Did Jesus Realy Rise from the Grave?

Did Jesus Really Rise from the Grave? 

1 Cor. 15: 1-8, 17-20, 50-58

The resurrection of Christ is fundamental to our faith. The cross paid the price for our sins, the resurrection took away the penalty. 

The resurrection of Jesus Christ and Christianity stand or fall together. You cannot refute Christianity because you cannot explain away an event in history: the resurrection. 

 

1.     The Importance of the Physical Resurrection of Christ

Norman Geisler: If Christ did not rise in the same physical body that was placed in the tomb, then the resurrection loses its value as an evidential proof of His claim to be God. The resurrection cannot verify Jesus’ claim to be God unless he was resurrected in the body in which he was crucified. That body was a literal, physical body. Unless Jesus rose in a material body, there is no way to verify His resurrection. It loses its historically persuasive value. 

When we talk about the resurrection, we mean the physical resurrection. Jesus had a physical body that could be touched, that needed to eat, etc. 

 

2. The Significance of the Resurrection 

All but four of the major world religions are based on philosophical propositions. Four are based on a personality. Of those four, only Christianity claims an empty tomb for it’s founder. 

Judaism: Abraham died about 1900bc but no resurrection is claimed for him. 

Buddha: The original accounts of buddha never ascribe to him anything close to a resurrection. It is written that when he died “it was with that utter passing away in which nothing whatever remains behind. 

Mohammed died june 8, 632AD at the age of 61. 

William Lane Craig writes: “Without the belief in the resurrection the Christian faith could not have come into being. The disciples would have remained crushed and defeated men. Even had they continued to remember Jesus as their beloved teacher, his crucifixion would have forever silenced any hopes of his being the messiah. The cross would have remained the sad and shameful end of his career. 

 

 3. The Resurrection Scene (some crucial details of the scene)

a.     Jesus was really dead. (This information will be very important in the next section)

-The scourging- The criminal was stripped of his clothes, tied to a post and lictor would administer the scourging. He used a “flagrum” or cat of nine tails. Hebrew law limited the lashes to 40, but the Romans had no limitations.  A 3rd century historian describes scourging like this: “The sufferer’s veins were laid bare, the very muscles, sinews, and bowels of the victims were open to exposure.”

-The journey- He was stripped of the robe that had mockingly been placed upon him, no doubt ripping the flesh again. The phrase in Mark 15:22 “and they bring him unto the place Golgotha” indicates that Christ was unable by that time to walk under his own power. He obviously was not able to carry the cross, but it’s possible he was not able to walk. 

-The crucifixion- Historian Frederick Farrar- For indeed a death by crucifixion seems to include all that pain and death can have – dizziness, cramp, thirst, starvation, sleeplessness, traumatic fever, tetanus, shame, long continuance of torment, horror of anticipation, all intensified just up to the point at which they can be endured at all, but all stopping just short of the point which would give to the sufferer the relief of unconsciousness. 

The unnatural position made every movement painful; the lacerated veins and crushed tendons throbbed with incessant anguish, the wounds, inflamed by exposure, gradually gangrened, the arteries, especially at the head and stomach, became swollen and oppressed, and while each variety of misery went on gradually increasing, there was added to them the intolerance of burning and raging thirst. 

-Proof of death- 

Pilate required certification of his death by sending four specialists who were experts on death. They knew the signs.

The centurion, standing right in front of Jesus, knew when Jesus died and said surely this man was the son of God. 

Pilate was surprised that Jesus was already dead. 

The soldier pierced his side and blood and water came out. 

Journal of the American Medical Assocation- “Clearly, the weight of historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus was dead before the wound to his side was inflicted and supports the traditional view that the spear, thrust between his right ribs, probably perforated not only his right lung but also the pericardium and the heart and thereby ensured his death. Accordingly, interpretations based on the assumption that Jesus did not die on the cross appear to be at odds with modern medical knowledge.”  

b. The stone

The opening to the central chamber was guarded by a large and heavy disc of rock which could roll along a groove slightly depressed at the center. It was used as protection against men and wild animals. Historians tell us it would have taken several men to move the stone. 

c. The seal

A stamp of roman authority. They did their best to prevent theft and the resurrection, but they overreached themselves and provide addition witness to the faith of the empty tomb and the resurrection of Jesus. 

Alfred Roper: “Roman soldiers numbering from 10 to 30, who under their direction, sealed the tomb with the Imperial seals of Rome, affixing thereto in wax the official stamp of the procurator himself which it would be a high crime even to deface. Thus did these zealous enemies of Jesus unwittingly prepare in advance an unanswerable challenge to their subsequent explanation of the resurrection”, that Jesus body had been stolen. 

d. The guards at the tomb. 

Their sole purpose and obligation was rigidly to perform their duty as soldiers of the empire of rome. The Roman seal fixed to the stone was more sacred to them that all the philosophy of Israel. Soldiers cold blooded enough to gamble over a dying victims cloak are not the kind of men to be hoodwinked by timid Galileans or to jeopardize their Roman necks by sleeping on their post.” 

e. Post-resurrection appearances 

C.S. Lewis- “The first fact in the history of Christendom is a number of people who say they have seen the resurrection. If they had died without making anyone else believe this gospel, no gospels would would have ever been written.” 

 

Appearances of the Risen Christ

Mary Magdalene- Mark 16:9, John 20:14

To women returning from the tomb- Matt. 28:9,10

To Peter- Luke 24:34

To the Emmaus disciples- Luke 24: 13-33

To the apostles without Thomas- Luke 24:36-43, John 20:19-24

To the apostles with Thomas present- John 20:26-29

To the seven by the Lake of Tiberias- John 21:1-23

To 500 plus believers on a Galilean mountain- 1 Cor. 15:6

To James- 1 Cor. 15:7

To the eleven- Matt. 28:16-20, Mark 16:14-20, Luke 24:33-52, Acts 1:3-12

At the ascension- Acts 1:3-12

To Paul- Acts 9:3-6, 1 Cor. 15:8

To Stephen- Acts 7:55

To Paul in the temple- Acts 22:17-21, 23:11

 

f. The enemies of Christ gave no refutation of the resurrection 

-They were silent. 

In Acts 2, Luke records Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost. There was no refutation given by the enemies of Jesus to his claim of the resurrection. Why? Because the evidence of the empty tomb was there for anyone to examine. However, everyone knew that the grave no longer held the body of Jesus. 

In Acts 25, all is before Festus. “When he had come, the Jews who had come down from Jerusalem stood about and laid many serous complains against Paul, which they could not prove. 

They made all kinds of personal attacks on Paul but avoided the objective evidence for the resurrection. 

“The silence of the Jews is as significant as the speech of the Christians.” Fairbairn

“The simple disproof, the effective challenging, of the fact of the resurrection would have dealt a death blow to Christianity. And they had every opportunity to disprove, if it were possible.”

The church was founded on the resurrection, and disproving it would have destroyed the christian movement. However, instead of any such disproof, throughout the first century, Christians were threatened, beaten, flogged, and killed because of their faith. It would have been much simpler to have silenced them by producing Jesus body, but this was never done. 

 

4. Established Psychological Facts

a.     Transformed lives of the disciples

John R.W. Stott: Perhaps the transformation of the disciples of Jesus is the greatest evidence of all for the resurrection. 

Simon Greenleaf, a Harvard attorney: It was therefore impossible that they could have persisted in affirming the truths they had narrated, had Jesus not actually risen from the dead, and had they not known this fact as certainly as they knew any other fact. 

Example: James the brother of Jesus. Before the resurrection, he despised all that his brother stood for. He thought Christ’s claims were ridiculous and pretentious and only served to ruin the family name. After the resurrection, James is found with the other disciples preaching the gospel. He describes himself as a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. The only explanation for this change is that he saw the risen Lord, as Paul describes in 1 Cor. 15:7. 

Think of the character of these witnesses, the disciples. Men and women who gave the world the highest ethical teaching it has ever known, and who even on the testimony of their enemies lived it out in their lives. Think of the psychological absurdity of picture a little band of defeated cowards in an upper room one day and a few days later transformed into a company that no persecution could silence- they continued to preach the resurrection even though it would have been much easier to stop. They wouldn’t have done that for something they knew to be a lie. 

 

5. Inadequate Theories about the Resurrection 

Non miraculous explanations of what happened at the empty tomb have to face a choice: either they have to rewrite the evidence in order to suit themselves or they have to accept the fact that they are not consistent with the present evidence. The only hypothesis that fits is that Jesus was really resurrected. 

a.     The Swoon Theory

This theory holds that Jesus never actually died on the cross. He merely “swooned”, or passed out. The coolness of the tomb revived him. 

Refutation: 

-Christ did die on the cross. (see letter A, under “resurrection scene.”)

-The disciples did not perceive him as having merely revived from a swoon. 

In Jesus’ appearances to his disciples, he was not sickly, weak, wounded, in need of medical attention. He was strong and healthy, preparing his disciples for a great work. In addition, he would have explained his condition to his disciples. To mislead them would have been dishonest and deceptive, allowing his disciples to spread a resurrection proclamation that was really a fairy tale. Not even the most ardent skeptic claims that Jesus was a bad man. 

-Once he revived, he would have had to wiggle out of the grave clothes that were wound tightly around him. 

“In preparing a body for burial according to Jewish custom, it was washed and straightened, and then bandaged tightly from the arms to the ankles in strips of linen about a foot wide. Aromatic spices, often of a gummy consistency, were placed between the wrappings or folds. They served to preserve and as a cement to glue the cloth wrappings into a solid covering. John uses the term “bound”. 

-Once he revived, he would have had to roll back the stone at the entrance of the tomb. 

A healthy man couldn’t have done it, much less one who has been in a coma for three days. 

-The long walk to Emmaus would have been impossible. 

Luke 24:13. Jerusalem to Emmaus was about 7 miles. 

-If Jesus didn’t die at this time, when did he did and under what circumstances? 

He would have had to retire to some solitary place unknown even to the disciples. While the church rose and changed the world, he would have been silent and unknown. 

b. The Theft Theory 

Jesus disciples came in the night and stole the body. 

-There are only two explanations for the empty tomb: it was a human work or a divine work. If it was a human work, it would have been carried out either by Jesus enemies or his friends. His enemies didn’t have a motivation to steal the body, and his friends didn’t have the power. 

Evidence that the body was not stolen: 

-Much precaution was taken to ensure the body was not stolen. The massive stone, the Roman seal, the armed guards. If the guards had fallen asleep, they would have been punished by death. There is no way the timid disciples overpowered armed roman soldiers to steal the body. 

-The grave clothes were still laying there. Why would the disciples have taken the time to rewrap the clothes and lay them there. Why would they have folded the head wrapping. 

c. The Hallucination Theory 

This theory states that all of Christ’s post resurrection appearances were just hallucinations. 

-Generally, only certain kinds of people have hallucinations. People who would be described as high strung, highly imaginative, and very nervous. The appearances of Christ were not restricted to persons of any particular makeup. 

Mary Magdalene was weeping. 

The women were afraid and astonished. 

Peter was full of remorse. 

Thomas was doubtful. 

The Emmaus pair were distracted. 

-The appearances were seen by many people. Hallucinations don’t happen to 500 people at the same time. 

-You can’t touch a hallucination. 

Winfried Corduan: 

The problem with this theory is that in the case of the resurrection appearances, everything we know about hallucinations is violated. 

 

 I’ve presented just some of the logical, medical, historical, and psychological evidence of the crucifixion. The evidence confirms that it is easier to believe in the resurrection than to disprove it. 

Remember, evidence might confirm our faith but it not the source of our faith. 

 

The Importance of the Resurrection to the Christian Faith- 

1.     It is irrefutable evidence that Jesus Christ was and is the son of God. 

Jesus claimed to be the son of God, the scriptures point to him being the son of God, but the resurrection confirms it. 

2.     If He is the son of God, we must do something with him. Reject him or accept him. You cannot ignore him. 

3.     The resurrection gives us the hope that our deaths are not final. We will join with him in the resurrection. 

Read 1 Cor. 15: 51-55 again 

If the grave is not strong enough to keep Christ in its grasp, it’s not strong enough to keep you there either! 

4. The power of the resurrection is available to us now. 

Ephesians 1:3-20

The power of God that saves you is the same power that raised Jesus from the dead. 

Does God have the power to save you, and to forgive you of your sins, no matter how wretched you’ve been? 

Does God have the power to take all the mess of your past and make it new? Does he have the power to redeem you? To adopt you into his family and make you a child of God? Yes he does! 

But does he have the power to change you? 

To make you who you need and want to be? 

Does he have the power to take away your fear? 

To deliver you from worry, and anxiety, and depression? 

Does God have the power to free you from the prison of bitterness and that grudge you’ve been holding onto all these years? 

Can God heal your broken heart? Can God heal your broken marriage? 

Can he bring your prodigal child back home? Can God deliver you from addiction? 

Can God heal you of all the trauma in your past that is sabotaging everything you try to do now? 

Can God pick up all the pieces of a shattered life and put them back together better than ever? 

Yes to all of these things because the power of God that brought a dead man back to life is the same power at work in you! Let it work! 

Why hasn’t He already done it? That is a complicated answer. But it might be that you are plugged in to the wrong power source. 

Nothing in this world can heal you and change you and put you back together again but the power of God in Christ. You are plugged in to things that can never make you whole. In fact, I’ll take it a step further…most of the things we try to plug into for help actually make it worse. 

For example- if you are plugged in to anything that involves your flesh- money, stuff, success, power, sex, addiction…it’s not actually those things that you are after, it’s how those things make you feel. The flesh. So all you have done is plugged your power cord back into yourself, and you have created a loop, a cycle of destruction and misery. 

Unplug from those things. And plug into the power of the resurrection.