Sermon Tone Analysis

*/Resurrection Proof; nv 4~/11~/04 a.m./*

*OS:* *A* 74% of kids eat their chocolate Easter Bunnies ears first.

Who would you guess is the most successful defense attorney in the world?

Johnnie Cochran?  /Guinness Book of World Records/.

"Most successful lawyer: Sir Lionel Luckhoo . . .

(who) succeeded in getting his 245th successive murder charge acquittal by January 1, 1985."

Nobody in the world has come close to replicating -- 245 murder trials in a row, either won before a jury or on appeal.

He is a real-life Perry Mason.

HOW? Certainly he must be smart and savvy.

He must have tremendous analytical skills so he can dissect what may appear on the surface to be an air-tight case.

And he must be a world-class expert on what constitutes reliable and persuasive evidence.

All of that describes Luckhoo, who was knighted twice by Queen Elizabeth and who also served as a distinguished diplomat and a justice on his country's highest court.

As we think of resurrection Sunday, wouldn't it be interesting to get an opinion from an expert like Luckhoo on the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ?

During his own spiritual journey, Luckhoo turned his expertise to the question of whether the resurrection of Jesus Christ fits the test of legal evidence.

And here's the conclusion he ultimately reached:

*B*/ "I say unequivocally that the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus Christ is so overwhelming that it compels acceptance by proof which leaves absolutely no room for doubt."/

A father was trying to explain Resurrection Sunday to his 5-year-old son Sammy.

They were sitting in church on Resurrection Sunday, and just before the service began, he pointed to the cross and said, "See the cross?

The people put Jesus on the cross.

/The people killed/ /Jesus/."

Sammy looked around very nervously, then asked cautiously: "/These /people?"

Well, we're going to get at the heart of Easter today; in fact, to the very heart of Christianity itself. 1 Corinthians 15:17: *C* "If Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins."

I'm going to begin by summarizing how Jesus died, and I'm going to get a little graphic for a very important reason.

Some people take the position that Jesus never really died on the cross; in fact, that's what many Muslims are taught.

It's called the "swoon theory" -- that Jesus fainted on the cross or took a drug that made Him only appear to die, and then the cool air of the tomb revived Him and He emerged alive.

So, they contend, there was no resurrection because He hadn't died.

But as I describe to you what happened to Jesus, you'll quickly see the fallacy of that position.

If you’ve seen Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion of Christ,” with the horrible brutally worked upon Jesus, you already know the impossible nature of the “swoon theory.”

After Jesus' trial in which He was found guilty of blasphemy for claiming to be God, John 19:1 says: "Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged."

A medical expert named Dr. C. Truman Davis studied what this involved and concluded this was a brutal beating that left Jesus on the very edge of death.

Jesus was tied to a post and beaten at least 39 times -- and probably more -- with a whip that had jagged bones and balls of lead woven into it.

Again and again, the whip was brought down with full force on His bare shoulders, back and legs.

At first, the heavy thongs cut through His skin only.

But as the blows continued, they cut deeper into the underlying tissues, first producing an oozing of blood from the capillaries and veins, and finally the spurting of arterial bleeding from vessels in the underlying muscles.

The balls of lead first produced large, deep bruises which were then broken open by subsequent blows.

By the end, the skin of His back was left hanging in long ribbons and the entire area was an unrecognizable mass of torn, bleeding tissue.

One witness to a Roman flogging wrote this: /"The sufferer's veins were laid bare, and the very muscles and tendons and bowels/ /of the victim were open to exposure."/

Undoubtedly, Jesus was in serious to critical condition even before the crucifixion began.

It's no wonder He was unable to carry His own cross.

Then five-to-seven-inch spikes were driven through His wrists, crushing the median nerve, which we call the funny bone.

Experts say this would be like squeezing your funny bone with a pair of pliers.

So painful was death by crucifixion that a new word was coined to describe it -- the word "excruciating," which is Latin for "out of the cross."

After His wrists and feet were nailed securely, He was hoisted into the air to hang.

Death from crucifixion is basically a slow death by suffocation.

Because of the stress on the muscles, Jesus could breathe in, but He couldn't breathe out unless He pushed up with His feet to relieve some of the pressure on His chest.

Of course, that was tremendously painful because of His bloodied back scraping against the coarse cross and because of the spikes through His feet.

After a while of pushing up again and again, exhaustion sets in.

If the Romans wanted to hasten death, they used a mallet to shatter the victim's shin bones so he couldn't push up anymore, and the victim's lungs would fill with carbon dioxide and he'd slowly asphyxiate.

And that's what the executioners did to the criminals crucified on either side of Jesus.

But when they came to Jesus, they saw He was already dead.

To confirm that, the soldier plunged a spear between His ribs, puncturing the sac around the heart and the heart itself, and causing a clear fluid and blood to spew out, which eyewitnesses recorded.

Then four Roman experts confirmed He was dead.

The Swoon theory doesn’t hold water to say the least.

One of the best replies to the swoon theory came from a lady who wrote into a question and answer forum:

Dear Sirs,

Our preacher said on Resurrection Sunday, that Jesus just swooned on the cross and that the disciples nursed Him back to health.

What do you think?

Sincerely, Bewildered.

Dear Bewildered,

Beat your preacher with a cat-of-nine-tails with 39 heavy strokes, nail him to a cross; hang him in the sun for 6 hours; run a spear thru his side...put him in an airless tomb for 36 hours and see what happens.

Sincerely,

Charles.

Nobody, nobody, nobody came down from a cross alive -- and that included Jesus.

An authoritative article in the prestigious /Journal of the American Medical Society/ concluded: *D* /"Clearly, the weight of historical and medical evidence indicates that Jesus/ /was dead (even) before the wound to His side was inflicted. . . .

Accordingly,/ /interpretations based on the assumption that Jesus did not die on the cross appear to be/ /at odds with modern medical knowledge."/

*TS] *Now let's look at the affirmative evidence for the resurrection.

I'm going to summarize it with the three E's, as you have on your handout.*

*

*I.      **E** The first "E" stands for "EARLY."*

A.   It's important to consider that the account of Christ's death, burial, and resurrection date back very early.

B.    For instance, a Christian Statement recited in the early church and preserved for us by the apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 15 clearly affirms that *:*/"Christ died for our sins according to the/ /Scriptures; He was buried; he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,” /and then it cites specific people who Jesus appeared to.

1.

This Christian Statement has been dated back to as early as two or three years after the crucifixion, and the beliefs that underlie it go back right to the cross itself.

C.   This completely rebuts the idea that legends about the resurrection developed in the decades after Jesus' death.

1.       Studies have concluded there was nowhere near enough time for that to have occurred.

2.

In fact, when the Paul mentions that Jesus appeared to 500 people at one time, He specifically states that many of them were still alive.

3.

In effect, he was saying, /"Hey, these/ /people are still around -- ask them yourselves if you don't believe me, and they'll tell you/ /it's true." /That's how confident he was.

There were witnesses still around for people to question because the proclamation that Jesus was the risen Son of God began virtually immediately after His death.

*II.

**F** The second "E" stands for the word "EMPTY" -- the empty tomb of Jesus.*

A.   During His trial, Jesus' chief accuser was the Jewish high priest Caiaphas, who served in that position from 18 to 37 A.D.

                      1.

It was Caiaphas who accused Jesus of blasphemy for claiming to be God and handed Him over to Pilate to be killed.

B.    Just six years ago, archaeologists were digging in Jerusalem, and they managed to uncover the burial grounds of Caiaphas and his family.

/But though His accuser's grave/ /has been found, nobody to this day has ever uncovered the body of Jesus Himself./

C.   Jesus' body was laid to rest in a tomb belonging to Joseph of Arimathea, a prominent member of the Jewish council, and the tomb was sealed and placed under heavy guard, and yet it was discovered empty on Easter morning by -- /and this is very significant /-- several women.

1.

The fact that the ancient documents say women discovered the tomb empty lends even more credibility to these accounts.

2.

The reason is that women had low status in Jewish society at the time and didn’t even legally qualify as witnesses.

So if the disciples were making up this story, surely they would have claimed that men discovered the empty tomb because their testimony would have been more credible in that culture.

3.

This is just one more indication that the writers were committed to accurately recording what actually happened.

D.   But here's the most powerful fact concerning Jesus' tomb: /nobody ever claimed it was/ /anything but empty!

/Even His opponents admitted it was vacant on Easter!

                      1.

They tried to bribe the guards to say that the disciples stole the body while they were asleep, which is ridiculous because they didn’t have the motive or opportunity -- and, besides, how would the guards have known it was the disciples if they were sleeping?

2.

But the point is, when the disciples declared the tomb was empty, Jesus opponents didn't respond by saying, /"No, it's not."

/Or, /"You've got the wrong tomb -- His body is over/ /there."

/Instead, they admitted it was true -- the tomb was vacant!

E.    Now, the question is, how did it get empty?

1.

For instance, the Romans wouldn't have taken the body.

They wanted Jesus dead.

The Jewish leaders wouldn't have taken the body.

They wanted Him to /stay /dead.

2.       Either the Jews or the Romans would have loved to have paraded Jesus' lifeless body down Main Street of Jerusalem because this would have instantly killed the growing Christian movement that they were expending so much energy trying to destroy.

But they couldn't because they didn't have the body.