeared to them as nonsense, and they would not believe the women.” How many times have we read in Mark that Jesus said, “I am going to be crucified, I am going to be buried, and three days later I am going to rise again”? Everything up to this point has fallen into place the way Jesus said it would. Yet when they come with the story that he has risen from the dead, Peter thinks it is nonsense.
When he does go and check out the empty tomb, it says he goes home marveling at what had happened. He was confused. So this is not a man of great faith who was anticipating Jesus coming back. That is who Peter was before: a man full of bluster and bravado, who, when the chips were down, would fold and go home. He was someone who did not have Jesus’ back.
But who was Peter afterward? Peter was a fearless advocate of Jesus Christ. On the day of Pentecost in Acts chapter 2, he stands in front of a group of people in Jerusalem, many of whom were part of the crowd that cried out for Jesus’ blood. He gives one of the first recorded sermons in the history of the church.
Some of the things he said to them that day were blunt. He confronted them for what they had done. He did not get up and give them the soft sell. He shucked the corn and told them what they had done. He said they had murdered Jesus. On top of that, he said, “You are not just murderers; you are bad at it, because it did not do what you intended. You murdered him, but Jesus rose from the dead.”
Then he said, “Now you need to repent. You are wrong, and you need to repent. You need to turn to Jesus. The one you crucified—you need to run to him.” Talk about a confrontational message.
Later on, Peter goes to a crowd at the temple in Acts chapter 3 and does the same thing. He confronts the people again about their sin and how they had turned on Jesus. He goes to a group of the Jewish religious authorities who had orchestrated all of this in Acts chapter 4 and takes the same message to them. He goes to a group of the Sanhedrin, the group that got together and condemned Jesus and took him to the Romans, in Acts chapter 5. He confronts them with the same message.
We see a Peter who had cowered in fear like a whipped dog before, now turned into somebody who is not backing down. He does not care what you throw at him afterward. He preached about Jesus and the resurrection in Acts chapter 10 to Roman military leaders. Historians tell us that he was crucified when he refused to stop preaching this message. Clement of Rome and Tertullian of Carthage write about how he went to his death proclaiming that Jesus died and rose again.
That is a pretty dramatic change. By the time we are adults, our personality is pretty well set, absent some kind of cataclysmic change. For somebody’s personality to change completely overnight, you need a pretty good explanation. Something enormous has to have happened in that person’s life.
What happened in Peter’s life? He tells us. In that sermon in Acts chapter 2 and in several other places, he tells us what had happened. He saw Jesus alive. He said in Acts 2:32, “God has raised this Jesus,” talking about the one they had crucified a couple of months before. He said, “God has raised this Jesus, and we are all witnesses.” He is saying, “We have all seen it. I have seen him alive.”
Have you ever been in a situation where you know you are right, and you are not backing down? That is where Peter was about the idea that Jesus had risen from the dead. He saw Jesus die. He saw the empty tomb. Then he met with the risen Jesus at least six times. Whatever we think happened on that morning of the resurrection, whatever we think happened at that tomb, it has to be sufficient to explain the transformation that took place in Peter.
The Second Clue: James’s Conversion
Tonight in the Living Lord’s Supper, you are going to see two Jameses. This is not one of them. This is a third James. Jesus’s own brother changed his mind about Jesus being God.
I have always found this one particularly interesting. If you have a sibling, what would it take to convince you that your sibling is God? Think about that for a minute. What would it take to convince you?
James changed his mind. Consider how James viewed Jesus before. He was skeptical of Jesus’s claims. He thought Jesus was crazy, or at least crazy from overwork. John 7:5 tells us, “For not even His brothers believed in Him.”
Part of the reason we know this is true is because James later becomes a leader in the church. Nobody would want to embarrass James and say, “He was skeptical. He was not a believer,” if it were not true. You did not make up stories that put the church leadership in a bad light. That is one of the reasons we know many of these details in the Gospels are true. They make them look foolish. The only reason to include these things in the story is because they really happened.
John tells us James did not believe in Jesus. James was included in a group of family members who came to Jesus when Mark records that they came to take him home. Jesus was out healing and teaching and doing miracles. Mark chapter 3 says, “Jesus entered a house, and the crowd gathered again, so that they could not even eat a meal.” There were so many people around waiting to hear Jesus.
When his family heard this, they had had enough. It says they set out to restrain him because they said, “He has lost His senses.” Jesus’s family thought he was crazy in the beginning. Later in the chapter, they tried to take him home.
James starts out believing, as I think all of us would if our sibling claimed to be God or started a religious movement and claimed to be sent by God. We would think they were crazy, right? We would probably try to intervene like James did.
I have already given you a clue as to who James turned out to be. Afterward, James became one of the most prominent leaders in the Jerusalem church. There is a historian named Hegesippus who tells us that he is not the same as James the Greater or James the Less. He is not the son of Alphaeus or the son of Zebedee. The James who became the leader of the church is the brother of Jesus.
After the resurrection and the ascension, the book of Acts tells us that James was part of the group that gathered in Jerusalem and waited for the Holy Spirit to come. So even before the church really gets off the ground, James is with the disciples, waiting for the Holy Spirit so he can be there at Pentecost. When Peter got out of prison in Acts chapter 12, Peter says to send word to the church, and he specifically mentions James: “Go tell James that I am out of prison.”
In Acts chapter 15, there is a council at Jerusalem when the church at Antioch started having trouble about whether believers had to be circumcised and follow these rules in addition to Jesus. Did they have to do all these rituals, or was Jesus enough? They called all the leaders together at Jerusalem and asked, “What is the answer here? What do we do?”
We have the record that they got up and deliberated. They discussed. They talked back and forth. James speaks more than anybody, including Peter, and probably sways the discussion more than anybody, including Peter. People say, “Peter was the head of the church after Jesus.” Not according to James. In Jerusalem, they all followed James.
You might say, “I might say my brother was awesome too if it got me all that power.” Let me tell you what he got for all his power and all his influence. Multiple historians tell us that James, the brother of Jesus, refused to quit preaching who his brother was and what his brother had done. As a result, he was thrown off a high point in the temple complex. When that did not kill him, the members of the Sanhedrin got down there and clubbed him to death.
The idea that he did it for power and influence does not fly with me. James started out believing, as any of us probably would, that his brother was crazy. Then, all of a sudden, he believes his brother is God. I go back to that question: what would it take to convince me that my sibling is God? I cannot even imagine. It would have to be pretty big.
History tells us what happened in the meantime. He saw Jesus. He had been dead. He had been buried. Suddenly, he was up and walking around again. James saw that, and it was enough to convince him about this brother he had been so skeptical about.
The Third Clue: An Early Creed
This is not what anybody calls it, as far as I know, other than me: the Corinthian Creed. I use that as shorthand, not because it came from Corinth, but because it is recorded in the book of 1 Corinthians. The Corinthian Creed shows us that the resurrection story is as old as it could possibly be. This idea that it was a legend that came up decades, if not centuries, later is just not true.
Paul writes in 1 Corinthians, just before the section we read earlier, at the beginning of 1 Corinthians chapter 15, something about the resurrection that scholars across the theological spectrum and historians across the spectrum recognize as an early Christian statement of faith. It is an early creed they would memorize and recite to reinforce what they believed.
Here is what he said, starting in 1 Corinthians 15:3: “For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that He appeared to Cephas,” that is Peter, “then to the twelve. After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep; then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles.”
In this statement, this creed that records what happened and what the earliest Christians believed, Paul emphasizes four crucial points that are essential to what we believe about the resurrection. Jesus died. Jesus was buried. That is important, because if he was not buried, then of course the empty tomb was empty. But he died, he was buried, he rose from the dead, and he was seen alive again after rising.
Gary Habermas, whom I mentioned earlier, said, “Virtually all scholars agree that 1 Corinthians 15:3 and following records an ancient oral tradition that reports the gospel data.” He is talking about Jesus Christ’s atoning death, burial, resurrection, and appearances to many persons. Although the Apostle Paul wrote the passage, this is not material he invented. It is actually much older than the book where it is recounted.
Elsewhere, Habermas writes that this confession is an early Christian, pre-Pauline creed. “Pre-Pauline” means before Paul. It is recognized by virtually all critical scholars across a very wide theological spectrum. What does that mean?
The evidence from the text itself tells us Paul wrote this letter around AD 54, after he had been in the city of Corinth with them in the year 51. In verse 3, he tells us he delivered to them what he had received. So Paul is saying, “I told you this back in AD 51.” That tells us the Corinthian Creed was no more than eighteen years after the death of Jesus Christ. This was not a legend that came about centuries later. This was the teaching of Christianity no later than eighteen years after Jesus died, the belief that he rose again from the dead.
But it goes further than that. Paul says he received this. He would have learned this during his time with believers in either Damascus or Jerusalem, which is recorded in Acts and Galatians. But the phrasing of the creed, the fact that he mentions James, and the fact that he uses Peter’s Aramaic name tell us he most likely learned this in Jerusalem.
We know from history that Paul was converted and became a follower of Jesus Christ in AD 34, about a year after the crucifixion. It was three years later, around AD 37, that Paul went to Jerusalem to meet with the apostles. That tells us the Corinthian Creed, this belief in the resurrection, comes from no later than four years after the death of Jesus.
Habermas actually says we can go back two stages earlier. The tradition would have been formulated before Paul first heard it, and the creed itself would be dated even earlier. Additionally, the independent beliefs that later composed the formalized creed would date back to the actual historical events. Therefore, we are dealing with material that proceeds directly from the events in question. This creed is crucial in our discussion of the death and resurrection of Jesus.
That tells us this statement of belief goes back to the immediate aftermath of the discovery of the empty tomb. This is not something people made up hundreds of years later. This is what the people who were there in Jerusalem when it happened actually believed and staked their lives on. You can disagree with them if you want, but you cannot say they made it up later.
I have read writers who say it was not early enough for legend to develop. We see fake news and false stories all the time, so it may not have been too soon for legend to develop, but it was too soon for legend to dominate. There are people now, about eighty years later, trying to tell us the Holocaust did not happen, but there are still people alive who saw it and can set that to rest. That is why the legend does not dominate.
This goes back no more than four years, and in all likelihood, to the immediate aftermath of the empty tomb. This was what they believed. This is what they taught. This is what they were willing to die for. A lot of people today die for things they believe to be true that are not true, but people do not usually die for things they know to be untrue.
What the Evidence Means
So what does this evidence mean? What does all of this mean for you? In these three clues, we have two men whose lives were changed in dramatic ways that can only be justified by extraordinary events. Something major had to happen to transform Peter’s entire personality and to convince James that his brother was God.
As I said, virtually all historians accept those basic facts. And we have an extraordinary explanation for them. It was not that somebody came along hundreds of years later and said, “We have to explain this somehow.” The explanation comes from right after the event. It is simply too early to be legendary in the sense of later legend taking over the movement.
I would love to say we have video. I would love to roll the footage of Jesus walking out of the tomb. We do not have that footage. Everything we have from the ancient world is circumstantial. But there is a lot we know and conclude to be true from the ancient world based on piles of circumstantial evidence.
Whatever we think happened that morning outside the empty tomb, it has to be able to account for Peter. It has to be able to account for James. It has to be able to account for that creed. I have not heard an alternative explanation yet that covers all the bases. It is because of pieces of evidence like this, including these and others like them, that I am as sure as I can be about something that happened 2,000 years ago: Jesus Christ walked out of the tomb alive three days after he had been crucified and put there.
The Hope of the Risen Christ
If the resurrection is true, then it confirms everything Jesus said about himself. If the resurrection is true, then Jesus is our Lord. If the resurrection is true, then Jesus is our Savior. If the resurrection is true, then he is our only hope.
As verse 20, which we read earlier in 1 Corinthians 15, says, he is the first fruits. If Jesus Christ rose from the dead, then he is merely the first of many who will rise from the dead. When he rose from the dead, it was after the crucifixion where he spilled his blood to pay for our sins. Everything wrong you and I have ever said, done, or thought that was offensive to God put Jesus Christ on that cross, and he took responsibility for it.
We could never be good enough to earn our place in God’s good graces. So Jesus Christ took the blame. He took the responsibility. He paid for it. Three days later, he stepped out of that tomb, proving that he could do what he claimed and conquering death on our behalf.
Because of what Jesus Christ did, our sins can be forgiven. That payment he made can be applied to us. We can be forgiven. We can go free. We can be raised to new life with him one day.
He has proved it. He showed us that he had done everything necessary for us. That forgiveness and that eternal life are available to you this morning. It is not about going to church. It is not about being a good person. Those things are good, but you and I can never do enough good to erase the wrong we have done or to earn for ourselves what Jesus earned for us.
We are separated from a holy God by our sin, and the only way out is through a Savior who shed his blood, paid for our sins, and rose again to prove it. All you have to do this morning is believe that Jesus is who he claimed to be, that he did what he said he came to do, and ask God’s forgiveness because Jesus has already paid for it.