History and the Resurrection

I CORINTHIANS 15:1-9

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Alright, well here we are, Easter again. Time is flying and um I was trying to think about what I wanted to do this week, and I did pray about it. I I ended up going with what first came to my mind, which is what I often do, really, especially if I have any kind of a strong feeling about it. I figure the Lord can redirect me if needed. And actually, I did think he might be doing so for various reasons I won't get into, but it eventually worked out. So hopefully we're where we're supposed to be. So I invite you to take your Bibles. You could be making your way to 1 Corinthians 15. This passage is perhaps not the normal one we would cover at Easter, but it's certainly could be classified as an Easter text. I didn't remember what we did last year, so I feel pretty confident you won't remember it either. Uh the woes of a pastor. Probably forget most of the time we forget by Monday what will happen on Sunday. But uh I knew we had not done what I'm calling, or what I'll call an apologetic Easter message in some time. And by that I mean a message more related to the historicity of the event. I used to do that fairly frequently, and I began to realize, I guess a few years ago, I probably need to change focus a little bit and emphasize more the spiritual lessons of the season, which of course are very important. But I guess realizing that I had done that for a number of years, and I don't know if it's partly what I've been listening to or some of the things I've been studying, I began leaning back in the other direction about the plausible historical arguments for the resurrection of Christ. So this passage came to mind quickly. I knew we'd covered it at some point because we've studied all of 1 Corinthians. So I thought, well, maybe I better look it up and then I might have some information on it too that I could use because I was dealing kind of with a short week. And we we went over this passage just five years ago in 2021, which kind of surprised me uh and seemed a little recent. But again, if I didn't remember what I did last year, and I'm sure you don't remember what we talked about five years ago, uh so it it was interesting to me, and I I'm just kind of rambling, I know, but I I just wanted to share it with you because it uh we we didn't study it for Easter, we looked at it in the run-up to Easter, and I was able to track down the sermon, and I thought, well, maybe I could use it, but it ended up being it's not really where I wanted to go, so I ended up redoing most of it for what it's worth. But as far as this text, most of you are aware that 1 Corinthians 15 is regarded as the resurrection chapter. It describes in some detail the resurrection of believers that occurs at Christ's second coming. It's not unusual for it to be heard at funerals. There's probably not been a time when I've done a funeral that I've not said it at a graveside service, some portion of it. Um, because it is our great hope. Living in eternity in perfect bodies. That sounds almost too good to be true, but that's the promise. And again, we won't get into it today, but 1 Corinthians makes clear it's not a spirit body, it's a physical body. Christ's resurrection was a physical resurrection. Um, Paul leads into all that again by addressing the resurrection of Jesus and how that resurrection is a major part of the gospel itself. And why I love this passage for Easter, the more I thought about it, is because I think perhaps more than any other text in Scripture, it's unique in the sense that it ties the factual historical events of the resurrection with the gospel message itself. So to me, it's simply one of the most beautiful, encouraging passages in all the Bible. These verses not only give us a clear hope for the future, but also make sure that we understand the basis for that hope. We're not hoping in just something, you know, erethral out there. There's real historical, this is a real historical event. Uh so we'll still definitely get some spiritual application or at least a very succinct reminder of the gospel itself, what it means, as well as the generally accepted evidence concerning the events surrounding the resurrection. And that generally accepted evidence is by both believing and unbelieving scholars. So it is in those events that will strengthen our conviction, and it does indeed challenge any unbelievers. So let's go ahead and pray. Father in heaven, thank you so much for your word. Thank you for our time here. And as Linda indicated, Father, we have to thank you for all things. Um, things that we don't even understand that you are bringing about that to us seem just we we don't get it, but ultimately we're told we can look to you and trust in you. You are working out everything to the good for those that love you. And we thank you for that encouragement. We thank you so much that Jesus has risen from the dead and that you love us and that you give us grace. We don't earn it. You give it to us, and we praise you for that. And thank you so much for it, Father. And we ask now as we study, Father, we'd be strengthened in our resolve, strengthening our faith, strengthen in our uh conviction, Father, to just live every day with you, for you, and following whatever you would have us do. And so we ask this in Jesus' name, amen. All right, 1 Corinthians 15, and we'll read verses 1 through 9. Now I want to make clear for you, brothers and sisters, the gospel I preach to you, which you received, on which you have taken your stand and by which you are being saved, if you hold to the message I preach to you, unless you believed in vain. For I passed on to you as most important what I also received, what I also received, that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day, according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, then to the twelve, then he appeared to over five hundred brothers and sisters at one time. Most of them are still alive, but some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one born at the wrong time, he also appeared to me. For I am least of the apostles, not worthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. All right. The the basis for the apologetic that I mentioned starts in verse three, and that's really also where the presentation of the gospel starts. But Paul introduces the section with two thoughts concerning the gospel in verses one and two, and we'll touch on them briefly. One is how is the gospel transmitted? The other is what is the benefit of the gospel? So first he'll tell you how to get it, and then he's going to tell you what it gives you. And I, if you're just if we're just reading, was breaking in at 1 Corinthians 15, that can seem out of order, right? You would think he would tell you what we have to get, you know, and then how to get it. But he's already told us about what the gospel is to some extent in the book. So really what he's doing here is providing just a very succinct summation of what the gospel is, and he's going to do that, but in but but he introduces in a way in saying, look, here's how you receive it, here's how you get it, if you will, and then here's the benefits of it. And then he'll explain again what it is very succinctly. So he's summarizing basically. So quickly, then how's the gospel transmitted? Again, and I'll just say this. Gospel means good news. Good news, we know that it's a word in the Greek, or two words in the Greek. Actually, it's a word in the Greek, and it means generically good news. It could refuse refer to good news on the TV if there ever was such a thing. Um, but it um in the specific the the Christians adapted it to make it stand for salvation, and then thankfully, our English translators they've isolated it and made it the word gospel. They kind of took some of the, I think it's Latin, maybe they took part of that word and then made it gospel so that it is distinguished from just any other good news. So that's what's happening. Okay, so to get it, Paul says, This is the gospel I preach to you that you have received and in which you have taken your stand. So the gospel message must first be made known. Okay, that would seem obvious, but you you get it. It must first be made known. Um that's Paul's preaching in this case. Now, we know elsewhere from scripture, I'm not going to turn there. I think all of you are comfortable with this and understand this. We only come to get some understanding of the gospel as led by the Spirit. The Spirit has to enlighten us in some way so that we understand it. Um, otherwise, there's a veil, Christ says. Uh, and the reasons that people begin to understand as opposed to not, we could explore that, we'll not get into that today. But first it must be made known, then the message must be received, and the receiving of the gospel here clearly indicates you stand in it. In other words, it's not just, oh, I heard that, that's nice, let's move on. It's no, I heard that, I receive that, I live in that. Okay, so again, what is fundamental? The gospel must be preached. Again, the gospel is often made known through preaching, the spirit illuminates in that way. Uh, it doesn't have to be, it could be made known directly by the Spirit. The Spirit can directly help people to understand the gospel. The Spirit also helps people understand the gospel through other people as we're talking to each other and those sorts of things. So you get the idea, hopefully. Um, but now receiving it is a bit of a different matter, right? Only you personally can receive the gospel for you, nobody else can receive it for you. So that part is personal. You receive it, you are responsible for what you do with it. Other people are not responsible for that part of it. Now, again, to be clear, so there's no misunderstanding, and I don't want to be offensive to people, and if I become so at some point, you can feel free to talk to me about it. I'm open to talking about it, but I'm convicted about this to some extent as well. Due to the Calvinistic malu the church is engulfed in currently, good news is transferred to the person who receives it. That's what's being said here. That is volitional. There is a choice to be made. Again, the gospel is not that you were elected in eternity past to receive it, and then suddenly you find out about it. That's not the gospel. The gospel is you hear that Jesus died for your sins, you believe it and you receive it. It's that you hear that Jesus died for your sins, you believe it and receive it. Now, you don't save yourself by believing. Okay? I think we all understand that. You could believe from now to doomsday and never be saved if God did not provide the gift of salvation. But God offers salvation, which you can have through belief, otherwise, it would be forced on you, and God is not a puppeteer. Also, the Corinthian Christians have taken their stand in the gospel. This is interesting. This despite all the problems that Paul addresses elsewhere in the book. A lot of you remember this probably, but when you read through Corinthians, I mean he's putting out one fire after another. It's just a constant problem with strife, there they're split. One say, I'm of Paul, one I'm of Apollos, there's divisions about doctrine, there's sexual immorality going on, there's this weird spirituality. It's like the first New Age movement's going on there. It's just all kinds of weird stuff happening. But Paul can still say, as he comes to the end of the book, they stand for the gospel. And what he's saying there is they understood they're not working their way to heaven. Okay. This is in contrast to the Galatian church, whom you may recall that Paul had to warn them, they're being moved away to a different gospel altogether, one which was mixed with works. So again, the gospel is preached, it is made known by the Holy Spirit, again, often through preaching, but could be through other means, but it must be received in a way in which you stand in it. Not a superficial acknowledgement, but an understanding that Christ has died for your sins. The benefit, then, is given in verse 2. Some translations say, by which you are also saved. The CSB puts it like this. Sorry. CSB says, by which you are being saved. I don't know what your version does. Hence, the CSB does that because of the conditional sounding statement that's there. If you hold on to or if you hold fast to the word which I preach, else you believed in vain. Well, how do you believe in vain? Well, you believe something he's indicating that you don't really hold on to or you don't stand in. Now, I don't want to digress. We we spent some time on this in in 2025 about this doctrine of eternal security. So I'm not going to go into that again. I made my new views known before, but as I've said before, whatever you believe about the doctrine of once saved, always saved, a look under the hood of both of those cars reveals the engines are churning pretty much the same way. In effect, the so-called differences seem to be as much about semantics than they do anything practical. And by that I mean it's the way we're viewing salvation and how it's worded when we say, Oh, are you saved? Are you not saved? Those sort of things. How so? Well, it's clear from scripture, this much is clear, and everybody agrees. There are warning passages not only to unbelievers, but to believers. So whether you think those warnings are just to people who were really never saved to begin with, and then they finally let their true colors show, or whether you think a believer can eventually reject the salvation they once had, the only security that we truly have is to stand firm and hold fast the word that is preached. Now, of course, as it's made plain elsewhere in Scripture, it is not that we would never doubt or struggle. Paul himself says in Romans 7, What a wretched man that I am. The good that I want to do, I don't do. Okay. But the issue is we do struggle, we do care. We are convicted when we sin and we are fighting. And we do go and confess our doubts, we confess our sins before God. And then He strengthens us in that. So it's not living a perfect life, obviously, but it is living a life following Christ and living a life in Christ. Now, as I said, the apologetic, the apologetic I want to highlight, begins in verse 3, but verse 3 also begins a very clear presentation of the gospel message. It's content. This is the what you are to receive. This this is the essence of it. What is most important, Paul says. And he would he would be asking some suspect or some witness some question. And sorry, ladies, it seemed like they did this a lot. It was a lot of times a lady answering the question and she would start going into all these details, and it was like just a fact, ma'am. You remember that, yeah. That's what Paul's doing here. Just the facts, the basics. Um, facts don't care about your feelings. I don't know if you've heard that. The Jew Ben Shapiro said that. I thought it was interesting because when William Lane Craig started presenting him facts about the resurrection, he he he got in his feelings pretty quick, so that was interesting. He cared about them at that point. But anyway, in Christian parlance, this is referred to as a creed. It is meant to establish facts of first importance, which Paul again makes clear. Christ died for our sins, he was buried and raised. That's the essentials to believe in for your salvation. That's the essential understanding it, believing it, Paul says living it, standing firm in it. Sin messed up our relationship with God. Jesus came to fix that. He did so in a very specific way. Death lived a perfect life, death, burial, resurrection. We might also say he was born incarnate, right? He became fully human, did not lose his full divinity, but he came fully human. He added humanity to his divinity, lived a perfect life, died, buried, resurrected. And yes, Paul died for our sins, buried, resurrected. Paul is saying part of the gospel is understanding Jesus was raised. Not just believing that he died. That's not all of it. We believe also he was raised. Well, it also says he was raised on the third day. Do we have to believe that? Well, if you believed he was raised, there's really no reason to not believe that. I understand where that question might come from. That's why I brought it up because of our background. Um the church is still arguing about some of the specific timing of all these events. From our perspective, Sunday is the third day. I mean, there's there's not much argument about the fact he was rose on Sunday, although there are a few that believe he was risen Saturday evening. So even that's debated somewhat, but not nearly as much as not nearly as much as the crucifixion day. We are celebrating his resurrection here on Sunday morning, and that seems most likely given strip scripture and tradition, which is very strong about it. The actual crucifixion day, again, is more debatable. The more salient point is that there was a real day Jesus was crucified, and on the third day from that day, however, the authors intended for that to be counted, he was raised on that day. The problem is people don't believe he was raised at all. One reason is because they don't want to, but another reason is it's an incredible claim, right? We don't see people walking out of the tomb every day. Well, we don't see people walking out of the tomb any day, for that matter. So we read it here, and let me also say this before we consider the apologetic side of it. You may have non-apologetic reasons for believing. That's perfectly fine. The living God can lead you as he will to believe in him. You should encourage those you know that don't believe to seek God and ask him to reveal himself. In fact, I think that's the more convincing proof when you subjectively realize you have you're in. In relationship with Christ, and He is guiding and leading you. And I don't want to say speaking to you in a flippant way, but speaking to you in the sense that He's giving you information that you know, oh, this is what He's wanting me to do. That is profound. So that's there's nothing wrong with having that experience or believing it in that way. But it's also worth knowing and noting the historical foundation for the resurrection because Paul himself provides a good deal of that information right here in these verses. His argument to any original readers of 1 Corinthians is clear. Hey, a lot of us saw Jesus alive. Most of us who did are still alive. And so this is not a handful of self-deluded souls that are literally, there are literally hundreds of us who saw the resurrected Jesus with our own eyes. We know he rose. Go ask me, go ask them. I dare you. Now, this is where I'm going to diverge, you know, from our typical verse-by-verse study and focus on the best current historical arguments. And I'd say these have always been arguments for the resurrection from history, but they've gained traction really in the last couple of decades. And these are the main arguments that unbelievers will have to deal with. You know, we need faith to believe in the resurrection. That's true. They need faith to create or believe in some alternative theory to these facts. They have to explain them in some way, whether they realize it or not. And it may be part of your job to help them understand that these things are not so easily explained away. Now, I'm going to present them as four main lines of evidence. If you study this where other people talk about it, they may present three, they may present four, five, or even six. I chose four because of the way Paul presents this here, so I'm hoping if you have reason to come back to this or have reason to present this to someone, it will help you more easily remember the assertions so that you can share as God leads you. So first, the death. But then there can be other things that need to be argued about that because the Jews will look at it in a certain way, and I don't want to get into all that today. But Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53 are two biblical passages there that would have predicted Christ's death. And you can look at those later. On the historical side, it's widely accepted by all camps. A man named Jesus lived in the first century and carried out a ministry for a few years and was crucified to death by the Romans. Virtually all scholars, regardless of religious belief, accept that Jesus of Nazareth died by Roman crucifixion in probably A.D. 30 or A.D. 33, possibly A.D. 31 or A.D. 32, but one of those four dates. Okay, they agree he was executed in Jerusalem under Pontius Pilate. Why? Well, to begin with, the biblical accounts do weigh in. Even scholars who are not Christians rarely dismiss them whole cloth. Bar Ehrman, a New Testament scholar who renounced Christianity some time ago, he lives in North Carolina. I think he teaches at Carolina, wouldn't you know an atheist teaching? I'm just kidding. Sorry about that. There was no need for that. I'm Mr. Sorry. Um, but anyway, Bar Ehrman, a New Testament scholar who renounced Christianity some time ago, he became agnostic. He became agnostic because of the problem of suffering. He just he just couldn't deal with that. So he he provides, however, the criteria for any genuine historical investigation of the book he wrote, and he says it's clear Jesus existed and was crucified as indicated. That's if you're going to believe in anything in history, you can believe that. There are early non-Christian sources that confirm this. Um, I'll mention a couple, Tacitus and Josephus. You could do a Google search on them and find that fairly quickly. Um, Daniel Aang, who was a scientist who eventually became Christian because he said of the evidence that he saw, he said this quote almost no historian disputes Jesus lived in the first century, carried out a ministry for a few years, and was crucified to death by the Romans. Okay, that's fact one. Jesus lived and died by crucifixion. Okay, fact two, Jesus was buried. We see Paul mention this in verse four. This may seem simplistic, but it will become key with our next point. The perhaps odd point here, it seemed odd to me a little bit, when I was reading about why this is accepted, the primary reason is based on the biblical accounts, starting with Luke's account about how Jesus was buried in a known tomb owned by Joseph of Arimathea. And I'm going to read that. Luke chapter 23, beginning in verse 50. There was a good and righteous man named Joseph, a member of the Sanhedrin, and he had not agreed with their plan, the Sanhedrin's plan in action. He was from Arimathea, a Judean town, and was looking forward to the kingdom of God. He approached Pilate and asked for Jesus' body. Taking it down, he wrapped it in fine linen and placed it in a tomb cut into the rock where no one had ever been placed. It was the preparation day, the sepulchre was on, and the women with him from Galilee followed along and observed the tomb and where the body was placed. Why is that convincing the skeptics? Well, we see that Joseph was a member of the Jewish Sanhedrin that condemned Jesus. That automatically tells them he would have been well known among Jewish circles because that was a very elite group. Scholars accept, and what they say is he is a most unlikely person for Christians to make up requesting Jesus' body, even though the gospels present him as sympathetic to Jesus' plight. And the reason they say that is because this would be embarrassing and confusing for early Christians who were reading this the first time, and only that a Jewish leader is brave enough to ask for Jesus' body, and that a member of the Sanhedrin. So understandably, and you'll get this if you think about it, historians find any story much more credible when the story would embarrass the person telling it. It's like that today, right? I don't like telling you stuff that embarrasses me. And you probably don't like saying things that embarrass you. And especially being public about it, right? Um, so that's the point. Why would they write this and put it out there for everyone to see if that's not what happened? So, Luke, of course, who writes it, says he had a number of Christian sources, and he indicates he himself was a Christian. So no group wants to put out something that's going to embarrass the group. Secondly, perhaps even more compelling, there really were not any early competing ideas in history. You may remember that Matthew reports that the first response by Jewish leaders about the missing body shows they admitted they knew where his tomb was. Matthew actually says they had a guard place there. That's never been questioned in history. In fact, Matthew says that when he wrote his gospel decades later, Jews were still saying the body was stolen from that tomb. That's in Matthew 28, 15. In effect, there's no competing burial story from the first century that would contradict the report of the gospels. So scholars, again, believers and unbelievers, accept Jesus was buried in a tomb, and most will say, yeah, it seems plausible it was in that tomb by that fellow named Joseph Arimathea, a Jew. Why would they have made that up? Next, fact three, the fact of the empty tomb, which has already been mentioned here. Most modern scholars, upwards of 75%, believe Jesus' tomb was found empty. Now that number drops a little bit. The reason it drops is once you acknowledge that, you've got some difficulty dealing with what happened with the body. And so some scholars just won't acknowledge it, but they find themselves in difficulty about trying to, they just kind of blow it off and say, Well, it must have maybe it was stolen, or I'll talk about what they say momentarily. Um, this is the second part of verse 4 that he was raised. As indicated with Jesus' burial, as far as the empty tomb, there were no competing theories. Again, the Pharisees admitted as much when they claimed the body was stolen. And here's the key: early Jewish polemics wanted to stamp down Christianity. We see that in Acts. We know that to be true. The Jewish Jews still have, especially the Orthodox Jews who celebrate Judaism, still have animosity towards Christians because, again, they don't believe that Jesus is the Messiah. So their problem is they wanted to stamp it out. But when they did so, their initial reaction to it was to not deny the tomb was empty. They didn't deny that. What they said was the body was stolen. Which, again, if they if that's the case, there definitely was no body to be found. It's funny in the sense they didn't even try to fake it. But of course, if they'd have found the body, that would have quashed the idea that Jesus rose from the dead immediately. But nobody was ever discovered, and there was no fake body ever tried to be produced. They just said it was stolen. Another reason to accept the empty tomb is that the tomb was first discovered empty by women. Now, I've mentioned this before, ladies. My apologies. But women of first century Judaism were not considered reliable witnesses. Husbands, don't be making hay of this later today. That would not be appropriate. I'm sure not going to if I can tell you that. But again, historians find it very unlikely that Christians would make this up. At that time, women could not even testify in court. So they would not make up this embarrassing fact that women would be the first to discover the Christian tomb. Who's going to believe that anyway? You may remember. When the women came to the apostles and told them what happened, they're like, they've lost it. They didn't believe them initial. And finally, Peter and John go to see what's going on, but their initial reaction was, that's not true. They didn't believe it either. So the point is, scholars realize if somebody made this up, they were not helping their own case in that day and time, not at all. They were not making a case for the resurrection by pointing out that women first found Jesus or the tomb missing a body. Now, let me just again mention Paul's biblical reference here because again he says, according to the scriptures, as far as Jesus being raised the third day, for your homework, I'm going to mention these. You can look at them if you don't get them as I go through them quickly. You can ask me later or listen and pick them up later. But as far as the plan for Jesus' resurrection in the Old Testament, and we've already talked about Isaiah 53, but Hosea 6.2, Jonah 1, 17, Psalm 16, 10. Now, the third day reference, I'll I'll admit that one's a bit vague. What people say is that's probably or about has to be a reference to Genesis 22, where Isaac, a type of Jesus, we do know that, is raised the third day on Abraham and his journey. It could be Paul's referring to that. He was referring to something. Of course, now Jesus said it very frequently about the third day, so he could be referring to that, but it's funny that he used the word scriptures because elsewhere when he quotes Jesus, he just says, Our Lord said, or something to that effect. So I don't know for sure. I thought that was kind of uh poetic, I guess, or apropos, that we're a little vague on the third day reference, and we're still a little vague on the third day timing. So, anyway, for what that's worth. But that brings us to the final fact, number four, that is generally accepted, and that is Jesus' disciples. Again, this is accepted by the majority of scholars, believe me or unbelieving. Jesus' disciples experienced encounters with someone they believed to be Jesus after his death. Now, as Christians, we understand Paul and others are clear that Jesus was resurrected physically. Some scholars will not go that far. They will affirm they had to they saw something, their lives changed too much, and too many of them were killed for their faith. That's in essence what it comes down to. And so they know they saw something, plus they have what's recorded in the gospels, so that's all there as well. And but clearly what they're saying is the disciple experienced some encounters with someone they believe to be Jesus. Now, there are several lines of support here. One is in front of us. Scholar Norman Perrin states Paul is one witness with whom we can interrogate. And by that he means 1 Corinthians 15, 3 through 8, or 3 through 9, is taken to be some of the strongest evidence for the historicity of the event. Howard Clark Key boldly asserts Paul's testimony can be critically examined, just as one would evaluate evidence in a modern court or academic setting. That's what we're doing. That's we're doing it on a very superficial level in some respect, but that's what scholars have done. They've looked at this very critically and said, oh, yeah, okay, this um makes sense. For at least this is what must have been happening in the disciples' minds. For several strong reasons, most scholars who address the issue think that what Paul is writing here in 1 Corinthians 15 predates any New Testament book. In other words, the way Paul writes here, he is stating in a way that was common for writings of that day that he's bringing forth an oral tradition that was handed down very early. So, again, it's a creed, as we said earlier. Paul's saying this is a fundamental belief by the Christians. And of course, they didn't have the New Testament at that time. So that was, they learned these things through oral tradition initially. Of course, you'll know all the people Paul mentions other than himself. Cephas, who is Peter, twelve other apostles, the twelve meaning the other apostles. He says over 500 brothers and sisters at one time. He doesn't mention who they are specifically. That's probably a reference to Matthew 28 when Jesus ascends up into heaven. He says most of them are alive at that time. Uh, it would have been easy to ask somebody, did you see, did you see who's he talking about? Those sort of things. Uh again, it was a challenge. We see the reference to James. Everyone understands that to be James, the brother of Jesus. This is actually presented sometimes as another line of evidence, and that we have no indication. James believed in his brother while Jesus was alive. And of course, that's not conclusive, but having raised three boys, I can uh I think that argument of James post-resurrection conversion holds water. Brothers grow up with one another, and so they are naturally unimpressed with each other. Doesn't mean they don't love each other, but you know, their view is I know him, I grew up with him, I know how he is, that sort of thing. So uh James no doubt knew of Jesus being lost to his parents at 12. I wouldn't doubt if he didn't make hay of it. Well, you got yourself lost. Uh, James, you know, brothers do those kind of things. I I know the boys used to complain that Seth liked to get them in trouble. They hadn't done anything, he just wanted to get them in trouble. And brothers will do that. Maybe they thought Jesus was a goody two shoes or weird. I don't know. We don't know anything about his early life like that, but they didn't believe it, and we know that. The Bible makes that clear, at least at a certain point in time. History records clearly that James, the brother of Jesus, was martyred for his faith. And the scholars do not doubt that. It's written very clearly. They think they found his bones uh or his burial box. He believed he saw the risen Lord, and indeed it is a certainty that both Peter and Paul were martyred for their faith, as well as James, the brother of John, the one we read about so much in scripture, um, as being with Jesus. That was recorded, that's recorded in Acts 12. Of the other ten apostles, there's tradition that nine of them were killed for their faith. I would say it's not so much tradition that we can take it to the bank, but what we can take to the bank is that it's clearly known that first century Christians were severely persecuted and some martyred for their faith. It's known the reason they were is because they believed Jesus had risen from the dead and they would not recant that belief. So again, few critical scholars reject the notion that after Jesus' death, the early Christians had real experiences of their own of some sort. All this means what scholar Reginald Fuller says, even the most skeptical historian has to postulate an X, meaning an alternative, in order to account for the New Testament data, namely the empty tomb, Jesus' appearances, and the transformation of Jesus' disciples. If anyone wants to reject that, he or she must postulate some other event. He goes so far as to say that the fact that Jesus' early followers thought they saw appearances of their risen master is one of the most well attested to facts in history. How are these things to be explained? Well, again, the first one was maybe the body was stolen. How would that be possible? If it was not a follower, we'd know. We'd know. If it was a follower, how in the world did the Christian movement take off? I mean, you would have to assert it's some individual that done it for some unknown reason. And that in contrast to what we know about the body being wrapped or what's said about it in the Gospels and the guard that was placed in front of it. Later on, that has lost traction fairly early on, actually. And then later the idea came that Jesus was only close to death, but really didn't die. And that went on for a while, and then the more they learned about crucifixion, the less that held up. Because people who were crucified didn't walk away. Romans were very good at making sure crucifixion meant death. More recently, there's been the proposal of mass hallucinations. And again, and I don't know if this speaks to anyone. You know, when a loved one dies, I think we can have hallucinations. Maybe not awake. I mean, you may dream about your loved one. I've actually not dreamed that much about dad. I dreamed about mom quite a lot when she died. I still dream about Seth frequently. But I when I wake up, I realize I'm awake. But I I suppose in distress and despair that people can have hallucinations where they think they see their loved one or they think their loved one is saying something to them. But the problem here is it's a bunch of people. This is like this is like a huge drug problem. I mean, it's all over. It's mass hallucinations. All these people are experiencing it. It's funny if you ever listen to any debates and this comes up, that one is as hard to defend as the other ones. At the core of the gospel are things that happen. Real historical events. The gospel isn't a matter of religious opinions, platitudes, or fairy tales. It is about real historical events. No, we don't have the people here in front of us. We do have their accounts. The scriptures, the historical facts are recorded for us. It's not that the resurrection has no attestation, it's that people don't want to face the facts. So they can ignore the implications. Of course, it's going to take an element of belief. Jesus is not standing here, but there's enough in history for us to take a serious look. It takes faith to also disbelieve. If you've heard of Frank Turek, I'll paraphrase him. He says, I don't have enough faith to be an atheist. And we can say here, I don't have enough faith to not believe in the resurrection. But I get it. If Jesus is alive, that's got implications. If Jesus rose from the dead, he has to be Lord of my life. That's why some people hope it's not true. Because the gospel says Jesus came to save me from my sin, not save me in my sin. Jesus will eventually eradicate all sin from our lives when we go to him or when he comes to us. If people could just grasp how wonderful that will be. That whatever fleeting pleasure there may be in whatever sin they're caught up in, it does not begin to compare to the eternal joy that God has in store for those who receive the good news. The good news that Jesus died for our sins, was buried, and was raised, making the way for his own to be raised one glorious day. Let's pray. Father in heaven, thank you for your word. Thank you for the assurances you give us. And now, Father, let us go forward in that in confidence that you love us, that you sent your son to die for us, as you rose again, that we have the promise of rising again, that we have the promise of going to you when our time comes. If you've not returned yet, that we have all the hope, Father, that you give us in your word. And we pray, Father, that we could be used of you, that we would be used in a way to point others to you and to the love that you have, that we would be a light and encouragement. Uh if we were to be a warning, then help us to uh do that in a loving way as well, Father. So we we play pray for guidance and strength as we go forward. Just pray you'd be with everybody this week that you would be with them and give them wisdom as they go in their way. And uh we pray for those in our fellowship that couldn't be here. We pray for our brothers and sisters worldwide, Father, that we would all be strengthening you and brought more to unity in the faith. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.