Untitled Sermon

Throughout my studies in seminary school the topic of study that has piqued my interest the most is by far Christian Apologetics. Apologetics, coming from the Geek word apologeos, which means legal defense, is the study of making a constructive and logical argument. In today’s increasingly secular society, many people regard Christian beliefs as nothing more than fairy tales or folklore. In the year 2020, Christians often find themselves on the defensive, trying to rationalize our beliefs for skeptics that are hell bent in trying to undermine and illegitimatize the truth of what we believe. For these reasons, today’s message will have a more academic tone, as I attempt to explain one of the greatest arguments in favor of the Christian faith that is available to us today.

First we need to talk about proof. Too often when confronted with a skeptic, they ask us to prove that an event in the Bible happened, or prove the existence of God, or even prove that Jesus was a real person. These people expect a rational answer to an irrational question. True proof is an exceptionally difficult thing to obtain, and in dealing with matters of history, it is nearly impossible. To show you what I mean by this I have prepared a small demonstration. (Do demonstration)

Now I challenge you to prove to me that that just happened. You can’t. So if you can’t prove something that happened 30 seconds ago, how then are you supposed to prove something that happened 2,000 years ago? Well the answer is difficult because you really can’t. In essence, what history really is, is a collection of very good arguments in favor of a series of events. We could never know for certain how certain events unfolded, especially in antiquity. Ancient sources tend to be far removed from the time of events by the time they were written down. This long gap of time leaves room for embellishment, making it the job of historians to separate out the truth from the myth.

This “legendary development”, this embellishment, is what critics of Christianity will say the Bible is guilty of. Almost every common argument against Christianity rests on this point. Unfortunately however, when many of us are confronted with objections to our faith we become dismissive, or worse, get angry and lash out. We are called to be better than that. 1 Peter 3:15-16 tells us: “In your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, ready to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is within you. Yet do this with gentleness and respect, keeping a clear conscience.” We are CALLED to have a defense for our faith, and that is what I am hoping to give you all today.

So, while rooted in the same basic thing, skeptic’s objections to Christian doctrine fall into two main categories: disbelief in the validity of scripture, and disbelief in the very existence of God. Now the argument that I am presenting today is an argument for the existence of God, but it does rely somewhat heavily on the New Testament scriptures. So before we can tackle that we first need to deal with the historical reliability of the New Testament. The reliability of historical documents can be checked by historians in many ways. Did other, independent sources report the event the same way? Is the source based on eyewitness testimony? Is there a large number of manuscript copies of the work from around the time of its writing? While these are only a few of the criteria used, The New Testament fits them all. The Gospel accounts are mostly considered to be independent of each other. There is little to no evidence to show that Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John were working together in their writing, or they were even influenced by each other’s writings at all. Yet they all report many of the same details. As far as eyewitness testimony goes, Matthew and John were eyewitnesses to the events of Jesus’ life and ministry, and Mark and Luke based their writings on a veritable wealth of testimonies that they sought out. While these things help to establish historical reliability to a certain extent, but the truly astounding evidence comes from the manuscripts we have available to us.

A few minutes ago I mentioned how ancient writings tend to be far removed from their sources. Take for example Alexander the Great. Much of what we know about Alexander’s life comes from “The Histories of Alexander the Great”, written by Roman historian Quintus Rufus in the first century A.D, hundreds of years after Alexander’s death. This long gap of time between the events and the written history leaves room for legend to form, embarrassing details to be dropped, and important details to be forgotten. The oldest manuscript copy that we have of Rufus’ work dates to the ninth century and is only a partial copy. Of all of the 123 manuscript copies we have of this work not one of them is complete. And worse, there are major differences between the copies, making it difficult to determine what the content of the original even was.

The New Testament manuscripts are a sharp contrast however. Paul’s letter to the Ephesians is one of the earliest books of the New Testament, written around 37 A.D. This places the first writings in the New Testament at only 5 to seven years after the death of Jesus. In the 60s A.D we would begin to see the Gospels written and circulated. At only 30 years out from the death of Jesus, many of the people who encountered Jesus, listened to his teachings, and saw his miracles would still be alive to confirm the accounts, or reject them if they were untrue. We see no such rebuttal of the Gospels within this time period.

The people who were charged with copying these works, truly did have a faith that could move mountains. The accuracy with which they copied the books of the New Testament is unparalleled in nearly all of history. We have over 5,000 manuscript copies of the New Testament dating from the first century to the 4th century available to us today. And amazingly these copies agree with each other up to 97%, with most of the differences between them being spelling or syntax errors. We can say with a degree of absolute certainty that what we read in our Bibles today is almost exactly what was written by the authors of the New Testament in the first century.

With that absolute certainty, we can begin to approach the topic of the resurrection. Many skeptics will agree that Jesus was a real person, who lived, taught, and was brought up on false charges of treason and crucified. The part they will always disagree with is the resurrection. And therein lies our main point. If you can convince someone that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead, how then could they deny the existence of God? These things naturally sound difficult to most of us, but people have dedicated entire careers to addressing these questions. One such person is Dr. Gary Habernas of Liberty University, who came up with what he calls The Core Facts Approach to the resurrection. The premise is that there are certain facts surrounding the resurrection account that are universally accepted by historians and scholars, and that these facts, in conjunction with each other, make a very solid case for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. There are five of these core facts, and we will go through all of them and some common rebuttals to them.

1. Jesus was crucified.

2. The disciples were in a state of fear and despair after the crucifixion. But after the resurrection they were triumphant and joyful, many o them willing to be tortured to death for their faith.

3. The disciples claimed to have seen the risen Christ.

4. Jesus’ tomb was found empty.

5. Saul, a great persecutor of Christians, converted and became Paul, a church father and the most prolific author in the New Testament.

1.

You are not likely to face much objection on our first point. The death of Jesus is almost universally accepted by historians.

2.

Our second point however is often disputed in a way. It is accepted that the disciples were in a state of despair after the death of Jesus, and that soon after were bold and confident. The disagreement comes from why that is. Many skeptics will say that the resurrection account was simply a story cooked up by the disciples after the death of their leader, and that they deified Jesus just to spite the Jewish Leaders of their day. While this may sound feasible to some, it is extremely unlikely.

Another way historians gauge the accuracy of an ancient writing is called the criteria of embarrassment. If you were going to write a story about myself, you wouldn’t include the part where you wet the bed last night! The disciples despair, among many other aspects of the resurrection account would be simply embarrassing to them, and would likely not be included in an embellished worl of fiction.

3.

Our third point is very important. The tomb of Jesus being found empty on Easter morning has been long accepted. We saw in our reading from Matthew 25 today that one of the first rebuttals to the claims of Jesus’ resurrection was the authorities who arrested Jesus paying the Roman guards stationed at the tomb to say that the body was stolen. This passage can make people uncomfortable sometimes, as it can sound rather antiemetic. Centuries of anti-Semitism have been justified by this passage, but that was not the spirit of the work when I was written. When Matthew talks about “The Jews” he does not mean Jewish people on the whole, he was Jewish himself, but rather the Jewish rulers and authorities who put Jesus to death. It would be easy for these men to squash the budding Christian movement if they could produce the body, but they couldn’t. It is unlikely that the Jewish leaders moved the body, and even more unlikely that the disciples stole it from a guarded tomb.

As I mentioned a moment ago, there are many aspects of the resurrection account that fall under the criteria of embarrassment. Now any student of history can tell you how prevalent sexism and misogyny have been throughout history, and the Israel of Jesus’ day is no exception. The testimony of women was not to be trusted, and was inadmissible in court. We know today that this was never God’s intention for the world, but in ancient times that was the way. This aspect of the story would be very unlikely to be present in a fictional account.

4.

Onto our fourth point, the disciples made many claims to have seen the resurrected Jesus, one of which we read this morning. Skeptics will deny that they actually did, but they cannot deny that he disciples claimed to have seen Jesus. Given the rest of these points, it is hard to deny that their experience of seeing Jesus was genuine.

5.

Our final point centers around the conversion of Paul. From what we know about his earlier life, it is extremely unlikely that such a person could be converted easily. Paul claimed to have had an actual encounter with Jesus on the Damascus road, but skeptics will claim that he converted out of selfish self interest, thinking that the Church offered him more power and influence. In reality the rest of Paul’s life after the Damascus road was a life lived close to poverty, and constantly in danger.

Without his encounter with Jesus, you cannot explain how Paul turned from such a greedy, hateful person; to the saintly figure we revere him as today.

So when you take these 5 facts together, they become nearly impossible to explain without Jesus being resurrected from the dead. Skeptics can try to claim that Jesus was never really dead, or that he was resurrected by some other means such as witchcraft, but this is grasping at straws. If Jesus was resurrected, then the God he claimed to be MUST exist. As we get ready to sit and meet to discuss the business of this church, let us remember this solid foundation upon which our faith is built, and that with these 5 facts, we have proof positive. Let us pray:

Father God we thank you for our ability to gather here this morning. We thank you with these tools with which to defend our faith, but when we do defend, let it be from a place of gentleness and respect. Amen.