of the Word of God to 1 Corinthians 15 again, and we will endeavor to finish this morning's sermon. Lord willing. Let's just read down the first 19 verses or so of this chapter, and before we do, let's pray together. Lord God Almighty, the entrance of your Word brings light and life. And we pray, O Lord, that you would search us, that you would lead us, O God, to know the truth of the faith that is offered to us in Scripture. We pray, Lord, that you would help me this evening, in this next 30 minutes or so, to make these things clear for your people, that we'd be stronger in our evangelistic witness, more confident to stand against the world, Often, oh God, we've not properly researched these things, we're not sharp on these things. And I pray this evening you would help me, Father, strengthen my voice, my mind, that I might be able, oh Lord, to make these things clear to your people. That we might have strong confidence that our faith is not some legend or some myth. but it's rooted and grounded in the granite-like character of God himself, who is faithful, righteous, and true. So hear us, Lord, and help us for Jesus' sake. And if there'll be any here this evening, oh Lord, who has yet don't know you, members of this congregation or visitors, Lord, we pray that you will reveal yourself to them and do for them what you've done for most of us here in this room. You'd open their eyes and revive and regenerate their hearts. For Jesus himself has said, unless a man is born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. For Christ's sake we pray, amen. This is the word of God. Listen carefully. Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve, and he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some of them have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. For I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. But by the grace of God, I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, though it was not I, but the grace of God that was within me. whether then it was I or they, so we preach and so you believe." Now, if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there's no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain, and your faith is in vain. We are found to be misrepresenting God because we testified about God that he raised Christ. whom he did not raise. If it is true, the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins. And those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of most, of all people, most to be pitied. Amen, thus far. The reading. of God's holy and infallible, fallible Word. We said this morning in our sermon that either the gospel is true or it's not. Either the resurrection of Jesus Christ, which is the most significant doctrine in all of the Christian canon, either it is true or it is not. Either it is a glorious truth or it is a vicious and cruel lie that has given false hope and false comfort to innumerable people throughout the ages. Which is it? And there are many scholars. Probably the chief of which today, the chief most popular scholar, we said this morning, was Bart Ehrman, the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at UNC Chapel Hill. He's written scads of books. on the subject, and he'll go to great length to say that the resurrection of Christ is a myth. The gospels, he says, were written years after the events. They were not written by the apostles. The writers were far too educated, far too erudite to be mere fishermen who would have been illiterate buffoons, he says. They contain some truth, of course, but also much legend. He talked about an evolving picture of Jesus, that Jesus was just a man. He never claimed to be God, never thought himself to be God. But over time, as the history moved on, a more and more miraculous, fantastic picture of Jesus came to the fore. This God-man, the Son of God, a man who became God. And he'll talk about different legends in the Roman culture and the Greek culture. He'll even speak in the Old Testament kind of borrowing some of our arguments for the deity of Christ, that the Jews in the Old Testament spoke of angels as gods and so forth, and the Son of Man was the divine figure, and even the Messiah, when he came, would be called the mighty God. Though the Jews were unashamed monotheists, he would say, they didn't believe in more than one God. Jehovah was God, yet the Messiah was also God. And rather than saying, oh, there's an early sign of the Trinity in the Old Testament, He says, no, the Jews were open to speaking about God in a wider sense. Now, that's completely, I think, crazy. But he uses these kind of things. Very erudite, he's a very, very good writer. You read them and you start thinking, what's up and what's down? What's black and what's white? What's true and what's false? It's like one of those guys with the peas in the shelves and moving them around and hiding which, and you think, where's the, I know, the pea's here. Lift it up, pea's gone. You think, where'd it go? And it's all sleight of hand, of course. He even says there was no empty tomb, that most crucified criminals were thrown in a common grave, Christ was thrown in a common grave, and from there he rose in the minds of his followers as kind of risen of an idea, and over time they kind of manufactured the evidence, the idea of the empty tomb and so forth and so on. And it all sounds, you read it at times, that if you didn't have an inkling of historical knowledge, you could easily be swept aside, and so forth and so on. And he'll say that miracles are just, you'd never ever assume, no matter how strange an event, you'd never assume a miracle. By its very definition, a miracle is always the least probable explanation. No, there's bound to have been some explanation. Any explanation you could dream up about what happened to Christ is more probable than a miracle. He was raised from the dead and so forth and so on. Now, He and others will say, there's no need to get rid of your Christian religion, just get rid of the miracles and so forth and so on. You can keep the Sermon on the Mount, you can keep the glorious ethic of love, turning the other cheek, praying for your enemies and so forth and so on, but let's not talk about this miraculous Jesus. And Paul this morning, we said, and he shows here in this passage that you just can't have that. The gospel is either all true or it's all false. You can't pick and mix. Who wants to believe a noble lie? If there's no resurrection from the dead, Christ isn't raised from the dead. And if Christ isn't raised from the dead, you are still in your sins. There's no hope of redemption. There's no hope of life after death. It's just all a charade. Let's just pack it all up and go home, Paul says. Now, so Paul here is writing to convince people of the resurrection. And we said this morning that it's interesting, his first point he goes to is not eyewitness testimony. Here's a man who was against Christ with his whole being, against Christ, willing to kill men and women who followed Christ. He was against Christ. And yet, it all changed in a moment on the Damascus Road. Historical fact, he saw, or claims to have seen, a vision of the risen Christ. And it changed him from being an enemy of Christ to being a preacher of Christ. And not only a preacher of Christ, but the writer of the majority of our New Testament. So here's a man, how do you know Jesus Christ is risen from the dead? And his first answer is not what his eyes saw, His first answer is what this book said. How do I know Christ was raised from the dead? Because the Bible tells me so. For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures. That he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. and that he appeared to Cephas and so forth in the end of the 12, in accordance with the Scriptures. The Old Testament Scriptures are full. In fact, the whole Old Testament can be summed up that God promised to send a great hero who'd be a great king to save his people from their sins. And saving his people would cost him dearly, would bring him down to the depths of hell. The Psalms are full of it. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And he dies doing it, Isaiah 53, crushed beneath the load of God's awful curse against all of our sins. And yet, the same scriptures that speak of his death speak of his glory. High, he'll be high and lifted up. He will not allow his Holy One to undergo decay. He will make known to him the path of life. In his presence, there's fullness of joy. At his God's right hand, there are pleasures forevermore. Psalm 16, speaking of God, not allowing Messiah to rot in the grave, and countless other scriptures. And so Paul says his first reason is the Bible, the Bible. This book is God's word. Now I can give you evidence for why I believe it's God's Word. We can look through it, talk about its historical credibility, but it is God's Word. And if you're here this evening as a young person maybe in this church and you're not sure it's God's Word, you're not really sure, I challenge you. Read the Bible. It's a book with hands and feet, living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword. You will read this book and you will find it piercing you like lightning all around. It'll uncover your thoughts, your intentions. You will feel, for the first time in your life, you will truly know yourself. It's a devastating moment of clarity when you see how selfish you are. How even when you're trying to be kind to others, there's so often an ulterior motive slipping in the backside. How pride always stands at the door. It'll be convicting, it'll be overwhelming. This is a book, as we said this morning, with hands and feet. It'll cut you to the very depth of your soul. But it does that, that it might lead you to healing. If you don't understand the depth of your disease, if you've got a headache and you think it's just a headache, you'll take Tylenol or Ibuprofen. If it's a brain tumor, you need deeper surgery. Taking Tylenol will just cover the symptoms, disaster. And this book, if you read it, will tell to you, tells you that you are made in the image of God, capable of worshiping and knowing God. But by nature, the Bible will tell you that we are all born dead in our souls and dying in our bodies. It's a devastating moment that our souls are shriveled, withered. We're made to be worshiping God and loving others. And like the legs of a dead cockroach, all of our thoughts, all of our desires, all of our affections, rather than going out to God and out to others, curl in upon ourselves in a horrible moment of self-indulgence and self-satisfaction and selfishness. It's painful. But when you realize that, you need, I need a surgery. I need more than just being a better person or making more resolutions. I need someone to make me new at the core of my being. That's the thing about the Bible, you see. Benjamin B. Warfield in his great essay on miracles says this, you know, you can jettison miracles and you'll feel great about yourself until you need a miracle. What are you gonna do if you get rid of the idea of miracles? What are you gonna do when you get to that moment when you realize you are so enslaved to sin, you need miraculous help, supernatural help that you can't do it yourself. You need someone to save you. If you've no miracles, you've no hope. But the Bible says there's a God in heaven who can make us new from the inside out. And that God is revealed through the scriptures, and it's his voice. And there are just some things in this world that are self-attesting. You can tell if someone's singing in tune. You don't need to go and get one of those accu-tuners, hold it up to their voice and say, are they singing in tune? Each know. Either it sounds great or it sounds terrible. And you just know. I remember standing with a minister friend of mine, he's now in glory, a young guy who was killed in a car accident. Never speak ill of the dead, but we'll make an exception. And this poor guy, he sang with all his heart, but he couldn't hold a tune in a tin bath. We were singing the Psalms together in Presbytery, and he was singing this, it was one of those Psalms, it was speaking about deeply wailing, deeply wailing. That's exactly what he was doing. And I was singing alongside him, and the tears were rolling down my cheeks as he was just singing this song with all of his heart, but the tune, It was just so, I mean, what he was singing and the tune had absolutely no connection whatsoever. But he was having a great time. I didn't need someone to show that to me. It was self-evident. There are just certain things that are obvious. And the voice of God is obvious. If you need evidence that it's the voice of God, it's not the voice of God. If I take you outside, is it night time or day time now? It's still night time. It's still day time. You don't need evidence. If you say it's dark, I'm saying you're blind. Or you've got cataracts or something. There are certain things that are obvious. And the voice of your creator is obvious. Expose yourself to the Bible. That's the most amazing thing. Most people in our day and age, they trust their eyes. They trust their mind. They trust the democratic spirit of human beings. Are boys boys? I don't know. Let's ask our culture. And you listen to our culture, we become so erudite, our children don't even know what restroom to use, because they're listening to men. What do men think? What are the opinions of men? But Paul says, no, when you think about truth, the place to start is not your eyes, not your mind, not what seems rational to you, what does God say? I believe stacks of things that are irrational or above reason. Dead men live. Axe heads float. Why? Because God says it. And this is a book that knows me and reveals itself to me. That was our first point this morning. Now, the second point, the Bible tells me so. The second point is the eyewitnesses tell me so. The eyewitnesses tell me so. We can know that Jesus rose from the dead because it happened Not in a corner, but before eyewitnesses. Notice what Paul says again and again. And he appeared to Cephas. Then to the 12. Then he appeared, he appeared, he was visible to more than 500 brothers at one time. most of whom are still alive. In other words, more than 250 people are alive in Jerusalem today who saw this man. You can go and you can meet them. and you can talk to them. Luke did. If you look at the beginning of Luke's gospel, Luke was a traveling companion of the apostle Paul. He was with Paul during many of his journeys. He was with Paul in Jerusalem during Paul's imprisonment. What did Luke do when Paul was stuck in jail in Jerusalem? He went about and spoke to people like Mary and others. And Luke says, and as much as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught. And you read Luke volume one, his gospel, Luke volume two, the book of Acts, you read the work of a careful historian. Even secular historians marvel at the skill of Luke the physician. Time and time again, people have cast aspersions on things Luke said, but time and time again, he's been found accurate in his geographic, historical, cultural records in Acts and in Luke, his first gospel. These are eyewitnesses. That's significant. a number of things about these eyewitnesses. First of all, they were early. They were early. As we said this morning, we covered some of this as I was trying to panic and get the sermon to the airport on time. We covered some of this this morning. But 1 Corinthians is a book of massive significance. There's no doubt liberals will talk about which letters Paul wrote, which he didn't write, but there's no doubt among even the most harebrained, liberal, critical scholar, they call them, that Paul wrote 1 Corinthians. And he did it about AD 54. You follow me this morning how we know that? In Acts 18, we're told that Paul came to Corinth and Priscilla and Aquila were there. Priscilla and Aquila lived in Rome. They were kicked out of Rome by the decree of Claudius in AD 49. There were riots in Rome between the Jews and the Greeks over Ecclesiastes, over Christ. And Claudius, the emperor, kicked out all of the Jews from Rome, AD 49. And part of that, Priscilla and Aquila made their way to Corinth. And Paul happened to meet them in Corinth, and Luke did too. So Paul got to Corinth AD 50. He stayed there 18 months teaching. He then left from Corinth, went to Ephesus. He stayed there three years, from AD 52 to AD 55. And during his time in Ephesus, we know he wrote 1 Corinthians. So scholars say he wrote Corinthians maybe AD 54, 20 years, 21 years after the death of Christ. And at that time, Paul says, I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. And scholars both Christian scholars and even secular scholars will say, the language here, it kind of sounds almost like a creed or a catechism that Paul received. And its language goes back, it's not the kind of language or phraseology Paul would normally use. And even Bart Ehrman himself will say, it goes back probably 20 years before to the mid-30s. So within a few years of Jesus dying, The church was reciting this creed that was delivered down eventually to Paul as their first order. Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures. That he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures. So there's never a moment, go back to the earliest moments, there was no gap between the death of Christ and the message that Christ is risen. It's an early record of early eyewitnesses. There were many, we said that earlier, 500, over half of them at least, maybe more, are alive to this day, go and talk to them. These eyewitnesses and the stories we're told about them, they're crazy. So they're early, they're many, and they're crazy. And what do I mean by crazy? Well, kind of the E ending kind of rhymes, I suppose. What I mean is you'd never make these kind of details up for yourself. I mean, think about it. The conventional lie is that the apostles or people wanting to represent the apostles in order to make the Christian message more credible made up the story of Christ's resurrection. But think about that. Who are the heroes? The disciples. How are they portrayed in the gospel messages? Oh, they're men of great strength, wit, wisdom like Ulysses. They're legendary. They're always on the ball. They knew everything. No, they're bumbling fools. Christ tells them again and again and again, I'm gonna die and be raised again. And they don't get it. The penny doesn't drop. These are the heroes of the story. When Christ is arrested, they stand strong. No, they run away. You'd never make that up if you wanted to make your message credible, unless it actually happened that way. Then, the ones who go to the tomb, first of all, who are they? They were women. Now, you'd never make that up. Why? Because in the early century, in the first century, women were not regarded as credible eyewitnesses in a court of law. If you had one man speaking against you and 10 women speaking for you, the testimony of the man carried the day. So you can imagine a barrister with the wig in the UK cross-examining one of the apostles. Okay, so who were the first ones to come? Were there any Pharisees there? Were any of the Sanhedrin there when the tomb opened? No. Who were there? Women. Are you kidding me? Yes, women, right. Okay, so let's, we don't normally allow their testimony here, but let's talk, were these women fine, upstanding women? What are their names? Well, one of them was Mary Magdalene. She's recorded in all the, okay. So Mary Magdalene, what was she like? Well, she actually had a fairly dodgy psychiatric history. What do you mean? Well, she had seven demons in her before, and she was kind of freed from them. Okay, so she's a woman and she's a dodgy psychiatric history. Yes, okay. When she saw Jesus, what did she see? Was he resplendent in his glory? Was his face shining like the sun in its strength? Was his voice like the sound of many waters? And no, what was it like? Well, kind of looked ordinary. She actually thought he was the gardener. What? Yeah, she thought he was the gardener. It's only when he called her name that she saw him as the master. So she's a woman, therefore inherently untrustworthy in their day and age. She's a little bit crazy, at least in the past. And when she saw Jesus, she thought he was the gardener. Do you ever think she might have been right? Maybe he was the gardener and she was a wee bit kind of crazy again. You would never make that stuff up unless it actually happened. See, when they mass rood, the two in the mass rood, they didn't recognize him for hours. At dinner, only whenever he broke bread, they realized who he was. You'd never make that kind of stuff up, unless it actually happened. Unless it actually happened. The truth is stranger than fiction. Early, many, crazy. Then the consistency of these eyewitness testimonies. If you read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and just quickly turn with me, we're gonna spend, we're getting near the end of our time again, which is a habit of mine in my sermons, but bear with me, just turn a second, just look at some of the gospels. So look with me a second at Matthew 28. You know, it's funny, Catherine and I in the house recently had a kind of a little discussion, a friendly discussion, about my mother. My mother has Alzheimer's disease. And we were talking with Cooper and Anne and others about how we first discovered. And I said, you know, well, my dad told me that she had Alzheimer's. And I remember the conversation, my dad telling me, your mother's got Alzheimer's. I'll never forget it. My dad telling me his mother, the bride of his youth, had Alzheimer's. And Catherine said, no, no, it wasn't your dad, it was your sister. I said, no, she told me that they were concerned about her memory. I am sure, Dad. She said, no, it was your sister. Now, in hindsight, I think we're both right. My sister did tell me. She was part of it. She kind of hinted at it. But in my mind, my memory, I'll never forget my dad looking at me with tears in his eyes and saying, son, the doctors say your mother's got Alzheimer's disease. We're both eyewitness testimonies, but if she wrote down her account of how I found out, I write down my account, we'd both stress different emphasis. Emphasis. Because we remember things differently. And if you're making up four gospel accounts, you'd make sure they were all absolutely identical. That's not what you find. Listen to Matthew. Now, after the Sabbath, toward the dawn on the first day of the week, Mary, Magdalene, and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And behold, there was a great earthquake, for an angel of the Lord descended from heaven and came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. And for fear of him, the guards trembled and became like dead men. But the angel said to the woman, do not be afraid, for I know what you seek. You seek Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here, for he is risen. As he said, come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, he is risen from the dead, and behold, he is going before you to Galilee. That's Matthew's account. Earthquake, okay? Read Mark 4 to Mark 16. When the Sabbath was passed, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James and Salome brought spices so that they might go and anoint him. And Mary Magdalene mentioned again. and Jesus would have married the mother of James in Salome. And very early on the first day of the week, when the sun had risen, they went to the tomb. And they were saying to one another, who will roll away the stone for us from the entrance of the tomb? And looking up, they saw that the stone had been rolled back. Now Mark doesn't mention the earthquake. Interesting. He didn't deny there was an earthquake, but they looked up and the stone had been rolled back. This doesn't mention the earthquake. Maybe as they walk head down, earthquake, they look up, stones roll back, that's what happened. But Matthew and Mark record it a little differently. Entering the tomb, they saw a young man sitting on the right side, dressed in a white robe, and they were alarmed. He said to them, do not be alarmed. You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is risen. He is not here. See the place where they laid him, but go tell his disciples. Peter doesn't mention or Mark doesn't mention the angel on the stone. He talks about them going into the tomb and finding in the tomb a young man, because they're frightened. God's telling the angel, I think, in my mind. And there's the Jews' histories of angels appearing like men. Abraham met angels that looked like men. God's telling the angel, I think, in my mind, don't frighten these women, no pyrotechnics, just appear normal, okay, just look like a man. But we know from the early fathers that Mark, wrote the gospel according to Peter. He wrote down Peter's recollection. Isn't it interesting that Mark, as he writes here, Matthew says, go tell your disciples, but Mark, Mark sitting at Peter's right hand, as Peter dictates this to him and talks to him about it, go tell his disciples and Peter, oh, Peter remembered that word. Peter, the one who denied Jesus. And it betrayed him. And wondering, am I still one of the disciples? And Peter remembered the day the woman came bursting in and said, go tell my disciples. And Peter said, am I still a part of that group? And then the word came, and Peter! And Jesus in heaven told the angel, when you tell the woman, go tell my disciples, don't forget to say, and Peter. Because you and I know Peter's still one of the disciples, but Peter's not so sure. He's still one of me. He denied me. I am not going to deny him. Peter remembered it. Now, look at John. We're passing Luke for no particular reason, but time's flying on. But look at John. He records slightly different details. None of them are contradictory. John 20. Now in the first day of the week, Mary Magdalene again, the woman with the dodgy psychiatric history, she's there again and again and again. And all the stories came to the tomb early while it was dark. Doesn't mention the other Marys, that's fine. Didn't say they weren't there. She's focusing on Mary. While it was still dark and saw that the stone, I mean, even that, even that, the only woman John mentions is the woman who's half crazy. It's just an amazing detail. You'd never make that up. He doesn't feel the need to bring in other more credible witnesses. She was there and that's all he says. While it was still dark and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb, so she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, they have taken the Lord out of the tomb. And then Peter and John run. John gets there first, but stands back. Peter, the impetuous one, bursts in, just like Peter, into the tomb to see what's there, and so forth and so on. Now, all very interesting, okay? So you've got this picture, and they're all different. Now, the amazing thing is this is where people like Bart Ehrman are really good at moving the marbles when they move the little shells. He'll say, okay, but there was no tomb. There was no tomb. He was thrown in a common grave. And these stories are obviously contradictory, because they're all different. So the stories are all different, and therefore you can't trust them, yes. So whenever the stories all agree, you do trust them, most of the time, yes. That's where I get off the wagon, Mr. and Mr. Ehrman, because Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all record Joseph of Arimathea specifically asked for the body to lay it in the tomb. So why do you not believe, why do you justify your unbelief of the resurrection? Because the stories are all a bit contradictory at times, or seemingly there are differences. And yet, in this one detail, when they all agree, the empty tomb provided by Joseph of Arimathea, you cast that out. You see, he's cherry picking. What he likes, what he doesn't like. In my mind, But apparently contradictory reports of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John actually underscore their credibility, because they all show people who remember different things, and the events aren't kind of artificially made to kind of measure up to one another. And that's just not me saying that. Simon Greenleaf, 19th century legal scholar, died in 1853. He was, I think, the Dane professor of law at Harvard. Okay, this is not some backwater school, some law school you don't mention in your CV. He's Harvard Law School professor before the Civil War in America. He's written a massive three-volume work called The Treatise on the Law of Evidence. He's been described as the greatest single authority on evidence in a law court in the entire literature of legal procedure. He's also written a book called The Testimony of the Evangelists. Can you trust Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John to tell you the truth? And he actually says, a wee small book this thick, ordered it this week in Amazon, I came in late, I've skimmed it, it's amazing. But he does say, let the gospel's testimony be sifted as it were in a court of justice on the side of the adverse party. the witness being subjected to a rigorous cross-examination, and the result, it is confidently believed, will be an undoubted conviction to the integrity, ability, and truth of these men and their testimony. He says elsewhere, a person who rejects Christ may choose to say, I do not accept him, But he may not choose to say that there is not enough evidence. Because you've got Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Mark, I believe, wrote around the 50s. Matthew and Luke wrote next. There are gospel in and around AD 60, maybe a bit earlier. There's debate about that, but not by much. And then John wrote last of all in the late 80s or 90 AD. And these were men There weren't in a vacuum. They were preaching in Jerusalem and Ephesus and elsewhere. They were known to the church fathers. We have the writings of the apostolic fathers, men who preached from AD 90 through to AD 120, 125, 130. These men like Polycarp, Irenaeus, Ignatius, we have their writings. They quoted the gospels all the time. of the four gospels. The early church fathers, the four gospels, right? The early church fathers quoted the four gospels alone 19,368 times in the writings. Justin Martyr quoted the four gospels 268 times. Irenaeus of Lyon, a thousand times. Now Irenaeus, was interesting, he was a man who was discipled by Polycarp. Which is interesting because Polycarp, one of the early martyrs, who wrote a letter in 115 AD to the Philippian church that Paul wrote to, Irenaeus was discipled by Polycarp. Do you know who discipled Polycarp? The Apostle John. So when Irenaeus quotes the gospels a thousand times, you have a man who knew a man who knew the Apostle John. And these men quoting The four Gospels are quoting Paul's writings, Peter's writings, with such regularity that it's been said, if you only had the quotations of the early church fathers, you could stitch together a large portion of our New Testament, because they quoted it that much in their sermons, their letters, their writings, and their pastoral counsel to the various churches. So how did this legend develop about the empty tomb when there were so many eyewitnesses? Is that really credible, really? I don't think so. How do you explain the empty tomb? There's no good way to explain the empty tomb. It doesn't make sense. The empty tomb speaks of a risen Christ. The faith of the apostles who were hopeless, despairing, unbelieving men, suddenly they become willing to die. Why? Well, they made it all up. Well, some men happen to die for a lie they believe is true, like the suicide bombers in Palestine. They die for a lie they believe is true. How many people do you know are willing to die in the most horrible situations imaginable for something they know is a lie? Not many. Not many. And then you got Paul and James. James didn't believe in Jesus. John tells us that. James was a man who was hostile to his brother. You can end it, and you can know why, because Jesus was the good one. He never got spanked. Even when he did, he took it well. James, oh, I just hate, Mom and Dad love Jesus more than me. He's just better. He's always doing everything right. And James, you can sense that. James mocks Jesus in John's gospel. And yet James, before the resurrection, against Jesus, mocks him, going up to Jerusalem, go on up there and do your prophet thing, Jesus, holy Jew. John said, he said, or James says, and suddenly, after the resurrection, he's converted and becomes one of the great leaders of the church in Jerusalem. How'd that happen? How did Paul, the tyrannist, the persecutor of the church, become the writer of the New Testament if Christ wasn't risen? The Bible tells me so. The eyewitnesses tell me so. And then lastly, the early, the great life of Christ himself tells me so. Just think about Jesus Christ, this one, who he was and what he did. What a life. As one man said, he was born in an obscure village, the child of a peasant. He grew up in another village where he worked as a carpenter until he was 30. Then for three years he was an itinerant preacher. He never wrote a book. He never held office. He never had a family or owned a home. He didn't go to college. He never lived in a big city. He never traveled more than 200 miles from the place where he was born. He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but himself. He was only 33 when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied him. He was turned over to his enemies by his own people and went through the mockery of a trial. He was kneeled to a cross between two thieves. And while he was dying, his executioners gambled for his garments, the only property he had left on earth. And when he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. 20 centuries have come and gone and today Jesus Christ is the central figure of the human race. Can you explain that to me? The writer said, I'm well within the mark when I say that all the armies that have ever marched, all the navies that have ever sailed, all the parliaments that have ever set, all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that one solitary life. Donald MacLeod, I love this quote. I never tire of reading it. Modern scholars tell us that the Christ of historic Christian belief is a creation of the faith of the early church. Really? Now, I think I've read a fair sample of the world's greatest literature, and it seems to me that there is something here that belongs to a different order altogether. Indeed, and I think I've said this often enough, if I couldn't worship the Christ of the Bible, I'd worship those who invented him. There's no record in the whole history of literature of a community creating a figure comparable to Christ. Such grandeur, such compassion, such magnificent teaching, such magnificent ways of teaching, such marvelous relationships with men, with women, with children, so good and yet so credible, so divine yet so human. So real that the narrative totally convinces us that if we came to Him, we would find rest for our souls. As far as I am concerned, I am a Christian because of what the Christ of the Bible does to me, and I come at the book through him. I accept it as God's word because of this incomparable excellence, Christ himself. Even as a concept, he's unsurpassable. There is no way in which I would want him improved or want him altered. When I find him, I find the obsolete. I find the ultimate. My spiritual quest is over. And this Jesus Christ, the Bible says, is the creator of all things, the sustainer of all things, the judge of all men. But one day you, each of you in this room, will one day stand before Christ and receive the sentence of your eternal destiny from the lips of Jesus Christ himself. Who was he? You can say, as you know C.S. Lewis' famous comment, you've got three choices. Either he was a liar, He was a lunatic, or he's the Lord. Lewis says, I'm trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Jesus. Oh, that I am ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I can't accept the claim that he is God. That is the one thing we must not say, Lewis says. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic on the level with the man who says he's a poached egg. I am the judge of all the earth. Of course you are. Let's go and lie you down here in a dark room and we'll put a blanket over you and you can lie down and feel fine. In a few minutes you'll feel much better. Crazy. or else you'll be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the son of God, or else a madman or something else, something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon, or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let's not come up with any patronizing nonsense about him being just a great human teacher. He has not left that option open to you. He never intended to. Before Abraham was, Jesus says, I am. And the problem is, when you read the Bible, You know, Bart Ehrman and his ilk, they can dodge, you know, it's like, you know, you imagine an avalanche coming down the mountain. This is not my point being made before by an apologist, but avalanche coming down the mountain, you can imagine the man standing there, and he's kind of, you know, like, it's all slow motion. And he has that mathematical, he slows it all down on his TiVo, he sees each boulder coming down the mountain, and he sidesteps one to the left and one to the right, and in his mind, he's dodging all these little, all these boulders coming down the mountain, and he's surviving. That's what Bart Ehrman does, dodging each of the, he has an explanation for what might have happened. Absolutely no evidence. He talks about no tomb, common grave. Discounts all of the evidence we have from history. Oh no, that's inconvenient. But he probably went to an open grave. No evidence for that. Just thrown out there as a convenient lie. Dodging boulder after boulder. And you can do that with an avalanche in your mind. But you can't do that with an avalanche on the mountainside. Because in your mind, the boulders come one at a time. But on the mountainside, they come all at once. And you stand before the record of history, you stand before the record of the Bible, the book that knows you, that explains who we are and why we are the way we are, and why the universe is the way it is. And it all comes at you as a mighty flood down the mountain, and there's no avoiding it. There's no avoiding it. And so I tell you this evening, if you can't trust this, who are you gonna trust? These people who say, well, I want to be 100% certain. There's nothing in life we're 100% certain about. There's a sense that whenever we commit ourselves to someone like a husband or a wife at the altar, you know a little bit about your wife, and what you know encourages you to trust her, and she knows a little bit about you, and what she knows encourages you to trust her. and you commit yourself to her on the basis of what you know. You've done no mathematical equations, no statistical analysis about her character, you just have this sense, I'm going to commit myself to this person. And then the years go by, you think, I never knew that about you, and she says, I didn't know your breasts, but like that first thing in the morning, wow. And all these things, you learn these things about one another. But you commit yourself on the basis of what you know. And I challenge you, read this book, look at the world about you, listen to the way this book diagnoses you and explains the great questions of life. And in this book, you'll have Christ standing and saying, son, daughter of Adam and Eve, commit yourself to me, trust me. If you can't trust Christ, who are you gonna trust? And if you don't want to trust Christ, why? Why is there such in mankind this reason to explain Christ away? Scientists will tell us, oh, your genes don't tell you, or your boy or your girl. Really? What evidence? Well, our feelings. Our feelings. Madness. If people don't believe in God, it's not that they believe in nothing, they become willing to believe in anything. I'm telling you. Christ says to you, believe in me and I'll forgive your sins. Believe in me and I'll save you from death and hell and everlasting burning and you'll live forever in a new heaven and a new earth. If you won't believe that, it tells you more about you than it tells you about Jesus. Let's pray together. Lord God Almighty, we come to you, we thank you for Easter Sunday. We thank you for the truth of your word, oh God. It is glorious, it's wondrous. It's something established more than any other fact of history. We come to Jesus, the great Lord of all, and ask you, Father, for his sake to receive us, to forgive us, to cleanse us, and to fill us with your spirit that we might be faithful, bold witnesses to a lost and perishing world of the truth of Christ. For he is the way, there's no way without him. He is the truth, there's no truth against him, and he is the life, there's no life without him. Oh God, give us courage and give us the words to share this message with all, great and small, that we can have a ministry to in the weeks that lie ahead. In Jesus' name, amen.