Truly Christ is risen indeed

Last week we described how Paul kept on affirming before Porcius Festus that Jesus was alive, whereas the Jews said he was dead (Acts 25:19).

This week we will examine the evidence which convinced him this was so.

First, there was the fact of the empty tomb.

It is quite possible that Paul was in Jerusalem, and was part of the crowd of many thousands who heard Peter preach in the Temple area on the Day of Pentecost, and say, "This Jesus God raised up, and of that we are all witnesses" (Act 2:32).

This word "all" included the people of Jerusalem. It was not just the disciples who were witnesses. It was a challenge, and an open invitation to anyone to investigate for himself.

Did Paul take up the challenge? Was he one of the hundreds of people who swarmed along the streets that short distance to the private garden of Joseph of Arimathea to find out if the tomb really was empty, and the body gone?

Surely he was one of them.

Perhaps he was a party to the manufactured story, put out by the Jewish leaders, that the disciples had stolen the body by night, and had hidden it away (Mt 28:13).

However, the more he thought about it, the harder it must have been for him to believe this explanation.

The more he thought about the great ropes that had anchored the stone to the mouth of the sepulchre, sealed with the seal of Pilate, which was a capital offence to break; the more he thought about the Roman soldiers, who had to guard that tomb with their lives; the more he thought about the demoralised state of Peter and his friends after the crucifixion; the harder it must have been for him to believe that they had perpetrated such a stupid hoax which was sure to be found out.

I suggest that Paul was quite unable to really explain the fact of the empty tomb. He lived in Jerusalem. It was so easy for him to check it out.

The change in the disciples

Secondly, Paul must have been astonished as he witnessed the certainty and confidence of those Christians he dragged off to prison and interrogated (Acts 8:3). They were all so absolutely certain that God had raised Jesus from the dead: and many of them had seen the risen Christ, and had spoken with Him, or so they said (1 Cor 15:6).

Then Paul must have been astounded as he witnessed the courage of Stephen, and the tremendous change in the character of Peter and his friends.

Previously they had been broken and defeated men, now they were as bold as lions (Acts 4:13).

So it must have been a very thoughtful Paul who walked along the road from Jerusalem to Damascus, "still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord" but, in his mind, some terrible doubts about the rightness of his action.

Perhaps, after all, the Christians were right? Perhaps Jesus had been raised from the dead?

Then, in that tremendously dramatic fashion, he met the living Jesus himself in his great conversion experience (Acts 9:1-19).

This was the third and final reason why Paul became so certain of the resurrection.

For no man, or woman, who has been converted, who has met the living Christ, and has surrendered his or her life to Him, can ever doubt the reality of the Easter morning.

On his return to Jerusalem Paul joined Peter and the other disciples, and heard from them the story of Easter, and of our Lord's resurrection appearances (Acts 9:27).

He would hear of His ascension to the right hand of God the Father, and of His promised return.

Later on he shared all these things with Luke. Luke the careful historian and his beloved travelling companion; and he would have thoroughly approved of Luke's writing, in the Book of Acts, that "Jesus showed himself alive after His Passion by many infallible proofs" (Acts 1:3).

So, in Paul's mind, evidence was piled upon evidence. There were so many infallible proofs. He became convinced, utterly and finally convinced, that Christ rose from the dead on the first day of the week.

So much so that, strict Jew as he was, rigidly bound by the Fourth commandment, "Remember the Sabbath Day to keep it holy", he was in complete agreement that Christians should honour the Resurrection Day by meeting on that day for worship; for the resurrection, for him, as for them, was just as stupendous an event as the creation of the world (Gen 2:2).

Yes, he became a Resurrection Day worshipper, as we learn from Acts 20:7 and 1 Cor 16:2.

This is why Paul kept on affirming before Porcius Festus that Jesus was alive. And Paul's reasons should be the reasons of every Christian.

Unbelief

The Jews kept on saying that Jesus was dead because their leaders had concocted the story that "His disciples came by night and stole Him away" (Mt 28:13).

But all denials of the bodily resurrection of Christ break down in the face of the new Testament record. The New Testament teaches that through an act of God the dead and buried Jesus (1 Cor 15:4) was raised to life in the same body in which he was crucified, yet with different qualities.

The fact is that he who was dead became alive again. H.E.W. Turner in Jesus Master and Lord, p84, asks the question, "If the primitive community created much of the material connected with its Lord who then created the community?"

Obviously it was the resurrection that created the community, and not the other way round. As Marxsen put it in The Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, "Apart from the resurrection of Jesus there would be no church."

Modern unbelievers say, like those Jews in the presence of Porcius Festus, "Jesus is dead, and lives on only as a memory, as it true of many dead men."

But Paul, if he were still with us, would thunder back, "Not so. He is alive. For have I not seen Jesus our Lord" (1 Cor 0:1).

Besides the evidence of the empty tomb, the evidence of hundreds of witnesses (1 Cor 15:6), and the evidence of the transformed lives of the disciples (Acts 4:31), have convinced me beyond any shadow of doubt that Jesus was "designated Son of God . . . by His resurrection from the dead" (Ro 1:4).

Tuesday

LUKE 24:13-27

"He interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning Himself" (v27).

What a pity we do not have a tape recording of Jesus expounding the prophetic scriptures concerning himself! As He began with Moses we can surmise that He reminded them of the "protoevangelium" in Genesis 3:15, the promise of God that the seed of Eve would "bruise" the head of Satan. Perhaps he moved on to Leviticus 23, where we are told that the Feast of the First Fruits was held on the third day after the Feast of Passover (1 Cor 15:20).

He would then quote Psalm 16:10, where it is said that God's "holy one" would not "see corruption", a Messianic prophecy interpreted in this way both by Peter and Paul (Acts 2:25-31;l 13:35).

Naturally He would refer to Isaiah 53, especially verse 10, where we read, "When he makes Himself an offering for sin, He shall see His offspring, He shall prolong His days"; a paradox which can be resolved only on the basis of the resurrection.

Perhaps He mentioned the experience of Jonah as He had done in the time of His ministry (Mt 12:39-40), and quoted from Exodus 12:46 and Zechariah 12:10, both said by John to be prophetic of His death (Jn 19:37).

One thing is certain. It was all part of the plan of God "that Christ should suffer these things and enter into His glory" (v26).

Wednesday

EPHESIANS 1:15-23

"The immeasurable greatness of His power in us who believe" (v19).

The power of God, demonstrated when "He raised Christ from the dead" (v20), is available to all who are in union with the risen Lord, We can say, with Paul, "I have strength for anything through Him who gives me power" (Phil 4:13 NEB).

In union with Christ there is power to lift us up far above what the world counts as living, to sit in heavenly places with Him (Eph 2:6). There is power to expand our minds, and give us intellectural capacity and achievement never believed possible. There is power to deepen our love, so we can love the unlovely, and serve the ungrateful, just as Jesus did.

There is power in the moral sphere, so temptations which once would have destroyed us now have no hold on us. There is power to get up and go on, no matter what life has in store for us (2 Cor 1:8-10).

There is power, wonder working power, resurrection power, available to all who live in conscious union with the risen Lord.

Thursday

2 CORINTHIANS 5:1-9

"We know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed we have a building from God ..." (v1).

The Christian does not say that death ends all. He "knows" that "to be absent from the body" is "to be present with the Lord" (v8).

He knows God has prepared for him a heavenly existence in joy, which far exceeds any joy known in this life.

Indeed, "No eye has seen, nor ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love Him" (1 Cor 2:9 NIV).

This belief in the life to come has been made certain by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

It is said that the great evangelist and philanthropist Dwight L. Moody, said towards the end of his life: "Some morning you will read in your newspaper that D.L. Moody is dead. Do not believe a word of it, for at that moment I shall be more alive than I am now.

"I was born in the flesh in 1837, I was born of the Spirit in 1856. That which is born of the flesh may die, but that which is born of the Spirit shall live forever."

A triumph statement made possible only because by conquering death Jesus Christ opened the kingdom of heaven to all who believe.

Friday

JOHN 14:1-6

"I go to prepare a place for you" (v2).

It is said of Sir Earnest Shackleton, the explorer of the Antarctic, that "these are the words of a gentleman in which we can have explicit trust."

Why do people doubt that there is a life after death when Jesus said so clearly that He was going to prepare a place for us, and that at the end of life He would come again to receive us unto Himself (v3)?

When Jesus spoke of the next world He used only one image, the image of home. He called it, "My Father's house".

So for Jesus, and for those who believe in Jesus, death simply means going home.

C.S. Lewis has pictured a soul waking up in the beyond and saying, "Why, this is home, the place which has haunted my solitude since in fancy, the place where that central music which I seemed to hear in every pure experience now fills the air."

So it will be, and all because Jesus rose from the dead so that all who trust in him shall never die (Jn 11:25).

Saturday

REVELATION 21:1-8

"He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people" (v3).

"The holy city, new Jerusalem, is the final destiny of the believer. For here we have no lasting city, but we seek the city which which is to come" (Heb 13:14).

The Christian is a pilgrim who can say, with the hymn writer, "Here in the body spent, absent from him I roam, yet nightly pitch my moving tent a day's march nearer home."

We are strangers here, exilies in a foreign country; for heaven is our true homeland where our citizenship is registered (Rev 20:15). As we journey on we "are shielded by God's power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time" (1 Pet 1:5).

Far from considering that all His treasure is here on earth the true Christian will be like Paul, who wrote to the Phillippians, "I am torn between the two. I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far, but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body" (Phil 1:23-24).

Life is sweet here, but it will be far, far sweeter there. There will be worship and praise in heaven, deeper than we have ever known (Rev 5:13); and there will also be service, for "His servants shall serve Him" (Rev 22:3).

Best of all there will be no more sorrow, for God "will wipe away every tear . . . death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying nor pain any more, for the former things have passed away."

Sunday

MARK 16:1-8

It is believed that the Gospel of Mark was the first gospel to be written. If so, one would expect that in such a crucial matter as the resurrection the other gospels would be in agreement.

They are in perfect agreement with reference to all the main features, which are that Jesus was truly dead, that He was buried, that the tomb was found empty on the morning of the third day, and that He subsequently appeared to the disciples.

On other matters there is disagreement, though in most cases these disagreements can be resolved. For example, we read in John 19:40 that the body was wrapped in strips of linen, whereas in the Synoptics it was wrapped in a linen shroud (Mk 15:46). Possibly the body was wrapped in both.

The Synoptics mention several women, but John mentions only Mary Magdalene. However, she included others when she said, "We do not know where they have laid Him" (Jn 20:2).

Disagreements in the record of the resurrection are in fact a guarantee of its authenticity. For if four witnesses appeared in a court with reference to some starting and wholly unexpected event, and repeated their story exactly the same way, the judge would suspect collaboration between them.

With all the weight of evidence that we have, we have every reason to agree that the resurrection is "the best attested event in history".

Monday

ACTS 26:19-32

"Paul said . . . 'I am speaking the sober truth'" (v25).

The unbeliever today, whether inside or outside the Church, refuses to believe in the resurrection because, in his view, "miracles simply do not happen".

His real problem is that he does not believe in God in the way we Christians should, as the God who can suspend his own laws.

This position was stated by the liberal theologian Rudolf Bultmann like this: "The resurrection of Jesus cannot be a miraculous proof by which the sceptic might be compelled to believe in Christ. The difficulty is not simply the incredibility of a mythical event like the resuscitation of a corpse. Nor is it merely the difficulty of establishing the objective historicity of the resurrection no matter how many witnesses were cited . . . No, the real difficulty is that the resurrection itself is an article of faith" (Kerygma and Myth Vol 1 pp42-43).

Here speaks the voice of rationalism. The truth is that both the crucifixion and the resurrection took place in a geographical place in historical time. The resurrection was not "a mythical event", it was "sober truth".

Certainly, "the resurrection is an article of faith", but "faith does not claw the air. It lays hold upon saving verities planted in the fabric of history" - On the Third Day, Clark Pinnock.

CHRIST IS RISEN!

HE IS RISEN INDEED!

 
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