From Fear to Faith (Part 2 of 2)

Welcome to Truth for Life weekend, and on behalf of all of us at Truth for Life, I want to wish you a joyful and blessed Easter. Is it possible that Jesus didn't really die on the cross? Did his disciples steal the body from the tomb?

Alistair Begg confronts the speculation of skeptics today as we conclude a series called Journey to the Cross. He's teaching from chapter 20 in the Gospel of John. By any standards, the disciples were in a complete shambles. One of them, the betrayer, Judas Iscariot by name, was already dead—a suicide. The unofficial spokesman of the group, Simon Peter, the one who had declared to Jesus that although everybody may run away and hide, although everyone may desert Christ, that he never would, he had crumbled before the questionings of a young girl just hours before. And so, to go and look for them is to discover a dejected and paralyzed company.

Now, the question is obvious to any thinking person. What was it that turned these men from fear to faith? What was it that transformed their paralysis to such an emboldened expression of power? What was it that took what was apparently a Friday evening catastrophe and turned it into a Sunday morning victory? You need to take all of the options and lay them out, sift through them, select the best of the competing explanations to explain why the evidence is as it is and not otherwise.

That's what you need to do. Christianity invites it. Well, if you do, then you've got to go to the evidence for the origin of the belief in the resurrection on the part of the disciples. You've got to go and do something with the postmortem appearances of Christ, and you've got to go finally and do something with this empty tomb. And when you look at the evidence concerning the empty tomb, the evidence that supports the fact of the empty tomb, it is vast—far more than I can give to you just now. But for example, when you look at this material with an open mind, the burial story itself is historically credible. I mean, this is one of the questions you should be asking as an agnostic. Is there any credibility in this at all?

Or does this give me the impression as I read it that somehow or another a group of individuals went in a room and came up with a religious idea, and they hanged it on the cross of Jesus Christ? Well, then you're a sensible person. You must look at the evidence. You must read it. And you know what you'll discover? You will discover that not only is this a book which is capable of your investigation of it, but you will discover as you read it that this book actually investigates you. You will discover it will creep up on you that the person who wrote this book made you, and that this is actually a handbook that explains your existence. The fact that you've had it in the glove box for so long and have driven for forty years of your life without reference to it is only an indication of God's gracious provision. But it will be a wonderful day when you take it out of the glove box and you'll say, I wonder why it is that I am as I am. I wonder if there is an answer to death.

I wonder if there is an explanation of life. I wonder what this matter of the empty tomb is. And you discover that, for example, Joseph and his tomb makes perfect sense. Joseph of Arimathea, people knew who he was. He said, I have a tomb.

It's never had anyone in it. Can I have the body of Jesus? The women did what women did at that time. It was customary for them to be the embalmers, the carriers of spice. What do we read?

The exact same. There are no conflicting reports concerning the burial of Jesus. And in fact, the awareness of the tomb's location was apparently something that everyone could understand. If there was a body in the tomb, it would have been impossible for the resurrection story to survive for five minutes. How can these men go out and say Jesus is alive if they're giving tours between two and four in the afternoon down through the catacomb area and saying, here is the coffin, and here is the body, and here is the Christ? Also, it is underpinned by the fact that the empty tomb and its discovery is recorded as being encountered, first of all, by women.

Women of all things. In that context, they didn't have a vote. They couldn't give testimony in a court of law. Shepherds couldn't either.

And the women were regarded as the lowest when it came to these matters. And yet you read the story, and what does it say? Early in the morning, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb. Let's imagine for a moment that we're putting together a mythology and we're sitting in the room. And I decide, let's say that early in the morning, Mary Magdalene went to the tomb. Any sensible person in the room is going to say, no, don't say Mary Magdalene went to the tomb.

I say, well, how about the mother of Clopas? No, don't say a woman went to the tomb. Say a man went to the tomb, because nobody will believe the testimony of a woman.

I mean, if we're going to make a fiction, let's make it a good fiction. So the fact that it is the women that go to the tomb substantiates the fact of its historicity. Otherwise, we have to believe that the formulators of this nonsense determined that it would be a good idea to take the leaders of the Christian church and right out of the chute humiliate them as writing a little piece that said, and all the future leaders of the church were hiding in a room, and they were very frightened. But let's say now, and all the women went to the tomb, the big, brave women went to the tomb, and all the leaders of the church were hiding in a room.

Who's writing this stuff? The earliest Jewish argument presupposes the empty tomb, doesn't it? When they discovered that the tomb was empty, what did they say? Not, the tomb is not empty.

They said the disciples have come and stolen the body. They substantiate the fact that the tomb was empty by the argument that they present. If they could have shown that the tomb was not empty, that would have been far easier than coming up with this notion of the disciples going out to steal the body. And the fact that the tomb was not venerated as a shrine indicates that the tomb was empty. For it to become a shrine needed a body.

It needed bones. No body, no bones, no shrine. It's actually very, very difficult to object to the empty tomb on historical grounds. Those who object to it do so for other reasons. Some of you are about to walk out to your Easter lunch, and this is the kind of thing that you're hanging your hat on.

And I want to ask you, do you really want to do that? You say the reason the tomb was empty is not because Jesus had risen from the dead but because the disciples stole the body. First of all, why would they steal the body? Secondly, where would they put it?

And thirdly, having put it there, why would they hit the streets with a lie and get themselves killed for it? I'll gladly take that one in a court of law. I'd be glad to deal with that one. No, says somebody, I actually don't believe that. The women were at the wrong tomb.

Well, I'll take that one as well. Now, says somebody else, I don't think it was that. I think it was that Jesus was not really dead. And once he got in the cold tomb, he revived, had a bowl of cereal, and then went and hit the Jerusalem streets. Let me say to you, as I draw this to a close, that those kind of alternative explanations are more incredible than the idea of the resurrection itself.

They demand more from a man or a woman than faith in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The reason you do not believe is because you will not believe. Two questions, and we're through.

Question number one, is this information reliable? See, that's the question that you need to ask. Am I up here on a wing and a prayer? Am I some kind of religious professional, the representative of the Christian mythology society, having myself disengage my brain somewhere in the earlier part of my life and determine that on the base of all of this trumped-up nonsense I will give my life to studying the Bible and to seeking every opportunity to tell others about it? Well, of course, you can conclude safely that that is the case, that I am a crazy person, and we can let that pass.

But there are others whom you may respect and whose testimony you may find more difficult to set aside in that way. You see, you have a belief in the miraculous in relationship to this. You either believe in a psychological miracle, whereby normal men and women who were going about the routine of their days became conspirators and liars who were prepared to die for the subterfuge that they hoisted on the world.

That's a psychological miracle that I can't get my head around. Or you're embracing a biological miracle in relationship to the death of Jesus. Your assumption is that when the soldiers, in doing the bidding of their headquarters, came to break the legs of the individuals who were on the crosses, when they failed to break the legs of Christ, that they did that somehow because they didn't understand the difference between life and death. That the man who took the spear and plunged it into the side of Christ was simply being masochistic. When in point of fact, what he was doing was giving the determination in the separation of clot and serum, that what had happened up here was that this life had already gone.

The two thieves, their legs would be broken so that the platform in which they were managing to sustain their chest cavity for a moment or two would eventually give out from underneath them, and the chest cavity would be collapsed, and the loss of oxygen, etc., would increase and hasten the time of their death. But when they come to the center cross, he's already gone. And so they say, there's no need to break the legs here. Look, I'll show you he's already gone, and he's gone.

Now, I know you say that's not the case. So you're either going to walk out on the basis of a biological miracle, or you're going to walk out on the basis of a psychological miracle, or you're going to walk out on the basis of, if you like, a theological miracle. That the best explanation of the facts points to the reality of the resurrection of Jesus. My final question is this.

Is this information relevant? Why take this time on this morning to talk in this way? Why not simply talk about one or two things, nice things, in the world? Why not give you a word of encouragement and talk about love and peace and happiness and family? I love love, peace, happiness, and family.

I just can't always get them together in the one box. But that's not what I've been given to talk about, at least not this morning. You need to determine, as I do, is this information relevant? And without a literal resurrection, the Christian faith is worthless. At best then, Jesus is just a prophet. But you couldn't put your faith in him as a Messiah.

That would be daft. To say that the resurrection is a symbol is equally stupid. And yet you'll find that propounded from pulpits all around us here this morning in the Shubin Valley. Congregations will come, and they won't know what's being said to them. They don't understand that the people in the position which I've been interested with actually do not themselves believe in a literal resurrection of Jesus Christ. They believe that if there was a resurrection at all, it was a resurrection that took place in the minds of the disciples.

And this somehow as a result of this psychological transformation that they experienced, they went out and lived and died on the strength of it. I put it to you, is that not a most ridiculous proposition? Because the facts remain the facts. Jesus was dead. So what use a symbol? What use a myth? I have no use for a myth, a Christian myth, that says on the strength of a dead Galilean carpenter, I'm supposed to live my life.

Why? Without the literal bodily resurrection of Jesus, Christianity is worthless. And that is why Paul, with all of his intellect, argues so forcibly in 1 Corinthians 15, if Jesus Christ is not alive, he says, then those who have died are still in their sins. Our faith is worthless. Our preaching is in vain.

The whole thing is a sham and a waste of time. Now, you see, the flip side of that, of course, is then if Jesus Christ is alive, then it is supremely relevant. For here is a friendship like no other.

Here is forgiveness that can be found in no other. And here is a future that is all wrapped up in the fact that he is alive. In the New York Times on Wednesday of this past week, they had an article on Mark Rich, the man who was pardoned in the final hours of the Clinton presidency, and all of the hullabaloo that there's been about it.

And if you read the article, it was fairly extensive. It talked about how he'd begun in trading as a nineteen-year-old, and he had made all these millions and had got involved in all kinds of deals, and much of it speculative and questionable. But as I read on in the article and I began to imagine the unfolding of this young man, this young Jewish man's life, how he eventually ends up with all of this money, and as a result of what he's done, he has to be in exile from his friends and from his family. He's an alone man, really.

He's like the man in Ecclesiastes. There was a man all alone who had neither friend nor brother. He gets the news in his position of exile that one of his children, his twenty-nine year old daughter, has died of leukemia. He knew she was unwell. Her death came, and he could not return for the funeral, because for him to return would mean that he'd be arrested, and he couldn't risk that, and so therefore he had to remain away. Those who were present on that occasion—and they were quoted in the article—said that when the news came to him, he was just shattered. He just looked so depressed. He was in this beautiful office surrounded by gorgeous paintings and flying off to his summer home in Spain. And he wasn't a happy soul.

No, how could he be? Absent the friendship that is to be found in Christ. What would it profit a man if he gained the whole world and lost his own soul? What did he need? Friendship. So do you. What did he require? Forgiveness.

So do you. You see, the fact of the empty tomb is grounded in the fact of a dying Savior. It is because of what happened in his death that he bore my sins, that he took my place, that the resurrection gives significance to this, and it is this which gives significance to the resurrection.

So both pieces hold together. The reason that we should be so delighted that Jesus is alive today is because of the sacrifice that he made for sins. The fact that he is alive bears testimony to the fact that Jesus made a sacrifice that was accepted by the Father. And that all of my guilt and all of my wanderings and all of my rebellion and all of the stuff that has been part of the chapters of my life that I have tried in vain to deal with can be dealt with. Because the tomb is empty, because Jesus is alive, and because he is the only one who can take that delete key and press it in your life in such a way that it'll never come back up again.

And no matter who comes in your room and turns on your life, they will never be able to get to it. Do you know that kind of forgiveness? Or are you here because you don't know forgiveness? And you figured that an Easter Sunday's got to be at least a fifteen-pointer.

Now, you could have got twenty if it had been the seven-thirty service, but at least you're going to have fifteen for eleven. That's the way you think. Because everybody who is trying to earn their way into heaven by religious endeavors doesn't understand forgiveness, therefore needs it. Is it relevant? Yes, because he gives you a friend like no other friend. Is it relevant? Yes, because he grants forgiveness that can be found in no other place. Is it relevant?

Yes, because it answers the question of your future. In an article in a magazine this week, I read about Joan Baez inserting herself into the Newport Jazz Festival in the sixties. Apparently, she didn't look like much. It had been raining. Her hair was straggled all over her head. She was a slip of a girl.

She was in her bare feet. And somebody said, you know, we ought to let her sing. And someone said, why would we let her sing? The fellow said, well, she's a good singer. He said, I will give up two of my songs. Let her sing.

So the man said, oh, fine. It's been raining. Let her sing. And out she comes onto the stage, and she sings, and she electrifies the crowd. She sings two Negro spirituals. She takes up a song, You Call Him David, I Call Him Emmanuel.

You Call Him David, I Call Him Emmanuel. And she sings this song and sits the whole place alight. Her first album sells without hardly any airplay at all. It becomes a number-one album from nowhere, from oblivion. And this girl suddenly becomes something of the conscience of the sixties. And when she finally begins to weave her way through all of the fame, all of the success, all of the opportunity, and she begins to grab for the stuff that she assumed would be the answer to her future, she finally writes these words, We are the orphans in an age of no tomorrows.

If you doubt that the cry of the sixties is epidemic in the twenty-first century, you are living with your eyes closed and your fingers in your ears. In Dallas this week, four youngsters came to me at the end of an address that I had given. One of them all dressed up in her running togs, apologizing for being late.

She had run two miles. That was fine. And in the course of conversation, they told me that that day, one of their friends had been arrested for carrying a semi-automatic weapon into their high school. Why had he taken the weapon?

I asked. Well, they said, because some other boys had said they were going to kill him. Now, his answer was not to stay home. His answer was not to call the authorities. His answer was to say, You kill me, I'll kill you, because who cares? I was born without reason. I prolong myself by chance, and I die, and the end is oblivion.

Without a resurrected Christ, that is the conclusion. It is legitimate for the child to conclude that. That's why we got to tell him. And standing in a pawn shop, of all places. You don't have to let it be known that your pastor was in a pawn shop. I went in a pawn shop, because I don't think I'd ever been in a pawn shop. I was in Augusta, and I said, Look at this place. I went in. What do they do in here? And as I stood in there, there stood beside me a mother and her son, and she was buying him.

She was putting the deposit down on a semi-automatic weapon so that he could have it to carry with him in his car. Do you think they think they have a future? They do not. Why do they believe there is no future? Because you, Dad, have no future either. They don't like the ladder you climbed. It's leaning against the wrong wall. They don't see anything in you that answers the deepest questions of their lives.

You have never been able to address for them the issue. Who am I? Why was I born? Is there a reason for my existence? And what happens when I die?

That's why they play what they play. And you need to get yourself sorted before ever you can speak to your kids. You can't sidle out of here. Neutral. You're either for Christ or you are opposed to Christ. You are either putting your faith and trust in what Jesus said and did, or you're putting your faith and trust in what you have said and in what you believe. I commend to you today our resurrected Christ. I commend to you his amazing love, the wonder of his sacrifice, in order that we who are dead in our trespasses and in our sins may be made alive forever and ever. That is Alistair Begg with the conclusion of a message he's titled, From Fear to Faith, listening to Truth for Life Weekend.

I hope this biblical investigation has helped relieve any doubts or fears you may have had about the reliability or relevance of Christ's resurrection. If you'd like to dig deeper into this subject, you can watch or listen to any of the messages in the Truth for Life archives for free. Search for teaching by topic, by scripture passage, or by title.

You can even download and share an entire series. Visit the Truth for Life website at truthforlife.org. Along with Alistair's messages, we choose books to recommend with great care and with our mission in mind. You may have heard me mention our current book, Man of Sorrows, King of Glory. This is the last week and I'll be talking about this book on the program. With Easter still fresh in our minds, this is a book that can help us continue reflecting on all that Jesus has accomplished and all he continues to do on our behalf.

Find out more about the book, Man of Sorrows, King of Glory, when you visit our website at truthforlife.org. Now here's Alistair with a prayer. Father, I pray that no one will go out of here misunderstanding the urgency of these affairs. I pray that friends and neighbors who have encouraged others to join them may be able to soften up anything that seems harsh, may be able to tighten up anything that seems inconclusive, may be willing just to share their lives with those who are asking for help.

May be willing just to share their lives with those who are asking the kind of questions that demand careful attention and thoughtful response. We long, Lord, to see unbelieving men and women become the committed followers of Jesus Christ. And may the grace of the Lord Jesus and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit rest upon and remain with each one today and forevermore. Amen. I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for sharing this special Easter weekend with us. He is risen. Join us next weekend as we'll begin a series titled, Wise Words, and we'll find out why a true friend is someone who will tell you what you may not want to hear. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.