We have been, over the last four Sunday nights, looking at some portraits of Christ. Obviously at this particular time of year there’s a greater amount of interest in the person of Jesus Christ because it is Christmas season, after all. And although our country seems to be making a maximum effort to remove Christ from Christmas, He still remains at the focus for most people and it’s a good time to be reminded of the importance of knowing the salvation that comes alone in Him. And we’ve been looking at some portraits of Christ over the last three Sunday nights and another one tonight is before us.
In the tenth chapter of Romans, and you don’t have to look at that, I’m just going to comment on it, in the tenth chapter of Romans and verse 9, there’s a very important statement there. The Bible says this, “If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.” That’s a very definitive statement. Saved from what? Saved from divine judgment. Saved from eternal hell. Saved from punishment. Saved from your sin. Saved from guilt. How is one saved from that? If you confess with your mouth Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead you shall be saved.
One of the things that must be believed in order for a person to be delivered from sin and death and judgment and hell is the resurrection of Christ. And so I want to talk about that and I want you to look at the end of the gospel of Matthew. Matthew is the first gospel in the New Testament, the first record in the order of the New Testament, record of the life and ministry of Jesus. And, of course, Matthew culminates his gospel with the history of our Lord’s resurrection.
There was a scientist many years ago in Canada by the name of G.B. Hardy who was searching for the true religion. And he said, “I really have only two questions. One, has anybody ever cheated death? And two, did he make a way for me to follow? Those are my only two questions.” And he went on a search and he found that Buddhist’s tomb was occupied. And so was Mohammed’s and so was every other religious leader who ever lived. But Jesus’ tomb has been empty since three days after He was crucified. This was a profound discovery, that this Jesus who claimed to be God validated that claim by rising from the dead. That answered the first question. And the second question, did He make a way for me to do it as well was answered by the words of Jesus who Himself said, “Because I live, you shall live also.” His resurrection then becomes the guarantee of our resurrection. His resurrection is not only the proof that He is God but it is the prototype of our own resurrection.
You cannot accept the Jesus of the Bible and not accept His resurrection. And if you acknowledge that He rose from the dead by His own divine power, then He stands alone as absolutely unique, for no one has ever been able to raise himself from the dead. We look for the reality of life after death. That’s not foreign to us. Even Solomon said in articulating human wisdom in Ecclesiastes 3:11, “God has set eternity in their heart.” Part of being human is feeling the pull of eternity. Part of being human is having built into you reason, an understanding of cause and effect which takes you back to the original cause which has to be God. Part of being human is having moral law written in your heart. Part of being human is having a conscience that excuses or accuses you when you do what is good or what is evil. And part of being human is feeling the tug of immortality. And that’s why Hardy asks the question. What happens after I die? Whether you’re talking about American Indians who used to bury the pony with the warrior who died so that he would have a horse to ride at the happy hunting ground, or the Greeks who were buried with a silver coin in their mouth so they could pay the fare across the mystic river. Or the Pharaohs who were buried in the pyramids with a solar boat so they could sail through the future life. Eternity is written in the human heart. It’s just not acceptable to us, to most of us, that we are protoplasm waiting to become manure and make the flowers grow at the cemetery. There is something in us that reaches out to immortality and is planted there by God. And to put it simply, you will live forever. You will live forever somewhere. The question is whether you have an eternal life with God or an eternal death in punishment away from Him, a deathlike existence.
And in order to be sure that you have eternal life, the Bible says you must confess Jesus as Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead. You must believe that Jesus died as a sacrifice for sin and rose from the dead. Now there are certainly many people who are skeptical about the resurrection and they want to deny the resurrection. It’s particularly a quasi scholarly thing to do. To come up with the idea, if you’re a professor at some university or if you’re a research person or sort of self-styled scholar, even a recognized scholar, it’s…it’s sort of popular, it sort of goes with that territory to be skeptical of the Bible, about everything in the Bible, for that matter, to be skeptical about Jesus’ virgin birth, to be skeptical about His deity, to be skeptical about His miracles, to be skeptical about His death and certainly to be skeptical about His resurrection. But the Bible gives the record of His resurrection. And it also gives the record that there were many people who saw Him after He was raised, over 500 people. In fact, 500 saw Him at one time and that’s a historical record laid down for us not once but several times in the gospels and reiterated through the rest of the New Testament, affirming the reality of that by the testimony of others.
What are the explanations if we’re going to deny the resurrection? If we’re going to say Jesus didn’t really rise, how do we explain it away? Well through the years several theories have been offered, and I’ll just throw them out because I want you to see how people who reject the resurrection think. First is called the swoon theory. That says Christ never died, he just went into a semi-coma. He was just down deep in some kind of sleep because of all of the suffering that had occurred on the cross and they assumed that He was dead, and so they put Him in the tomb and, you know, when they wrapped Him and put the spices that they typically did in the wrapping, it was the reviving effect of the spices, the coolness of the tomb and He woke up and he showed up and His disciples had assumed that He had risen from the dead. Is there any possibility that that could be true? Well, it might help you to know that it was invented in 1600 so it took 1600 years to think that one up, a man by the name of Venterini(?). And before 1600 all early records were emphatic about the fact that He died. And everybody knew the Roman proficiency at killing people, at crucifying people at the tens of thousands and at knowing whether someone was dead. And the record says that when they came by they knew He was already dead so they ran a spear into His chest and out came blood and water, indicating the severing of the pericardium around the heart. He was dead.
If He was only in a semi coma, then you have to conclude that He successfully survived a really an unbelievable beating, lashing prior to the cross. He survived crucifixion. He survived the spear rammed into Him. He survived being handled like a corpse would be handled with not particularly good care. He survived being entombed with about, I suppose as much as 75 pounds of spices wrapped around His body, including His head. He survived in that condition three days with no food or water, woke up without medical help, having lost most of His blood. And then moved the stone away, chased off the Romans who were guarding His tomb and convinced everybody that He was God. And by the way, when He was done with that He walked seven miles to Emmaus on feet that had been shredded by nails. Give me a break. It’s ridiculous.
Well the other theories go like this. There is what’s called the “no burial” theory. He wasn’t there because He was never put there. The reason when they went to the tomb they didn’t find Him is He was never put there. They took Him off a cross and they threw Him in Gehenna which is the city dump where they threw criminals, the corpses of criminals. He wasn’t there on Sunday because He hadn’t been put there on Friday.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
