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This is the very kingpin of our Christian gospel. For if Christ did not literally and bodily rise from the dead, we have no gospel to preach. It is useless for the modern theologian to tell us that when the early Christians speak of the bodily resurrection of Christ, they are indulging in mythological terminology, which we in our day have to discard, that is, discard the mythological terminology, and merely take the reality, uh, that they try to express thereby. That's nonsense. Paul himself tells us that he not only preached the resurrection of Christ, but he preached it deliberately and meant what he said. You see, if Christ did not literally rise from the dead, he observed, then we apostles, and I, Paul in particular, are found to be deliberate liars. For we have deliberately preached that God raised Jesus Christ bodily from the dead. If you refused, uh, if we are false, then we are deliberately false. We are liars. It's no good of us, twenty centuries later, trying to rescue Paul's words by saying he didn't really mean that Christ bodily rose from the dead. But if we preach that Jesus Christ rose bodily from the dead, then many people we find, and increasingly so, many people find a big difficulty in it. They'll say it's a miracle, isn't it? Yes, of course it's a miracle. Ah, but they can't believe in miracles. They are of the opinion that there are no such things as miracles. They are further of the opinion that science has proved there are no miracles. And what people thought in years gone by were miracles, now science can show are not miracles at all, because science can explain exactly how they haven't. So in the old world, when it thundered, people thought that was God or one of the gods speaking. Well, scientists can show what it is that causes the noise. You'll see it's all this electrical discharge and what have you, and the sound waves and the light waves and all the rest of it, and they explain how it happens. So there's no place for God. And if you're going to preach a gospel that is ba- founded on a miracle, then they tell you they find it impossible to accept it. So, as I say, scientists, and some scientists at least, show you that, uh, tell you that they can explain how nature works, and there's no room for God in it. When I'm confronted with that, I tell a little parable, and it's true because I made it up. Like you to imagine a motor car, any make you like, that surreptitiously had been landed in the middle of the rainforest in the Congo. And presently the dear pygmies discovered it, didn't know what it was, so they poked around in it and opened the doors and pushed this button and turned the other key. And they presto, as they turned the ignition key, the engine came to life. And of course they were scared. Oh, must be a god in there or something. When the engine went sweetly, they thought the god liked them. When it backfired, they thought he was angry with them and offered the thing sacrifices. And then they wondered what the name of the god was, and they found the letters on the front, F-O-R-D. And they decided, uh, that, uh, this, uh, Mr. Ford was the god inside the motor car. How else could you explain it going? Mm-hmm. But then they learned engineering and science and became very courageous and took the thing to pieces. And they looked all around, pistons, gears, brakes, plugs, couldn't find Mr. Ford anywhere, and decided that after all, there was no Mr. Ford in the machine. Because now they were engineers and could explain everything without calling upon the presence of Mr. Ford. Then they took the next big step. They decided there never had been a Mr. Ford. The whole notion of a Mr. Ford was a myth, you see. He never had existed. And you smile because you wouldn't make that mistake in logic, would you? You say, well, Mr. Ford wasn't in the machine. Of course he wasn't. No good looking there to try and find him. He wasn't inside the engine or the carburetor or something. But it's one thing to explain how the engine works. Quite a different question of where the engine came from. And was there or was there not a designer? Science may have able to tell us how the universe works. But they haven't thus got rid of God. To do that, they'd need to explain where the universe came from. And that, ladies and gentlemen, they cannot tell you. They have the theories, of course. If you want a little, uh, entertainment, wicked entertainment, gather a few scientists around your dinner table, and halfway through, hmm, uh, uh, raise the innocent question with them. They'll say, you know, one thing puzzles me a little bit. I try to read a little science and I don't succeed very well. One thing puzzles me, this energy stuff or whatever it is. What is energy? And if you're not careful, they will say, well, we can measure energy, and energy does this, and energy does the other, and energy does something else, and we can measure it. Oh, very good. I said, marvelous. Can you really? But I said, I wasn't asking what it can do, I was asking what it is. And then you can sit back and enjoy the fun. Because whatever their theories, the fact is, as Feynman, long since the Nobel Prize winner, I mean, scientist, told the public, we don't know what energy is. That's very interesting. The Bible says that creation was made by the word of God. It also says that our blessed Lord Jesus, through whom the worlds were made, he upholds all things. Now listen to this. He upholds things by the word of his power. It is God who creates and supplies the energy. And not only did so at the beginning of things, but this universe hangs together because it hangs together in Christ who made it, and is upheld by his incessant input of energy, upholding all things by the word of his power. But your atheist is liable to come back at you and say, you tell us this miracle of the resurrection of Christ, but miracles go absolutely counter to all. Behind that particular view lies to a great extent still in this modern world the arguments of the Scottish philosopher David Hume. It astonishes me that so many of my colleagues of time past still regard Hume's arguments in this area as being solid and undeniable. So let me read one or two things, by your gracious permission, that David Hume said. He was a Scotsman after all, I suppose. If at this stage you choose to go to sleep, well, you might be well advised to do so. Only wake up in about five minutes time, won't you? Hume, in, uh, one of his works writes as follows: A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature. And since a firm and unalter- un- unalterable experience has established these laws, that is the laws of experience, you can't undo experience, can you? The mankind's experience of nature, he says, has established these laws. From the very nature of the fact, there comes an entire argument from experience, as entire as can be imagined. For instance, he says, it is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden, because such a sudden death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen. Hm, so though it's not all that common, yet it does sometimes happen, has been observed to happen, that a man apparently in good health shall fall down dead. But while that isn't a miracle, it is a miracle, says Hume, that a dead man should come to life, because that has never been observed in any age or country. Well, he hasn't read his history, has he? But you see, he states what he wants to prove. We Christians would, uh, say, excuse me there, David, old chap, but it is a fact of history that one man rose from the dead. But cleverly, he's asking you to be- uh, believe what he wants to prove. It's never been observed in any age or country that a dead man should come to life. There must therefore be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit the term miracle. So he's arguing that miracles are im- are impossible because the whole weight of human history, they never have occurred. So any suggestion of a miracle has taken place is quite unacceptable, you see. And I've known even university dons to be impressed by that kind of argument. It's extraordinary. But you mustn't, uh, be surprised if some of your next door neighbors hold that same view about miracles and therefore cannot bring themselves to believe, they say, that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. You see. And you will observe that K- uh, Hume is arguing that nature everywhere is absolutely uniform. Its laws are unalterable. Therefore, miracles are impossible. But if you're going to read Hume, I don't necessarily advise it, make sure you read enough. Because in another of his works, he's arguing that, uh, nature is not uniform. You say he's just arguing that it is. Ah, but no, it suits him well this time to say it isn't. He denies, uh, the, the uniformity of nature. He famously argues that just because the sun has been observed to rise in the morning for thousands of years, that does not mean, says Hume, that we can be sure it will rise tomorrow. Well, that's extraordinary. So nature isn't uniform then. And even though thousands and thousands of years the sun has got up every day, do you see? You mustn't suppose that means that it always will. Because Hume says nature isn't uniform. Well, come now, I want to say, Mr. Hume, dear sir. I thought you told us that experience has always been unalterable. There have never been a miracle because it's always been uniform. Now you're turning around and telling us it isn't uniform. You can't guarantee the sun won't rise tomorrow. Because nature isn't uniform. Then how does you know that no one has ever risen from the dead in the past then? Don't be too soon impressed by the logic of atheistic philosophers. If God made this universe and set it going, with all its laws, it is, of course, logically, it is illogic, irrational to think that God cannot intervene and do something that is contrary to the laws. Take that dear subject of thought, Mr. Ford. If he designed the car, and it runs because there's a cylinder head on the top of the cylinders that gets the old power behind the combustion or whatever it is. The law of mechanics will tell you that the, uh, why the cylinder head is there and how it works and all that, and will guarantee to you that if everything is as it should be, the thing will go on working. But what is to stop Mr. Ford, if he wants to, telling one of his mechanics to come along and take the cylinder head off. Has that changed the law of mechanics? Well, of course not. Now his mechanics will tell you the laws that s- that that affirm that the car won't run. Because the cylinder head is removed. And if Mr. Ford could intervene in the running of a Ford motor car, the Almighty can intervene in the laws of nature and do something that is contrary to them. C. S. Lewis used to illustrate the point, didn't he, simply enough. He said, if I put a pound coin in my money box one day, and the next week I put two pound coins in my money box, and the third week after that I put another pound in my money box, the laws of arithmetic will tell me that when I come to it next, there will be four pounds in my money box. Yeah. The laws of arithmetic are straight to your mouth. There's no denying them. Says he, if I come to my money box four weeks later and find there's only one pound there, what shall I conclude? That the laws of arithmetic have, uh, have been changed. Not of course. No. But what has happened is, he says somebody's broken the laws of state, some burglar, some thief has come along and pinched three of the coins out of the box. It isn't the laws of arithmetic have been broken. The laws of arithmetic will tell you now that if someone has pinched three pounds out of the box, there'll be only one there. There's been a higher interference from another level. Christians don't pretend that people have been rising from the dead every other year since the beginning of creation. It's a most unusual event. But it doesn't break the laws of nature. It's simply that God, who made nature to run this way in normal circumstances, is free, if he so pleased, to intervene, and quite contrary to the law of nature, to raise somebody from the dead. And whether or not Jesus Christ rose from the dead is not a matter for science, please. It's a matter for history. That is the price, precisely the point at issue between us and David Hume and his likes. Not a question of saying that nature is uniform all the way through down the centuries, and therefore no miracle is possible. Science says so. It's a question of what does history say? Does history tell us that at one stage in one particular century, God intervened, reversed the laws of nature, and raised the body of Jesus Christ our Lord from the dead. And to say, like Hume, that there's no evidence of it, well, he's just putting his head in the philosophical sand, isn't he, Watt? That is the point at issue. It is a historical question. And of course, the New Testament is keen to point us to the historical evidence of history. In one Corinthians chapter fifteen, Paul tells us the gospel is that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised again the third day according to the scriptures, but that's not the end of the gospel, is it? He adds another bit. He was not only raised the third day according to the scriptures, but was seen. It's an integral part of our, our gospel that the risen Lord Jesus was seen, his witness, uh, his resurrection witnessed to. Paul lists the order of the occurrence of those appearances of the risen Lord to his apostles, some to individuals, some to small groups, some in this place, some in another place. One appearance to five hundred brothers at once. And Paul adds the greater part of them are alive to this day. Witnesses, therefore. And then, and this would please whom if anything pleased him, the Bible bids us think of the character of those witnesses. Who witnessed then and witnessed to us now through their writings, that they saw the risen Christ, handled him, listened to him speak, watched him eat food. What kind of men and women are these? You'll have to ask yourself now questions of character. Are you very good at, at, at, at, at reading character? Would you say that, uh, Mary Magdalene at the tomb? You wouldn't say she was a deliberate liar, would you? You say, but, you know, she was grief stricken and emotionally a little bit off colour, and, uh, she might have, um, imagined all sorts of things. There were two on the road to, um, Emmaus. People think they were both, uh, men, because when they talked to the Lord and and expressed their disappointment that this Jesus, who they thought was going to be a political deliverer, had allowed himself to be crucified. And then they said there were certain of our women at the tomb, and they brought message of angels and things, but you know, you know what women are, they meant. Didn't fit on. Because a political deliverer that had allowed himself to be crucified, what kind of a deliverer was he? It was almost irrelevant to be told he'd risen from the dead, so what good was that anyway? But what about the men? John, Peter. Deliberate lies. John himself is on record in one of his letters of saying, we know that no lie is of the truth. Enunciating the principle that you must not use lies under the excuse that you are supporting the truth thereby. No lie is of the truth. John is one of the chief witnesses, isn't he, in the record? That Christ has risen from the dead. A deliberate lie for the further good of the spread of the gospel or something. Were John and Peter liars? And watched innocent young men and young women and older being persecuted by Saul of Tarsus, tortured and put to death. For believing in a resurrection that had never happened, and that John and Peter had made it all up and knew it was a lie to start with. Well, of course not. If we're any judge of character, these men were not deliberate liars, were they? Did they go to their own deaths for being Christians, knowing it all depended on a lie that they themselves had concocted? That is frankly incredible. Hmm. Hmm. Uh, uh, uh, and then, of course, there is another bit of historical evidence that is the rise of the Christian Church. Professor Charlie Moll, Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge some time ago, used to argue it extensively. The existence, the rise and existence of the Christian Church, with all its faults and failings, granted for the moment, is a historical fact. And therefore it is right and proper and legitimate to ask, what was the cause of the rise of the Christian Church? Didn't just happen like topsy. One morning Peter woke up from bed and thought, boring job, this fishing. What about John? What about if we started a church, John? Of course not. But what was the cause of it then? Well, if you ask the early Christians, what will they say? Oh, we so admired Christ's ethical teaching that we felt it would be a good thing if we banded together and formed a church to promote Christ's ethical teaching. That won't do, will it? The story of the rise of the Christian church is given in the Acts of the Apostles. Have you read it recently enough to be able to find out how much of the Sermon on the Mount is in the Acts of the Apostles. Marvellously little. Oh, there's some, of course. You can't divorce Christian ethics from the Christian gospel, but ethics as such, as in on the Sermon on the Mount, exceedingly little in the Acts of the Apostles, and particularly in the sermons of the early apostles. If you haven't observed it, read it again and notice the apparently shocking a- a- absence of much ethical teaching in the sermons of Peter and Paul. What was it then? You ask the early Christians what brought them out into the marketplace on the day of Pentecost from scouring in their little closed locked room for fear of the Jews, if what brought them out, they will tell you straight, the resurrection of Christ and his ascension into glory. This was the gospel. And you say, yes, well, it's the resurrection of Christ that, uh, uh, uh, lies behind your existence as a Christian church. Hm. But what, what message have you to preach now that you exist? Well, if you ask the Acts of the Apostles that, they'll tell you what the message is every sermon in the book. The message is the resurrection of Christ from the dead. Oh, what a magnificent gospel this is. Pray don't let us minimize it. It is right that we preach the atonement, of course, and the cross of Christ. Absolutely right and fundamental. The gospel is that he died for our sins according to the scriptures. The elements of the gospel are not in competition. But the other big element is that, uh, the third day he rose again from the dead according to the scriptures. Oh God, give us many more gospel sermons on the resurrection of our Lord from the dead. For we live in a world of hopelessness. Men and women who have no hope beyond a grave, and when illness and decay and disappointment set in, live life largely with no hope. When we suffer pain, when great disasters happen, like the tsunami, men and women will say, but how can you believe in a God if he allows such things to happen. I was seated at dinner at one stage in Moscow, along with others, and present was a professor of psychiatric medicine, head of the Department of Psychiatric Medicine in Moscow. Very gracious man he was. When the subject veered around, as sometimes these subjects will with a little help, ah, do you see, to the question of God in creation, no, no, no, no, no. He was a scientist and his wife was a microbiologist or something, and that was it. And then, smiling graciously, he said to me over the table, you see, if there's a God as you say there is, how could you possibly explain so much suffering in the world if he's a loving and kind and all powerful and all wise creator? It's a question, isn't it? I said to him in reply, yes, I have a problem. I admit that to you, sir. I have a problem. I don't have full and final answers to the questions of suffering. They're complicated indeed. I said, I can tell you how to get rid of your, your, uh, uh, uh, uh, your philosophical problem, sir. And that is get rid of God completely, banish him from your mind. Now you won't have a problem, will you? In fact, now, uh, the universe is very easily understood, particularly all the suffering side. For if the whole universe, and you included, are the product of mindless, non-rational forces working by accident, then what would you expect but a lot of suffering? You would then have another big problem that you didn't grant, uh, uh, bargain for, and that's how much of creation happens to be magnificently wonderful, and that so regularly. I said you could get rid of the problem, uh, sir, but allow me to remind you, you get rid of the problem by denying there is a God. You don't get rid of the pain, do you? I said, now you've made it ten thousand times worse. For if there is a God, though much in suffering goes beyond us, here is solid hope. The pain is not in the end meaningless and merely destructive. For the God who sent his son to save us points out that be it hell or high water, God can take suffering and use it for our eternal benefit, that we might be conformed to the image of his son. I said, sir, in my little experience, when pain comes, the biggest sustenance against it to fight its battles is hope. The creation shall be delivered from her bondage to corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. Yes, there is hope. And founded not just on it, and not on imagination, but on evidence. Historical evidence. What kind of evidence? In the laws of this universe, tea time stops me from telling you. But like all tea times, tea times come on a pace, don't they? Yes. I can remind you of two kinds of evidence, among many other bits of evidence. One is the external objective material evidence, such as John and Jane, John and Peter came across in the tomb on Easter morning. For they looked in. The body was gone. The extraordinary thing was about the clothes. There were the clothes that had been around his body, lying just as they were. Not like when men get up in the morning and late for the train, and the pajama jacket goes one way and the trousers the other. Lying just as they were before. And the extraordinary thing was the napkin that had been around the head. It was still lying on that slightly raised ledge where the, the head of the corpse would have been put. And was still folded round. A little collapse, maybe. But there's no body. And the spices weren't all over the floor, but it had been wrapped in with the linen clothes. How would you explain In it? it. Had some robber come along and moved the stone away, even though the guard ro- the guard was on on duty outside? Well, of course not. But had they come, had they carefully got unwound the lentils and unwound it, and then taken the body out and put that down, and then wind it up to make it look? You'll say, no, of course not, that's nonsense. And who would have done it anyway? Well, the enemies of Christ wouldn't have done it. Would any believer have done it, stolen the body aw- away and then not told the apostles where to find it? No, indeed not. When John and Peter saw it, they perceived from the evidence that a miracle had taken place. The body was gone. They didn't yet understand what resurrection meant. They were to find out later that day as the risen Lord appeared among them. So they went off to breakfast. Like men are liable to be by objective evidence. But Mary stood at the grave. I don't know whether they tried to explain to Mary all this business about objective evidence and things, or whether they said, Mary, come home to breakfast with us. No good you're standing. There's nothing more to see, Mary. Ah, but she was a devoted follower of Christ. You think of what he had meant to her. She found life almost impossible without him. She looked for the Savior. She had come to bring her contribution of spices. Yes. And had she and the other Christian woman succeeded, they would have turned, they would have anointed the body more and put the spices in, had the soldiers allowed them, and then come and visited the, the, the scene, wouldn't they, made a shrine of it. We know what later Christendom did, with shrines galore. The remarkable historical fact is that from that day onward, the early Christians abandoned the sepulcher, the grave, altogether. You never read in the epistle of Paul to the Galatians saying, now, if you like to make a little atonement for your sins and improve your Christian life on the whole, you'd be wise to take a, a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and go and pray at the sepulcher of Jesus. You'll get so many indulgences for that. There's no sort of advice in the epistles about that, is there? Why not? The women had come with spices to begin the process of turning it into a shrine where they could go and pray. Why didn't they? Because that morning, our blessed Lord appeared to Mary. Said, go tell my brothers I ascend to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God. He's standing the other side of death, and she's still in this life, announcing a relationship between her and him, between his brothers and him, and between them and the Father, which is eternal life, that relationship, and is not severed by death. The relationship so living and satisfying that the Christians abandoned the sepulcher and never tried to find it again until superstitious times prevailed. Evidence galore of different kind. We haven't time to consider it all. One last point. The really clever objectors will talk to us like this. Ha ha. So you believe that Jesus not only survived death, now let's get this clear, you're not just saying he survived death, you're saying he bodily came out of the grave. Yes. And you're saying that when Jesus returns, as you put it, thousands of millions of believers are going to be raised out of the grave. Yes. You mean the bodies that went in? Well, why not? Oh, I say come, come, come, come. Bodies are made up of cells and things and atoms, and the cell of the body all disintegrates and goes in the grass, and the cows come and eat the grass, and then they give milk and people drink the milk, or they go into the pigs and whatnot. How on earth is God going to raise the cells of that body, uh, uh, and a resurrected body when goodness knows where they are around the world now, you say? Well, you believe it if you like, I mean, if it comforts you. And they, of course, without knowing it, asking the question that Paul raises. In what body do they come? Interesting that, isn't it? A farmer doesn't get, uh, expect to get an ear of wheat out of the ground unless he first puts a kernel in. I think that's ordinary agriculture. So there is a connection between the body that's put in the grave and the body that rises. Yes. Don't let me alarm you that every cell in your body this last ten years, while you've still been alive, except a few brain cells maybe, and that's doubtful. I don't mean it's doubtful whether you have a few brain cells, I mean it's doubtful whether these remarks apply to brain cells, or some of them at any rate. And the scientists themselves tell us that within ten years, every cell in your body has changed. And yet use you all the time? You're still you. And your friends recognizably you. How do you manage difficulty myself? Thinking that the God who made us. Excuse my using my almost irreverent languages, language, knows our DNA. He knows the code that is us. It will not be something new that it never existed before, but God knows the code that you and nobody else in the whole universe from the year dot to the beginning of eternity. God isn't short of a little phosphorus or other necessary chemicals to give you a new body, and it will be really you. You are allowed to shout hallelujah, but do it quietly so as not to disturb the company. Now is Christ risen from the dead, the first fruits of them that slept. Oh, praise God for this glorious gospel. Let no one intimidate you in being afraid to preach the bodily resurrection of Christ and the bodily resurrection of those that have fallen asleep when the Lord Jesus comes again. And because it is so, we have today listened from our dear brother to exceedingly important practical exhortations that we witness for Christ in this dying world and be a saver and a roamer of Christ. Salt and light, the city hid upon a hill. It will take a lot of hard work. It might wear you up a bit sooner than you would get wear- worn up if you kept at home and took things easy. But, my brethren, because the resurrection is a glorious fact, the resurrection of Christ, and our resurrection a certain hope. Maybe when the Lord comes, we shall soon still be living and not need a resurrection, but a transformation. But because these things are so, wherefore, my dear brethren, be always abounding in the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord.