Easter Sunday 2018: The Resurrection

On Friday we reflected about Christ’s death on the cross and how his death transformed the cross from a human torture device, that represents death and suffering, to an icon that symbolizes life, forgiveness, hope and salvation.

Easter Sunday is the evidence of those truths becoming a reality.

Christians believe that Jesus Christ died on the cross on Friday afternoon, then literally and physically rose from the dead on Sunday morning.

Luke 24:1–12 NLT

But very early on Sunday morning the women went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. They found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. So they went in, but they didn’t find the body of the Lord Jesus. As they stood there puzzled, two men suddenly appeared to them, clothed in dazzling robes. The women were terrified and bowed with their faces to the ground. Then the men asked, “Why are you looking among the dead for someone who is alive? He isn’t here! He is risen from the dead! Remember what he told you back in Galilee, that the Son of Man must be betrayed into the hands of sinful men and be crucified, and that he would rise again on the third day.” Then they remembered that he had said this. So they rushed back from the tomb to tell his eleven disciples—and everyone else—what had happened. It was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary the mother of James, and several other women who told the apostles what had happened. But the story sounded like nonsense to the men, so they didn’t believe it. However, Peter jumped up and ran to the tomb to look. Stooping, he peered in and saw the empty linen wrappings; then he went home again, wondering what had happened.

The resurrection of Jesus Christ is an essential belief when it comes to the Christian faith. Yet, many don’t believe it to be true. There has been much debate over Jesus death and resurrection.

The Resurrection is an Essential Belief

If Jesus is still in the tomb, then their is no evidence that our sins have been fully and freely forgiven.

if the resurrection isn’t true then what we have is death still reigning, death still ruling over humanity, over God’s creation.

it is the resurrection that shows that the bill has been paid in full.

That sin and death have been defeated.

The resurrection should actually be celebrated every time we gather, not just on easter.

often Christians focus on the life of Jesus, the death of Jesus, but we don’t discuss the resurrection of Jesus. But we should because it is the proof that that everything else is true.

If it’s true then it’s all true, if its not true then none of it is.

The resurrection is part of the joy of being a Christian

As Christ has risen we also will rise with him.

The Goon news of the Gospel, our sins have been forgiven, death has been defeated. How do we know.....the resurrection!

Many secular scholars have studied the resurrection and try to clam it to be false. Lets take a quick look at some of their arguments.

Secular Scholarship Against the Resurrection

The following are the top 4 dominant theories agains the resurrection.

The Wrong Tomb

You can giggle. I didn’t write it. The theory around this brouhaha of the resurrection of Jesus Christ was these ladies were just so distraught in their grief they showed up at the wrong tomb. So when they ran back and told these other guys, then Peter ran to the wrong tomb.

Maybe. I’ve gotten lost before. Anyone else? I’m not trying to deny what they’ve experienced was traumatic, but if they just went to the wrong tomb and as Christianity began to spread and the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Romans tried to destroy the faith, wouldn’t they just have rolled out his body? Wouldn’t they have just gone, “Okay, morons. They just went to the wrong… Here’s his body right here. His followers are just morons”? But they didn’t because there was no body to be found.

2. The Followers Were So Filled With Grief They Hallucinated that they Saw Jesus.

Maybe. I’ve been around traumatic loss. Maybe they didn’t sleep. Maybe they started drinking a little too much wine. I don’t know, but maybe there was a hallucination.

The problem with that is Jesus in his resurrected body appeared, not to just this guy over here and this guy over here, but appeared in front of hundreds of people. There isn’t a lot of evidence that group hallucination can occur. He sat down with them. He ate with them for 40 days. He walked with them, and then those hallucinations stopped. Again, this is an absurd theory.

3. The Swoon Theory, has the most traction over the past century.

The swoon theory is Jesus, having been severely beaten, hanging on the cross, blacked out because of loss of blood and because of the beatings he had endured, and they mistakenly believed he was dead and pulled him down and buried him when he was still alive.

It has happened, so maybe they’re onto something. Maybe Jesus just swooned and then just didn’t come back to life but kind of just pulled himself together and crawled out, somehow miraculously moving the stone, and that was what they thought was the resurrection. David Friedrich Strauss is not a Christian. He is a secular historian, and he thought…

“It is impossible that a being who had stolen half-dead out of the sepulchre [tomb], who crept about weak and ill, wanting medical treatment, who required bandaging, strengthening, and indulgence, and who still at last yielded to His sufferings, could have given to the disciples the impression that He was a Conqueror over death and the grave, the Prince of Life…”

4. The Body was Stolen

His disciples stole the body of Jesus and then made up the resurrection so they could further their Master’s teaching.

The problem with this theory is that scripture often shows us that even the disciples didn’t understand most of the time. Even during the account of Christ’s death we see the disciples hiding like cowards. Do we really think they would have stolen the body and come up with the greatest deception ever.

Keep in mind Peter has a wife. These are men who have families. Nobody recants and nobody calls it off, and yet the theory is they stole him. They somehow figured out how to get past the guards, and they stole his body and yet kept the story alive as they were slaughtered one by one and as other men and women by the hundreds were slaughtered.

Because that seemed so absurd, historians then move on and go, “No, what happened wasn’t the disciples stole the body…” Because of course they had been too incompetent for that. “What happened is the authorities hid the bodies so the disciples couldn’t take the body.” Again, aren’t we now just trying not to believe? If the authorities took the body, then as Christianity begins to spread, wouldn’t they just destroy the thing by presenting the body?

These are the top 4 secular reasons to not believe in the resurrection. Now lets look at reasons and proof of the resurrection.

Biblical Evidence of the Resurrection

Biblical Evidence

The Old Testament prophesies the coming Messiah will die and he will be brought back from death. We don’t have time in our gathering today, but I would encourage you at some point this weekend to read Isaiah 53. It is a breakdown, not only of the cross, but what will occur after the cross, namely the resurrection of Jesus Christ. So Isaiah 53 is going to talk about his resurrection.

Jesus taught at least four times on the road to Jerusalem that in Jerusalem he would be arrested by the high priests and he would be turned over to the Gentiles and he would be flogged and he would be murdered and he would be raised from the dead. It was in stunning detail. Let me read you some of these.

Mark 8:31 NLT

Then Jesus began to tell them that the Son of Man must suffer many terrible things and be rejected by the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed, but three days later he would rise from the dead.

Mark 9:30–32 NLT

Leaving that region, they traveled through Galilee. Jesus didn’t want anyone to know he was there, for he wanted to spend more time with his disciples and teach them. He said to them, “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of his enemies. He will be killed, but three days later he will rise from the dead.” They didn’t understand what he was saying, however, and they were afraid to ask him what he meant.

Mark 10:32–34 NLT

They were now on the way up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them. The disciples were filled with awe, and the people following behind were overwhelmed with fear. Taking the twelve disciples aside, Jesus once more began to describe everything that was about to happen to him. “Listen,” he said, “we’re going up to Jerusalem, where the Son of Man will be betrayed to the leading priests and the teachers of religious law. They will sentence him to die and hand him over to the Romans. They will mock him, spit on him, flog him with a whip, and kill him, but after three days he will rise again.”

So Jesus is teaching this is what’s going to come. Biblically speaking, you have the Old Testament that testifies it’s coming. You have Jesus’ own teaching, “I will die, and I will come back to life.” The last thing I would want you to see in regard to biblical evidence is when the resurrection of Jesus Christ is argued by the apostles and other biblical writers it’s rarely argued as, “Have faith in,” but rather, “Talk to those who saw,” eyewitnesses.

1 Corinthians 15:3–6 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.

Paul’s argument around the resurrection is, “There were at least 500 at one time, most of whom are still alive. Ask somebody. I’m not making this up.

The Historic Circumstantial Evidence

The historic circumstantial evidence is through the roof.

1. The utter and complete transformation of his disciples.

As I’ve already covered, these men were cowardly, weren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer, and yet something happened to them that turned all of that on its head.

a. Look at Peter.

Peter who denied Jesus three times and basically became a coward hiding from the authorities.

Then this same man stands up about 60 days later at Pentecost and preaches his guts out. It enrages the powers that be, and they brought him before them and said, “Quit teaching about Jesus. We have the same power to do to you what we did to him. Quit it.” What does Peter do? “Oh, okay”? No, he’s like, “Judge for yourselves what’s right and wrong, but as for us, we can’t help speaking about what we have seen and heard.”

b. Jesus’ family believed he was God.

How do you pull that one off? His mom who gave birth to him believed this was… Do you know his half-brother James became a Christian who was one of the pastors in the church in Jerusalem who was martyred, was killed.

He so believed his half-brother was the Son of God they pulled him up on the temple mount, told him to recant, he refused to recant, they threw him off the mount, he landed, fractured both of his legs, he’s bleeding out, and he’s praying for the mob that’s trying to kill him. It enrages a guy, who picks up a blunt object and crushes his head.

That’s how James Died, he could have just said “ya, your right none of it’s true” He didn’t because he was completely convinced.

c. The women were the ones who discovered him in the tomb.

That doesn’t register with us much, but I can tell you in the first century, women’s testimony was not admissible in a court of law. If a woman saw a crime and the woman was the only one who saw the crime, you couldn’t ask that woman to testify on your behalf because the court wouldn’t accept it.

So the fact that it was the women who first testified tells us that others must have witnessed Jesus alive after his death or it would not have been believed.

d. The focus of worship moved off of Saturday

The focus of worship moved off of Saturday, which they had practiced for thousands of years in accordance with the Ten Commandments, and it moved to Sunday.

It was moved because the church celebrated the resurrection weekly on Sunday, the day Jesus was resurrected.

e. Others outside of the Bible Wrote About the Resurrection.

Secular first-century writers Josephus, Pliny the Younger, and Salutius all wrote about the resurrection of Jesus Christ and some of the weird things that happened in the temple upon the death of Jesus Christ. E.g. the curtain being torn.

There is much more evidence that we just don’t have time to get into today. Ultimately, it boils down to this......do you want it to be true?

Closing

Ultimately, if this is true, and I believe historically, biblically, and every way it is, then that means our sins are legitimate, they needed to be handled, and were completely handled in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

If Jesus was resurrected from the grave, then what that resurrection means is death has been defeated, and the Bible tells us death is a result of sin.

Therefore, death has been defeated through the person and work of Jesus Christ.

The resurrection brings life to those who believe, and hope that there is life after death. That we don’t just live this life and it’s over.

The resurrection proves that everything Jesus taught was true, that he really was God in the flesh. God in the form of a human being.