Merredin Uniting Church

I told you last time that for much of my life I had not been a Christian and I found the whole subject really of Christianity and religion very boring, I wasn’t interested in it, and I just thought it was completely irrelevant to my life.

But at the age of 27, I came to realise that the claims of Christianity were true and necessary if my life was to have any meaning. How that happened is another story – and I will share it during this series of Alpha Talks – but for now I want to look at why this is so—what is the evidence? I don’t believe that you can prove Christianity kind of like a mathematical proof, or a scientific proof, or even a philosophical proof. But it’s based on evidence —like the kind of evidence in a legal case you might put before a jury.

I spent twenty three years studying and practising as an economist, and while I sometimes had to just take a kind of blind leap of faith in the assessment of economic trends, mostly it was based on careful research and analysis. For me, it’s a question of taking a step of faith based on good historical evidence—the life, death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So what is the evidence? How do we know, for example, that Jesus even existed? The answer is that there’s a great deal of evidence: first of all, outside of the New Testament. The Roman historian Tacitus talks directly about Jesus. The Roman historian Suetonius talks indirectly about him.

The first-century Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, says this—he’s talking about Pilate, Pontius Pilate, and he says: `Now, there was about this time Jesus, a wise man—if it’s lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews and many of the Gentiles.’ And then he goes on to talk about his crucifixion and his alleged Resurrection.

So there’s evidence outside the New Testament that Jesus existed. But more important, there’s evidence inside the New Testament.

Some say, `Well, the New Testament was written a very long time ago. How do we know that what they wrote has not been changed over the years?’ And the answer is we do know very accurately, through the science of textual criticism, what the original writers wrote. And essentially, the more manuscripts we have, and the earlier they are, the less doubt there is about the original.

Sir Frederick Kenyon, who’s an expert in this field, sums it up like this: `The interval, between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established.’

So we know from evidence outside and inside the New Testament that he existed. But who was he? We know he was fully human: he had a human body—he ate, he drank, he sweated, he got tired, he suffered pain; he had human emotions—love, joy, sadness; he had human experiences—he had the experience of growing up in a family, of education, of having a job, of being tempted, bereavement, suffering, being tortured, and the experience of death.

Many today would say, `Okay, he was a human being, but only a human being, albeit maybe he was a great religious teacher.’

So, for example, Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code suggests Jesus was not the Son of God: he was a mortal prophet, a great and powerful man of staggering influence, a great religious teacher but not the Son of God. On the other hand, Bono, lead singer of U2, says this: `I believe that Jesus is the Son of God. I do believe it, odd as it sounds.’

So that’s the issue: what evidence is there to suggest that Jesus was more than just a great religious teacher?

Turn to Matthew, chapter 16, verse 13.

When Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he

asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

“But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”

Simon Peter answered, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

It’s possible to be with someone for a long time and not realise who they are.

In my previous congregation there was a man named Howard Watt. He died in 2005 and it was only in preparing for his funeral that I came to recognise who he was. He was the last surviving member of the legendary South African cricket team called “The Invincibles”. He was also a Springbok rugby player touring New Zealand in 1937. But not only that, he also represented the United States in cricket in 1932 when they were trying to establish the game, AND, he is the only man to have bowled out Sir Donald Bradman twice in one match – both times for a duck.

I had been this man’s pastor, had visited him regularly and spent days with him when his wife Rosalie was dying, but I never knew that he was famous … until the family began to share with me and presented me with an envelope full of press cuttings of his achievements.

When Jesus asked the question, Simon Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God!”

Now, the question is, was he right? What is the evidence?

There are two parts to this argument, really.

The first part is who did Jesus think he was? Because if Jesus didn’t think he was anything more than a human being, a great religious teacher, that’s the end of the argument. And some people say Jesus never claimed to be God. And it’s true he didn’t go around with a t-shirt saying `I am God’.  But when you look at everything he taught and said, I think there’s little doubt he was conscious of being a man whose identity was God.

So that’s the first part of the argument.

Secondly, was he right? What evidence is there to support his claims?

1. WHAT DID HE SAY ABOUT HIMSELF?

So let’s look at the first part of the argument: what did he say about himself? And there are three pieces of evidence. First of all, his teaching centred on himself. Most great religious teachers, they point away from themselves. They say, `Don’t look at me; look at God.’ Jesus, who was the most humble and self-effacing person who ever lived, in pointing people to God, pointed to himself—he said, `It’s through me that you come into a relationship with God.’

Jesus said: “I’m the way.” People are looking for values on which to base their lives. Jesus said: “I’m the truth.” I think all of us want some ultimate meaning, purpose, to our lives. Jesus said: “I’m the life.”

Other people said, `That’s the way.  That’s truth.  That’s life.’  Jesus said: “I’m the way, and the truth, and the life.”

He said: “If you receive me, you receive God. If you welcome me, you welcome God.” He said: “If you have seen me, you have seen God.”

The second piece of evidence is an indirect piece of evidence. Jesus said a number of things which, although they weren’t direct claims to be God, show that he regarded himself as being in the same position as God. Take one example: Jesus said to people, “Your sins are forgiven.” To forgive those who’ve sinned against us is something that we can all do; but to forgive those who’ve sinned against others is something only God can do.

The third piece of evidence is his direct claims, if you like.

Turn in your Bibles to John, chapter 20, verse 26.

This is after the Resurrection. Jesus appeared to a group of the disciples, but Thomas was not there. And when these disciples, who were friends of Thomas, said to him, `Thomas, we’ve seen Jesus risen from the dead!’ Thomas said, `Uh-uh, I’m not going to believe that! I’ll only believe if I can actually see the nail marks in his hands and actually put my finger in his side.’

Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.” Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”

Thomas called him God. And Jesus didn’t say, `Hey, hang on a second—that’s going too far!’ What he said to him: `Well, you were a bit slow to get the point!’ It says,

Then Jesus said to him, “Because you’ve seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

John, chapter 10, verses 30–33.

The background is that a claim tantamount to a claim to be God was blasphemy in the eyes of the religious leaders, and it was worthy of death by stoning. And Jesus says this, verse 30:

“I and the Father are one.” Again they picked up stones to stone him, then Jesus said to them, “I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?” “We’re not stoning you for any of these,” they replied, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere human being, claim to be God.”

So that’s the first part of the argument: what did Jesus say about himself? Obviously, claims like these need to be tested, because all kind of people claim to be all kinds of things. There are people who say they’re Elvis Presley resurrected from the dead.

How do we test such people’s claims? Well, Jesus claimed to be the unique Son of God, God made flesh. It seems to me—there are a whole variety of possibilities, but they basically boil down to three.

The first is that it wasn’t true, and that he knew it was untrue: in which case he was an impostor, he was a fraudster—and an evil one, at that.

Second is it was not true but he really didn’t realise it. He genuinely thought he was God: in which case he was deluded; I think we’d say he was insane.

But the only other logical possibility is that it’s true. C.S. Lewis put it like this:

`A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said wouldn’t be a great moral teacher; he’d either be insane or else he’d be the devil of hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the Son of God or else insane or something worse. But don’t let us come up with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He hasn’t left that open to us. He didn’t intend to.’

2. WHAT EVIDENCE IS THERE TO SUPPORT WHAT HE SAID?

1) Well, I guess the first area you might look at: what did he teach? The teaching of Jesus is widely acknowledged to be the greatest teaching that’s ever fallen from the lips of a human being. “Love your neighbour as yourself.  Do to others what you would have them do to you. Love your enemy. Turn the other cheek.”

John Mortimer, who’s the creator of Rumpole and is a leading atheist, and has often attacked Christians, and still describes himself as an atheist; but he says now he’s had a change of heart and he describes himself as `a leading member of the Atheists For Christ Society’! Asked what brought about this change, he said: `Seeing the impact on society of a generation that has rejected God and, as a result, Christian ethics. What is beyond doubt,’ he writes, `is that the Gospels provide a system of ethics to which we must return if we are to avoid social disasters.’ And the article was headed: `Even the unbelievers should go back to church today.’

Jesus’ teaching has been the foundation of really our entire civilisation in the West. Many of our laws were originally based on the teaching of Jesus. We’re making progress in every field of science and technology—but no one’s ever improved on the moral teaching of Jesus. They’re the greatest words ever spoken. They’re the kind of words you’d expect God to speak.

2) Then what about his lifestyle—what about the things that he did? Jesus must have been the most extraordinary person to be around! People sometimes say, `Oh, Christianity’s boring!’ It certainly wouldn’t have been boring being with Jesus.

Can you imagine how amazing it would be to go to a party with Jesus! Do you remember, one time he went to a party and the wine ran out, and he said, `You see those stone jugs over there, stone jars? Fill them up with twenty or thirty gallons of water each and start pouring them out for the guests.’ And as they did so and poured it out, out came the best cabernet you can imagine!

And how wonderful it would be to go, say, hospital-visiting with Jesus! Remember, one time he went into a hospital and there was a man in there who’d been an invalid for thirty-eight years, and he said, `Get up, take up your bed and walk,’ and the man walked out of the hospital, healed.

Imagine going on a picnic with Jesus—don’t bring any food; come as you are!

Or even imagine going to a funeral with Jesus. Remember one time he went to a funeral, and when he arrived the guy had been dead for four days, and he said, `Take the stone away.’  And they said, `Oh, we can’t do that—there’ll be a terrible smell!’ He said, `Just take it away.’ And the man came out wrapped in his grave-clothes! He said, `Untie him and let him go.’

Not just his miracles but his love for the loveless, his love for people who society had written off—the outcasts. And the way he set people free, and still sets people free today. And of course, I suppose, ultimately his death—laying down his life for his friends.

3) And then his character has impressed millions who wouldn’t call themselves Christians.

Time Magazine said this: `Jesus, the most persistent symbol of purity, selflessness and love in the history of Western humanity.’

Could such a person really be evil or unbalanced?

4) Fourth piece of evidence is his fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy.  No one else in the history of humanity has had a whole collection of books written about them before they were born. Jesus fulfilled over 300 Old Testament prophecies spoken by different voices over hundreds of years, 29 of them in a single day.

It could be suggested he was a kind of clever conman who deliberately set out—he read all these prophecies and he thought, `Right, I’m going to go through and I’m going to fulfil them in my life.’ The difficulty with that is first of all the sheer number of them, and then the fact that humanly speaking he had no control over many of these things—there were prophecies about the exact manner of his death, about the place of his burial, even about the place of his birth. If he was a conman he couldn’t say: `Oh goodness, I’m supposed to be born in Bethlehem’—it’s too late!

5) Fifth piece of evidence, and by far the most important, his conquest of death. The physical resurrection from the dead of Jesus is the cornerstone of Christianity. So what evidence is there that the Resurrection really happened? Let me summarise under four main headings.

? First of all, his absence from the tomb. The locus of the tomb is well-known. Many theories have been put forward to explain the fact that Jesus’ body was absent from the tomb the first Easter Day, but none of them are very convincing. First, it’s been suggested that Jesus didn’t die on the cross and he recovered in some way in the cool of the tomb. But, if any of you have seen Mel Gibson’s film The Passion, you know what it means to undergo a Roman flogging and crucifixion. People didn’t survive that. A stone weighing one and a half tons was put in front of the tomb. Furthermore, there’s a fascinating piece of evidence.

Turn to John, chapter 19, verse 33.

But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs [breaking legs was to speed up death by crucifixion]. Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water.

It appears that there had been a separation of the clot and the serum, which we now know is good medical evidence that he was dead.  But they didn’t have that medical evidence at the time; they were simply writing it because that’s what happened.

Then people have said, `Well, maybe the disciples stole the body, and then they began a rumour that Jesus had been resurrected.’  But leaving aside the fact that the tomb was guarded, it’s psychologically improbable that here is a depressed, disillusioned group of people—look at what they had to go through for their beliefs. Noone would be willing to be tortured and die for something that they would have known was not true.

Others have said, `Well, maybe the authorities took the body.’ That’s the least probable of all, because if they had the body, all they had to do when people were saying `Jesus is risen from the dead` was to say `No, he’s not. Here’s the body.’

Look how quickly we were shown the body of Muammar Gaddafi—because they wanted us to know they were dead.

Other people say, `Well, maybe robbers stole the body.’ That’s the least likely of all, because—I haven’t actually talked about the `empty’ tomb, because the tomb was not empty. Jesus’ body was absent. When the disciples got to the tomb they found the grave-clothes, which were the only valuable thing, the only thing for robbers to take—they had collapsed like a caterpillar’s cocoon when the butterfly’s emerged. And the headpiece that had been around Jesus’ head had been folded up and put in a separate place. And when they saw that, they believed.

? Second piece of evidence. First, the absence of Jesus’ body from the tomb. Secondly, his presence with the disciples—he was seen. Sometimes people say, `Well, hallucination.’ Yeah, people do hallucinate, but it is highly unlikely that even two people would have the same hallucination. Jesus appeared on eleven separate occasions, on one occasion to more than 500 people at one time. 500 people could not have the same hallucination.

? And then the third piece of evidence is the immediate impact. Here were a group of disciples who were discouraged, depressed, fearful, hiding—and something occurred that totally changed them so that they went around telling everybody, `We’ve seen Jesus! Jesus is alive!’ And then you get this historical phenomenon we know about which is the birth and growth of the Christian church. And it’s an extraordinary phenomenon, because beginning with a group of basically fishermen and tax collectors there is this explosion in 300 years right across the whole known world. It’s a story of a peaceful revolution with no parallel, really, in the history of the world.

? Fourth piece of evidence is Christian experience down the ages.  Countless millions of people down the ages have experienced the risen Jesus Christ. And it’s people of every ethnicity, continent, nationality, every economic, social, intellectual background, from all walks of life: they unite in this common experience of the risen Jesus—millions of Christians all around the world today experiencing this relationship.

I told you at the beginning that I came to the conclusion that the claims of Christianity are true. But I didn’t want to become a Christian—I thought, `If I become a Christian, my life will be miserable from now on!’ And I tried to put it off, I tried to find ways not to become a Christian, but eventually basically I just said, `Yes.’ And at that moment I experienced I think what unconsciously I’d been searching for all my life. I experienced something that gave ultimate meaning and purpose to life—in a relationship with Jesus. And that was the last place in the world I expected to find it. It was at that moment it kind of dropped from my head to my heart.

I’m far from perfect. I mess up, I’ve got masses of failings; but I can tell you that over the last 34 years since then I have experienced the love of Jesus Christ, his power, and a relationship with him that convinces me that he really is alive.

What I’ve been trying to argue is that when you look at the claims of Jesus, who he said he was, and the possibilities of him being evil or deluded, I think we can rule them out as being impossible when you look at his teaching, his life, his character, his fulfilment of prophecy, his resurrection from the dead—those explanations become – to say that he was evil or deluded is kind of absurd, it’s illogical.

And therefore, the point that Sherlock Holmes made, when you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains must be the truth. And actually when you look at those, they lend the strongest possible support to Jesus’ own consciousness of being a man whose identity was God.

C.S. Lewis put it like this. He said:

`We are faced, then, with a frightening alternative. The man we are talking about was and is just what he said or else insane or something worse. Now, it seems to me obvious that he was neither insane nor a fiend; and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that he was and is God.’

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