Did It Really Happen? // A Life Eternal, Part 3

There’s not a serious historian alive today who doesn’t acknowledge the life and death of Jesus Christ. But the resurrection…..well that’s another thing entirely. Did it really happen?

Over this week on the program, we are looking at and exploring the whole question of Jesus’ resurrection. It can seem fanciful and even irrelevant, something that may or may not have happened a couple of thousand years ago and let’s face it – Jesus was crucified and then they said He’s alive. I mean, it’s pretty hard to believe, you know.

What’s the proof, what’s the evidence? I mean, if we look at it like a sane, rational person, can you really come to the conclusion that this Jesus, died and rose again? And if so, what does that mean for you and me, here and now? Today on the program, we are going to step back in time, into Jerusalem, into those days and weeks that followed the death and alleged resurrection of Jesus Christ and just take a look at some of what happened. The rest is up to each one of us, you and me; we have to make up our own minds.

Ok, well, let’s start with the facts. I mean the whole Jesus crucifixion thing is no mystery. I mean, Jesus became very popular, He made sense, people flocked to hear Him speak and the religious leaders of the day, they seriously got their noses out of joint and they plotted to kill Him; they whipped up the crowd and we looked at that earlier on in the week and last week.

Pontius Pilot had Him crucified, He was dead – there’s no doubt about that. I mean, no historian seriously disputes the facts to this point and probably, none of us would have any difficulty with the story thus far. It’s horrible how they crucified Him but that’s what happened. Now, then comes the whole story, though, of this resurrection of Jesus. They crucify Him, they put His body in a tomb, they put a stone and some Roman soldiers there guarding it, and what we celebrate now as being Easter Sunday, was about an empty tomb.

Now, we have a resurrection mystery – not a murder mystery – but a resurrection mystery. What happened to the body? All right, let’s think that through. What are the options? Option one is that the Roman authorities or religious leaders took the body and hid it. But why would they do that? You see, it wasn‘t in their interest. Jesus had been predicting His own resurrection and if the Romans or the Pharisees or Sadducees – those religious leaders of the day – had they taken His body and stolen it and hidden it, that simply would have opened up the possibility for a rumour of Jesus resurrection. So there’s no way that the Romans or the religious leaders, who had Him killed, would have taken the body and hidden it.

Number two – Jesus’ followers stole the body! It’s a possibility; they could have done that to create that rumour. I mean, He was dead, if He didn’t rise again, the disciples take the body, they hide it, they go round and tell everyone, "Jesus has risen." There are just a few things that work against that theory.

The first one is security. Have a listen to what it says, “The next day,” we are in Matthew 27, towards the end, beginning at verse 62:

The next day, the one after the preparation day, the Chief Priests and the Pharisees went to Pontius Pilot - they said, “Sir, we remember that while Jesus was still alive, He said, “After three days I will rise again,” so why don’t you give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day, otherwise His disciples might come a steal the body and tell the people that He has been raised from the dead.

You see, the religious leaders figured out this potential as well, so Pilot said, “Take a guard, go and make the tomb as secure as you know how.” So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard, right? So here you have the religious leaders figuring out the possibility of deception by Jesus’ disciples – I’m being just totally objective, investigating the mystery – and they go to Pilot and say, "we had better stop any possibility". So, Pilot goes and has a huge stone rolled in front of the tomb, a seal put on it so that if it is broken, they know what’s happened and he puts some guards on the tomb.

Well, it’s a little bit hard for the disciples who weren’t armed to fight armed Roman soldiers and steal the body. And secondly, you’ve got to look at the state of mind of these disciples, they were in disarray; they were in a daze.

Now you read any of the accounts in the Books of Matthew, Mark, Luke or John – just the last couple of chapters of each – they didn’t believe this stuff about the resurrection. These disciples had just seen Jesus killed, they were afraid, they were fleeing for their own lives. It didn’t enter their heads that Jesus might have been resurrected. In fact, when some of them came back and said that it had happened, others said, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me, it just doesn’t happen.’ In any case, you had that security.

And all of these disciples went on to die the death of a martyr, because they went out and proclaimed that Jesus had risen. One by one, over the next thirty or forty years, each one, as far as we know, died the death of a martyr. Now would they have done that for something they knew to be a lie? Not likely. So I don’t see the potential for the disciples to have stolen the body as really being a possibility.

The other key possibility, whether you like it or not, was He actually rose again. Now He appeared to over five hundred people at once – you can read that in the letter that Paul writes; the First Letter to the Corinthians chapter 15 verse 6.

Now that’s a huge percentage; that’s like two or three percent of the population of Jerusalem; that’s the equivalent these days of filling a huge stadium in a city. And Paul wrote this at a time when many of the people who were alleged to have seen Jesus, when He rose again, could testify as to the truth or otherwise of such a claim.

Account after historical account – I don’t know, as I look at this stuff, I just skimmed over it – I guess today, it’s not that hard to believe the evidence. What’s hard to believe is that God would actually do something like this, to bring Jesus back to life. The truth is I’m not sure that I can convince anybody; we can’t have a coroner’s inquest to look at the evidence for the resurrection today. The people who were there, they are not around any more but what I can do is encourage you to do this: read the accounts for yourself.

We are just talking about a half an hour – the last few chapters of the Books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John in the New Testament.

I mean, ask the questions, look at the evidence, make up your own mind and in your heart, once and for all, if you look at the evidence and you say, "You know something, if this God is God and He is as powerful as He is, He can do this. And when I read these accounts, you know, everything points to it." If that’s you; if that’s the conclusion that you come to, can I ask you to pray something like this: "God, if this is true, do something in me and show me? Do something in my heart and put a certain faith in me that will never, ever again waver."

You see, for me it’s very rational; I’m your IT consultant type of person and I look at things fairly logically and I have to tell you, with everything I am, I believe in my heart that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. There doesn’t seem to be any other logical possibility and God keeps telling me, through His Word; through the Bible, that’s exactly what happened. Paul writes in Romans chapter 10 verse 9:

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved.

It’s that important, so take the time, read it, turn it over in your head, draw your own conclusions, believe in your heart – Jesus is alive!