Sermon Tone Analysis

Fake News

If there is no resurrection, then our faith means nothing.

But why would the disciples make up a story like this anyway?

Did they want to stay in the crosshairs of Roman executioners?

That seems unlikely.

But let’s just chase this down for a moment.

So I think just about everyone would acknowledge with a pretty good amount of certainty that there actually was a man named Jesus who lived in Israel during the first century.

And that this man Jesus was arrested and executed by the Roman empire.

Everyone acknowledges that part is true.

It’s the resurrection part of the story where so many people walk away.

This is the part of the story where the apostle Paul loses his audience with the Greek philosophers in Athens.

Resurrection is hard to imagine.

Resurrection is not natural—in fact, it is the opposite; resurrection is a miracle.

And there are people in the world who find it hard to believe in miracles.

And so they say the whole part of the story about Jesus rising from the grave is made up.

It was a story put together by the disciples and other followers of Jesus, but never actually happened.

They went and stole the body from the tomb and then pushed this made-up story about a resurrection.

Very recently we have come up with a new term for this kind of thing.

FAKE NEWS.

If Caiaphis the high priest had a twitter account he would undoubtedly be sending out a nonstop tweetstorm.

Resurrection—never happened.

Pontius Pilate would add his own tweets.

Rome has the best executions, the very best executions.

Don’t leave out Herod the great.

Just heard Simon Peter had my palace wiretapped.

Unbelievable.

The ones who held power at the time had every motivation in the world to shut this thing down, to refute any claim at all about this resurrection story.

They had every reason in the world to strike back and spin the story at any cost that this whole thing about Jesus rising from the grave is completely made up.

Credibility of witnesses

Let’s imagine that for moment.

Imagine that the whole thing is made up.

That the disciples stole the body in the middle of the night and then came up with a fake news story about Jesus being resurrected.

Imagine it.

If you were one of the disciples, then in order for this story to have any credibility it would need witnesses—credible witnesses.

This is nothing against women; it’s just stating the fact of first century culture.

Women were never credible witnesses.

The testimony of women was not allowed in court because the testimony of a woman was not considered reliable in those days and in that culture.

So if you were with the disciples and had to make up a fake news story about Jesus rising from the dead, and you needed witnesses, how would you tell it?

Well, for starters you would absolutely NOT have any of the first witnesses be women.

That would shoot down your whole story right there.

But what happens?

As the gospels record the story of Easter for us, the very first people to hear the announcement of the resurrection are a group of women.

And the very first person to actually see Jesus alive on Easter was a woman.

Someone needs to tell the disciples that their fake news story here is all wrong.

Don’t tell it like that because nobody is going to believe that.

Unless, of course, it wasn’t made up.

Unless, of course, it actually happened that way.

So that’s the way the disciples tell about it.

Here is what the apostle Paul wrote about it to the church in the city of Corinth.

This isn’t made up.

It’s not fake news.

This isn’t a metaphor or an analogy.

Paul is not saying that the legacy of Jesus or the teaching of Jesus simply lives on in our hearts, so to speak.

No. Paul is insisting that a very real resurrection took place on that first Easter.

And he is insisting that the entire gospel message hinges on this resurrection being a very real occurrence in human history.

The 2000-year conspiracy

2000 years of a conspiracy theory?

These first followers of Jesus sacrificed everything for this.

They gave their lives to it.

Would you do something like that for a story you knew was made up?

Would you sacrifice everything for something you knew was fake news?

Would you pin your entire life on a conspiracy theory?

There have been a lot of conspiracy theories throughout history.

Who really killed JFK? Was the Apollo moon landing actually staged in an underground studio set?

Stories like this come and go from time to time.

But what about Jesus and the resurrection?

Is this really just a massive cover up of a stolen corpse?

A conspiracy theory?

Is it really possible that such a fake news story would hold up?

That it would spread and gain followers and spark a movement that reaches every continent across the globe?

That this story is embraced by billions and billions of people?

That the resurrection of Jesus would not go away—has been with us for over 2000 years now?

Is it really possible that all of this is just one big hoax?

Ockham’s Razor

Some might object and say that none of this resurrection stuff can be scientifically proven.

There is a scientific principle called Ockham’s Razor.

It is a problem solving principle that scientists use whenever they have two competing explanations for something.

Ockham’s Razor states that “among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected.”

In other words, when there are several different theories to explain an event or a phenomenon, the simplest explanation is usually the right one.

So what is the simplest explanation for the resurrection of Jesus?

That it’s true.

That it actually happened just as the witnesses of the first century describe it.

The simplest and most compelling answer is this: Jesus is alive.

From Resurrection to Revolution

What difference does this make?

Why is the resurrection of Jesus so important.

The apostle Paul certainly seems to think so in the passage we see here in 1 Corinthians.

In fact, Paul uses a very particular term to describe the resurrected Jesus.

Paul refers to the resurrected Jesus as the ‘firstfruits.’

That’s important.

It means that Easter is more than just a resurrection, it is the signal of a revolution.

We have been working our way through the series talking about the meaning of the cross.

We have been making the case over the past several weeks that the cross has a very direct connection to what God did in the Old Testament when he rescued his people from Egypt.

And in that event, rescue was about much more than end of slavery.

It was also the beginning of something brand new.

God not only called his people out of bondage.

He also called his people into a new covenant life.

It wasn’t just a rescue.

It was a revolution into something completely new.

If the Exodus represents this revolution for one particular time, with one particular group of people, in one particular place; then the cross represents this same covenant revolution for all time, given for all people, in every place.