Evidence for the Resurrection

Tonight we are looking at what is one of my favorite topics to teach when going through apologetics and that is the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. In history, everything prior to the death and resurrection of Jesus is running towards that moment and everything after the death and resurrection of Jesus is responding to that moment. We cannot underestimate the importance of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Paul puts it bluntly in 1 Corinthians 15:12-17

1 Corinthians 15:12–17 ESV

Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins.

Without the resurrection of Christ, we are in a dead faith and dead in our sins. I’ll share with you some quotes of just how vital the resurrection is to faith and ministry. C.S. Lewis wrote, “To preach Christianity meant (to the Apostles) primarily to preach the Resurrection… The Resurrection is the central theme in every Christian sermon reported in the Acts. The Resurrection, and its consequences, were the ‘gospel’ or good news which the Christians brought.” R.C. Sproul said, “The resurrection was God the Father’s way of authenticating all of the truths that were declared by Jesus.” John Flavel, a great Puritan theologian said, “Christ’s resurrection is the ground-work of our hope.” We need the resurrection. The resurrection verifies what Christ said and what He did and it is the groundwork of our hope. Tim Keller put it like this, “If Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn't rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said? The issue on which everything hangs is not whether or not you like his teaching but whether or not he rose from the dead.” We are going to look at a lot of evidence for the resurrection tonight. We’re looking at the facts. Everything that we talk about today does not come close to cover all of the proof for the resurrection of Jesus. We could have weeks of lessons devoted to evidence of the resurrection of Jesus. Entire books have been written that all give loads of evidence but we are going to try and get in as much as we can in the short amount of time that we have. So, what we are going to look at tonight are 3 things. 1. Did Jesus really die? 2. Resurrection theories while the body of Christ was in the grave. 3. Post-Resurrection Theories. So, let’s open up in prayer and then we will dive into Matthew 28:1-15

Matthew 28:1–15 ESV

Now after the Sabbath, toward the dawn of the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. And for fear of him the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified. He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples that he has risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee; there you will see him. See, I have told you.” So they departed quickly from the tomb with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. And behold, Jesus met them and said, “Greetings!” And they came up and took hold of his feet and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, “Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me.” While they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers and said, “Tell people, ‘His disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep.’ And if this comes to the governor’s ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble.” So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story has been spread among the Jews to this day.

Did Jesus Really Die?

Before we look at proof for the resurrection, we need to look at the death of Jesus. Believe it or not, there are people out there who don’t believe that Jesus actually died while on the cross. Some people legitimately believe that Christ, while hanging on the cross, simply passed out due to exhaustion and blood loss, was placed in the tomb, woke up a couple of days later, and then under His own strength, tore Himself out of the grave clothes, folded them, moved the boulder that was in front of the tomb, and then simply walked out passed the Roman guards that were carefully guarding the tomb. To us this sounds ridiculous right? But people doubt and have questions so we should have an answer. Do you all recognize how much Christ suffered, not just while on the cross, but even prior to being nailed to that tree? Let’s start with the whipping. We see in scripture that the Romans scourged Christ with whips. Now some believe that Christ was only whipped 39 times, as was lawful to the Jewish people. But one thing that we need to note is that the law of whipping someone only 39 times was not a law that Rome necessarily followed. I believe that there is a fairly good chance that the Roman guards that were in charge of whipping Jesus did it more than the 39 times because they did not necessarily follow the same laws that the Jews did. Now Jesus was not just whipped by normal whips. Instead, they would use an assortment of whips, some made of bones and metal, that would tear the flesh off of its victim, leaving muscle and bone exposed and they did this repeatedly. Even after the whipping, the Romans and the Jews still physically beat Christ. They shoved into His skull a crown of thorns. And it wasn’t just a hat that He put on. It was forcefully shoved into the skull where it was lodged into the bones of the skull. Even after all of this, we can assume that the physical and emotional agony that Christ went through was too much for anyone to bear, and yet He kept going. In the Gospel of Mark, we see that it says that they made Simon carry the cross for Jesus, and that they brought Jesus to the place where He would be killed. Now what we can gather from this is that, Jesus was too weak to physically take Himself to Calvary and this was all before the crucifixion. Now before Christ went to Calvary, He had just gone through a night of torture, sleeplessness, starvation, dehydration, and bleeding that wasn’t properly taken care of. Crucifixion was the most painful form of execution in those days because unlike beheading or the electric chair, it was a long and agonizing experience. Some believe that when Christ was nailed to the cross, that they went through his hands and His feet. This is not technically accurate because if the nails went through Christ’s hands, the nails would rip through the hands and would not support the weight of the victim. Instead, they would nail through the wrists. When the nails would go through, it would feel as if lightning was going through each and every vein in the body. Now with all of the weight of having to hold up the body on the cross, a person that was crucified would have to physically pull himself up just in order to breath. This was already hard enough to do with the amount of exhaustion that Christ went through already. Frederick Farrar gives a very vivid description of what death by crucifixion looked like, ““For indeed a death by crucifixion seems to include all that pain and death can have of horrible and ghastly—dizziness, cramp, thirst, starvation, sleeplessness, traumatic fever, tetanus, shame, publicity of shame, long continuance of torment, horror of anticipation, mortification of untended wounds—all intensified just up to the point at which they can be endured at all, but all stopping just short of the point which would give to the suffer the relief of unconsciousness. The unnatural position made every movement painful; the lacerated veins and crushed tendons throbbed with incessant anguish; the wounds, inflamed by exposure, gradually gangrened; the arteries- especially at the head and stomach- became swollen and oppressed with surcharged blood; and while each variety of misery went on gradually increasing, there was added to them the intolerable pang of a burning and raging thirst; and all these physical complications caused an internal excitement and anxiety, which made the prospect of death itself- of death, the unknown enemy, at whose approach man usually shudders most- bear the aspect of a delicious and exquisite release.” When you were on the cross, you wanted to die as quickly as possible because that was the only relief that was in sight. So we see this picture of Christ, beaten beyond recognition, having to pull Himself up just to be able to breath on the cross. By the time that Christ finally did die on the cross, the cause of death wasn’t just because of exhaustion and blood loss, it was likely due to His heart rupturing. Then after He died on the cross, the Roman soldier stabbed Christ in the side, through the rib cage that punctured the right lung and the heart. After hanging on the cross for hours, with all of this blood pouring out of Him, Jesus was eventually relieved from the cross and placed in a tomb. Where for three days He laid in there, with no remedies for the wounds on His body. Even if Christ had not died on the cross, he would have bled to death in the tomb. We can hardly put into words just how greatly our Savior suffered. What astounds me is that when we look at Christ in the garden of Gethsemane, He asked that the Father would remove the cup from Him. He said, “Father if it is your will, have this cup removed from me.” Yet the cup that He was so concerned about, the cup that caused Him to sweat great drops of blood, was not the cup of crucifixion, it was not the cup of shame, it was not the cup of suffering at the hands of sinful man. It was the cup of God’s holy wrath that He was about to drain to the very last drop. Stephen Charnock said, “Not all the vials of judgment that have or shall be poured out upon the wicked world, nor the flaming furnace of a sinner’s conscience, nor the irreversible sentence pronounced against the rebellious demons, nor the groans of the damned creatures – give such a demonstration of God’s hatred of sin – as the wrath of God let loose upon His Son! Never did divine holiness appear more beautiful and lovely than at the time our Savior’s countenance was most marred in the midst of His dying groans – when God had turned His smiling face from Him, and thrust His sharp knife into His heart, which forced that terrible cry from Him, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me!” If Christ’s greatest worry at the time of His betrayal was the wrath of God poured out on sin and sinners, how much more should we be concerned about the lost? How much greater should we be concerned about our own souls? How great and overwhelming must the wrath of God be and should we not take heed lest we fall? There is no way that Jesus could have survived the cross. The reality of the death of Christ is also testified to the sheer number of witnesses that were present at the time of His death. There were a lot of people present at the crucifixion of Jesus. People clearly saw that Jesus was crucified. We know through Scripture that there were women that followed Jesus there, John the Apostle, the chief priests, scribes, elders, Roman guards, two prisoners, and many other who came to see this happen. Jesus was not killed in secret but was crucified publicly to shame Him and to put an end to His following. The Jews wanted people to know that Jesus was killed. The Romans that took Christ’s body off of the cross were convinced that the man that was killed there was dead. Now you have to realize that the Romans killed thousands on crosses. They would clearly know if someone was dead or not because this was not some uncommon practice. The idea of someone being able to survive crucifixion was unheard of. You don’t walk away from that. Now the Bible notes that all who were present, could tell that Jesus was dead. Executioners came to inspect the body of Jesus before it was given to Joseph of Arimathea. Now these men were accustomed to death and they knew a dead guy when they saw one. John clearly records that when the soldiers came to the cross to quicken the deaths of those on the cross, that they saw that Jesus was already dead that’s in John 19:33. People witnessed that Christ was dead and that is why Pilate gave the body to Joseph because Christ was clearly dead and many saw it. Now remember what I said earlier, even if Christ had survived everything that He went through on the cross and in the beatings that He went through, if He had survived that somehow, He would have died in the tomb. With no treatment to the wounds, He would have died in the tomb due to blood loss during those three days. The tomb was also sealed shut. Very little air would get into the tomb so if He did not die from blood loss, He could have likely run out of oxygen. We know that Christ did in fact die on the cross. Jesus was dead. If there was a way for Him to get out of the tomb alive, there is no way that He could have walked away on His own. The tomb was empty. What I want to turn to now are the resurrection theories that are often mentioned in regards to what happened while the body of Christ was still in the tomb. We will talk about 2 of the more popular theories, one of which has been in circulation since what we read about in Matthew 28: The wrong tomb theory and the theory that the disciples stole the body.

Resurrection Theories in the Grave

What is the wrong tomb theory? Some people believe that the women who went to the tomb on the third day, and the disciples that went to the tomb on the third day were so heartbroken and delirious from what had just occurred, that they went to the wrong tomb. This theory states that the believers simply went to the wrong tomb because of how distraught they were. There are obviously a number of issues with this theory, the first being that people knew where the tomb was. John 19 states that the tomb was nearby to where He was killed. Joseph placed Jesus into his own tomb. There is no way that the followers of Jesus would not know where the Lord was laid to rest. Both secular and non-secular sources knew the location of the tomb. Issue number 2: The Roman guards were at the tomb that Jesus was laid to rest in. They would not have just left their post; the followers of Jesus would know that it was Christ’s tomb that was being guarded. The Bible clearly states that there were soldiers at the tomb. Issue number 3: If they went to the wrong tomb, why did they never produce the body of Christ once Christianity started blowing up all over the world? In the couple of months between the resurrection of Jesus and the start of the early church, the Jews and the Romans could easily have pointed people to the right tomb and had shown the body to the world: thus, stopping Christianity right away. This brings us to the next theory: The theory that the disciples stole the body of Jesus from the tomb. That is the theory that we read about today in Matthew 28. This is a theory that has been argued about since the very beginning of Christianity. Now there are so many things that are wrong with this theory. It all comes down to the Roman guards and the soldiers. It was their idea to start spreading the rumor that the disciples stole the body of Jesus but it actually points to the resurrection of Jesus. The priests made a deal with the soldiers saying that they would agree to saying that the disciples stole the body while the guards were sleeping. But here is the issue with that: if a roman soldier was to leave his post or to fall asleep where he was posted, the punishment for that guard would be death. We can see that when Paul and Silas are in prison and the guard prepares to kill himself. If the prisoners escaped on his watch, he knew that not only would he be killed, so would his entire family. His house would be burned and his family would all be killed. That was common practice for Roman guard. And here is the thing with them being asleep. During this time period, a temple guard would go where soldiers were posted and if the soldiers did not rise or was found to be asleep, the soldier would be beaten and then have his garments burned. Yes there is a chance that maybe one had fallen asleep, but there is no way that all of the guards would have fallen asleep or remained asleep. No crucified individual ever had a guarding like Jesus did. One more thing: The soldiers were all tasked with staying as close to the tomb as possible. Have you ever tried moving something during absolute silence? You hear something. There is no way that the disciples could have quietly moved the stone from the tomb, taken the body under the cover of darkness, and gotten away without waking up a single guard. There is no way. The disciples could not have taken the body. One last thing: the disciples were cowards. They all ran away at the arrest of Jesus. There is no way that they would suddenly be encouraged to take on the Romans and move the body of Jesus. Even after the resurrection of Jesus, the disciples were all hiding as seen in Luke 24. These men were not about to take on the Romans. One thing you did not do was take on Rome during this time. One of the next theories that some have is that the Roman soldiers that were guarding the tomb were overpowered by the disciples. The powerful unstoppable force that was the Roman soldiers were beaten down by a couple of fishermen with little to no combat experience. Roman soldiers were an unstoppable force that were the equivalent of a human tank. A Roman soldier would be trained for years, practically since childhood and was a human fighting machine. There is no way that a couple of fishermen from Galilee could take on these men. Now most people assume that there were only 2 guards at the tomb. This is not completely accurate. In fact, most of the time, when Rome would be called to guard something, it would have anywhere between 4-16 guards. The Roman guard also had weapons that the disciples could not get their hands on. Each Roman soldier was trained to cover 6 feet of ground. Extra guards would be nearby resting in a semi-circle so that they could be woken up if something went wrong. If people were trying to get by, they would have to basically go over the guards to get where they needed to go. If the same pattern was applied to cover the tomb, you are looking at roughly 4-16 men being nearby. If a roman guard was going to be beaten by anyone, it wouldn’t be a couple of fishermen who just days earlier were all fleeing from them.

Post-Resurrection Theories

I want us to turn now to the post-resurrection theories as to what happened that first Easter morning. The empty tomb is the greatest piece of evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. The greatest proof that we have for the evidence that Jesus rose from the dead is that the tomb was empty. Andre Kole is one of the greatest illusionists to have ever lived. Kole is the only illusionist to have never been fooled by another illusionist. He was tasked with discrediting the miracles of Jesus. Kole took the challenge and thought that it would be easy for him. After researching things for a while, he found that there were some miracles that could be disproved through modern illusion techniques, but there was one thing that he could just not explain. Kole, the man that had never been fooled by another illusionist, found that after careful research, that he could not disprove the resurrection of Jesus. He found that there is no way that the resurrection of Jesus was just a trick. A large portion of illusions need to be done indoors and in an enclosed space for crowd control: Most of Christ’s miracles were performed outdoors. Kole also said that in order for an illusionist to do just one trick, 3 semi-trucks worth of equipment are needed. When one looks at many of Christ’s miracles, there is no way that they could have planned out these things occurring. The disciples were shocked at several of the miracles when they happened, especially the resurrection! There is no way that the miracle of the resurrection and the seeing of a resurrected Christ was some form of illusion. It had to have been real. The main question that we need to ask skeptics of the resurrection is where is the body? Where is the Body of Jesus? If Jesus had not been raised from the dead, it would have been incredibly easy for the Romans or the Jews to produce the body of Christ. In the thousands of years since the resurrection, no one has been able to produce a body. Christianity would have ended instantly if they just showed a body but they couldn’t because there was no body to be seen. The sheer number of people to have seen Jesus after the resurrection testifies that it was more than a trick and that He truly was raised from the dead. You cannot disprove it. If there was a wrong tomb that they went to, then the guards could have shown the right tomb. If the body was stolen, then there was no reason for the Apostles to die for something that they knew was a lie, we mentioned that last week. Every apostle except for John was killed for his faith. If these men knew that there was no resurrection, they would not have died for something that they knew wasn’t true. This also doesn’t add up with the story of Paul’s conversion. Paul saw a resurrected Jesus years after the death of Christ. We could look at Paul’s conversion in more detail but we really do not have the time for it. How could Paul had seen a resurrected Jesus if the body was in the hands of the men that he was trying to kill? One last theory that is pretty common amongst nonbelievers and those who are against Christianity is called the hallucination theory. Now it’s pretty self-explanatory, the theory states that every time that people saw Christ after His death, it was no more than a vision or a hallucination. J. Gresham Machen said this about the hallucination theory, “if true, that means that the Christian church is founded upon a pathological experience of certain persons in the first century of our era. It means that if there had been a good neurologist for Peter and the others to consult, there never would have been a Christian church.” If the apostles and all who had witnessed a resurrected Christ were just hallucinating, the entire church would have ceased to exist if just one of them went to counseling. Let’s get down to the problems of this theory. 1. Hallucinations do not explain the changed lives of the apostles. Here’s what I mean; Hallucinations do not explain how the apostles were moral heroes. These men had such a good understanding of Scripture, politics, history, and their surroundings after the resurrection that it cannot come down to them just hallucinating a couple of times. I find it hard to believe that each Apostle minus John would be put to death for their faith if they were just proclaiming a hallucination that they saw. Problem number 2: Psychiatrists agree that visions usually only occur to certain types of people who are under one emotional strain, so people that are high strung or worn out: However we know from Scripture that there was a large variety of emotions that were being felt after the death of Christ and this leads us to the biggest and most important problem with the hallucination theory. 3. A hallucination does not explain the high number of people who saw Christ after His death. Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8

1 Corinthians 15:3–8 ESV

For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me.

Christ appeared to more than 500 people after His death. Now the fact that all of these people saw Christ in exactly the same way, that just does not happen if it were only a hallucination. Paul, who had no reason to hallucinate Christ, saw Him 2 years later on the road to Damascus. Now what Paul experienced was the same Jesus that the Apostles saw after the death of Jesus. When people hallucinate, they don’t see the same thing and people don’t see the same thing that hundreds of other people saw years earlier! 4. One last problem with this theory, and trust me there are plenty of them. If all of these people had just hallucinated the risen Jesus, certainly Joseph of Arimathea or the Romans or the Pharisees, would have been able to solve that problem. If they had simply hallucinated this, it does not explain the empty tomb. We are running out of time but I want to try and fit in just two more points really quick. The point that I want to make is that the opponents of the Gospel were silent about the resurrection multiple times in the book of Acts. Let me explain what this means. What I mean is that when the Apostles were before the leaders of the people, they did not refute the claim that Christ’s body was gone. This was because they knew that the body was gone and that Christ had been raised from the dead. In Acts 2, we see that no one who was present at Peter’s sermon refuted the claim that Jesus was raised from the dead. They couldn’t! Why did they say nothing? Because they had the evidence in front of them! They could go to the tomb and see that Jesus wasn’t in it! Every leader knew that the grave no longer held the body of Jesus. The Jews could not explain what had happened. In Acts 25, we see the same kind of thing. Paul is being questioned and the people are making personal attacks on Paul but none of them can discredit the resurrection. All these people could do was name-calling and making false witness because that was all that they could do. There was no discrediting the resurrection. One last point is that the rapid spread of Christianity verifies a risen savior. If Christianity and the resurrection of Jesus could have been disproved in any way, it would have been done and it would have crushed the spread of Christianity before it even started. In 2000 years, no one has been able to discredit the resurrection. If the people who were present at the crucifixion couldn’t do it, there is no way that man today will be able to do it. The fact that the resurrection of Jesus was first discovered by women in a time when the testimony of women was totally ignored points to the fact that what we see in the Bible is true. What would have been the point of establishing the resurrection as truth if the first witnesses would have been largely ignored? The disciples’ lives were changed because they had seen a resurrected Jesus. Now they knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that Jesus was worth dying for because they had seen with their own eyes their Lord. Overnight these men and women were strengthened because they had proof of a resurrected Jesus. These men and the church could not be stopped because their beliefs could not be disproved. This leads into so much more evidence for the resurrection such as the changed lives of the Apostles prove that Christ was risen from the dead. It is one thing for those that were closest to Jesus to say that they saw that Christ rose from the dead but some of the best evidence that we have for the resurrection comes from the fact that there were so many skeptics that are recorded in Scripture that claim to have seen a resurrected Christ. For time’s sake, we are going to look at just 2 of these people: Paul and James the brother of Jesus. Prior to coming to faith in Christ, Saul of Tarsus, or Paul as he would be called, stood firmly against Christianity. Prior to his conversion, Paul was not just skeptical of Christianity, he actively persecuted Christianity. Acts 9:1-2 says, “But Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any belonging to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.” Paul hated Christianity because he saw it as a threat to Judaism. He didn’t see the connection that Jesus was the promised Messiah but this same Paul is author of the majority of the New Testament and one of the greatest Christians that ever lived. How does something like this happen? Gary Habermas writes, “We must now ask the question: What caused this change in Paul? Why did one who persecuted Christians suddenly become one? Both Paul himself and Luke report that it was because he believed firmly that he had an encounter with the risen Jesus. Paul’s conversion is so interesting because he was an enemy of the church when he claimed to have seen the risen Jesus.” Paul seeing a resurrected Jesus and converting to Christianity while he was still an enemy of Christianity all seem to support that he must have truly believed that he really did see something unexplainable. It makes no sense for an enemy of Christ to claim that he saw Jesus if he actually didn’t. Plenty of people change religions because of a certain message that they hear but Paul was different because for him, there was no message. Instead, Paul had an encounter with the risen Jesus. The second person that we need to talk about is James, the brother of Jesus. If you have studied the Gospels, you may have seen that Jesus had four half brothers and all of them did not believe that Jesus was the Christ. John 7:5 says, “For not even his brothers believed in him.” James was never a follower of Jesus during his brother’s earthly ministry. But by the time we get to Acts 15:12-21, the very same James is identified as a leader of the church in Jerusalem. What could have happened that would have caused James, a skeptic, to become a follower of Christ and be seen as the leader of the church within the heart of Jerusalem? Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 15:3-7. What could convince a skeptical brother that his brother was the Christ more than seeing that very brother raised from the dead? There is no reason for James to become a Christian if he did not actually see Christ. Gary Habermas says of James, “Not only did James convert to Christianity, his beliefs in Jesus and his resurrection were so strong that he died as a martyr because of them. James’s martyrdom is attested by Josephus, Hegesippus, and Clement of Alexandria. Therefore, his martyrdom is attested by both Christian and non-Christian sources.” The resurrection really did happen. It is said by some that the resurrection is the most well-documented event in human history. You can confidently believe that the resurrection of Jesus really happened and if the resurrection really happened, then Christianity is true, and if Christianity is true, than the promises of God are true, and if the promises of God are true, that means that Jesus is real, and if Jesus is real, than that means that are faith is not in vain. We have proof to the resurrection so we know that what we believe is true. Those who were against Jesus knew that the body was gone and the tomb was empty. They knew that Jesus was resurrected.