"Evidence for the Resurrection" by Rod Bayley, 23 March 2008, Matthew 28:1-15

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Josh McDowell, who is now a famous American Christian writer, entered
university as a young man looking for a good time and searching for
happiness and meaning in life. He tried going to church, but found
religion unsatisfying. He ran for student leadership positions but
was disappointed by how quickly the glamour wore off. He tried the
party circuit, but he woke up Monday mornings feeling worse than
ever. He finally noticed a group of students engaged in bible study,
and he became intrigued by the radiance of one of the young ladies.
He asked her a reason for it. She smiled and looked him straight in
the eye and said: “Jesus Christ.” “Oh for heaven’s sake,” he
retorted, “don’t give me that garbage about religion.” She replied,
“I didn’t say religion, I said Jesus Christ.”

The students invited him to intellectually examine the claims of
Christ and the evidence supporting Christianity. He accepted their
challenge, and after much study and research, finally admitted that he
couldn’t refute the body of proof supporting Christianity. McDowell
received Christ as his Saviour, and his research became the background
for his book Evidence that demands a Verdict. One of the major
factors in his conversion to Christianity was his inability to ignore
the historical resurrection of Jesus Christ, a point he later made to
a student who asked him, “why can’t you intellectually refute
Christianity?” “For a very simple reason,” he replied, “I am not able
to explain away an event in history - the resurrection of Jesus
Christ.”

It is this historical event which occurred on the first Easter Sunday
that we want to consider today because Christianity stands or falls on
this unique event. We will actually focus on the evidence provided by
Matthew’s gospel, which is written in such a way to provide a ready
defence for the certainty of the incredible claim of a man, albeit the
perfect God-man, being raised from the dead. So we’ll consider the
question: What evidence is given for Jesus’ resurrection?

In verse 1 we see that early on the Sunday morning the two Mary’s went
to look at the tomb. Some people argue in trying to deny the
resurrection, that the women went to the wrong tomb and that was why
they didn’t see Jesus’ body. But we know from our earlier reading
that they saw Jesus’ body put in the tomb and the stone rolled in
front (27:61). Besides this, it has often been remarked that the role
of women as the first witnesses both of the empty tomb and of the
risen Lord can hardly be made up, as women were not accepted as
witnesses in Jewish society. If you were going to fabricate a story,
you would have men as the first witnesses of the empty tomb - and so
the account is given even further weight as to its authenticity. In
verse 2 we learn that a violent earthquake suddenly occurred and an
angel of the Lord appeared, who rolled back the stone which sealed the
tomb. There is no suggestion, notice, that the opening of the tomb is
necessary to allow the risen Christ to come out - indeed, in verse 6
it is clear that He has already risen. Neither are the women
therefore called to see Him rising, but to see that He has risen and
the tomb is empty - the opening of the tomb is for the women’s
benefit, for their faith, not for Jesus’ benefit.

The appearance of this angel in verse 3 is glowing - he is described
as “like lightning” and with clothes “white as snow” - shining
brilliance, a completely amazing, startling sight. Not surprisingly,
the Roman guards are scared silly in verse 4 - we read that “they
shook and became like dead men.” Remember, these are Pilate’s troops,
trained fighting soldiers who were not afraid of anyone, and yet they
‘go to water’ at the sight of the angel. We know of course from the
end of chapter 27, that these Roman soldiers were put in place by
Pilate at the request of the Jewish chief priests and Pharisees
(27:62, 65).

In verses 5 to 7, we hear the message which the angel came to pass on
to the two faithful women. Naturally, the women are also afraid
because of this startling appearance, and so the angel begins his
message to them in verse 5 by calming their fears and showing
knowledge of their actions. But his message centres on the amazing
news of the resurrection, and the passing on of that message to Jesus’
disciples in verses 6 and 7. Notice in verse 6 he affirms that “he
has risen”, and in verse 7 this affirmation is to be repeated to the
disciples - “he has risen from the dead.” Further, the women are
invited not simply to believe the message, but to look with their own
eyes at the empty tomb - “Come and see the place where he lay” - so
there is no possibility of a mistake - they are eyewitnesses of the
empty tomb.

In verses 8 to 10, the evidence for Christ’s resurrection moves from
the empty tomb to an appearance of the resurrected Jesus to the
women. As they are on their way to the disciples to pass on the
angel’s message, they run into the risen Jesus himself. Their worship
and taking hold of his feet is an appropriate response of gladness and
reverence. The physical contact provides confirmation of the physical
reality of the risen Jesus - they are not seeing a ghost or
imagining. Jesus’ words do not repeat those of the angel, as He
specifically commands the disciples “to go to Galilee.” But the same
essential message is to be given to the disciples who will see Christ
at Galilee.

Even with such evidence of the empty tomb and Jesus’ post-resurrection
appearances to eyewitnesses, people struggle to accept the reality of
the resurrection because it just doesn’t happen in every day life - it
has never happened before or since, so it’s just simply outside of our
known realm of possibility. But that is just the point isn’t it - if
Jesus was the unique son of God, then the resurrection is entirely in
keeping with His unique divine qualities. As John Stott, the famous
English Christian writer, notes: “It is fitting that a supernatural
person should enter and leave the earth in a supernatural way. This
is in fact what the New Testament teaches and the Church believes.
His birth was natural, but His conception was supernatural. His death
was natural, but His resurrection was supernatural.” Therefore the
account we have recorded by eyewitnesses is certainly amazing, but it
is fitting for who Jesus is - the unique Son of God.

In verses 11 to 15 we see a second response to the reports of the
risen Jesus - that of the Chief priests and elders. While the women
were going off to report to the disciples, the guards were doing their
own reporting to the chief priests in verse 11. Wouldn’t you love to
have been able to listen in to the guards reporting “everything that
had happened.” And yet the resurrection of the Messiah they had
denied and conspired to kill leaves the chief priests unmoved, despite
the likelihood that they were initially dumbfounded. The hardened
hearts of the religious leaders of the Jews is portrayed in verses 12
and 13, because it doesn’t take them long to consult with the elders
and devise a plan. Their plan involves a lie, and a bribe to make
sure the lie is spread and the truth suppressed. Given the previous
bribery involved in Jesus’ arrest, whereby they gave 30 pieces of
silver to Judas to betray Christ (26:14-16), it is hard to argue that
this is not true to form. Their corruption and preservation of their
own power base knows no bounds. The content of the lie is recorded:
“You are to say, ‘His disciples came during the night and stole him
away while we were asleep.”

The chief priests and Pharisees as we mentioned earlier, were the ones
who had insisted on the placement of these Roman soldiers. They had
done this, as verses 63 and 64 tell us in chapter 27, because they
remembered Jesus’ predictions about being raised after three days and
wanted to prevent his disciples from stealing the body and deceptively
claiming fulfilment of his prophecy. In verse 66 we see that they
went to great lengths to prevent any human from attempting to remove
Christ’s body - “So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a
seal on the stone and posting the guard.” Ironically, when they are
confronted with the reality of the fulfilment of Jesus’ words, despite
their precautions, they immediately perpetrate a deception, when they
had claimed that the disciples would be guilty of this. And this is
despite the trouble that their lie could cause the Roman soldiers.
This is why in verse 14 they offer to satisfy the governor, that is
Pilate, if this spreading lie designed to deceive the Jewish people
reaches him - by “satisfy” they mean they will offer a further bribe.
The story suggested by the chief priests was not only discreditable to
the soldiers but it was dangerous, as sleeping on guard duty was a
serious offence, perhaps punishable by death. A “large sum of money”
would be needed to convince them to spread such incriminating
information. The improbability of several soldiers all sleeping
through a tomb-robbing undisturbed does not appear to have worried the
chief priests - such improbability was preferable to the truth.

Such lies in the public domain continue today of course - not simply
from politicians with parliamentary privilege, but even from so-called
respected journalists producing factual shows. A very interesting
article appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald in April of 2002,
entitled “The lies have it”, where the writer argued that the truth is
more relative and less valued than ever. He primarily used the 60
Minutes story by Richard Carleton on the Bosnian massacres as an
example, because it was at that time being fought out in court. 60
Minutes viewers were led to believe he was at the scene of the 1995
Srebrenica massacre, one of the ugliest incidents of the Bosnian war.
But the grave side beside which he stood was hundreds of kilometres
from Srebrenica, and it contained no bodies from the war crime in
question. All the exhumations from Srebrenica had already been
completed. The QC questioning Carleton put it to him that he was
lying, but he tried to argue that he was only misleading. The trouble
is, once we dispense with notions of precise truth, we are faced with
numerous gradations of meaning.

This is why it is hard to tell what is “truth” today in the media, and
why it was understandable in the 1st century world of verbal accounts,
that the Jews swallowed this bare-faced lie in verse 15 - after all it
came from Roman soldiers and was no doubt backed up by the religious
leaders. And so the soldiers were bribed and the lie spread. This
lie has often been latched on to by unbelievers in our day. Hugh
Schonfield’s Passover Plot is one of the modern literary attempts to
explain away the events of the crucifixion and the resurrection. But
it, like all the others, relies on that ancient lie circulated in the
very first century by the soldiers who were paid to say that friends
of Jesus had come and stolen his body away. But no one has ever been
able to explain how that could happen.

Well what is the application of this incredible eyewitness evidence
for Christ’s resurrection? Firstly, the evidence points to the truth
of the resurrection, and this fits with the reality of history. That
is, the gospel would never have spread and taken hold through the
preaching of the disciples who went to their death over the truth of
Christ’s death and resurrection, if it were simply a fabrication.
John Stott suggests that, “Perhaps the transformation of the disciples
of Jesus is the greatest evidence of all for the resurrection. It was
the resurrection which transformed Peter’s fear into courage, and
James’ doubt into faith. It was the resurrection which changed the
Sabbath into Sunday and the Jewish remnant into the Christian church.
It was the resurrection which changed Saul the Pharisee into Paul the
apostle and turned his persecuting into preaching.” The Great
Commission which saw the disciples go out to all the world with the
gospel immediately follows the section we have looked at tonight. The
very existence of the church today is testimony to the truth of these
eyewitness accounts, and their inability to be discredited for the
last 20 centuries.

In the early twentieth century there was young man in England who was
a barrister by the name of Frank Morison. He was not a Christian, and
for years he had promised himself that one day he would write a book
to disprove the gospel accounts of Jesus finally and forever. Later
in life he eventually got the time, and he did the necessary study to
write an honest rejection of what he saw as a hoax. However, he
became a Christian before he published his book in 1930 titled, “Who
moved the stone?”, which you can still buy today. Starting from the
most critical approach to the New Testament he was forced to conclude
that the resurrection accounts following his death were credible and
could not be explained away.

The French mathematician Auguste Comte was talking about religion one
day with the Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle. Comte suggested they
start a new religion to replace Christianity, based on positive
thinking and mathematical principles. Carlyle thought about it for a
moment and replied, “Very good, Mr Comte, very good. All you will
need to do, will be to speak as never a man spoke, and live as never a
man lived, and be crucified, and rise again the third day, and get the
world to believe that you are still alive. Then your religion will
have a chance to get on.” The very impossibility of coming up with
such an account points to its authenticity - no one could have dreamt
up such a group of beliefs as contained in the gospel. It could never
have gotten off the ground - unless it was true. We have the
irrefutable proof of an empty tomb and the fact that a body was never
produced, and post-resurrection appearances seen by eyewitnesses who
went to the grave confessing their truthfulness.

Compare that with those involved in the Watergate Scandal in the
United States in the 1970s, that began with the burglary and
wiretapping of the Democratic party's campaign headquarters, which
later engulfed President Richard M. Nixon and many of his supporters
in a variety of illegal acts, and culminated in the first resignation
of a U.S. president. The arrest of the burglars eventually uncovered a
White House sponsored plan of espionage against political opponents
and a trail of complicity that led to many of the highest officials in
the land, and yet the President and his aids refused to admit any
involvement. But a Senate Select Committee on Presidential Activities
opened hearings in May 1973, and a series of startling revelations
followed. One official came forward and testified that the President’s
attorney-general had ordered the break in and that a major attempt was
under way to hide White House involvement. He claimed that the
president had authorized payments to the burglars to keep them quiet.
The Nixon administration vehemently denied this assertion. But one by
one they admitted the lie after it was revealed that Nixon had ordered
a taping system installed in the White House which would provide all
the evidence needed. The threat of imprisonment brought out the truth
from Nixon and his helpers, but the disciples of Jesus never changed
their story even when they were threatened with death and killed.

Secondly and most importantly, is the fact that the resurrection is
the central proof of the authority and truth of everything else that
Jesus did and taught. Walking on the water is nothing if you can
defeat the grave. Because we can be confident that Christ did rise
from the dead, everything else he did and said can be trusted, as his
whole life and ministry are vindicated by this unique event. Above
all else, this means that our sin and its consequence of death have
been defeated. Not only is He alive today, but His death is shown to
be sufficient to pay for our sins and bring us back to God, because
God raised him on the third day. Our salvation is therefore secure,
the promise of eternal life for those who trust in Him is sure,
because He has already been raised to eternal life himself. As one
writer has said, “If the resurrection is not historic fact, then the
power of death remains unbroken, and with it the effect of sin; and
the significance of Christ’s death remains uncertified, and
accordingly believers are yet in their sins, precisely where they were
before they heard of Jesus’ name.”

The apostle Paul says this even better in 1 Corinthians 15 when he
states: “14And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless
and so is your faith. ...17And if Christ has not been raised, your
faith is futile; you are still in your sins. 18Then those who have
fallen asleep in Christ are lost. 19If only for this life we have
hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men.” But Paul
asserts that the resurrection is absolutely true: “20But Christ has
indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have
fallen asleep.”

Well, have you considered the evidence for the resurrection that
demands a verdict? If you have, are you living in the light of these
foundational truths? Have you placed your trust in the One who died
and rose to secure your rescue and establish a right relationship for
you with your Creator? There is not a bigger decision in life that
you will make.