EASTER SPECIAL MESSAGE "Evaluating The BEST Evidence WE Have On Christ's Resurrection" (John 20:24-31)
Introduction: (To show the need . . . )

(1) According to 1 Corinthians 15:1-11, to receive eternal life, one must believe that Christ died on the cross or our sins, was buried and rose bodily from the dead on the third day, and was seen risen after that. Unless one believes in this truth, he will not receive eternal life, cf. 1 Cor. 15:2 and 15:12-18. In fact, Paul writes: " . . . if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. They also which are fallen asleep (have physically expired) in Christ a re perished."

(2) PROBLEM: Since resurrection is not natural, has not been proven to occur scientifically in modern times, to go to heaven, we are expected to believe in a miracle of resurrection that allegedly occurred almost 2,000 years ago!



Well, if the New Testament demands that we believe in a miracle that occurred almost 2,000 years ago in order to enter heaven, and we have no tangible way of testing that miracle ITSELF in our era, is there any way to test the BEST evidence ava ilable so that we can make an intelligent decision this Easter on the resurrection, and the gospel of Christ?! After all, our eternal life allegedly hinges on doing so!





Need: "Jesus ALLEGEDLY arose from the dead nearly two thousands years ago! According to New Testament writers, only by believing in this feat does one gain heaven and escape hell, 1 Cor. 15:1-11! Well, since the ETERNAL stakes are so HIGH, is the re any way to evaluate the BEST evidence WE have on this alleged event to see IF Jesus truly arose?! After all, it IS important!!"

1. John's Gospel included only input about Jesus that would most elicit faith from its readers who NEVER saw Christ, Jn. 20:29-31.
2. Thus, John's Gospel input is DESIGNED to contain the BEST evidence that WE can test for determining IF Jesus arose!
3. Evaluating the context preceding John's comments on his evidence selection, we have a persuasive argument for Christ's resurrection:
1. The disciple Thomas was not with Jesus when John records that Christ appeared to the others in Jn. 20:19-24, and Thomas did not at first believe Jesus had risen simply because the others claimed it, Jn. 20:25.
2. If we objectively inspect John's record of Thomas' alleged change of mind, we have a strong case favoring Christ's resurrection as follows:
1. In 85 A. D. when John wrote this account, he was not promoting a belief that was false to him: longtime associates Peter and James had then been martyred for this belief, making that motive absurd!
2. The disciples in John 19 were not trying fake Christ's appearing to start a religion: they gathered behind locked doors for fear of the authorities, and their fear countered such a motive! (Jn. 20:19, 26)
3. When Thomas later met with the others, they were NOT trying to conjure up a religio-mystico-apparition of Jesus! They met eight days after a Sunday on a non-holy MONDAY, Jn. 20:19,26!
4. John reports that when Jesus appeared with Thomas present, He expressed uncanny, personal insight, evidence that He arose!
1. Thomas previously said that unless he felt the wounds in Jesus' hands and side, he would not believe. At that time, Thomas unwittingly omitted reference to Jesus' foot wounds, John 20:25!
2. Yet, Jesus had been pierced in His feet, cf. Lk. 24:40!
3. When Christ appeared, He asked Thomas to examine His hands and side, omitting reference to His feet, Jn. 20:27! He revealed that somehow Jesus knew of Thomas' original words of doubt!
4. The other disciples were not trying to set Thomas up to believe a lie by conspiring to inform the person whom Thomas was now seeing of his former doubts, for their own fear of the authorities counters such a motive. Rather, Thomas realized that Jesus heard his doubts firsthand, and was therefore alive and risen!
5. Thomas remarkably countered a GENETIC bent he had under these conditions to resist the disciples' news of the resurrection!
1. From other accounts of Thomas Didymus, he showed socially reticent and pessimistic behavior around Jesus. He worried about following Jesus to Judea because of enemies there, Jn. 11:16; he repeated Peter's anxiety when Jesus announced He was going where they could not go with Him, Jn. 13:36-14:5; he was absent possibly out of his fear of enemies when the Lord first appeared, Jn. 20:19,24. (Z.P.E.B., vol. Five, p. 732)
2. Named "Didymus," or "twin" (Ibid.), Thomas' behavior was at least partly GENETIC: according to "all the research on the genetics of personality", when even an adult twin usually shows "fear of strangers" or "introversion", he reveals a genetic bent toward it, Mussen (U.Cal., Berkley), Conger (U. Col. Sch. of Med.) & Kagan (Harvard), Child Develop. & Personality, p. 56.
3. Thus, to be told by the other disciples that Jesus had risen after he had been so badly disillusioned by the death of the One he had thought was Messiah, it was natural for genetically disposed "twin" Thomas to deny it to avoid getting hurt again!
4. However, upon allegedly merely seeing and hearing Jesus, AGAINST his GENETICALLY influenced BENT, Thomas made the most socially uninhibited confession ever recorded in John's Gospel to CLIMAX that Gospel: he exclaimed, "My Lord and My GOD!" (Ibid., Z.P.E.B.) Something phenomenal happened to change his natural behavior!
6. As John did not have modern knowledge of a GENETIC bent in personality, his gospel's record of Thomas furthers John's claims of Christ's resurrection even though JOHN did NOT KNOW it! We must conclude that John's account is divinely inspired to give us evidence 2,000 years after the fact, when science finally caught up with God's insight on personality genetics, that Jesus AROSE!

Lesson Application: Looking at modern genetic insight on twins that the writer of John's Gospel did not have coupled with the evidences that the disciples would not have duped Thomas, nor John US, seeing Thomas go from doubt to faith so dra matically reveals strong evidence that Christ arose! Thus, (1) believe on Him (Jn. 20:31) and then (2) submit wholeheartedly to His lordship as did Thomas, John 20:28!

Conclusion: (To illustrate the sermon lesson . . . )

There is additional evidence on the reliability of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth that is worth mentioning here:

(1) Dr. Simon Greenleaf did a study on what would happen if the evidence supplied by the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John claiming that Jesus of Nazareth from the dead, were presented in a court of law according to legal stipulations. He wrote this examination out in a book entitled, An Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists by the Rules of Evidence Administered in the Courts of Justice. He wanted to see if the Gospel accounts would hold up as reliable witnesses in an American court according to American law.

Dr. Greenleaf was the famous Royall Professor of Law at Harvard University who succeeded Justice Joseph Story as the Dane Professor of Law at that school. These two men are mainly responsible for the rise in eminence of the Harvard Law School in America. Greenleaf's Treatise on the Law of Evidence is still "considered one of the greatest single authorities on the subject in the entire literature of legal procedure."

His findings? Dr. Simon Greenleaf concluded that, "according to the laws of legal evidence used in courts of law, there is more evidence for the historical fact of the resurrection of Jesus Christ than for just about any other event in history." (Josh McD owell, A Ready Defense, p. 217)

(2) Professor Thomas Arnold, fourteen years the headmaster of Rugby, author of the three-volume History of Rome and holder of the chair of modern history at Oxford University, once said: "I have been used for many years to study the histories of other times, and to examine and weigh the evidence of those who have written about them, and I know of no one fact in the history of mankind which is proved by better and fuller evidence of every sort, to the understanding of a fair inquirer, than the great sign which God hath given us that Christ died and rose again from the dead." (Ibid., p. 216)

(3) Lord Caldecote, Lord Chief Justice of England, wrote: "My faith began with and was grounded on what I thought was revealed in the Bible . . . the cardinal test of the claims of Jesus Christ, namely, His resurrection, has led me, as often as I have tried to examine the evidence, to believe it as fact beyond dispute." (Ibid.)