The Death & Resurrection of Jesus

Introduction

Who loves history?

How do we know if something happened in the past?

As Christians, we have a faith that is not like other religions for a lot of reasons....

What are some of the ways Christianity is different?

In Christianity you can’t earn your way to God… it is a free gift to all who receive it, where in other religions you have to try to work your way to God

In Christianity, it is not based on the words of just one person claiming to be a prophet, like Islam or Mormonism.

In Christianity God invites our doubts and questions while in many other religions if you doubt or question you get in big trouble.

In Christianity, Jesus takes on the problem of pain and suffering in the world by becoming a human and joining us in it, offering to free us from it, where in other religions like Buddhism, you have to say the very real pain and suffering people experience are just illusions to be ignored.

In Christianity, we see the immense expression of Gods love as he takes on the greatest problems humans face - sin and death - and deals with them through Jesus - while other religions like Islam say God would never dare become a human.

And there are many more differences.....

But with all that said, there is one very important difference that I want to talk about tonight as we wrap up the series we are in…

And that difference is that Christianity is the only religion that is based on a historical event… the death and resurrection of Jesus.

First of all, of course, Christianity is based on the belief that God exists.... and I have tried to show you how much evidence there is for the existence of God…

We even brought in a world class scientist to explain this stuff....

So yes God exists, but the fact that God exists does not automatically mean that Christianity is true.

See, what Christianity claims is that God actually entered into creation as a man… and that man claimed to be God… He healed people… forgave their sins.... raised people from the dead… taught us the way to be reconciled to God… taught us how to truly live and find real life by trusting him and by putting our faith in him...

And then he said… for those who still don’t believe… you will know for sure this is all true when I rise from the dead.

And the death and resurrection of Jesus happened in time and space… in the world we live in… so if it happened, it would be really great if there was historical evidence that supported the truth of this event.

And to be clear and to reiterate, the death and resurrection are also SO MUCH more than just a physical event… it had cosmic implications as Jesus defeated sin and death on our behalf…

The death and resurrection is SO important in every way to our faith, that Christianity being true or it being a lie hinges on the answer to the question of whether or not the death and resurrection of Jesus happened.

And this is not something that I am just saying, or a non believer, or someone from another religion… It is actually what is says in the Bible.

The apostle Paul wrote in

1 Corinthians 15:14 NLT

And if Christ has not been raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your faith is useless.

It all hinges on this.

But tonight I want to focus on the history… and ask this question… is there any historical evidence that Jesus rose from the dead?

And to be honest, because Jesus is alive and the Holy Spirit is at work, you do not even have to know the answer to the question of if there is historical evidence for the resurrection…

God can move in your heart and life and you know have any idea of the evidence for the death and resurrection...

But since in the series we have been looking at evidence for the truth of God’s existence and Christianity being true, it is certainly worth looking at

PRAY

How do we know anything from history?

So before we talk about historical evidence for the death and resurrection… we need to talk about what historians do.

Historians look at historical clues, evidence, archeology, all of this… and piece together what seems probable to have happened in the past.

With anything in the past, you can never go back in time and prove it.... but you can look at evidence and come to conclusions about what happened by studying the historical evidence.

This is how we can be confident about what happened in the past.

There is a method that historians use to determine what happened… like scientists use the scientific method to test and repeat, historians have a method as well called...

The historical method

The historical method takes into account various things in relation to the past in order to establish what happened in history.

What are some of those things that historians look for in order to establish what happened in the past?

Here are some of them....

Eyewitness testimony

Multiple independently attested sources (this just means more than one separate and unique perspective)

Early testimony

Criterion of embarrassment

When historians look at data to determine what happened in history, much of it, as you can see, is about examining written sources. Hopefully a source with eye witness testimony, hopefully more than one source that shows a unique perspective, and hopefully a source or sources that are early (meaning close to the events), and that the person told the truth no matter if it was embarrassing to them or in their culture.

So from a historians perspective, this is what your looking for.

Now for us, when most of us think of a bible, we think of a book that is inspired by God.... this is not “wrong”, but it is more than that too....

The Bible is different from the sacred texts of other religions for so many reasons… but

The bible is actually a library of 66 separate and unique ancient books that are included in a library of books that are broken up into the OT and the NT...

The OT is written before Jesus came to earth and the NT is written after Jesus came and we Christians call this library of 66 books… the Bible….

Within this library of ancient books, there is a treasure trove of historical data. Historians use the books from the Bible all the time to figure out things that happened in the ancient past.

But tonight we are obviously talking about the resurrection of Jesus, so we are going to look at some of these sources of historical data in relation to that event, along with other historical source material as well...

So the NT begins with 4 of what historians call Greco-roman biographies, that are about a man historians call Jesus of Nazareth, but we’ll just call him Jesus.

Now every Book of the bible is not this genre of book! Books included in the bible are not all the same type - some are poetry, some are letters to people, they’re all different… so you read them differently and according to their type.

But the 4 Gospels - Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are greco-roman biographies about Jesus.

These books are inspired scripture, authoritative in our lives, endorsed by Jesus and all of that - BUT

They are ALSO historical documents that, when examined, reveal that they contain unique, independent, early, eye-witness testimony about things that actually happened.

For many people, the historical evidence found in these accounts is the turning point in their life, following the evidence straight to Jesus. One such man is named J Warner Wallace.

J Warner Wallace was an atheist cold case homicide detective out in Los Angeles county CA. He became pretty famous as far as detectives could be, he was getting featured on Dateline, Court TV, things like this.

Eventually he took up a challenge to prove to some of his Christian colleagues that the bible was nonsense.

When he started to read the gospels… he noticed something. Here is what he wrote about this experience

“I had interviewed hundreds (if not thousands) of eye witnesses and suspects. I had become familiar with the nature of eye witness statements, and I understood how testimony was evaluated in a court of law. Something about the Gospels struck me as more than mythological storytelling. The Gospels actually appeared to be ancient eyewitness accounts”.

J Warner Wallace, Cold-Case Christianity: A Homicide Detective Investigates the Claims of the Gospels, pg. 17

Remember, Dr. Garte felt the same way when he read the gospel accounts…

But there are more sources in the biblical library outside of the 4 gospels as well…

Eye witness testimony

Does the bible contain eye witness testimony?

Multiple independently attested sources

Compare other historical figures to Jesus - (Alexander the Great)

There were five versions of the Gettysburg Address that were acknowledged by Abraham Lincoln in his lifetime.

Early testimony

Do the human powerpoint....

Alexander the great

Note that nothing mentions the fulfillment of the destruction of the temple as a fulfillment...

Criterion of embarrassment

The disciples cowardice

The women discovering the tomb

Minimal FACTS nearly all Historians accept

Jesus was crucified

This is confirmed in the gospels, basically all the books in the new testament. BUT, it is also confirmed by other early ancient sources, including NON Christian sources

Josephus – jewish historian

Tacitus – a roman historian

Lucian

Mara Bar-Serpion

Talmud

The tomb was found empty

Recorded in all the earliest sources.

One of the key facts of 1 Corinthians 15 creed… which makes it extremely early.

Multiple sources.... Acts 13 and Mark 15 for example all essentially repeat the facts in this early creed

The burial part of the story is highly unlikely to be made up, since it included Joseph of Arimathea who was a part of the Jewish religious leaders who put Jesus to death… it was his tomb.

Historians realize this is not something anyone would make up

“John A. T. Robinson of Cambridge University, the burial of Jesus in the tomb is “one of the earliest and best-attested facts about Jesus.”

The stories lack legendary development… they are simple… like you would expect from early accounts. Compare with the gospel of Peter...

The tomb was found empty by Jesus’ women followers.... this is not something anyone would include if this was made up.

“Let not the testimony of women be admitted, on account of the levity and boldness of their sex” (Antiquities of the Jews IV.8.15.§219).

rabbinical texts: “Sooner let the words of the Law be burnt than delivered to women!” (Sotah 19a)

and again: “Happy is he whose children are male, but unhappy is he whose children are female!” (Kiddushin 82b).

The daily prayer of every Jewish man included the benediction “Blessed are you, Lord our God, ruler of the universe, who has not created me a woman” (Berachos 60b).”

Historians know that if the claim of an empty tomb was made up, it would not have had an wealthy and powerful enemy of Christians being a good guy in the story and burying Jesus in the tomb he owned

And it was made up in that culture, it would never have had women discovering the empty tomb because their testimony wasn’t even admissible in court...

Jesus Appeared to People after His Death

1 Corinthians 15:3–8 NLT

I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said. He was seen by Peter and then by the Twelve. After that, he was seen by more than 500 of his followers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. Then he was seen by James and later by all the apostles. Last of all, as though I had been born at the wrong time, I also saw him.

The earliest sources say that the risen Jesus was witnessed by at least these people…

“The great New Testament scholar of Cambridge University, C. H. Dodd, replies, “There can hardly be any purpose in mentioning the fact that the most of the 500 are still alive, unless Paul is saying, in effect, ‘The witnesses are there to be questioned.”

James… this is one of Jesus’ younger brothers who, we know also from the gospels that Jesus’ half brothers did NOT believe in Him before the resurrection. What happened to James and the other brothers of Jesus who changed their mind?

Paul was someone who hated Christians as recorded by other sources, and also confirmed by Paul too… who claimed he saw Jesus. What happened to Paul who was out killing Christians and for him to have his life turned around?

There are multiple accounts of people seeing the risen Jesus in independent sources.

When you apply the same historical method that we use for everything else....

Skeptical scholar Lüdemann said “It may be taken as historically certain that Peter and the disciples had experiences after Jesus’ death in which Jesus appeared to them as the risen Christ.”

What is the best explanation of these facts?

Alternatives

Jesus wasn't actually dead

Wrong tomb

Hallucination

Conspiracy

Created by Rome

Disciples stole the body

What would the disciples gain by making up this story?

Why do people lie to gain one of 3 (or all 3).... money, power, and sex

What did the disciples get?

People don’t hold on to a lie when they have nothing to gain....

Well, what happened to the apostles?

History tells us that the disciples and apostles suffered immensely for their faith in Jesus-

Sources include –

Books in the bible, like Acts and 6 other ancient sources, in the writings of

Clement of Rome

Polycarp

Ignatius

Tertullian

Origen

Dionysius of Corinth

Paul even tells us himself what he’s gained from this

2 Corinthians 11:23–27 (NLT)

I have ....been put in prison more often, been whipped times without number, and faced death again and again. Five different times the Jewish leaders gave me thirty-nine lashes. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked. Once I spent a whole night and a day adrift at sea. I have traveled on many long journeys. I have faced danger from rivers and from robbers. I have faced danger from my own people, the Jews, as well as from the Gentiles. I have faced danger in the cities, in the deserts, and on the seas. And I have faced danger from men who claim to be believers but are not. I have worked hard and long, enduring many sleepless nights. I have been hungry and thirsty and have often gone without food. I have shivered in the cold, without enough clothing to keep me warm.

Because of the overwhelming evidence that these men claimed a resurrected Jesus from day one and were willing to suffer so horribly because of their convictions, the majority of historians agree that the disciples of Jesus sincerely believed that Jesus rose from the dead and appeared to them.

Im going to wrap up with this, incase anyone was wondering what happened to the disciples and other apostles, here are just a few of them…

Paul – after Jesus appeared to him and he became a Christian, he traveled around

preaching, planting churches, and suffered intense persecution. He wrote the many

letters which we now have as books in the new testament. Eventually, he was taken to

Rome as a prisoner, where he was beheaded by order of the Emperor Nero.

Peter – A man who denied Jesus 3 times the night Jesus was arrested, was scared for

his life, met the risen Jesus and lived his life telling people about Jesus. He also ended

up in Rome, with a friend named Mark, who wrote a book called the Gospel according

to Mark, based on Peters eyewitness testimony and teachings to the Roman people.

Peter was arrested and crucified, but he refused to crucified like Jesus was because he

wasn’t worthy of it and requested that he be crucified upside down.

James the disciple – was put to death by the sword by the order of Herod Agrippa

James the half brother of Jesus – did not believe the Jesus was the messiah at all, until

the risen Jesus appeared to him and James changed forever. James became the head of

the church in Jerusalem and wrote a famous letter we now call the book of James.

Eventually, James was arrested and thrown off a wall. After hitting the ground, he was

still alive, so they took a club and smashed his skull.

Matthew – He wrote a book we call the gospel according to Matthew. Later in life, he

ended up preaching about Jesus in Ethiopia, where he was beheaded. Other sources say

that before he was beheaded, he was impaled on a pole, then beheaded.

Thomas – the disciple who according to the gospels, doubted that Jesus rose from the

dead until Jesus appeared to him and let him touch his scarred hands and side. Thomas

was never the same – he ended up going to India as a missionary, where his preaching

angered the local authorities and they ran thru him with spears.

The rest of them have similar endings… Historical evidence is one sided.

There is not one account of an apostle recanting his faith in order to save his life. Not one.

They all preached the truth about Jesus until their last moments, their violent deaths, with unwavering faith.

The resurrection of Jesus changed EVERYTHING for them… And it can for you too!

Best explanation

What the disciples said happened

51 But let me reveal to you a wonderful secret. We will not all die, but we will all be transformed! 52 It will happen in a moment, in the blink of an eye, when the last trumpet is blown. For when the trumpet sounds, those who have died will be raised to live forever. And we who are living will also be transformed. 53 For our dying bodies must be transformed into bodies that will never die; our mortal bodies must be transformed into immortal bodies.

54 Then, when our dying bodies have been transformed into bodies that will never die, this Scripture will be fulfilled:

“Death is swallowed up in victory.

55 O death, where is your victory?

O death, where is your sting?”

56 For sin is the sting that results in death, and the law gives sin its power. 57 But thank God! He gives us victory over sin and death through our Lord Jesus Christ.

58 So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and immovable. Always work enthusiastically for the Lord, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless.

1 Co 15:51–58.

On the one hand, the resurrection of Christ is a fact to be believed. On the other hand, it is an experience to connect with, not just that we believe in, but that we experience.

Timothy Keller