Sermon Tone Analysis

ATTN

Well, it’s Easter and you’re here.

I guess that means that you either consider yourself to be a Christian, you came with someone who does, or you’re at least interested in or respectful of Christianity.

You may not even go to church that much the rest of the year, but you’re here on this day out of respect or at least habit.

We’re glad you’re here, and let me just say that if you are a believer in or respectful of Jesus Christ, church is a great place for you to go on Easter.

One person said, “I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.”

“Ok,” you might say, “Guess I would agree with that.

What preacher said that?” Well, it wasn’t a preacher who said it.

While it sounds like preacher talk, that was actually said to someone who at least called herself a preacher.

It was said to Pastor Mary Sewell, a unitarian pastor who said that she really didn’t believe the “stories” of scripture in any literal sense.

She would consider this occasion we celebrate today to be a nice religious ceremony, but not an actual event.

But this pastor’s doubt is not the most shocking part of this story.

The most shocking part of this incident is not that some pastor, so called, had to be told of the essential nature of the resurrection.

It was the person who said these words to her.

You see, the person who corrected this Unitarian’s theology was none other than avowed atheist and Christian antagonist, Christopher Hitchens.

And by the way, in this one statement at least, the Bible agrees with the atheist, not the pastor.

Paul, the great Apostle wrote in 1 Cor 15:16-17: 16 For if the dead do not rise, then Christ is not risen.

17 And if Christ is not risen, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins! 18 Then also those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished.

19 If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all men the most pitiable.

There you have it!

Hitchens agrees with the apostle.

If you call yourself a Christian and consider the resurrection of Jesus to be a nice story or an inspirational parable, you are not chic or politically correct: you’re just pathetic; you are pitiable.

Worse than that, you are deceived.

Scientist Henry Morris writes: “The bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the crowning proof of Christianity.

If the resurrection did not take place, then Christianity is a false religion.

If it did take place, then Christ is God and the Christian faith is absolute truth.”

There is no middle ground.

NEED

So maybe you came today thinking that you’d just go through the religious motions of Easter celebration and leave to enjoy an Easter egg hunt.

I want you to know that before you leave here this morning, however, you’ve got to make a choice: You must decide to either accept the truth of the resurrection, or reject it.

Either the resurrection happened and Christianity is true, or it didn’t and Christianity is false.

So, since you have to decide, let’s examine the facts.

For the sake of argument, lets just assume for a moment that it did not happen.

Many have said that, you know.

Many people have looked at the resurrection as, at best, a fantastic legend or, at worst, a cruel hoax.

So how have these people actually explained the resurrection story?

What explanations have they offered for Easter?

DIV 1: THE CASE AGAINST THE RESURRECTION

EXP

THE SAVIOR SURVIVED THE CROSS

Well some doubters say that Jesus survived the cross, he died sometime later as an old man and possible even the husband of Mary Magdalene.

Recent skeptics have, on the basis of the flimsiest, almost laughable evidence, even claimed to have found his tomb.

But this theory has all kinds of problems.

For one thing, it was not even seriously considered until some 1800 years after the event.

Doubters, looking back on the resurrection event, and unable to refute the Biblical record at face value, came up with this one.

Sort of late, don’t you think?

For another thing, to argue that Jesus didn’t die is to argue that Roman soldiers, accustomed to execution and who had their necks on the line, certified a prisoner dead who really wasn’t.

And then there’s the Bible.

In the account at the cross we are told that the soldiers went to the two prisoners on either side of Jesus and broke their legs so that they would not be able to lift themselves up on their feet to breathe.

They suffocated more quickly that way.

Jesus, on the other hand, when they came to Him, the Bible says, was already dead, so, instead of breaking His legs, they ran Him through with a spear so that the Bible says that “blood and water” ran out.

This is a classic sign that the heart was punctured.

And noone would survive a punctured heart!

No, to say that Jesus really didn’t die and was able, in a weakened state, to survive three days in a sealed tomb, then get up and move the stone away all by Himself is to make a fool’s argument!

THE DISCIPLES STOLE THE BODY

“Well, if He did really die,” others say, “then maybe the reason that the tomb was empty was that the disciples, wanting to start their own religion, came and stole the body away in the middle of the night.”

Well, the Roman and Jewish authorities were way ahead of you on that one.

They said that they feared something like that happening, so they put a guard of as many as 30 soldiers to guard the tomb.

Do you really think that a rag-tag group of disciples could have overcome such a contingent of soldiers?

Not only that, but if the disciples stole the body, then they must not have all been in on it because the women return to anoint the body on the third day.

Why would they go to anoint a body they knew was not there?

Not only that, but the disciples, when they heard that the body was missing, ran to see for themselves.

Why would they run to see a body that was not there?

Not only that, but breaking a Roman seal was a serious offense.

If the disciples stole the body, why were they not arrested after the fact.

No, the disciples didn’t steal the body.

They showed by their behavior that they expected it to still be there.

THE WITNESSES EXPERIENCED AN HALLUCINATION

And others say that the church which claimed to see the pre-ascended body of Christ on several occasions after His resurrection were simply hallucinating.

Well, that one really doesn’t hold up either, not unless you believe in mass hallucination.

The Apostle Paul says in 1 Cor.

15 that Jesus was seen on several occasions and that, on one of those occasions, he was seen by 500 people at one time!

500 people!

Have you ever known of 500 people spontaneously having the same hallucination all at the same time?

That doesn’t happen even if there are drugs involved.

500 people may drop acid at the same time and hallucinate, but they won’t be seeing the exact same bugs crawling up the wall at the exact same time!

You see, the doubting heart of man finds it hard to accept the event of the resurrection, but the theories which seek to explain how the resurrection did not happen really ask the wrong question.

That’s what prominent Virginia attorney of the University of Virginia Law School and former mayor of Norfolk, Va. said.

He investigated the legal evidence for the resurrection of Christ.

He began asking himself the question: Can any intelligent person accept the resurrection story?

After examining the evidence at length, he came away asking a different question: Can any intelligent person deny the weight of this evidence?

ILL

Years ago in England two men set out to disprove Christianity.

One was a well-known English jurist and literary scholar named Lord Littleton.

The other was Gilbert West.

They agreed that if Christianity was to be discredited, it was necessary to do two things—disprove the Resurrection and explain the conversion of Saul of Tarsus in a way that satisfied the skeptics.

The two men divided these tasks between themselves, Littleton taking the problem of Saul and West agreeing to research the Resurrection.

They invested over a year for their studies and then met together to compare notes.

Each one was astonished to discover that the other had become a Christian.

The evidence was too strong, the truth too undeniable.

It still is.

You might say, “Well show me some of that evidence, then.”

If the arguments against the resurrection will not hold water, what arguments can you offer to prove it’s truth.

DIV 2: THE CASE FOR THE RESURRECTION

EXP

THE WITNESS OF THE WRITTEN WORD

The first witness for the resurrection is the Word of God itself.

Immediately when I say that, you might object.

You might say that the Bible is a biased witness.

After all, the Bible is the book which tells us about the resurrection to begin with.