Good morning, everyone. Glad we can be together this morning and start of the Advent season, busy month coming up with different programs and activities. And I hope that in all the hustle and bustle, you'll actually take time to slow down. That's actually the meaning of the word Advent. It means coming, but it also is an opportunity for us to say, you know, Maybe we don't cause the earth to spin every day, and maybe we should just slow down and enjoy the Creator who does, and how He was orchestrating all things so that His Son would come at just the right time. I love this time of year. And it's interesting that where we've arrived in the gospel according to Matthew is that we arrived bringing the two main seasons together, both Advent and Lent. And we'll see that as we continue in our passage today. But we've been preparing for it for many weeks, looking at the sufferings and trials of Jesus, leading up to our celebration and recognition of the Lenten season. Dr. Simon Greenleaf was a skilled lawyer and an expert in dealing with evidence. He was a professor at Harvard University and is one of two men credited with building up Harvard Law School into the bastion of legal training that it is today. He wrote a three-volume series entitled, A Treatise on the Law of Evidence, that is considered a classic in American law and jurisprudence. He is still seen as an authority on the examination of evidence. He was challenged to use all of his skills to examine the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ. He applied the principles of his work and published them in a book. Now, back then, in the 1800s, the titles were a little longer, and this was the title of the book, An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in the Courts of Justice. In the concluding remarks, as summarized by Josh McDowell, looking at the evidence as they are given and how we examine evidence, he said, there's more evidence for the historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ than for just about any other event in ancient history. His work is still available today, though under a much shorter title, called The Testimony of the Four Evangelists. And his work continues to influence many theologians and defenders of the faith. Such was the influence of Simon Greenleaf that in 1980, a school was established in his name in Southern California, the Simon Greenleaf School of Law. It had the goal of training lawyers and Christian leaders and teachers in the defense of the Christian faith. Eventually, this school, in 1997, was purchased by Trinity International University, which is the flagship seminary of the Evangelical Free Church of America. of which this church is an associating member. 1,600 EFCA churches across the country. Now, I begin this sermon this morning with an academic reference to show that serious study of the resurrection of Jesus has been important to the church since its earliest days, even down to the present day. And last week, we looked at the fact of the resurrection as given by the apostle Matthew. As we continue in our series today, we'll see that the enemies of Jesus are still trying to plot to cover up that fact. They failed. Yet history is full of those who continue to cast doubt upon the resurrection. And so this morning, we're gonna take some time to look at our next passage that is in the gospel according to Matthew, and then consider some challenges that have been given over the years. For it is good for us to examine the evidence and to be ready to give a response. For it is the resurrection that is the bedrock of our faith. And so as we prepare to look at that passage this morning, I invite you to stand as I read the passage we will consider this morning, Matthew 28, verses 11 to 15. And as we stand in the honor of God and his holy word, let us have ears to hear and eyes to see. While they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. And when they had assembled with the elders and taken counsel, they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers and said, tell people, his disciples came by night and stole him away while we were asleep. And if this comes to the governor's ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble. So they took the money and did as they were directed. And this story has been spread among the Jews to this day. This is the word of the Lord given to us for edification this morning to show us that even from the earliest of times, people have opposed the resurrection of our Lord. And we have ears to hear this morning as we study. Please be seated. And let us pray. Father, we thank you. We thank you for the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. to live among us for 30 plus years as the perfect man, who fulfilled all righteousness and fulfilled the law and the prophets, and who revealed God as He truly is to us. And we're thankful that as we've gone on this journey through the Gospel of Matthew, that you've been leading us step by step to look at what He did and how He did it and why He did it. And as we arrive toward the end and look at what happened, the time of the resurrection and the response of those around Jesus. Father, would you open our eyes to see and our hearts to receive, our ears to listen, our minds to understand, our wills to be bent to the truth that is your word. Father, we know that as we come into this place, we are tempted to bring in many anxieties, many problems and difficulties. Father, would you free us from those now as we lay them at your feet? would you be our teacher as we commit ourselves to you and commit this time into your care, in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's begin with just a brief summary of what we saw last week. Of course, we're not going to be able to go over the whole sermon again, but we saw that two women were on the way to the tomb, and according to Mark, they were going to anoint the body. They didn't know all that had transpired in the subsequent times, and so they didn't know that there would be soldiers mounted there, they just expected a stone. And as they got there, they said, who's going to move the stone? Only to find that an angel appeared to them, had moved the stone, and had scared the soldiers half to death. Then as they're running off to tell the news to the disciples that Jesus has risen, they encounter Jesus Himself. And in an appropriate response, they run and bow at His feet and worship Him as the Lord of their lives and as the living King of all. They know that He's alone who is worthy of worship. And so Jesus sends them off to go and share this good news with the disciples. And off they go, and full of joy, full of awe, full of expectation. And that's where we pick up our story this morning with our first sermon outline, which I have entitled, The Incredible Cover-Up. The Incredible Cover-Up. And our text begins. Now while they were going, behold, some of the guard went into the city and told the chief priests all that had taken place. So now we have two groups here that are in movement. We have the women running to tell the good news, and we have the guards who are also in movement to tell what for them is bad news. One group is going to reveal what really had happened, the other going to try to hide what had happened. One group was on the path of obedience to declare the victory of the Lord. The other was on the pathway of opposition, trying to cover up that very same victory. And so it begins with the deceitful plan. The deceitful plan. Before moving on, let me give our greetings this morning to those of you joining us online. Thank you for being with us, for using media in an appropriate way that we can gather together. And we hope that wherever you are, the Lord is guiding you now through your study of the scriptures as we look at Matthew 28 together. Thank you. We look forward, hopefully, to seeing many of you soon, but we're glad that you're with us this morning and we can gather together. Some of the guard did go into the city to explain what had happened, while it seems that others would have remained behind. Now, we recall, as we told the story, this was a guard that would have been given by Pilate, but now seems to be under the control of the Jews. At least it's to the Jews that they bring the report. And wouldn't you like to have been a fly on the wall in that conversation? What kind of confusion had happened? What kind of heated arguments did they have as they saw the angel, the stone displaced, the body's not there, and they run away? Were they embarrassed? Were they fearful? Were they angry? Was it a combination of all of them? But we're not told what they said. We're not told the conversations that happened. We're just told that they went to the chief priests of the Jews to tell what had happened. You can understand it would not be easy for them to explain, or later to their Roman leaders, why the body was gone. And so it would be that all those who heard, at least on that first morning, would have had a healthy skepticism, and a good reason for that not to be the case, that the tomb was empty and the body was gone. Now, the text says that they told the chief priests all that had taken place. I wonder what's behind the word all, what is included in the word all there. Surely they heard the earthquake, saw the stone move, heard about the angel. They were told that they fell down in fear, becoming as like dead men, perhaps fainting in the presence of someone greater than they. But we're not told whether they saw Jesus alive at this point. But clearly they had seen enough to know that something unusual had happened. But how? How would they go about explaining this first to the Jewish leaders and then eventually to the Roman leaders? But off they go to tell them what had happened. And when they had assembled with the elders and had taken counsel, and I'm interrupting my reading right there because I want us to know that the chief priests are there, and now the elders are there. These same two groups that have opposed Jesus consistently throughout the gospel according to Matthew are now there opposing him again. They're still doing it. They're taking counsel with one another. That's a sly way of saying they're developing a plan to deal with this sticky situation and to put the plan into action. And so it will involve what I would call the dirty payment, the dirty payment. The middle of verse 12, I continue with the reading where it says, and they gave a sufficient sum of money to the soldiers and said, tell people his disciples came by night and stole them away while we were asleep. So they pay a large sum of money, we're not told how much, to the soldiers to keep them quiet, and it would have to be a large sum of money to keep the soldiers quiet, because they had failed in their duties. The tomb was empty. They had arrested no one. They had not stopped it. And by sleeping on the job, maybe what they did, at least that's what they're told what they did, or showing cowardice, they would be punished for their dereliction of duty. So they feared the reaction of what their Roman overlords would do once they heard about it. So let's think about the irony of the situation. The Jewish leaders now have to spread this story that they had taken direct efforts to try to stop in previous passages. They had said, we think the disciples are going to come and steal the body, so post a guard. So they arranged to have a guard posted so that the body wouldn't be stolen. Now the body's gone. So they resort to the story that they had created beforehand that would be the excuse. Perhaps they reasoned that it's better to face a lie than to face the reality of what they feared most. They did not want Jesus to be who He said He was. They did not want Jesus to be the Lord of life, that He was the crucified and risen Messiah. So they pay the money, and they tell the guards, this is what you are to say, that the disciples came by night and stole the body, But the irony continues, it was for that very purpose that they had been posted there so that the disciples could not come and steal the body. So they didn't fulfill their duties. They're overpowered by a presence, by a being that was more powerful than they. But the fact remains that the tomb is empty. Would this be their opportunity then to recognize that Jesus is who he really said he was, that he's the living Lord of life, that he has conquered death? Would they repent and believe the gospel? Or would they have another response, just looking for a way to save their own hides? Well, we know the answer. They run to the chief priests, who then get the elders together, and so they decide how they're going to react to this new development. But the body's no longer there. The tomb is empty. Those facts are undeniable. These men had failed at every level, and so they propose a solution. Take a large sum of money, and go and tell people that his disciples came by night and stole the body. Of course, we look at it and we realize this reason, this solution, makes no sense on a number of levels. First of all, for them to fall asleep on the job could bring capital punishment, as it did in Acts 12, where just the thought that they had fallen asleep on the job and Peter escaped from prison caused the Roman leader to put the soldiers to death. Secondly, if they were asleep, how could they know what had happened? How would they know that it was the disciples who had come and taken the body? Third, there were a lot of things happening at this time. The angel, the noise, the earthquake, the stone. Would that noise not have awakened them? And then they would have seen the brilliance of the angel who was there? Fourthly, does this fit with what we know about the disciples who were just a ragtag bunch of discouraged men, really not in a position to fight, really not in a position to come and do some type of rescue plan, overcoming the guards, moving away the stone and taking away the body of Jesus? But fifthly, the disciples were not even expecting a resurrection. It had been promised to them many times. But their behavior during the times of the arrest, the trials, the crucifixion, the death of Jesus showed that they were not expecting a resurrection. So they were not going to plan a rescue effort to plot and steal the body of Jesus. It was not on their minds. So this is not a very good argument against the resurrection. But our text goes on. It says, and if it comes to the governor's ears, we will satisfy him and keep you out of trouble. So imagine this whole scenario, this whole saga has begun that led to the rest of Jesus, his beatings, his trials, his crucifixion, his death, his burial, his resurrection. This whole saga began with a bribe being paid to Judas to betray Jesus. And now it ends with a bribe being paid to the Roman soldiers to keep it quiet. And it's hinted at in the text that they're also prepared to bribe Pilate if he should catch wind of what had actually happened. Now, the headquarters for Pilate was normally in Caesarea. That was where his headquarters were as he ruled over this area. He just happened to be in Jerusalem during the time of the Passover, and that is why he was present for the trials of Jesus. So they're hoping that the news would not reach his ears, but if it did, they already had a plan in effect to explain away both the things that had happened and to keep the soldiers out of trouble. They would pay for the soldiers to be silent. They would pay for Pilate not to punish the soldiers and not bring any trouble against the Jews. So once again, we see the Jewish leaders, we see the Roman leaders plotting together and working against Jesus. They all had a vested interest in their not being a living Messiah. So they're trying to keep it a secret. Unfortunately for them, they could not. Their efforts would fail. But for now, they carry out their dutiful performance, the dutiful performance. And so they took the money and did as they were directed. They did as they were told. And at some level, this seemed to satisfy both the Jews and the Romans. The Jews, after all, thought they were doing the right thing. Yet we know that as they opposed Jesus, they were fulfilling the very prophecies and prophets that they claimed to believe in. that the Messiah would be opposed even by his own people and put to death. Now, we know about these things, of course, because God has instructed and led the gospel writers to record these events, but some of this is just, we know from history some of the events that were going on. We also know that there were two men, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, who were in the inner circle of Jewish leadership, and perhaps they shared some of the inner workings. In addition, as the church was growing, it was living side by side with the Jewish community for decades until the temple was destroyed in 70 AD. They performed and did what they did, but the lie still continues. The last part of verse 15 says, and this story has been spread among the Jews to this age. Matthew wrote his gospel around 60 AD, around 30 years after the events of the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus. So 30 years later, the same lie is being told among the Jews, that the disciples came to steal the body. During that time, the church is growing. People are coming to faith in Christ. But so is the opposition, with, unfortunately, the Jewish leaders still active in their opposition to the things of Christ, still spreading the lie. It's often said that the truth is sometimes harder to believe in than the lie. To quote Michael Wilkins, a theologian in Southern California, the devil often tries to take the really good news and turn it into a hoax, and the hoax becomes more believable to the hard-hearted than the truth. Now, Matthew, for his part, mentions the argument and doesn't even attempt to answer it, for it's clear that it's a nefarious plot. It's clear that it's false. But that did not mean that others in church history would not have to respond to it. We've already said Matthew includes it. It shows that 30 years later, this lie was still being spread among the Jews. Well, in the second century, there was a man named Justin Martyr, who is listed among the first apologists. Now, in this context, an apologist is not one who apologizes like, I'm sorry. It comes from the Greek word apologia, which means to give a defense, to present evidence and to defend. And he was one of the first defenders of the faith who wrote widely on what it was that he believed and what was true about the Christian gospel. And he was engaged in a dialogue with a certain Jew named Trifo. And in Trifo's writings, he said, no, the disciples came and stole the body. And so Martin Luther, Justin Martyr is writing to Trifo and saying no and pointing to what was written in the Gospel of Matthew, saying that this lie was already dealt with a long time ago, but keep in mind that over a hundred years after the fact, the same lie was still being told among the Jews. There are those that, down through church history since that day, have tried to cast doubt on the resurrection. It continues even into our present day. The Internet is full of arguments, full of those who would present so-called truth, full of those who think they have the inside scoop. And so, we do well to consider what some of those challenges are. If we want to give a good presentation of what it is that we believe, then it's good for us to have an understanding of what it is that others claim. And so, we're going to do something a little different in the rest of the sermon today. I'm not going to be looking at direct text. I'm actually going to put on more my previous calling, which was a professor, put on more of a professor's cap and give a little lecture about how to deal with arguments against the resurrection. And so our second major point is challenges to the resurrection. Even during the time of Christ, the best efforts of men and devils could not keep Jesus in the ground. He overcame it all and did just as he said he would. And what was the testimony of the early church? Writing in the early 50s in the first century, listen to what the Apostle Paul said. Paul, who had had a life-changing encounter with the living Christ, records the simplest what we have presentation of the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15, as I read it, just listen to what he is saying. Beginning in verse three of 1 Corinthians 15. 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, that he appeared to Cephas, another name for Peter, then to the 12. Then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, the half-brother of the Lord, then to all the apostles. And last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me." Look at the testimony that Paul is giving. There's so much more we could say if we wanted to study this passage. But he's saying, Jesus appeared to a number of different people alive over a period of time. We know that according to Acts 1-3, Jesus was alive for 40 days. He was on earth for 40 days after the resurrection before he ascended to heaven. How many people did he appear to during that period of 40 days? We don't know. There's a difference in each of the different appearances that he has, but especially he appeared to 500 people at one time. And so there were many people available in that day to testify that they had seen the living Christ. We also realized that there was the church that was growing rapidly in the midst of great opposition from both the Romans and from the Jews. 3,000 people believe on the day of Pentecost, the number grows to 5,000, and many more throughout the Book of Acts. And that has continued down now through history as the Church has passed on from generation to generation the Gospel, sending it around the world to the point that today approximately one-third of humanity confesses some type of faith in Jesus Christ. And yet not all believe. or not all are willing to believe. There are still challenges out there to the resurrection. But a brief study of church history shows that they are not new. With 2,000 years of church history, and writers and teachers and Bible teachers and churches in every generation, every generation of the church has had to face doubters, opponents, skeptics, mockers. 100 years ago or more, it was Robert Ingersoll who gave way to Clarence Darrow, who gave way to Madeleine Murray O'Hair, who gave way to Christopher Hitchens, who gave way to Sam Harris, a common, a contemporary, I should say, atheist of our generation. And so it is that each generation of Christians needs to be ready to present and defend and declare the faith to each generation. Across 2,000 years of church history, as we study it, just about every argument Accusation, challenge, has appeared in one form or the other. And just about every generation, there are those who are ready to respond to every accusation, objection, assertion against the faith. There really is nothing new under the sun, it just may happen to be new to us. What Paul said in the first century, As he was languishing in a Roman prison and as he wrote to the church in Philippi, it rings true today. He said, For many of whom I have often told you and now tell you with tears, walk as enemies of the cross. There are many arguments, accusations, presentations against the resurrection. But they are not new, but they are diverse. There are a number of different theories that have been brought up challenging the resurrection. And so our responsibility then is what? angry and put mean diatribes on a chat room on YouTube or Instagram? Is it to launch accusations about the supposed intellectual ability or lack thereof of those who have these questions? No. We have a very different charge that we are given, according to 1 Peter 3. It says, in your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy. Now, just stop there. If we're honoring Christ as holy in our hearts, what will that mean? That means we will take on the attitude of Christ, in humility, in acceptance, in love, in respect, in dignity, in honor. In your hearts, honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense. There's the word of Polygia, make a defense. to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you, yet do it with gentleness and respect. Do it in a way that represents Christ well. Do it in a way that people will recognize that you actually belong to Christ, not with anger, not with shouting, not with accusations, not with judgment, but what? With gentleness and respect. After all, we are dealing with those who are also created in the image of God. Fellow human beings, who need love and respect and friendship and to be treated with dignity. So let's do that. Let's present it in a way that would show that we truly do belong to Christ. And so as we consider some of the arguments that are presented against the resurrection today, we'll try to do that in that attitude, recognizing that you still have to call something wrong if it's wrong, but you don't have to pick up a bag of rocks and throw it at the one who said it. So the first one that we'll consider is what is called the swoon theory. Now, this has many different forms, but a very typical one is that Jesus did not really die, but was placed in the tomb, badly beaten and sick and bruised, but still alive. And somehow the coolness of the tomb, and perhaps the time of rest, revived him, and he came out of the tomb alive, but not as resurrected. Now, I think to that we can say two things. First is that the Romans were really good at execution. They knew what it was to see a dead man. They crucified people by the scores and by the thousands. They knew when someone was dead. We're told in the Gospels themselves that they checked to make sure Jesus was dead before they removed him from the cross. That's why they did not break his legs in fulfillment of prophecy. But they did spear him. and fulfillment of prophecy. And the testimony of what is seen as he was speared was that the plasma had already started to separate from the red blood cells and what came out of the side of Jesus. They knew what it was to be dead. Jesus was dead. But secondly, let's entertain the possibility that Jesus could have swooned and came back to life. Could someone who had been so viciously beaten, slapped, had thorns pressed into his head, experienced the flogging that often led to death itself, be wrapped in 75 pounds of spices and bandages, looking like a mummy, laid in the tomb. Could the cool air of the tomb have revived him and allowed him to unwrap himself, and then push the rock away from the stone slightly uphill, fight off Roman soldiers, and then present himself as the living Lord? Think about crucifixion itself, which was a cruel way to die, and just the fact of being crucified often led to very quick death. The historian Josephus, who was a Jewish historian but who switched sides during the civil war of the 66 to 70 AD and became an advocate of Rome, found out that three of his acquaintances had been put on crosses. They'd been crucified. They had not suffered all the beatings that Jesus suffered, but they were crucified and put on crosses. When Josephus found out, he pled on their behalf, and all three of them were taken down, and they were immediately given medical attention. And yet still, two of them died just from the punishment of crucifixion. So how likely it is that Jesus would have survived all of that, take off the bandages, pushed away the stone, fought off the guards? I think we'd have to say that would take a bigger miracle So we see this theory as not being satisfactory. Next, there's the theory of the wrong tomb. This theory, it tries to look at the psychology of the women and say they were under such grief that they just failed to recognize that they had gone to the wrong tomb. That in the early hours, really before the sun was fully up, they came, and through the tears, they went to the wrong tomb. They didn't know where he was laid, and so they knocked on the wrong door, so to speak. But Matthew took great pains to tell us that they saw the tomb in which he was laid. They came to that tomb Sunday morning, not expecting it to be empty. They came expecting it to still be sealed with a stone in front of it. And when they came, they found Roman soldiers passed out, the stone away, and the tomb wide open. If they'd gone to the wrong tomb, how long do you think it would have taken the Jewish and Roman leaders to take everyone to the right tomb? and say, see, the body's still there. Moreover, if they went to the wrong tomb, so did Peter and John, who recorded at different occasions going to the tomb and seeing that was empty. And so were the angels. After all, there are several appearances of angels that take place during the resurrection accounts. Did they all go to the wrong tomb? No, if they'd gone to the wrong tomb, the simplest explanation would be, go to the right one, open it up, and show the dead body of Jesus. A third one that is sometimes given more in an academic setting is that the Romans hid the body. that the Romans, because of all the different hostilities they had with the Jews, did not really like serving in the area of Judea and Galilee. The Jews were known to be somewhat renegades, they went against the Roman way of doing things. It was actually considered a place of dishonor to be posted there, whether as governor or as a soldier, and so this was the Romans' way of getting revenge against the Jewish people, just to mock them. It's really hard to imagine why they would do this. given the problems that were brought as a result. They wanted this problem of Jesus to go away as well. They didn't want a living Messiah who claimed to be God in the flesh. After all, they had their own pantheon of gods. They wanted to protect the Roman social order. They didn't want somebody else coming around challenging that social order. Certainly, a resurrection would not help them just as it would not help the Jews. But the church was also growing rapidly. both in Judea and Galilee and throughout the Roman Empire, what would have been the quickest way for them to deal with it? Just go to the tomb and pull out the dead body, or to reveal that they had it all along and to show it to the world. It's another theory that really doesn't stand up to close scrutiny. Another presentation or an accusation is that it was the wrong person. Now, this comes more from working in a Muslim context, which I did for 25 years. The typical Muslim response to the resurrection claims of Christ is to say, well, according to the Quran, their book, it was the wrong person, that the Romans and the Jews were in error in thinking that they had put Jesus on the cross. They believed that God substituted someone at the end and made this person to look like Jesus. In their way of reckoning, Jesus was a prophet, and it was unthinkable that a prophet would be killed in such a shameful manner. And so, God put someone else in the place of Jesus. Now, let me say first of all that, yes, Jesus was a prophet, and he was killed in a shameful manner. And that's the good news of the gospel. He came to bore our sin and our shame and our guilt, and he took it on himself so that we can be shameless, as it were, not guilty, holy before Christ. But this argument just ignores the evidence that that's not what Judas did. This is often the person that they say was transposed, as it were, in the place of Jesus on the cross, that it was actually Judas Iscariot, and God made him to look like Jesus. But we know what Judas did, that he had arranged in a conspiratorial plot to betray Jesus, but then he felt a pang of guilt and went off and took his own life. This also ignores the testimony of three different bodies of evidence among the Christians, among the Romans, and among the Jews, that a man named Jesus of Nazareth was put on the cross, and it was given by eyewitness accounts. But even more sadly, is that if in fact this was true, does it not make God a liar and party to a lie? That all along it was promised that Jesus would be put on the cross, but at the last minute, God substituted someone else. And of course, we know as believers that if Jesus didn't die, then he didn't rise, and we have no hope. But Jesus did all these things, as we saw last week, as he said. And so why would we deny the eyewitness testimony of three different parties who normally did not agree on a lot of things but agreed on this? The Romans, the Jews, and the Christians. They all agreed that Jesus was crucified and that for some reason the tomb was empty on the third day. In addition, why would we throw all that out and accept the testimony that came 600 years after the fact? in a different cultural setting, in a language that was not even used at the time of Christ, at least not widely in the regions of Judea and Galilee, who was not even an eyewitness to these events. And moreover, we know that according to what Muhammad taught, he denied that Jesus was the Son of God, that Jesus was God in the flesh, he denied that Jesus was crucified, and he denied that He was resurrected. So I don't find it a good argument. as I shared many times with Muslim friends, and trying to show them that there's a better way than Christ. In recent days, there's been a man named John Dominic Crossan, who was part of what was called the Jesus Seminar. Not a widely known name, but what they did in the 1980s and 1990s was they put themselves in a position where they would judge every so-called statement of Jesus in the New Testament, and then vote on whether it was valid or not. voted whether it was likely, whether it was true, or whether it was myth and legend. I'll get it out. And so a lot of things that Jesus ends up saying in the Gospels, they voted to be myth and legend. And John Dominic Crossan was one of the leaders of what's called the Jesus Seminar. And he denied the crucifixion. Not the crucifixion, he denied the resurrection. He believed in the crucifixion, he denied the resurrection, and he said, we don't have the body of Jesus because it no longer exists. That according to the customs of the day, the body was taken down like it was with Roman criminals and either thrown into the public garbage dump or left out exposed where it was eaten and consumed by animals. Of course, he has no historical evidence for any of this. This is just more a revelation of his a priori. decided ahead of time decision on what the evidence would show. And as you do more investigation into this man, he just has more of an animus against the gospel than really arguments about whether it's true or not. Next is the claim that it was just all hallucinations. And it goes something like this, that people that are in grief do have visions. or they can't hallucinate about what they want to see. Here we have the group of disciples, a group of women, that are in great grief over the death of the Messiah. They did not want Him to be dead, and so as a protective measure against their emotional pain, they hallucinated that Jesus was alive and that they had seen Him. Well, what do we say to that? Well, we need to recognize that people do have hallucinations, they do have dreams, they do have visions, but they're always personal. and they're always transitory. They're not shared with another person. There's not really a recorded case of a whole group of people having the same hallucination at the same time, unless there was some type of drugs or narcotics involved. Secondly, concerning the appearances of Jesus, they all happened at different times, at different places. in the morning, in the evening, to one person, to a group of people, to 500 people. There was no steady pattern. And they apparently happened over a period of 40 days, and then they stopped. Which just happens to correspond with the time when Jesus ascended back to the Father after the 40 days that He was on earth. And the last one that we'll consider, and there'd be many more, is that the disciples were simply dishonest men. They were more interested in power and influence than in the truth. They enjoyed the fact that they could be the leaders of this new spiritual movement that would take on Rome, that would seek after power, money, influence about this resurrected Lord, and they had the secret inside knowledge. Now, let's say it plainly. If they did in fact claim that Jesus died and rose again, all the while having secretly taken away his body and hidden away, then we would be among the first to say that they were dishonest men. But is that really what we see with the character of the disciples in the Gospels? No, oftentimes we see they're slow to believe, slow to react, They're not showing a lot of courage. They're hesitant to even stand with Jesus. They flee when he's arrested. They don't seem to be there, all of them, at the time of the crucifixion. Would this same group of men suddenly gather and be willing to suffer and die terribly for something that they knew was a lie? It is true that people would die for something that they believe is true. But it is unlikely that people would die for something that they know is a lie. And early church history and tradition says that all of the apostles died a martyr's death of some sort or another, with the possible exception of John, who was exiled onto the island of Patmos. Moreover, the history of the church is full of those who were willing to suffer and die for Jesus, to live for Jesus. As we've said in previous weeks, as Jesus warned that there would be persecution, that there would be hostility, that there would be troubles for believers, I gave you the statistic that today, one believer in seven around the world is facing some level of persecution for his faith, with many being in prison, having their jobs threatened, and even having the threat of death. Would people still die for a lie and for a hoax over 2,000 years, or would they be willing to live and die for that, which is ultimately true? And so we see, as we look at these arguments, that we can see that they don't stand up to close scrutiny. And so we confess that they all fail. Perhaps they reveal more just a hermeneutic of suspicion, a hermeneutic of doubt, than they do of a real intent to study the evidence for themselves. As Dr. Leon Morris of Australia says, the resurrection of Jesus Christ can be dismissed only by a prior worldview considerations that rule out supernatural events. In other words, you decide ahead of time there can be nothing supernatural, and then you look for ways to skirt around the evidence. Now, there's a lot more that could be said about each one of these, and there's a lot more arguments that could be brought to bear. My intention this morning is simply to show that as we preach and teach the gospel, we need to be ready to give a reason. And there is defensive apologetics, which means we answer the charges that are against the faith, and there are offensive apologetics, meaning we challenge people to hold up their own worldviews, to give evidence for their own worldviews. Can their own way of putting the world together actually stand up to scrutiny and answer the ultimate questions of life? but we need to do it with gentleness and respect. On our last point, our brief point, let's consider the impact of the resurrection. That could be a sermon all among itself, but we're briefly just going to consider just a few things of the impact that the resurrection has had on the world, and the first is the Church itself. The Church of Jesus Christ exploded into existence 2,000 years ago. In the midst of great opposition in Israel and throughout the Roman Empire, a movement started and grew that believed that Jesus was the living Messiah and the Son of God who would come to become the Redeemer of all who would believe. And it grew in spite of rapid opposition. It had no governments behind it. It had no armies backing it up. It had no financial backing to push it forward. It had no organizational structure, at least at the beginning. Yet the church continued to grow because Christians just went out and preached the gospel, with many of them paying a high price of beatings and imprisonment and even death. It continues today that there are literally hundreds of millions of believers around the world who will gladly live and die for the one they believed lived and died for them and rose again on the third day. What is a reasonable explanation for the growth of the Christian church. A second thing to look at is the transformed lives of those who claim to have encountered the living Christ and said our lives have been changed and transformed, often in dramatic ways. Their backgrounds are different, their life situations are different, their nationalities are different, their ages are different, their professions are different, and yet they testify to having been radically transformed by a life-saving encounter with Jesus Christ, and I'm in their number. In the fall of 1980, I had a dramatic encounter with Jesus Christ, where I felt the weight of my sin lifted, the guilt done away with, and I recognized that I was fully accepted and embraced by God and Jesus Christ. I was the first believer in my family. And if you talk to my mother today, she will testify that something dramatic happened to Greg when he was 15, because he became a different person. So I could add that testimony to the testimony of millions upon millions down through society who testified that their lives have been dramatically changed. And for 2,000 years, that has been the story from generation to generation. The power of Jesus is the great equalizer. The love of Jesus invites the young and the old, the rich and the poor, men and women, the successful and those who are still trying, into a status of equality before a holy God. And so it is those who have met Christ will testify that they now have power for living, a promise of a better future, a perspective and purpose in life, full of life and hope and meaning and joy. And that's what the living Christ brings to those who have encountered him. His resurrection shows that he is true and that what he came to do has great value. Are you in that number today? Have you met the living Christ? Lastly, we see transformed societies. The impact of the gospel has transformed societies and civilizations and peoples. It's a testimony of the church. And much to be said, but I brought a couple of books along that I'm going to make reference to. One that I recommend is a book by D. James Kennedy, What If Jesus Had Never Been Born? And as he does his research, Dr. Kennedy looks at 14 major disciplines and areas of life that have been greatly transformed by the gospel. He includes things like science, medicine, morality, the arts, compassion to the poor, education, civil liberties and human dignity, economics, and the family. Now, he's very sober and also recognizing areas where the church got it wrong. But the impact of the gospel is unmistakable, and we could not conceive of our current lives without the impact of the gospel on our culture. The resurrection, my friends, is a bedrock of Christian truth. It's what we stake our lives on. And there's a few more books that I want to recommend. The first is a book, Who Moved the Stone? by Frank Morrison. Frank Morrison was a lawyer who set out to disprove the Gospel, who set out to disprove the Bible. And as he looked at the evidence, he wrote a book called, Who Moved the Stone? And the first chapter is appropriately entitled, The Book That Refused to be Written. He started out to write one book, but as he encountered the evidence, he ended up writing another book that explains the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now, he didn't bring the adult version of it, but another book I'd recommend is The Case for Christ. This is the teenage version. Lee Strobel was a journalist for the Chicago Tribune. He was an atheist who lived his life the way he wanted to live it, and he was dismayed that his wife was converted to Christ. His wife challenged him and said, Lee, you're an investigative journalist, use those same skills and challenge the truth of the Gospel and the Bible. And he did. and was converted to Christ, and he writes a whole series of books, The Case for Christ, The Case for a Creator, The Case for the Resurrection, The Case for Faith. And then one last book that I'll recommend is A Ready Defense by Josh McDowell. Josh McDowell has given his life to the study of evidence, and giving reasons for faith, while we can believe that the resurrection is true, the Bible is true, prophecies were fulfilled, and that the Gospels had an impact on the world. Now, there are many, many more that I could recommend. But I would just say this. We do not need to fear studying and searching for the truth. Because by the grace of God, we're connected to the one who is the truth, the living truth, the one that will endure generation after generation and even unto eternity. but let it be a joyful journey. Let it be a hopeful journey. Let it be a right journey that leads to greater righteousness as we search out the truth. And so as we come to the end of our study in the book of Matthew, and we're almost there, and we've been talking a lot about the passion of Christ, the crucifixion and the resurrection of Christ, and our preparing for the incarnation of Christ, let those two marvelous events be joined together, for in fact they are. We can't have the cross unless we first have the incarnation. Well, next week, we'll come back to the book of Matthew, and we will have our final sermon from this wonderful gospel. But what are some lessons we can take away and think about this week as we come to the end of our time? Well, first, because Jesus is alive, we will live in hope and not fear, in joy and not in doubt. Secondly, because Jesus is alive, we will live for him in his power and for his glory. It is the desire of Christ that we experience the fullness of joy that is his, that he makes available to us through the Holy Spirit. But thirdly, because many still oppose the gospel, we will pray for them and tell them well the truths about the risen Savior. And that's that word again, with reverence and gentleness and respect. And lastly, because Jesus, as the truth, is alive, we will live in the truth before a watching world. It is good at Christmastimes we prepare to celebrate, to confess that we serve and we believe in a risen Savior. And may that hope just give more joy and blessing to your Advent season. Let us pray. Father, it is good for us to turn to you and it is good for us to trust you. And it's good for us to acknowledge that your glory is far beyond what we can imagine. Your goodness far exceeds our own human standards. But Father, I want to thank you that the Lord Jesus Christ appeared to so many and they gave their testimony. And we have it recorded in the book that you've given to us. But I want to thank you as well that history is full. And this church is full of those who have met the living Savior and who can testify that there is a Redeemer who brings new life, who rescues, who gives hope, and who redeems. And I thank you, Father, that we can trust you. And I pray that as we contemplate not only the birth of Christ and all that it means, but we would see it in light of the death and resurrection of Christ and how it all comes together for your eternal glory and for the eternal good of all who are in Christ. Use us this week for your glory, we pray, in Jesus' name.