This week we are
addressing the second of these eight common questions that those who are
skeptical pose as a challenge to Christianity, which is: “Who was Jesus and how
can we know?” In other words, “How can we really know who Jesus
was? What sort of historical evidence do we have?”
We discovered that the first type of historical
evidence that we have concerning Jesus as a historical figure comes from the
accounts of Jesus life that are recorded for us in the letters that make up the
Bible. And while one may object by
saying that you can’t use the Bible to prove things in the Bible, all of the
accounts of Jesus life were written within 30 years of Jesus death, which is
hardly enough time for legends to develop. After all, people were still alive
who could confront any falsehoods that would have been stated in the accounts.
By contrast, some of the other gospel accounts of Jesus life that we hear
about, such as the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Mary were written in the
early second century or later.
Another skeptical objection that is often raised is
that the manuscripts, or copies of these accounts of Jesus life have been
corrupted or altered and therefore cannot be trusted as being reliable. However,
we discovered that if you are going to maintain that Homer wrote Iliad and that
we can trust that work; if you are going to maintain that we can trust the
accuracy of Caesar’s the Gallic Wars, based on manuscript evidence, then we
must hold the same view of the letters that make up the New Testament of the
Bible.
Another skeptical objection is that the writers of
these accounts of Jesus life were only concerned about was making sure that
people believed Jesus spiritually, not who Jesus was in history. Again, one archaeologist carefully studied Luke’s references to thirty-two
countries, fifty-four cities, and nine islands, without finding a single error.
As a matter of fact, many have credited the
gospel of Luke as being one of the most beautiful and historically accurate
pieces of literature ever written.
So if these writers were interested in proclaiming
who Jesus was in history, then what do they say about Jesus? What we discover
when we read the accounts of Jesus life is that the story of Jesus in history
is a part of a much larger story of God’s activity in history. In the Old
Testament of the Bible, we discover that God had promised a man named Abraham, who was the
person from which the Jewish nation descended from, that through his offspring
that all the nations would be blessed.
In addition, God had promised the Jewish nation’s most famous king, King
David, that one of his descendants would be the Messiah. So the Jewish people
were looking for the descendant of Abraham, from the line of David that would
be the promised Messiah who would bring the Jewish people back to God and back
to prominence in the world as He ushered in the Kingdom of God here on earth.
And throughout Jesus life, Jesus repeated talked about the kingdom of God. And
when Jesus asked His closest followers “Who do people say that I am?” Peter
responded by proclaiming that He believed that Jesus was the fulfillment of God’s
promise to send the Messiah.
However, how Jesus talked about the kingdom of God and His role in the
kingdom of God was very different than what the Jewish people had come to
believe about the kingdom of God. You see, the Jewish people of Jesus day believed
that the Messiah would be a political and military leader who was going to kick
the Romans out and bring them back to God and back to prominence in the world.
However, Jesus seemed to have no interest in bringing judgment on the Roman
Empire. As a matter of fact, Jesus had no interest in even judging people from
within the Jewish nation that lived in rebellion against God. Instead, Jesus
seemed to be saying the He came on a different mission, to provide a different
and deeper deliverance. And Jesus unwillingness to follow the script when it
came to what the Jewish people expected Him to do as the Messiah was not the
only problem. In addition, Jesus had the audacity to call God His Father.
Jesus had the audacity to claim that He was equal to God.
Jesus challenged the Jewish religious system and its misguided and
corrupt leaders and proclaimed that He was able to rebuild and restore that
broken system in three days. In the last week of His life, as Jesus and His
disciples celebrated the Passover, Jesus changed the script. Instead of celebrating
the Passover like it had always been done, Jesus took the unleavened bread and
said "this is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of
Me". Then Jesus took the wine and went off the script again. Jesus made an
incredibly strange statement: "This cup is the new covenant in My blood;
do this, as often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me."
After celebrating the Passover feast and after praying for His followers
throughout history, Jesus and His closest followers went to a garden called the
Garden of Gethsemane. Judas, who was one of the twelve disciples, but who had
chosen to reject and betray Jesus, completed His act of betrayal by leading
between 300 and 600 Roman soldiers to the garden in order to arrest Jesus.
Jesus was then summarily tried, convicted, and crucified.
And for Jesus closest followers, at that moment, all their hopes and dreams
for a new kingdom of God died with Jesus. It seemed that all that Jesus had
promised concerning the opportunity to enter into a new covenant, or agreement,
with God that would result in a right relationship with God died with Jesus.
Like all the would-be Messiah’s before Him, Jesus was now dead. And if that is
how the story had ended, if that is what happened in history, there would be no
Christian church, there would be no Christians.
But that is not what happened. Instead, shortly after His crucifixion and
burial, Jesus followers were proclaiming that Jesus rose from the dead. Now,
a natural objection that any skeptic could make at this point is this: Well,
Dave, that is what his disciples said. How do we know that they were telling
the truth? How do we know that they did not just make all of it up?
If that skeptical question or objection is running
through your mind, my response would be this: When people make up a story that
they are a part of, do they tell the story in a way that makes them look better
or worse than what actually happened? For example, think of fishing stories. Do
people say I caught a fish that was two inches long and weighed six ounces,
when in actuality that had caught a 18 inch 5 pound fish? No, they don’t;
usually the story works the other way right. Usually the story goes something
like this “I caught a fish that was this big, when I reality it was only this
big. And over time the fish gets bigger right. The fish gets bigger because the
fish story is designed to make us look better that what we really are and to
put us in the most positive light, right.
So do the accounts of Jesus life, death, and
resurrection as contained in the letters that make up the Bible make His
followers look better than they really are and put His followers in the best
possible light? When we look at the accounts of Jesus life, death, and
resurrection as contained in the letters that make up the Bible, we discover
that these accounts do not place His followers in the best possible light. Actually,
the accounts do the exact opposite. Let me give you a few examples for you to
consider.
First, none of the accounts of Jesus life, death,
and resurrection portray Jesus closest followers standing outside the tomb on
the first Easter morning, waiting for Him to rise from the dead. There wasn’t a
crowd outside the tomb having a countdown as the sun rose that first Easter Sunday.
Instead, the accounts of Jesus life portray His followers as hiding in a locked
upper room in fear of their lives.
In addition, the accounts of Jesus life tell us that
the first people to see Jesus after He was raised from the dead were women. Now
the reason why this matters is because in the Jewish culture of the first
century, the testimony of women had little to no standing in a court of law. So
to fabricate and make up such a story would not increase its acceptance and
credibility, it would do the opposite. Such a story would decrease its
credibility.
In addition, all that the enemies of these early
followers of Jesus had to do to silence them and destroy their new movement in
history that we know today as the church would be to produce Jesus dead and
decaying body for everyone to see. After all, they knew where Jesus was buried,
as they had the tomb guarded by Roman Soldiers.
You see, these early followers of Jesus viewed Jesus
as a historical figure who was crucified and killed in an event from history,
and who was raised from the dead as a historical event. These early followers
of Jesus talked about Jesus resurrection of the dead as a historical reality
that was witnessed by other people who lived in history. You see, for Paul and
other followers of Jesus, Christianity was not simply about doctrine, theology,
or philosophy.
Instead Christianity, at its core, was about an
event that occurred in history. We see this reality revealed for us in a
section of a
letter that was written to an early church that is recorded for us in the New
Testament of the Bible called the book of 1 Corinthians.
Tomorrow we will
look at this section of this letter...
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