Why I Believe in the Resurrection

Reason #10 His Story Resonates with my Heart

 

On Feb. 27, 1991, at the height of Desert Storm, Ruth Dillow received a very sad message from the Pentagon.  It stated that her son, Clayton, Private 1st Class, had stepped on a mine in Kuwait and was dead.  Ruth later wrote, "I can’t begin to describe my grief and shock.  It was almost more than I could bear.  For 3 days I wept.  For 3 days I expressed anger and loss.  For 3 days people tried to comfort me, to no avail because the loss was too great."  But 3 days later, she received another phone call.  The voice on the other end said, "Mom, it’s me.  I’m alive."  Ruth Dillow said, "I couldn’t believe it at first.  But then I recognized his voice, and he really was alive."  The first message was a mistake!  She said, "I laughed, I cried, I felt like turning cartwheels, because my son whom I had thought was dead, was really alive.  I’m sure none of you can even begin to understand how I felt."

 

But that must have been how the disciples felt on their third day.  Their Lord, their teacher, the one they knew was the Messiah and Savior of the world, their friend, was dead.  Remember what Cleopas said on the road to Emmaus?

 

Luke 24:13-21  Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem.  They were talking with each other about everything that had happened.  As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him.  He asked them, "What are you discussing together as you walk along?" They stood still, their faces downcast.  One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, "Are you only a visitor to Jerusalem and do not know the things that have happened there in these days?"   "What things?" he asked. "About Jesus of Nazareth," they replied. "He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people.  The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him;  but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place.

 

"But we had hoped."  Is there any sadder sentence in the English language?  These disciples had given up their lives to follow this Rabbi from Nazareth.  They had left their families and their homes.  They had walked the dusty roads and slept out in the open and sacrificed all that was in their lives to be with Jesus.  But then he had died.  They had received their call from the "Pentagon" and spend three days in grief and shock.  They had endured their 3 days of anger and loss.  They had spent their three days weeping. 

But then they received their 2nd call.

 

Luke 24:22-24  In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning but didn't find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but him they did not see."

 

Something was going on.  Was the tomb really empty?  Where was the body?  Angels saying he was alive.  What's with that?  At first they didn't believe.  It was all too good to be true.  Dead people, especially crucified dead people, don't come back to life.  Those kind of things don't happen; dead is dead. 

 

But then, as they walked along the road, Jesus began to talk to these two…

 

Luke 24:25-27   He said to them, "How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken!  Did not the Christ have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?"  And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

 

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I would have loved to have heard that sermon.  I would give my Xbox to have a transcript of that conversation.  But, I don't have a copy.  So, I have had to, kind of, write my own.  Over the last three months I have been sharing the reasons why I believe in the resurrection.  I have been walking the road to Emmaus gathering reasons why I believe in The Resurrection. 

 

1.  There is no Christianity without the actual resurrection 

We began with Jonah.  The prophet Jonah while inside a really big fish prayed a prayer for deliverance and God answered that prayer and after three days and nights in the digestive track of a whale he was resurrected.  Jesus took that story and issued it as the ultimate challenge…

 

Matthew 12:38-41 Then some of the Pharisees and teachers of the law said to him, "Teacher, we want to see a miraculous sign from you."  He answered, "A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign!  But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah.  For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.  The men of Nineveh will stand up at the judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the preaching of Jonah, and now one greater than Jonah is here."

 

The resurrection of Jesus is the bottom line of Christianity.  We asked, "Couldn't we have Christianity without the actual/factual resurrection?  And we answered, "No!"  The resurrection is the first domino. 

 

1) If Jesus was not resurrected,

2) Then he failed the sign of Jonah;

3) We can't trust the any of his words.

4) If he was a liar, he is certainly not God.

5) If he was not God then his death was just another death on a Roman cross.

6) He cannot forgive my sins.

7) I have no hope for my own resurrection.

 

The first reason I believe in the Resurrection is it has to be true or none of Christianity is true. 

 

2. The resurrection has the feel of truth

Then we looked at John 20 and three powerfully emotional stories.

-We stepped into the tomb with John and saw the empty mummy suit; it was as if Jesus had been transported out of it.

-We saw the scars on his hands and feet and side, and said with Thomas, "My Lord and my God!"

-We felt the hug that Mary Madeline put on Jesus as she clung on to her Lord.

 

This became the 2nd reason I believe.  The details are too real, the emotions too raw, the fine points too creative, the story too unexpected; to be anything but the truth.  The stories of the resurrection feel true.

 

3. Historiography

Then we put aside those emotional reasons and we delved into historiography!  We studied 5 Rules of historiography: Early witnesses, multiple witnesses, enemy witnesses, embarrassing witnesses, eyewitness all add up to show that this historical event happened.  We discovered that even with our emotions set to the side, we still reached the same conclusion; Jesus was resurrected from the dead.  The 3rd reason was the evidence of history says Jesus was literally resurrected.

 

4. The empty tomb

In my 4th reason I asked was the tomb really empty?  We answered it with 3 factors:

Empty Tomb Factor One: Jerusalem

 It happened in the very place where they could have disproved it.  Just 50 days after his death they claimed the tomb was empty.  All anyone had to do to end Christianity before it began was produce a body.  It wasn't.

Empty Tomb Factor Two: The Cover-up

Remember Rule #2 Attestation by an enemy is believable?  The earliest Jewish allegation was that Jesus’ disciples had come during the night and stolen the body.  They did attempt a cover-up.  But they admitted that the tomb was empty! 

Empty Tomb Factor Three: The Women

If you were going to concoct a story in an effort to fool others, you would never, in that day, have hurt your own credibility by saying that women discovered the empty tomb. 

 

I believe the tomb was empty.

 

5. Empty Tomb + Appearances = Resurrection

"Neither the empty tomb by itself, however, nor the appearances by themselves, could have generated the early Christian belief.  The empty tomb alone would be a puzzle and a tragedy.  Sightings of an apparently alive Jesus, by themselves, would be classified as visions or hallucinations, which were well enough known in the ancient world.  However, an empty tomb and appearances of a living Jesus, taken together, would have presented a powerful reason for the emergence of the belief."  - N.T. Wright

 

When we stack the empty tomb and the appearances of Jesus together we can have confidence in the resurrection.

 

6. Why is Jesus Christ? 

In the 6th reason the evidence really got exciting; preacher exciting.  We asked "Why is Jesus, Christ?"  Why would any Jews of the first century ever say Jesus was the Messiah; the Christ?  He did not do the three things on the Messiahs' to do list: Rebel and drive out Rome, Purify and restore the Temple and bring justice and peace to the world.  He did the opposite.  He died at the hands of the Romans which ended all other Messiahs.  He predicted the Temple would be destroyed.  And he was dead he could not bring peace to the world.

 

But in the resurrection he did do all three by defeating Rome in coming back to life!  And creating a new temple not built by human hands and bringing peace and justice to the world by his blood.  He quickly, amongst his Jewish disciples became Jesus Christ.  The only reasonable explanation is the resurrection.

 

7. The symbol of the first day of the week

In the 7th reason we looked at one of the most enduring symbols of Jesus' day;  the Sabbath.  For over 1500 years the Sabbath day had been the day that God rested.  But in just weeks that special day changed to the "First day of the week".  Why would any Jewish person change that?  Symbols, religious symbols, are amazingly hard to change, but it was.  The only reason I can think that these early Christians would abandon the Sabbath for the First is the Resurrection occurred on the First day of the week!  God is no longer resting.  He is moving in new creation! 

 

8. Symbols of the Resurrection

We kept with the symbol theme in reason 8.  We looked at 4 more symbols which came early into Christianity and we asked, "Where did they come from?"

-The Cross went from a symbol of brutal repression to hopeful jewelry. 

-The Fish became the earliest rebellious claim that Jesus was the Christ, Son of God, and Savoir of the World, not Ceasar.

- The Passover became the Lord's Supper.  How did a new covenant begin without the resurrection?

- Baptism, the coolest symbol ever, reenacts the death and resurrection of Jesus.  Where did baptism come from if not the resurrection? 

 

These amazing symbols all point to the 8th reason why I believe in the resurrection.

 

9. The Lost Symbols of Christianity

The last time I preached, we explored a weird but powerful line of evidence for the resurrection. We discovered the Lost Symbols of Christianity.  I had never thunk these thoughts before.  In the world of the first century all religions did Animal Sacrifice, and had magnificent Temples.  The Jews longed for their Promised Land.  Religions made everyone think their race and ethnicity was superiority and the true one.  But, suddenly, Christianity came along and dropped all these symbols.  They dropped what it meant to do religion in the first century and did religion differently!

 

But, why?  We no longer need animal sacrifice to appease God because Jesus is the ultimate sacrifice.  In his resurrection he became the once and always sacrifice!  Through the resurrection of the body of Jesus, we no longer need a stone-upon-stone temple.  Through his resurrected body we are formed into a living Temple!  We no longer cherish the actual land of Israel because we have new Promised Land where we join the resurrected Jesus for eternity.  Because of the resurrection all who faith in Christ, regardless of their ethnicity, are reconciled to God!  All the lost symbols of Christianity lost their meaning in the resurrection of Jesus.  Nothing else explains all this.

 

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But there is one more reason, a 10th reason, why I believe in the resurrection of Jesus; my heart resonates with the resurrection!  Just like what happened on the road to Emmaus?

 

Luke 24:28-32   As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus acted as if he were going farther.  But they urged him strongly, "Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over." So he went in to stay with them.  When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them.  Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, "Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?"

 

My heart burns with the resurrection.  My heart wants to believe.  I want the Easter story to be true.  My faith grows out of the yearning for this life to mean something.  I want to know that those people whom I loved and are gone, will someday share with me again.  I want to believe that the next life will have purpose and that this life is preparing us for something better and bigger.  My heart intuitively knows that there is another life after this one and the resurrection of Jesus is my assurance of that resurrection!

 

Romans 8:17-18 Now if we are children, then we are heirs-- heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.  I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.

 

The 10th Reason is… My heart knows it! 

 

Los Alamos Church of Christ

June 20, 2010