Last night, I had the most amazing experience I have ever had. I was getting ready for bed when I noticed a bright, greenish-colored light coming into my house from outside. When I went to the window, I saw a UFO in my backyard, hovering there like a giant metal Frisbee! It was about 15 feet off the ground, and after a few minutes, a staircase came down from the underbelly of the UFO, and a figure started to walk down to the ground. I looked closely, and soon I realized—it was Bigfoot! He was walking down right into my backyard! I hardly had time to think before I noticed another figure coming down the stairs. The second figure was somewhat smaller and more human, and then I saw him as clear as day—it was Elvis himself!
Now, some of you seem to be a little skeptical about my story of a UFO landing in my backyard, but I want you to realize what has just happened within the course of our church service. A few moments ago, we were singing about a dead man coming back to life, and no one seemed to think twice about it, but when I started talking about a UFO, you started laughing at me. Well, we don’t often realize this as Christians, but to many people in the world, the claim that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead is no different than the claim that Bigfoot and Elvis stepped out of a UFO in my backyard! Both of them sound ridiculous!
So let me ask you this—why do you believe that Jesus rose from the dead? 1 Peter 3:15 commands us to “always [be] prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” So what reasons do we have to believe that Jesus rose from the dead?
Most people who deny the resurrection of Christ either claim that the disciples saw Jesus in a dream or a hallucination and came to believe that He was alive, or they claim that the disciples stole the body and made up the story of the resurrection. These two claims will serve as the backdrop of our discussion this morning, and as we look at the facts surrounding the burial place of Christ, we will see that the best explanation of the facts is that Jesus did in fact rise from the grave.
1. Jesus’ tomb was in a known location
If no one had known where Jesus was buried, then the disciples could have made up a story about a resurrection because no one could have checked it out; no one could have gone to the tomb to see if the body was still there. But since Jesus’ tomb was in a known location, once the disciples started talking about a resurrection, people could have easily gone to the tomb to check out their story. If the disciples had been just dreaming or hallucinating, then people could have seen that Jesus’ body was still in the grave, and the story would have immediately fallen apart.
The Gospels tell us that the disciples weren’t even involved in the burial of Jesus. According to the Gospels, Jesus was buried by two men who were members of the same Jewish council which had just condemned Jesus to death—a man named Joseph of Arimathea, who is called a respected member of the council, and a man named Nicodemus, whom Jesus called THE teacher of Israel in John 3. Please understand that this detail simply could not have been made up. If the disciples had made up these men for a fictional story, or if they had lied about real people, their lies would have easily been exposed. People could have simply talked to these men to find out if these details were true.
According to John 19, Jesus’ tomb was located in a garden in the same place that He was crucified, which we know was just on the outskirts of the city of Jerusalem. John 19:20 says that many of the Jewish people witnessed Jesus’ crucifixion because the place was “near the city.”
So the significance of these details is that the location of Jesus’ tomb was widely known. Thus, the events surrounding His resurrection did not happen in secret; they were played out in the public eye. So when the disciples began to publicly declare just a month and a half later that Jesus had risen from the grave, anyone who was curious could have checked out the tomb and spoken to those who were directly involved in His burial.
This brings us to the second fact that we must consider.
2. Jesus’ tomb was found to be empty by several of His female disciples
According to the Gospels, a handful of Jesus’ female disciples were the first to find that Jesus’ tomb was empty, and they then reported their discovery to the men whom we call the Apostles. How do we explain the fact that Jesus’ tomb was empty? Even the strongest critics of Christianity accept that Jesus’ tomb must have been empty, because otherwise the disciples’ claims could have never gotten off the ground. Christianity would have been dead on arrival if Jesus’ body was still in His tomb.
So how do we explain the fact that Jesus’ tomb was empty? All of the suspicion falls on the disciples, because no one else would have moved Jesus’ body. The Jewish leaders wouldn’t have done it, because that was precisely what they wanted to prevent! According to Matthew 27:62-66, they requested to have Roman soldiers stationed at the tomb so that the disciples could not steal the body and claim that Jesus rose from the dead.
So the Jewish leaders would not have moved the body, and the Roman authorities had no reason to do so. Grave robbers could not have gotten past the Roman soldiers without being discovered, so the real question is whether the disciples were somehow able to move the body.
Many skeptics of Christianity have claimed that Jesus’ tomb was empty because the disciples stole the body and then made up a story about the resurrection so that they could become the leaders of a new religion. Supposedly the disciples were after fame and possibly even fortune, and they thought that this was a way that they could get it. But this skeptical theory doesn’t hold water for numerous reasons.
If the disciples had made up their story:
1. They would not have begun to spread it in Jerusalem.
As I mentioned earlier, anyone in Jerusalem could have easily checked out the disciples’ story by visiting the tomb and talking to the people who were involved in the burial. If this was all a big hoax, it would have made much more sense for the disciples to travel to another part of Israel and spread their story there. News traveled slowly back then, so by the time anyone in a different city could have checked out the facts, the disciples could have had their new movement up and running. In their new location, they could have developed something like a cult following, and by the time anyone could have challenged them with the facts, it would have been too late to stop their movement from getting off the ground.
2. They would not have claimed that women were the first people to find the empty tomb.
In the culture of that time, the testimony of women was not considered to be reliable. Even the apostles did not believe the women who first told them about the empty tomb. Luke 24:11 says that when the women reported what they had seen, “[their] words seemed to [the apostles] an idle tale, and they did not believe them.” These women were personal friends of the apostles, yet they still did not believe them. That tells you what society thought about the testimony of women.
If the disciples had made up this whole story, you would think that they would have made it as strong and convincing as possible, which means that they wouldn’t have claimed that women were the first eyewitnesses to the resurrection. Why include a detail that so many men would have mocked? Likewise, they probably wouldn’t have stated their own unbelief. One would think that they would have made themselves out to be heroes, but the story recorded in the Gospels doesn’t make them look very heroic at all.
3. There is no good explanation for their dramatic change in attitude after Jesus’ crucifixion.
In the Gospels, we find the disciples in hiding after the crucifixion because they were afraid that the Jewish authorities might arrest them as well. But just a month and a half later, they stood up in front of a crowd of thousands in Jerusalem and proclaimed that Jesus rose from the dead. And when they were arrested not long after that, they listened to the threats of the Jewish leaders and said, “We have to obey God rather than you, so we’re going to keep preaching!” How did their attitudes change from cowardly to courageous? Are we really supposed to believe that their confidence came from a story that they made up themselves?
We should consider the conversion of Paul as well. Paul himself was one of the Jewish leaders, and he knew all about the disciples’ claims. He surely knew that the tomb was empty, but he must have thought that the whole thing was a hoax. He initially tried to stamp out Christianity by arresting Christians for blasphemy, but after the risen Lord appeared to him, he became a fearless preacher of the gospel.
Paul had much to lose from his conversion. He himself wrote in Galatians 1:14, “I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people.” Paul was destined for power and prestige among the Jews, but he gave it all up to be persecuted the same way that he was persecuting others.
The idea of a made-up story doesn’t square with the facts, especially when we consider that the disciples maintained their claims to the point of death.
4. There is no good reason to believe that the disciples would have died for what they knew was a lie.
Historians from centuries ago tell us that all of the apostles except one died as a martyr for their claims about Jesus and the resurrection—and even the one who wasn’t killed suffered terribly. According to tradition and historical documents, Peter, Andrew, Philip, Jude, and Simon the Zealot were crucified; James (son of Zebedee), Bartholomew, and Matthias were beheaded; Matthew was killed with an axe; Thomas was killed with a spear; James the Less was clubbed to death.
Now, history is filled with the stories of martyrs who have died for a thousand different causes, but the common denominator between them all is that they sincerely believed in the truthfulness of their cause. But some critics of the resurrection would ask us to believe that the apostles died for what they knew was a lie—one which they had fabricated themselves. This is simply an unreasonable conclusion. Are we to believe that ALL of the apostles maintained a lie as they saw their friends being martyred one by one; as they saw the entire Christian community suffering because of what they were proclaiming? That sounds like Elvis in a UFO to me!
When you think through the facts that we have surrounding the resurrection of Jesus Christ, the truly reasonable conclusion is that He has risen, just as He said He would! The real reason that some people do not want to believe that Jesus rose from the dead is that His resurrection proves that He is God, and as God, He is worthy of our worship and obedience. There is no lack of evidence, nor is there a lack of logic and reasoning behind this belief—there is simply a corruption of the will which compels all of us to resist the call to humble ourselves before God and embrace the Son whom He has sent into this world.
We cannot ignore the fact that Jesus rose from the grave. We cannot hide it behind a plate of ham and potato salad or a basket of colored eggs and then put it away until next year like all of our other decorations. We must decide whether we will accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior or whether we will ignore his rightful claim over our lives.
The Apostle Paul—who was also a martyr—stated that God in His grace has overlooked times of ignorance, “but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed: and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead” (Acts 17:30-31).
One day, Jesus Christ will judge the world. Here is what he said himself in John 5—“[God] the Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to [me], the Son, that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.”
God the Father has declared His acceptance of Jesus by raising Him from the dead—have you declared your acceptance of Him?
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