SPEAKER_00: Jesus is risen.
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you guys can go ahead and have a seat.
SPEAKER_00: Let's thank our worship team for leading us this morning.
SPEAKER_00: They practice really hard to be able to lead us together as a community, so I'm grateful to them.
SPEAKER_00: It is great to be with you.
SPEAKER_00: Happy Easter.
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
SPEAKER_00: My name's Mac.
SPEAKER_00: I'm one of the pastors on our team here at the church.
SPEAKER_00: Also want to welcome all of you who are joining from home.
SPEAKER_00: Happy Easter to you and thanks for tuning in.
SPEAKER_00: A little bit about my journey, my spiritual journey.
SPEAKER_00: I do not have a cool testimony.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have one of those dramatic come to Jesus moments where my life was a total mess, and then boom, like encountered Jesus, and then everything turned around.
SPEAKER_00: Those stories are powerful.
SPEAKER_00: Those stories are awesome.
SPEAKER_00: If that's your story, I encourage you to figure out how to articulate it to the people in your life.
SPEAKER_00: We need to hear those kinds of stories.
SPEAKER_00: It's just not my story.
SPEAKER_00: I grew up in a Christian home and don't really remember a time when I didn't know Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: It's like the world's most boring testimony you could imagine, okay?
SPEAKER_00: I don't even remember like a conversion moment where I first gave my life to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I don't have one of those.
SPEAKER_00: Instead, what I can point to is lots of conversion moments where my faith was sort of stretched or tested and went deeper in some way.
SPEAKER_00: One of those seasons for me was when I was in the ninth grade.
SPEAKER_00: I began to experience all kinds of questions and faith-related doubts.
SPEAKER_00: They just began to bubble up for me.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe I was a little bit odd at the time, but they like kept me awake at night.
SPEAKER_00: Like I couldn't turn them off.
SPEAKER_00: And there were two in particular that I found myself thinking about a lot.
SPEAKER_00: And they were they're sort of connected.
SPEAKER_00: But the first one is, how do I know that the Bible is true?
SPEAKER_00: Like, why believe that it's reliable?
SPEAKER_00: Why trust that the scriptures are accurate?
SPEAKER_00: I remember really thinking about that a lot.
SPEAKER_00: And then the second one, which was related to it, was um, why believe that Jesus rose bodily from the dead?
SPEAKER_00: Like that's a pretty significant claim.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know anybody who's been raised from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Like, it's a pretty big claim.
SPEAKER_00: So why believe that that is true?
SPEAKER_00: Some people, friends, they just believe and they don't have to work through questions like this.
SPEAKER_00: And God bless those people.
SPEAKER_00: That's just not me.
SPEAKER_00: Um I've been a thinker from the very beginning.
SPEAKER_00: It's like my mind needs to give my heart permission to believe.
SPEAKER_00: And so I was in this season of just like intense wrestling and asking questions.
SPEAKER_00: And I remember going to church every week and youth group on Wednesday nights, like desperate for someone to say something that would address some of these questions that were sort of bubbling underneath the surface.
SPEAKER_00: And it didn't happen.
SPEAKER_00: I remember on Easter Sunday, like showing up for a couple years in a row on Easter, being like, maybe this is the year the speaker will actually give some reasons for why they believe that this man rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: And it never happened.
SPEAKER_00: Like year after year I'd go going, maybe this you'd think of all the days, they'd say something about like, here's why we believe this happened, and it didn't happen.
SPEAKER_00: And so eventually I started to take matters into my own hands.
SPEAKER_00: I figured out how to do research on my own and um began to explore the different ways people view this and try to figure out my own answers to these questions.
SPEAKER_00: Looking back, it probably laid the foundation for what would become my life's work, multiple Bible degrees and so on.
SPEAKER_00: But in light of that, in light of my own story, knowing I was looking for something like that on a day like this, I want to today do something I've never done before, which is to give an apologetic for Easter.
SPEAKER_00: The word apologetic simply means a defense, an argument, a case.
SPEAKER_00: I want to build a case for the resurrection, and I'm hoping to connect with two groups of people today.
SPEAKER_00: So, first, maybe you're here today and you're a little bit like me.
SPEAKER_00: You've got these questions in the background that sometimes come to the foreground, and you're like, why believe that this is true?
SPEAKER_00: Um, I hope to be able to connect with you today and maybe provide some reasons for why you can believe that Jesus rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: The second group, though, are for those of you who already believe.
SPEAKER_00: You're already convinced that Jesus rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: That's great.
SPEAKER_00: But I'm hoping to equip you today so that you can better explain why you believe this to be true to those in your life.
SPEAKER_00: And Scripture calls you to be able to do this.
SPEAKER_00: It's not just pastors who should be able to do this.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what it says in 1 Peter 3 15.
SPEAKER_00: It says, always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have, but do so with gentleness and respect.
SPEAKER_00: So I hope to equip you to be able to explain why you believe this to be true, not to be an antagonistic jerk.
SPEAKER_00: Nobody comes to faith through argumentation.
SPEAKER_00: That's not how people they come to faith because they experience the love of Jesus flowing through you with respect and gentleness.
SPEAKER_00: And so here we go.
SPEAKER_00: I want to make a case for the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: A good argument, by the way, um, has two components.
SPEAKER_00: And this is true of any argument, but a good argument makes a positive case.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, it can put forth reasons for here's why you should believe this to be true.
SPEAKER_00: But a good argument doesn't stop there.
SPEAKER_00: It also puts forth a negative case.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, it can respond to objections that people have to the position you're taking.
SPEAKER_00: Here are how people would respond or disagree with you.
SPEAKER_00: And so a good argument can also respond to potential objections.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to do both today.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna spend a lot more time building a positive case, but at the end I'll respond to the most common objections uh to the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: So I want to um guide us by talking about three facts, uh, three facts that I believe provide reason for a thoughtful, um, reasonable person to believe that Jesus in fact rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Uh the first fact is this is the fact of the empty tomb.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so central and foundational to the belief in the resurrection is that the tomb was empty.
SPEAKER_00: The tomb that Jesus was buried in was empty.
SPEAKER_00: Without that, there would be no case for the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: And so the question is: are there reasons to believe that the tomb that Jesus was placed in was found to be empty?
SPEAKER_00: And I want to suggest to you there's lots of them, and I'm gonna give you a handful right now.
SPEAKER_00: Here's why I believe the tomb was empty.
SPEAKER_00: Number one is that the disciples couldn't have preached Jesus' resurrection without an empty tomb.
SPEAKER_00: From the very beginning, the disciples are proclaiming that this Messiah who was crucified and buried was raised from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Now think about it, if anybody wanted to prove this message wrong, and we have ample evidence that there were tons of people who wanted to do just that, it would have been really easy for them to do so if they just would have pointed out that Jesus' body was still in the tomb or produced Jesus' body in some way.
SPEAKER_00: Then it would have been game over for the disciples, and they would have had no message to proclaim at all.
SPEAKER_00: And yet, there's not a single account that we have that would suggest that someone said, Oh, here's the body of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Again, that would have been game over, nothing more to present, but we don't have any evidence that that took place.
SPEAKER_00: So that's the first point.
SPEAKER_00: The message of Jesus wouldn't have survived a week if the tomb hadn't, in fact, been empty.
SPEAKER_00: But here's a second reason.
SPEAKER_00: The empty tomb is attested to and confirmed by numerous early sources.
SPEAKER_00: So we have multiple first century sources that are independent of one another.
SPEAKER_00: We have five primary sources, that's the the gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John plus 1 Corinthians.
SPEAKER_00: And then we have 11 secondary sources that all either explicitly affirm or presume that Jesus rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: I want to quote to you from the earliest one.
SPEAKER_00: This is 1 Corinthians chapter 15, starting in verse 3.
SPEAKER_00: It says, Now, brothers and sisters, Paul is writing here, he says, Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand.
SPEAKER_00: By this gospel you are saved if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you, otherwise you believed in vain.
SPEAKER_00: For what I received, I passed on to you as of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried and he was raised on the third day, according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Caphas, and then to the twelve.
SPEAKER_00: After that he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.
SPEAKER_00: He means that they have died.
SPEAKER_00: Then he appeared to James, then to the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
SPEAKER_00: Here Paul's being self-deprecating.
SPEAKER_00: For I'm the least of the apostles and do not even deserve to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God.
SPEAKER_00: Scholars are unanimous about this.
SPEAKER_00: They all agree that Paul is the one who wrote 1 Corinthians.
SPEAKER_00: Not only do they all agree that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians, but we know when he wrote it.
SPEAKER_00: He wrote it in between 53 and 55 AD from Ephesus.
SPEAKER_00: So just note, that's like 20 years after Jesus' resurrection, a mere 20 years.
SPEAKER_00: But here's what's more significant is that most commentators agree that what Paul is writing here isn't him writing it for the first time.
SPEAKER_00: He's actually reciting an early profession of faith in Jesus' resurrection that all of the early churches proclaimed every week.
SPEAKER_00: See that?
SPEAKER_00: So he's not just writing 20, what he's writing is sort of an early church profession of faith that goes back to the beginning, the earliest days.
SPEAKER_00: And there's a couple indicators that clue us into this.
SPEAKER_00: One is that, notice that he says, What I received, I passed on to you as a first importance.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul is sort of reminding them, I didn't come up with this, I received it.
SPEAKER_00: This is the profession of faith, then I passed it on to you.
SPEAKER_00: And here's what it is.
SPEAKER_00: Another detail that's really significant is that Paul refers to Peter throughout his letters as Peter, but here he refers to him as Caphas, which is his Aramaic name, which again suggests that this is early Jewish origins.
SPEAKER_00: So even though Paul is writing just 20 years after the fact, 53, 54 AD, he's quoting something that likely goes back to the very beginning.
SPEAKER_00: This is just one example.
SPEAKER_00: When it comes to documentation affirming that Jesus rose from the dead, we have numerous sources that are early and independent of one another, which is more than can be said about really any historical event or person we know from the ancient Near Eastern world.
SPEAKER_00: Just lock this in.
SPEAKER_00: We have numerous sources, very early dated, that are independent of one another, that are all saying the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: And we don't have anything like that when it comes to anything else in ancient history.
SPEAKER_00: You all know who Alexander the Great is?
SPEAKER_00: Yeah?
SPEAKER_00: Most of what we know about Alexander the Great is relying not on many sources but one source.
SPEAKER_00: His name is Arian, and he was writing 400 years after the time of Alexander the Great.
SPEAKER_00: And yet we seem to trust what he was reporting about Alexander the Great.
SPEAKER_00: Most of what we know about first century Judaism, we're relying not on many sources, but one source, and that's Josephus, and he was writing a hundred years after the things that he's reporting and describing.
SPEAKER_00: With the Gospels, you don't have a hundred years, you don't have four hundred years, you don't even have four decades.
SPEAKER_00: You've got a very short amount of time, and you don't have just one person, you have multiple people all describing the same thing with a scary degree of consistency.
SPEAKER_00: And so the second point that leads me to conclude that the tomb was found empty is that it's attested to and confirmed by numerous early sources independent of one another.
SPEAKER_00: The third point that supports the empty tomb is that even skeptical scholars accept that the tomb was empty.
SPEAKER_00: So you need to know this.
SPEAKER_00: Even ardent skeptics don't argue this point.
SPEAKER_00: They all agree that the tomb was found empty.
SPEAKER_00: And the reason why is because we know more about Jesus' trial, his death, and his burial than any other person in ancient history.
SPEAKER_00: And lots of details about it.
SPEAKER_00: We know where Jesus was arrested.
SPEAKER_00: He was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane.
SPEAKER_00: We know who betrayed him, Judas.
SPEAKER_00: We know the people who are involved in his trial.
SPEAKER_00: Caiaphas, the high priest, he appeared before Herod, the king of the Jews.
SPEAKER_00: Pontius Pilate oversaw his trial.
SPEAKER_00: He was a Roman governor.
SPEAKER_00: We know where Jesus was crucified on Golgotha.
SPEAKER_00: We know whose tomb he was placed in, Joseph of Arimathea.
SPEAKER_00: We know that who helped him, Nicodemus, both of them were part of the Sanhedrin, which was like the Supreme Court for the Jewish folks.
SPEAKER_00: These are real historical figures and verifiable locations, which makes the burial account very difficult to dismiss with any degree of integrity.
SPEAKER_00: And skeptics know this.
SPEAKER_00: So rather than arguing that those things aren't true, they have to come up with alternative theories that explain the evidence we do have on hand.
SPEAKER_00: We'll get to those in a little bit.
SPEAKER_00: The final point I would make as to why I believe the tomb was actually found empty is that the first century Jewish folks actually confirm that the tomb was empty.
SPEAKER_00: In Matthew 28, the Roman guards discover that Jesus' body is no longer in the tomb.
SPEAKER_00: And that's a big deal because they were responsible for protecting the tomb and making sure nothing happened to Jesus' body.
SPEAKER_00: And they end up going to the Jewish religious folks saying, Oh, Jesus' body is no longer here.
SPEAKER_00: And the authors tell us that the Jewish religious leaders paid the guards off in order to circulate the story that the disciples stole the body.
SPEAKER_00: Which I think is a pretty um not very credible story.
SPEAKER_00: But note in doing that, they implicitly confirm that in fact Jesus' body is no longer in the tomb.
SPEAKER_00: You see this?
SPEAKER_00: So if we're gonna say, we're gonna ask the question, why believe this to be true?
SPEAKER_00: That a human being who was crucified and killed, buried, and rose from the dead, that's a pretty like significant claim.
SPEAKER_00: Why believe that's true?
SPEAKER_00: I'm naming the first fact we have to deal with is that the tomb was actually empty.
SPEAKER_00: And I've given several reasons for why I believe it to be the case.
SPEAKER_00: And I think this is such an airtight case that I would say if you don't believe in the resurrection, if you're like, yeah, I don't believe that, then it's the burden of proof sort of shifts to you to go, then how do you explain that the tomb is empty?
SPEAKER_00: Like, you've got to come up with some explanation given all the evidence that I've just presented.
SPEAKER_00: That's the first fact.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the second fact that prompts me to believe in the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: It's the post-resurrection appearances.
SPEAKER_00: When we put all of our primary and secondary sources together, that's the four gospels plus 1 Corinthians 15.
SPEAKER_00: We have 12 individuals andor groups of people that experienced a post-resurrection encounter with Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Here they are if you're taking notes.
SPEAKER_00: Uh Paul mentions himself in 1 Corinthians 15, and then the book of Acts, he tells his story of encountering Jesus three times.
SPEAKER_00: So you've got Paul, you've got Mary Magdalene in John 20, 21, you've got the other women with Mary Magdalene in Matthew 28, you have Peter in Luke 23, you've got two unnamed disciples in Luke 24 on the road to Emmaus.
SPEAKER_00: You've got Thomas and the other disciples in John 20, seven apostles listed in John 21, all the apostles together presented in Matthew 28 and Acts 1.
SPEAKER_00: You've got 500 people mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15, James, the brother of Jesus, mentioned in 1 Corinthians 15, and then you've got 10 apostles mentioned in Luke 24.
SPEAKER_00: Just notice this.
SPEAKER_00: We're not relying on one person who had an encounter with Jesus, and then we're being asked to trust that one person.
SPEAKER_00: We've got lots of people who have encountered Jesus and are all sharing the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: What's more is that there are some people in this list that are really significant.
SPEAKER_00: And it's worth pausing and considering, huh?
SPEAKER_00: I wonder how that happened.
SPEAKER_00: So, for instance, think about Paul for a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Before Paul was one of the leading missionaries in the early church, he was the leading persecutor of the church.
SPEAKER_00: The first time we encounter Paul in the book of Acts, he's present when Stephen is being stoned to death and he's excited.
SPEAKER_00: And from there, he basically goes on a rampage, making it his mission to stomp out the Christian movement.
SPEAKER_00: He's persecuting Christians, he's trying to get them arrested, he's trying to stomp it out.
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, when he's on his way to Damascus, where he encounters Jesus, he's going to Damascus to round up Christians and have them thrown into prison.
SPEAKER_00: He's on a mission of persecution.
SPEAKER_00: And then while he's on his way, he encounters Jesus and his life is turned around.
SPEAKER_00: There's something about Paul going from persecuting the church to now leading the church that is inexplicable unless you see that he encountered Jesus risen from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Like that had to have been it's the most significant moment in Paul's life to make such a turn.
SPEAKER_00: Here's another one to consider is James, the brother of Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I have no idea why the Catholic Church insists that Mary and Joseph never had sex after Jesus was born.
SPEAKER_00: That is so silly to me.
SPEAKER_00: Because it's very clear that Jesus had brothers and sisters.
SPEAKER_00: And I imagine that it would really stink to be Jesus' brother.
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna name that.
SPEAKER_00: Anytime you'd get into an argument, you know who's at fault, right?
SPEAKER_00: It's you.
SPEAKER_00: There's no winning here.
SPEAKER_00: And we know from like the gospels that there was a little bit of rub.
SPEAKER_00: Like when Jesus started his public ministry, there's accounts of his family trying to like round him up, like he's kind of like out of control from their vantage point.
SPEAKER_00: And so there's some friction there.
SPEAKER_00: Have you ever wondered, like, oh, how did his own brothers and sisters come to faith in him?
SPEAKER_00: Well, one of the people that Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 15 that Jesus specifically appeared to was James, his brother James.
SPEAKER_00: And something happened in that counter because James ends up becoming one of the primary leaders in the early church.
SPEAKER_00: We see that in Acts 15.
SPEAKER_00: He is the one who wrote the letter to James, which we've preached through before as a church, but that's a significant clearly that encounter mattered as his own brother put his faith in Jesus and began leading in this Christian movement.
SPEAKER_00: The final group to consider is the 500.
SPEAKER_00: In 1 Corinthians 15, Paul mentions that there are 500 people that Jesus appeared to at one time.
SPEAKER_00: But he doesn't just mention them.
SPEAKER_00: He tells us that many of them are still alive.
SPEAKER_00: And he's essentially saying to the readers, so if you doubt the resurrection, why don't you just go talk to some of them?
SPEAKER_00: Because they'll tell you what they saw.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, here's a massive group of people that can affirm what we're talking about here, and all you got to do is go ask them.
SPEAKER_00: They're right here for you to talk to.
SPEAKER_00: In addition to all these people that Jesus appeared to, Jesus also did some things in these appearances to prove that his body was real.
SPEAKER_00: It was a real physical body.
SPEAKER_00: Give you just a couple examples.
SPEAKER_00: In John 20, we're told that uh Jesus appeared to the disciples, but there was one disciple that wasn't there, Thomas.
SPEAKER_00: And when he shows up to visit the disciples, the disciples tell them, We just encountered Jesus, and Thomas doesn't believe.
SPEAKER_00: And he says, Hey, unless I'm able to examine Jesus' body, see the nail marks in his wrists, touch his side, like I'm not gonna believe.
SPEAKER_00: And so a couple days later, whatever the timeline is, um, they're all together and Jesus appears again and says, Hey Thomas, I know what you said.
SPEAKER_00: You know, kind of know things.
SPEAKER_00: Um, check it out.
SPEAKER_00: Come examine it.
SPEAKER_00: Look at my wrists, put your hand in my side.
SPEAKER_00: You can you can examine it for yourself.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus is proving, like, hey, this is my body, it's true.
SPEAKER_00: In in Luke 24, he's with his disciples again.
SPEAKER_00: Not only does he allow his disciples to touch him, verifying that he has a physical body, but he actually eats food.
SPEAKER_00: He ingests food, which shows that he has a physical body.
SPEAKER_00: Again, when you put all this together, why believe this is true?
SPEAKER_00: This is a central Christian belief.
SPEAKER_00: If it's not true, then we've believed in vain.
SPEAKER_00: A second reason I'm giving to you is these post resurrection appearances.
SPEAKER_00: Multiple people, not just one, occurring over a 40 day period according to Acts 1 3, appearing to individual.
SPEAKER_00: And groups of people together.
SPEAKER_00: And again, I want to just submit to you if you don't believe in the resurrection, again, I want to submit the burden of proof sort of shifts to you to go, then how do you explain these post-resurrection appearances?
SPEAKER_00: What explanation do you have on hand given what I've just presented?
SPEAKER_00: Here's the final fact.
SPEAKER_00: It relates to some details about how Christianity got started.
SPEAKER_00: So you've got the empty tomb, you've got the post-resurrection appearances, but then there's a bunch of details to consider about how Christianity got its start that I think seals the deal for Jesus being raised from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: The first is the transformation of the disciples.
SPEAKER_00: So you'll remember when Jesus was arrested in the garden.
SPEAKER_00: What did the disciples do?
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_00: They all ran away.
SPEAKER_00: Yes?
SPEAKER_00: They were fearful, they were scared, and they all abandoned Jesus, except for one person, that's Peter.
SPEAKER_00: He sort of like creeps, right?
SPEAKER_00: He follows from a distance, kind of creeping on the situation, but he's still full of fear.
SPEAKER_00: And then he's prompted by a servant girl and ends up denying that he even knows Jesus three times.
SPEAKER_00: The depiction of the disciples is cowardly.
SPEAKER_00: They're scared and fearful.
SPEAKER_00: And really, they're the only ones who aren't at the crucifixion.
SPEAKER_00: We know that John was, but the women are the ones who are present.
SPEAKER_00: And even after Jesus is, they're hiding, they're scared.
SPEAKER_00: But then they encounter Jesus, and all of that changes.
SPEAKER_00: They go from cowering in fear to boldly and courageously proclaiming that Jesus rose from the dead, so much so that they end up turning the Roman Empire upside down.
SPEAKER_00: They go from being scared of dying to every single one of them, with the exception of John, ends up dying for their faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: John is the only one who wasn't executed.
SPEAKER_00: He was exiled to an island.
SPEAKER_00: But Peter, according to church tradition, died in Rome.
SPEAKER_00: He was crucified upside down because he didn't consider himself worthy of being executed the same way his Lord and Savior had been killed.
SPEAKER_00: So Peter dies by crucifixion upside down in Rome.
SPEAKER_00: Andrew, Bartholomew, Philip, and Simon were also all crucified.
SPEAKER_00: Paul, by the way, was beheaded in Rome.
SPEAKER_00: James was beheaded.
SPEAKER_00: Matthew and Thomas were speared to death.
SPEAKER_00: And both the other James and the other Judas were stoned to death.
SPEAKER_00: So all of these disciples that ran in fear end up dying for their faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: The disciples didn't gain anything from this.
SPEAKER_00: They ended up losing their lives.
SPEAKER_00: What's more is that if you look at the early church, they survived and even thrived during some incredible periods of persecution.
SPEAKER_00: There were some really intense periods of persecution, especially under Nero.
SPEAKER_00: He was rather sadistic.
SPEAKER_00: He would tar Christians, impale them, and then light them on fire to serve as torches during his dinner parties.
SPEAKER_00: But we don't have record of a single Christian, I'm not saying none of them did, but we don't have record of any Christians recanting their faith, denouncing their faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You'd think if the disciples made this up, and you're about to get crucified, hanging upside down, you might go, okay, I give in, I made it all up.
SPEAKER_00: But they don't do that.
SPEAKER_00: They end up losing their life, their lives out of conviction that this thing is true.
SPEAKER_00: Consider the incriminating details.
SPEAKER_00: If you are going to make up a story, let's say you and your friends get together and you're gonna make up a story, you're gonna fabricate something.
SPEAKER_00: My sense is that you would try to put together an argument or a story that was sort of airtight, very consistent, so that nobody could poke any holes in it.
SPEAKER_00: That is just not what we have in the gospel accounts.
SPEAKER_00: There are several incriminating details that actually lend to its credibility that it wasn't made up or fabricated.
SPEAKER_00: So, for instance, have you ever noticed who discovered the empty tomb?
SPEAKER_00: That it was women?
SPEAKER_00: That may not strike us as a significant detail because we live in a fairly egalitarian culture, praise God, but in the first century, women weren't even considered witnesses, they couldn't function as witnesses.
SPEAKER_00: But in the gospel story, the very first people who give witness to the empty tomb and to Jesus' resurrection are women.
SPEAKER_00: If you're trying to build a story with credibility, you wouldn't have women discovering the empty tomb.
SPEAKER_00: The only way to make sense of that is that's how it actually happened.
SPEAKER_00: Consider the fact that the disciples didn't believe the women at first.
SPEAKER_00: They have to go check it out for themselves, and then they end up believing.
SPEAKER_00: Notice also that there are discrepancies between the stories.
SPEAKER_00: So if you put all of the gospels together and then you sort of uh read them alongside, there's conflicting and different details in the gospel accounts about how it actually appeared.
SPEAKER_00: You would think that if you're making up a story, you'd make sure that every detail lines up perfectly so that everybody could be convinced.
SPEAKER_00: That's just not what we have in the gospels.
SPEAKER_00: There's sort of differing details that sort of go, how does this fit together?
SPEAKER_00: But it's exactly what you'd expect if you have several different people recounting what they saw from their unique vantage point.
SPEAKER_00: It makes all the sense in the world.
SPEAKER_00: I want to submit to you that there's lots of incriminating details, including how the disciples are depicted.
SPEAKER_00: If you're the one making up the story, wouldn't you present yourself as having it all together instead of being dull and stupid and cowardly?
SPEAKER_00: All of these details suggest that they're presenting an honest story.
SPEAKER_00: The final incriminating detail, and this is one that a lot of people miss, but is actually perhaps the most important one, is the concept of the resurrection that they present.
SPEAKER_00: So I know this is getting a little bit heady, but in first century Judaism, most Jews believed in the resurrection, except for the Sadducees.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: But the concept of the resurrection that they believed in is very different than what the disciples depict.
SPEAKER_00: For most first century Jews, they believed that there would be one resurrection for everyone, all at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: Making sense?
SPEAKER_00: One resurrection that's gonna happen for everybody, all human beings, at the same time.
SPEAKER_00: Notice that this is not what the disciples are teaching and proclaiming.
SPEAKER_00: Their argument is that one person, namely Jesus, experienced the resurrection before everybody else, in order to secure it for everybody else.
SPEAKER_00: And this idea that one person would experience the resurrection before anybody else is nowhere found anywhere in the ancient Near Eastern world.
SPEAKER_00: In other words, it's totally new and unique.
SPEAKER_00: Which raises the question: how in the world, if they made it up, did they come up with something totally unique?
SPEAKER_00: And if they wanted to convince people, you usually don't present something they've never considered before.
SPEAKER_00: I think the best case is that they were simply telling the truth about what they saw and experienced.
SPEAKER_00: So those are the that's the positive case I'm presenting today.
SPEAKER_00: The empty tomb, the post-resurrection appearances, many facts around how Christianity got its start that I think is difficult to explain apart from what they've recorded.
SPEAKER_00: I want to use uh a few minutes just to address some of the most common objections to the resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: And just note a lot of what I've covered so far uh provides a foundation for responding to some of these objections.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm not gonna spend a ton of time here.
SPEAKER_00: But here are some of those common objections to the resurrection for those who believe that Jesus was not raised from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: The first is known as the conspiracy theory.
SPEAKER_00: The basic argument here is that the disciples made the entire thing up.
SPEAKER_00: They sort of concocted this story, it didn't really happen, it's one giant fabrication.
SPEAKER_00: I'm not gonna spend a ton of time here because I've already suggested or laid a foundation to suggest that this is a total strikeout.
SPEAKER_00: This theory, I don't think, can explain what we know about the transformation of the disciples from being cowardly to courageous.
SPEAKER_00: Um they didn't gain anything from doing so.
SPEAKER_00: Um, how do you explain this unique version of the resurrection that they came up with if it's just a fabrication?
SPEAKER_00: Um what do you do with all these incriminating details that I mentioned a moment ago?
SPEAKER_00: Why would they have women discovering the tomb?
SPEAKER_00: These are all things that the conspiracy theory, I think, is not able to explain.
SPEAKER_00: And because of that, I would suggest that if you're here today and you're like, I don't believe in the resurrection, I believe it was a conspiracy.
SPEAKER_00: I just want to humbly name, I think your belief requires a lot more faith than mine, than simply believing the gospel accounts.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the second objection.
SPEAKER_00: This is the most common one that I've encountered.
SPEAKER_00: It's known as the legendary theory.
SPEAKER_00: Um, this is the idea that Jesus was a great person, obviously a standout in some ways, and then he died, and over time what happened is stories about him, including his resurrection, were sort of embellished.
SPEAKER_00: They were exaggerated and eventually were presented as a fact.
SPEAKER_00: There's two major problems with this theory.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, the first is first century Judaism is not a context where this kind of thing happened.
SPEAKER_00: First century Jews were monotheists, they gave their exclusive allegiance to Yahweh alone.
SPEAKER_00: This is why they wouldn't even tip their hat to Caesar.
SPEAKER_00: They were hypersensitive to elevating any human being to be on the same playing field as God.
SPEAKER_00: And yet in the Gospels, you see the disciples worshiping Jesus as God.
SPEAKER_00: You can't explain.
SPEAKER_00: Like the idea that a first century Jew or a group of Jews would gradually embellish what they what a human being was capable of doing to be on par with God is pretty silly unless that actually happened.
SPEAKER_00: The other thing is you don't have enough time for this type of thing to develop.
SPEAKER_00: Okay?
SPEAKER_00: This would take years and years, decades, if not centuries.
SPEAKER_00: It was 500 years until Buddha became a godlike figure.
SPEAKER_00: 500 years.
SPEAKER_00: With Jesus, you don't have 500 years.
SPEAKER_00: You don't even have five decades.
SPEAKER_00: You arguably don't have five years, let alone maybe five days, because it goes back to the very beginning.
SPEAKER_00: You don't have the context nor the time for a legend like this to develop, especially when it's been so easy to disprove along the way.
SPEAKER_00: Again, I want to submit to you if this is your conviction, if this is why you don't believe Jesus rose from the dead, that requires a whole lot more faith than those who simply believe the gospel accounts.
SPEAKER_00: Another common theory is the hallucination theory.
SPEAKER_00: This is the idea that, hey, yeah, sure, people encountered Jesus after he had been raised from the dead, but they were just hallucinating.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus hadn't really been raised from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: Notice the problem here is it's not dealing with all the case that I've presented, it's just the post-resurrection appearances.
SPEAKER_00: Hallucinations, by the way, are also rarely public.
SPEAKER_00: They're always private.
SPEAKER_00: They don't happen to a group of people, they happen to individuals.
SPEAKER_00: It'd be really unusual for an entire group of people to hallucinate in the same way and see the same thing.
SPEAKER_00: You also in the Gospels have Jesus appearing over a 40-day period to large groups of people for an extended period of time, and most hallucinations are short in duration.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus walked with the disciples on the road to Emmaus for several hours and then ate with them.
SPEAKER_00: There's other theories, there's other objections.
SPEAKER_00: There's the wrong tomb theory.
SPEAKER_00: There's the uh apparent death theory or swoon theory that Jesus wasn't really dead.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I find that hard to believe because he was killed by professionals.
SPEAKER_00: Like their paid job was to ensure that their victims died painfully and actually died, and it was confirmed with a spear.
SPEAKER_00: And how in the world would Jesus, so mangled, somehow remove a stone a couple tons large?
SPEAKER_00: Like, how would that work?
SPEAKER_00: My point here is that um if you don't believe in Jesus' resurrection, you're still exercising a considerable amount of faith.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the bottom line for today.
SPEAKER_00: No matter what you believe, it requires faith.
SPEAKER_00: No matter what, you're exercising a lot of faith.
SPEAKER_00: There's no faith-free way to live life, and you all exercise faith on a regular basis with all sorts of things.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, most of you drove today to church in a vehicle.
SPEAKER_00: Uh you had faith that your brakes would work.
SPEAKER_00: You had to believe that your brakes would work.
SPEAKER_00: And you go, well, I can explain it scientifically.
SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, you can.
SPEAKER_00: You have reasons to believe that your brakes would work in your car, but your faith was put in those reasons.
SPEAKER_00: You still had to exercise faith.
SPEAKER_00: When you get on a plane, you have to have faith or trust that the pilot knows what he's doing.
SPEAKER_00: When you fly, do you like quiz the pilot before you get on and test his credentials?
SPEAKER_00: No, you exercise faith that up this pilot knows what he's doing.
SPEAKER_00: When you got married, you had to exercise faith that this other person was going to be faithful to you.
SPEAKER_00: Right now, you're exercising faith that that chair you're sitting in is gonna hold your body up.
SPEAKER_00: Now, again, you have reasons to believe that.
SPEAKER_00: Uh, absolutely, but you still are putting your faith in those reasons.
SPEAKER_00: And what I'm suggesting to you is that it's no different when it comes to putting your faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: There's no faith-free way to live life.
SPEAKER_00: The issue isn't whether or not you will exercise faith, the issue is what you'll put your faith in.
SPEAKER_00: Have I uh definitively proved today that Jesus rose from the dead?
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely not.
SPEAKER_00: We can definitively prove very little.
SPEAKER_00: It takes faith to believe that Jesus rose from the dead.
SPEAKER_00: But it's not blind faith, it's a reasonable faith.
SPEAKER_00: And I submit that I've given some solid reasons for believing that's actually true.
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't believe it, just note you're also having to exercise quite a bit of faith because how do you explain all the things that I've laid out today?
SPEAKER_00: Not believing, I would submit, actually requires more faith than simply doing so.
SPEAKER_00: And so here's the invitation.
SPEAKER_00: The invitation is simply for you to put your faith and trust in Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: There's no pressure or manipulation or guilt.
SPEAKER_00: But perhaps you're here today and you've had all these questions and doubts, sort of like me, and the coin is landing in the slot.
SPEAKER_00: Or uh maybe you just sense God stirring in your heart this morning.
SPEAKER_00: I would just encourage you not to ignore that.
SPEAKER_00: Don't ignore that.
SPEAKER_00: The invitation of Jesus is for everyone, every single human being.
SPEAKER_00: It's for all of us.
SPEAKER_00: And responding to it simply requires two things.
SPEAKER_00: You receive what Jesus has done for you.
SPEAKER_00: He died on the cross to free you from the power of sin, to forgive you of your sin, and he rose from the dead to give you new life.
SPEAKER_00: So you trust that.
SPEAKER_00: You put your faith in that truth.
SPEAKER_00: But it doesn't end there.
SPEAKER_00: Faith in Jesus means living faithfully to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You have to pledge your life to Jesus and then become one of his disciples, where you're essentially learning from Jesus how to live like him in your everyday life.
SPEAKER_00: It's not a one-time prayer, it's a lifelong journey.
SPEAKER_00: So as I was thinking about, like, okay, how do I close this?
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you all are in different spots.
SPEAKER_00: Each one of you is in a different spot in your faith journey.
SPEAKER_00: Whether you're not a follower of Jesus, I'm inviting you to consider becoming one.
SPEAKER_00: But maybe you've been following Jesus for a long time.
SPEAKER_00: Here at Cross Point, we don't just listen to sermons, we respond with our lives.
SPEAKER_00: So I'm just gonna give you a minute or two.
SPEAKER_00: Um, I asked the uh Brenda to come out and play some music so it's not awkward.
SPEAKER_00: Um just to respond to whatever you sense God is doing in your life today.
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so just take a moment.
SPEAKER_00: Where's God moving in your life?
SPEAKER_00: And what would it look like for you to say yes to Him?
SPEAKER_00: This is how we know what love is.
SPEAKER_00: You laid down your life for us, but then you call us to follow you and to lay down our lives for one another.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to receive your love today.
SPEAKER_00: Help us to put our trust and our faith in you.
SPEAKER_00: Wherever we are today, I pray that we take the next right step towards you, experiencing your joy and your delight as we do so.
SPEAKER_00: We ask it in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Uh next week, um, I'm gonna preach, I feel like a pretty I've been looking forward to this message for a long time.
SPEAKER_00: Um I'm going to look at two historical artifacts, the Shroud of Turin and the Suderium of Oviedo, and make a case that I think it provides physical evidence for Jesus' resurrection.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're looking for a church community, come back next week.
SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be a really fun and interesting message.
SPEAKER_00: So happy Easter to all of you.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for coming and go in peace.