Gospel's Invincible Evidence

1 CORINTHIANS 15

The Gospel's Invincible Evidence

There are a few organs in your body that you can live without, apparently. Melissa, my daughter-in-law, in common with others of you, is living without her gall bladder. You can live without your appendix, your tonsils, your spleen, various other bits also. These bits are helpful and do a job, but you can live a long and healthy life without them.

There are other bits without which you can't live, at least not for very long. Your heart, your brain, your liver, your lungs. You can be kept alive by a machine, but it can hardly be called living.

There are some bits of the Gospel that are good and important, but we can live without them. We could get along without having the Lord's Supper like the Salvation Army. We could manage without elders like many Baptist churches. We could manage without a formal membership list like many of the newer churches. But there are some things without which we can't manage. Without these vital things the Gospel dies and the life of the church eventually perishes. It can be kept alive artificially for a long time, but it's not really what you'd call life.

One of these vital organs is the truth of the resurrection of the body. All the way through his first letter to the Corinthians the Apostle Paul's been addressing issue after issue in the life of the Corinthian church. And over and over he's dealt with these matters in the light of the world to come.

The life and behaviour of God's people in this age, should be shaped and directed by the life of the age to come. As the Christians were taking each other to court over personal disputes, the apostle asks them, do you not know that you WILL judge angels? As he himself was assaulted by waves of personal criticism about his ministry he stood his ground saying, It is the Lord who judges me, therefore, judge nothing before the appointed time. And so on.

So, by the time he gets to chapter 15 the incredible importance of the future world for Christian discipleship in this world is well and truly in focus. And the apostle adopts this method of build up to chapter 15 because the new preachers in Corinth were stripping the doctrine of the future resurrection of the body out of the Gospel. And this mighty chapter consolidates all he's said before by insisting that the resurrection of the body is one of the Gospel's vital organs. Take this out and the Gospel dies.

Paul's logic from the beginning of this chapter is that if Jesus Christ didn't rise from physical death then there IS no Christian message. He's saying that the Gospel has an irreducible content - Christ died for our sins according the Scriptures, he was buried, he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. You can't reduce this message because you reduce the Gospel of God. Take the future resurrection of the body out of the Gospel and you put yourself under the judgement of God.

So, if the Christian church died without the resurrection of Jesus which guarantees the future resurrection of those who trust Christ, it stands to reason that the resurrection of Jesus from death needs to stand on sure foundations.

The more important a thing is, the more sure you need to be that it's built on solid foundations. Next time you fly out of an international airport terminal you're truly trusting that the plane's been serviced and the security checks have been properly done.

The Gospel's Foundational Evidence

It's quite common for Hollywood to portray religious faith as the opposite of scientific knowledge. It's an old mistake. I saw a film some time  ago for the second time. It was on the television. It's a Jodie Foster film in which Miss Foster plays the part of a woman of science who's particularly interested in the probability of life existing in other parts of the Universe. One of the other main characters played by Matthew McConaughey, is a man of faith who believes in God. The tired old modern cliche comes through several times that faith believes in something that can't be proved, whereas science proceeds by knowledge based on fact, observation, and proof.

As one point Foster's character says, What is more likely? That an all-powerful mysterious God created the Universe and then decided not to give any proof of His existence, or that He simply does not exist at all?

Well, the assertion of the Bible is that Christianity is founded on an important branch of evidence. It's founded on two things. The first is verified prediction and the second is eye-witness testimony. And it's that second one that I'm interested in exploring now.

When Paul is describing the things he received and passed on to the Corinthians as of first importance he says about Jesus, that he was raised the third day according to the Scriptures, AND - AND. He's not finished. There's something he taught as part of the things of first importance. AND he appeared to Peter, and then to the Twelve, then to more than 500 most of whom are still living, then to James, last of all he appeared to me.

So, as part of his one true Gospel he preached evidence. Eye-witness testimony. I'm telling you, he says, that the body of Jesus, which was most certainly dead, not only came to life again, but was raised to a new kind of life. It was the same body, it was recognizable, but it was transformed into a new kind of body ready for a new kind of world, the future world. And if you don't believe me, get the boat to Israel and go interview the witnesses. Check out the story. Ask any and every question, they'll tell you what they saw, heard and touched with their hands.

Two of them walked along the road with the risen Lord Jesus. He spoke at length with them, he sat down at a meal with them, prayed with them, and then revealed to their tired hearts that it really was him, the risen Lord.

A bunch of them had breakfast with the risen Lord as they'd done many times before on the shores of the sea of Galilee.

These people are credible witnesses. They tell the same story but in their own words and with their own style. They've been accused of having discrepancies in their accounts, but at least they didn't get together to tell exactly the same story word for word.

But the core and heart of their eye-witness testimony is the same. The Lord Jesus rose from death on the third day. And they were so convinced of the reality of what they'd seen that they based their lives on it. They'd heard the Lord Jesus predict that he would rise from death and they hadn't really believed him. But here they were on the third day and in the midst of their hopeless despair he revealed himself to them as risen, alive from the dead. And to prove he wasn't a ghost he ate something there in front of them and invited them to put their fingers into the holes left by nails in his hands and feet.

And those same men and women went out willing to die in the cause of the risen Christ. This is the Gospel's foundational evidence. They became witnesses to evidence. We live so much of our daily lives on the basis of credible eye-witnesses. You ask someone directions to Woolworths, "Oh yes, she says, I shop there often. Go first right and second left and it's there in front of you". Almost every court case in the land stands or falls on eye-witness evidence. So, does the case for the Christian message.

There's a lovely old chorus we used to sing in the old days:-

He lives, He lives,

Christ Jesus lives today;

He walks with me and He talks with me

along life's narrow way.

He lives, he lives,

salvation to impart,

you ask me how I know he lives,

he lives within my heart.

There's something lovely about that chorus that warms us. But it's not the foundational evidence upon which the Gospel rests. We can't go to an unbelieving world and say I know Jesus Christ is alive because he lives in my heart. There are all sorts of religions in which the disciples say the same thing about their guru or religious teacher.

We know that Jesus is alive for ever because the witnesses saw him, not because we feel him. And if they didn't see him, what we feel would be nothing more than a fiction. A lovely, helpful but misguided fiction.

That's why the Apostle John thought it important to write like this when he sent his first letter to the churches; 1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched--this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. 2 The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. 3 We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. 1 John 1:1-3

He rose again the third day according to the predictions of Scripture and he appeared to Peter. It's history. It's the most carefully recorded and accurate history written in ancient times.

Most of the people I've talked to over the years have dismissed the claims of Jesus Christ without looking at and listening to the evidence. "It's all religious nonsense" they say, and yet they've never bothered to consider the evidence.

If that's how you react to Christianity, imagine how you'd feel if you were in the dock in a court of law and the judge said, "Never mind the evidence, you're going to gaol anyway! Take him down."

Frank Morrison was an agnostic journalist. He wanted to write a book about the resurrection of Jesus. He already had his conclusions. It wasn't true, it didn't happen. So, he set out to research and read and think completely convinced that he would discover the evidence to justify his conclusions. And he ended up convinced by evidence that Jesus Christ rose from the grave.

Gilbert West and Lord Lyttleton were two Oxford students. They believed that Christianity was a "tale gone mad" and they determined to refute the Christian faith. Lyttleton set out to disprove the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, and West would refute the resurrection of Jesus Christ. They assumed that a careful, rational, examination of the evidence would easily disprove the Christian faith.

But after examining the evidence” they both separately came to the opposite conclusion! Lyttleton concluded that Saul of Tarsus did, in fact, convert to Jesus Christ. And Gilbert West concluded that the Resurrection of Jesus Christ was among the best established facts in all of history! West went on to write a book entitled, "Observations on the History and Evidences of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ".

He WAS seen by Peter. It's history. The eye-witnesses are reliable and believable. As I come towards the end let me call two last witnesses whose lives are strangely linked.

The first is a doctor, called Luke. He was a man committed to gathering evidence. He eventually became a companion of the Apostle Paul. Concerning the story of Jesus Christ he wrote - I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, it seemed good to me to write an orderly account so that you might know the certainty of the things you have been taught. Luke wrote the Gospel of Luke and also the Acts of the Apostles. The Acts of the Apostles is based on the reality of the resurrection of Jesus. It begins with the resurrection and is the story of the church that went out into a hostile world to preach the resurrection.

Luke records political, geographical, nautical, sociological, and military facts from his travels in the Middle East. He records little details like names and dates as well as big stories.

Now, along with Dr Luke let me remind you of the story of Sir William Ramsey. He had an academic career as distinguished as any. Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology at Oxford. Regis Professor of Humanity at Aberdeen. Three honorary fellowships from Oxford colleges. Honorary doctorates from nine universities. One of the original members of the Royal Academy. He became one of the world's leading archaeologists, and the world's leading authority on Asia Minor. He dug up a lot of Turkey in his time.

He was convinced when he set out on his travels that he would discover lots of mistakes and errors in the writings of Dr Luke, especially the Acts of the Apostles. He was going to look for evidence. And no man did it more thoroughly.

Ramsay found that Luke had got everything right even down to the titles used by politicians in town councils. Immaculate accuracy. He said, "You may press the words of Luke in a degree beyond any other historian's and they stand the keenest scrutiny and the hardest treatment".

He tested the evidence and found it to be utterly reliable.

Now I ask you this. If Luke was immaculately careful about recording the finest details with integrity and accuracy, do you think he was a complete liar when it came to the foundational purpose for which he wrote his book - the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Would a man whose devotion to truth had gained the admiration of many of the world's greatest minds, be a liar in the most important thing in his life.

I feel justified in my title, the Gospel's invincible evidence. He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures and was seen by Peter.

And if Jesus Christ rose from death to declare himself the King of God's eternal kingdom, then he has a divine right to call you to become his disciple. As your life moves towards its close, some of us this year, some next, some in several decades, there's only one religious leader who claimed he could rise from death and did. The evidence is all in his favour. I call you to consider the evidence, to examine his claims.

The greatest weekend in history was the Friday when God's only begotten Son died for your sins on the Cross. He said he would and he did. He said he would rise up from death on the third day and he did. He's won the right to pardon your sins and make you right with God. He's proved he has the right by conquering death. These things were written so that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ, and in believing have life through his name.