Convincing Testimony to the Resurrection

Paul is acting here like an attorney for the defense of the resurrection. This is powerful, substantial, firm, convincing, irrefutable testimony to its validity. And if Christ rose, then He is my Lord and my God.

And if He rose, He is the Messiah and He is the Savior and the death conqueror and the sin-bearer. Simon Greenleaf was a Harvard Law professor, and he was considered one of the greatest legal minds of the 19th century. But perhaps his most important contribution to mankind was when he set out to examine the evidence for Christ's resurrection and follow it wherever it led. After a thorough study, he concluded this, that there was more evidence supporting the resurrection of Jesus than just about any event in human history.

Now, what evidence did Greenleaf find, and what made it so persuasive? John MacArthur shows you today on Grace to You. He calls his Good Friday lesson, Convincing Testimony to the Resurrection. Well, John, on this Good Friday, let me ask a personal question. How do you prepare for Resurrection Sunday?

What does Easter weekend look like in the life of John MacArthur? Well, traditionally, we've always had a Good Friday service, and it's built around the Lord's table. We celebrate communion. It's a time to look at the cross, not only for the theological realities of the cross, but beyond that, that we might worship our Savior who gave His life for us. It's a time of joy, thanksgiving.

It's a time of heart-searching. It's a time of confession. It's a time of repentance. There's a combination—and I guess this is the way that I would explain it—there's a combination in a Good Friday service of the joy of the accomplishment of Christ on the cross, which purchased my redemption, and the sadness about my own sinfulness. As I come to the Lord's table on Good Friday, it's obviously with a heavy heart realizing that I freely accepted His salvation, but I still court sin in my life. So there's the joy of forgiveness along with the sadness of disobedience that all of us have to deal with.

I think it's that kind of thing, and it should have that kind of sober reality, because I think that's how you have to approach the cross. There's profound sadness when you realize that Christ is not suffering for anything He did, but He's suffering for everything I did. So the idea from the pastoral standpoint is to help people understand that it's their sin that put Him there. And I think about this every time we come to Good Friday. My sin is what He paid for there. How can I willfully, then, entertain the very sin that killed Christ?

But we do. Whenever we sin as believers, we are acting out the very sins which caused Him to die. And if we say we love Him, we wouldn't inflict that pain on Him again. So I think it's a time of deep heart searching as well as a time of joy. PHILIP That's right, and thank you, John. I think that will help a lot of our listeners have a more worshipful Easter. And now, friend, turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 15 as John shows you how you can trust and defend the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Here's the lesson. JOHN The resurrection is so critical to us that there is no Christianity without it. There is no gospel without it.

There is no hope without it. That is why throughout history the resurrection has been attacked and assaulted, even down to the very present time. It is also why Christians have been imprisoned and embattled and persecuted and assaulted and beaten and executed, but the world has never been able to cause the church to give up its confidence in the resurrection. It has always been and always will be the foundation of our faith.

And thus, it is the point of attack. Scripture anticipates that. That's why the New Testament marshals its forces to give testimony to the resurrection. In the earliest of the writings of the New Testament, Matthew and Mark, there is clear evidence of the resurrection.

In the earliest of the epistles, 1 Corinthians, there is an entire chapter on the resurrection, 1 Corinthians chapter 15. This great chapter in 1 Corinthians 15 opens up with Paul's defense on what we would call direct grounds. This is irrefutable testimony. Paul is acting here like an attorney for the defense of the resurrection.

This is powerful, substantial, firm, convincing, irrefutable testimony to its validity. And if Christ rose, then He is my Lord and my God. And if He rose, He is the Messiah and He is the Savior and the death conqueror and the sin-bearer. And so the testimony of these witnesses comes against any denials of this resurrection. Let's look at the first category of testimony, the testimony of the church, the testimony of the saved. Verse 1, Now I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you, which also you received, in which also you stand, by which also you are saved, if you hold fast the word which I preached to you unless you believed in vain.

Paul starts out with an emphatic introduction. I make known to you, brethren, I am affirming the gospel to you. I am declaring the gospel which I preached to you when He was with them, the gospel which they heard, which they believed, by which they were saved and in which they continue to stand and persevere. And what he is saying here is, my message is what you have already believed. My message is what you have already experienced. My message is what has made you what you are, the living church.

You received it. You stand in it. That's a perfect tense, by the way, perfect tense in the Greek means something that happens in past time with ongoing effect. You received it and you believed it and you took your stand on it and you are still standing there. You entered into the realm of faith and you're still there.

That is to say, the permanent condition, the permanent experience, the permanent state of the Corinthian church is evidence of a risen Christ. You have been transformed by faith in that gospel, by that living Christ. And the verb you are saved is present tense, you are continually saved and it emphasizes perseverance. You received it and now you continue to stand in it and to continue to be saved by it. Salvation is not just something that happens in the past, justification happened in the past, sanctification is an ongoing reality.

We are being saved. We are constantly being delivered from the power of sin, someday to be delivered from even the presence of sin. You are, he says, living testimony to the power of the resurrection of Christ because you have believed and you are experiencing the salvation that Christ provided in His death and resurrection. This by the way is an essential element to the gospel. How else can you explain the church?

How else can you explain the ongoing power of the church? How else can you explain conversion, salvation, sanctification, our experience with the living Christ? You are even today testimony to the truth of the resurrection unless...there's a caveat, see it in verse 2?...unless you have believed in vain. There are people who believe with no effect, that's what it means, who believe with no impact, who believe uselessly. It is a superficial faith, it only qualifies you to be a demon because the demons believe too. So Paul is just simply saying, if your faith is saving faith as evidenced by holding fast the Word, never denying the Word, never rejecting the Word of the gospel, the truth that saves, if you are holding fast to that and persevering in that faith, then you are the living testimony to the truth of the resurrection.

That's the first place you go. You look at the church and you see the living Christ alive in His people. There's a second line of evidence when you think about the resurrection and that is in verses 3 and 4, the testimony of Scripture, the testimony of Scripture, for I delivered to you, verse 3, as of first importance, what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures and that He was buried and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. If anybody would say to me, what is the gospel? What is the gospel? This is the passage I would go to because verse 1 says, I make known to you, brethren, the gospel...the gospel with the good news which I preach to you. And then as an aside, which you received, in which you stand, by which you're saved, if your faith is the real thing. And he goes back to the beginning, for I delivered to you, which is another way of saying, I make known to you the gospel which I preach to you. And here again, I delivered to you as of first importance, that is the principle thing.

Here's the principle thing. What I received, I received this gospel directly and it is this, that Christ died for our sins, that is substitutionary death and behalf of sinners, paying the penalty for our sins according to the Scriptures and that He implied being genuinely dead was buried and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures. That is the gospel...that is the gospel. No presentation of the gospel can leave any of this out. But He said, look, at the end of verse 3 and the end of verse 4, it all happened according to the Scriptures.

What does He mean by that? He simply means that His death was prophesied in the Old Testament and it was prophesied in numerous ways. There are some veiled indicators of it, such as God killing the first animal in the garden to clothe the sinful Adam and Eve. God makes the first sacrifice to cover sin. Such as Genesis 22, Abraham and Isaac go to the mountain, Isaac lifts...Abraham lifts the knife to plunge into Isaac's heart to offer him the sacrifice. God stops him, provides the substitute animal to be a sacrifice and God is indicating that He will provide the Lamb the sacrifice. The entire sacrificial system laid out to Moses with all of the animals that were being slaughtered, none of which could take away anybody's sin, picture a final sacrifice. In fact, the whole idea of the sacrificial system was to create massive frustration. It was relentless because sin was relentless. In the temple when they offered sacrifices were like butchers massacring animals by the tens of thousands knee-deep in blood.

It was a horrific system but never ever was there a sacrifice that ended it all until Christ. Every one of those sacrifices pictured the one who would come and Isaiah laid it out in very clear terms. There will come one, the suffering servant. He'll have no beauty that we should desire him.

He'll be a root out of Jesse. He'll come down the line of David, the messianic one, and he will bear our sins and he will bear our transgressions and he will die for us to make peace and reconciliation with God. He will be wounded for us. But that same Isaiah 53 chapter also says that he will be given a place with the great and he will be elevated and exalted. When you come down to verses 10 to 12 of Isaiah 53, you see that that's not the end of the story. Even though he bears our iniquities and bears our sins, he's going to have a place with the great.

Why? Because he's coming out the other side of the grave. The Old Testament made that clear as well. You go back to Psalm 16 and Psalm 16 is the testimony to the Messiah's resurrection that stands above all the rest in the Old Testament. Listen to what David says and it doesn't refer to him.

We'll show you that in a minute. Psalm 16, I have set the Lord continually before me, because He's at my right hand I will not be shaken, therefore my heart is glad, my glory rejoices, my flesh also will dwell securely...this is the Messiah talking...thou wilt not abandon my soul to Sheol or the grave, neither wilt thou allow Thy holy one to undergo decay, thou wilt make known to me the path of life in Thy presence is fullness of joy, in Thy right hand there are pleasures forever . The psalmist says there is a resurrection, the Messiah is going to go through the grave and out the other side without ever being corrupted.

When Peter stood up to preach, look at Acts chapter 2, it was the day of Pentecost, he stood up and he gave this great message, verse 22, men of Israel, listen to these words, Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles, wonders, signs which God performed through him in your midst just as you yourselves know, this man delivered up by the predetermined plan, that's the primary cause, and foreknowledge of God you nailed to a cross, that's the secondary cause, by the hands of godless men and put him to death. And God raised him up again, putting an end to the agony of death since it was impossible for him to be held in power for...and here he quotes, Psalm 16, David says of him, I was always beholding the Lord in my presence, He is at my right hand that I may not be shaken, therefore my heart was glad my tongue exults, moreover my flesh also will abide in hope because Thou wilt not abandon my soul to Hades or Sheol, nor allow Thy holy one to undergo decay, Thou has made known to me the way of life, Thou wilt make me full of gladness with Thy presence. Now Peter pulls that prophecy under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, applies it to the Messiah, then verse 29 says, brethren, I may confidently say to you regarding the patriarch David that he both died was buried and his tomb is with us today. It can't be David in view, he's still dead physically, bodily. We're not talking about David.

Verse 31, what was David writing about? He looked ahead, spoke of the resurrection of the Christ that he was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did his flesh suffer decay. This Jesus God raised up again to which we are all witnesses. Psalm 16 wasn't about David, it was about Messiah. And so the Old Testament is witness to the fact that the Messiah would come, He would be the final sacrifice.

God ended the sacrificial system when Jesus had finished His sin-bearing. So when we look at the resurrection, what evidence do we find? The testimony of the living church, the testimony of the Scriptures. Thirdly, the testimony of eyewitnesses. You cannot underestimate the power of prophecy, powerful testimony that God said it would happen and it happened centuries later, nor can you discount the testimony of eyewitnesses. Verse 5, after that he appeared to Cephas, or Peter, Simon Peter, then to the Twelve, after that he appeared to more than 500 brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now. These eyewitnesses are still around. Then verse 7, he appeared to James, then to all the Apostles.

Now let's stop there for a moment. Human courts always base their adjudications, if they can, on eyewitness accounts. Circumstantial testimony is secondary, it is fraught with problems, as we all know.

Testimony of eyewitnesses is vital, especially if there are two or three eyewitnesses in which things can be...by which things can be confirmed, especially if they're intelligent, competent, sound in mind, ethical, maintain integrity. And that's why Paul appeals to this. He appeared to Cephas, he appeared to Peter. Now Peter wouldn't be a good candidate to make up a resurrection, he wouldn't be.

Peter was really having a hard time. The last encounter he had with Jesus, he was confronted by Jesus because he had just denied him on three different occasions, at least well as many as six different times on those three occasions. Now you would think that having sort of ended his life with Jesus in that tragic way, our Lord might have found somebody else to appear to. How amazing that he appeared first to Peter, Peter who denied him, denied him with an oath, denied him angrily and yet he appeared to Peter. But the fact that Peter could give evidence to the risen Christ is a clear indication that he did, in fact, see the risen Christ. And then it says in verse 5, he appeared to the Twelve and he says in verse 6, add to that, more than 500 brethren at one time, most of whom remain until now, as I said, 20 to 25 years later, some have fallen asleep, kind of a biblical way of saying died because for the believer it's only a temporary thing, not a permanent one.

The majority are still alive for 20, 25 years, a quarter of a century they've been telling about this experience. They had spread it far and wide, believe me, they had said to everyone, I saw the risen Christ, 500 eyewitnesses. And then in verse 7, he appeared to James. That's another interesting choice, probably not James, son of Zebedee, or James the son of Alphaeus, the two in the apostolic band, probably James the Lord's brother because he's distinguished from all the Apostles here rather than being one of them. James the brother of our Lord, who according to John 7, 5, along with his other brothers didn't believe in him, they were the children of Joseph and Mary, they didn't believe in him. Peter was a denier of Christ and so was James and those are the only two names there.

The Lord picks people who are so objective in their testimony because there was no predisposition to create this. It may have well been that the last days of Jesus' life generated some wonder on the part of James. But when James saw Christ alive, he believed and he became the leader of the Jerusalem church, two unlikely eyewitnesses. And then all the Apostles. And there were repeated appearances, according to Acts 1, for 40 days.

He kept appearing to them and teaching them things concerning his kingdom. And then one other name, the name is not given but we know it. Last of all, as it were to one untimely born, he appeared to me also, Paul. Here's another unlikely person. If you wanted an eyewitness of the...if you wanted somebody to fabricate the resurrection, you wouldn't pick Paul. He didn't believe anything about Jesus.

He's the least likely...I mean, absolutely the least likely. But let's call him the special witness. Number four, you have eyewitnesses in verses 5 through 7, you have the special witness in verse 8 through 10. He says, I am the least of the Apostles, which ties in to what he said in verse 8, as one untimely born, I'll explain that, who am not fit to be called an Apostle because I persecuted the church of God. By the grace of God I am what I am and His grace toward me didn't prove vain, I labored even more than all of them, yet not I but the grace of God with me. He says, look, Peter the denier, Peter the vacillating, Peter the coward, James the unbeliever and Paul the untimely born. Incredible statement, really. In the Greek, ta ektromati, ta ektromati, ektroma means a premature birth, okay? A premature birth. Ektromati is an aborted fetus, the abortion, Paul the abortion, Paul the dead fetus.

This is amazing. He picks a coward and an unbeliever and the lowest of the low, a persecutor of the church. I'm worse than Peter the denier. I'm worse than James the unbeliever.

I'm the enemy. But we all have seen the risen Christ, an unlikely trio of witnesses who would never fabricate the resurrection. And then finally, and this is powerful. There is the testimony of the common message, testimony of the church, the Old Testament Scriptures, the eyewitnesses, the special witness, Paul, and the testimony of the common message.

This is very powerful. It's amazing to me again the economy of words with which the Bible says so much. Verse 11, whether then it was I or they, that is the Apostles and the rest of the eyewitnesses, the 500 and everybody else, so we preach. What do we preach? Verse 1, I make known to you, brethren, the gospel which I preached to you. Whether it's me, or whether it's any of them, we all preach and you believe.

This is powerful stuff. What are you saying? I'm saying this. They all only preached one thing. There wasn't a debate. There weren't some preachers who said He rose and some who said He didn't. There weren't some who said, well, you know, we wanted Him to rise so much that we got this sort of...we worked ourselves up until we really believed it because we wanted it so badly. There weren't some who said, well, there was an apparition that appeared. It was actually an apparition, it wasn't a resurrection. Others said it was a resurrection. No, it really wasn't. It just appeared to be there and it was a figment of our imagination. It was a sort of a hallucination, it was mass hysteria.

There were others who said, no, it was just really His Spirit who rose, just the good feelings we had about Jesus made Him live like somebody we love who dies and they stay alive in our memory and blah, blah, blah. Every one of those things that I'm talking to you about you can read in modern liberal theology. There's no common message today.

This is the modern era. But in the era of the New Testament, there was one message. He rose, we preached it and you believed it.

There was no diversity within Christianity. There was no diverse message and there was no diverse faith. The testimony of a common message. We all believed it because it was true. We all preached it, whoever we were, wherever we were and you all believed it.

It is that commonality that is so powerful. And it went on and on. It's now twenty years, twenty-five years and Paul is still preaching it. And it goes on another decade and another into the sixties and in the seventies, the eighties, the nineties and then John pens the gospel and concludes with that great chapter I read and it's still the same message and they all believed it and they all preached it and they all believed it.

And it's the same today. The gospel is that Christ died for our sins. He was buried and He was raised from the dead according to the Scriptures. That is the gospel. If you believe and confess Jesus as Lord, you will be saved. This is Grace To You with John MacArthur. Thanks for being with us. Today John showed you convincing testimony to the resurrection. That was the title of his message here on Grace To You.

And now friend, let me encourage you to seize opportunities to talk about Christ's sacrifice with your family this weekend from the little ones to the older adults and let us know how John's Bible teaching has helped prepare for your Easter celebration. Write to us today. You can send your letter to Grace To You, Box 4000, Panorama City, California, 91412. Or if you prefer, email that address, letters at gty.org.

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Our web address, gty.org, that's gty.org. Now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson, wishing you and your family a blessed Resurrection Sunday celebration. And be here next week as John looks at how the simple truth of the gospel can help you face life's most complex challenges. He's starting a series titled The Foolishness of God. With another half hour of unleashing God's truth one verse at a time, on Monday's Grace To You.