4-8-07
“How Deep is Your Faith?”
Easter Sunday Message
Luke 24:33-43

Summary: Ignorance of God is a moral evil. God wants you to know Him and is knowable and has provided corroborated evidence. The disciples doubted even when Jesus appeared (we are prone to resist truth). They believed the reports but then doubted out of joy when Jesus appeared (too good to be true and faith is tested by the presence of God). Force doubts to face the facts. This shows layers of faith. Only the deepest layer touches all of life. Believing the resurrection = accepting the supreme Lordship of Christ. 

Luke 24:33 That very hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem. They found the Eleven and those with them gathered together, 34 who said, "The Lord has certainly been raised, and has appeared to Simon!" 35 Then they began to describe what had happened on the road and how He was made known to them in the breaking of the bread. 36 And as they were saying these things, He Himself stood among them. He said to them, "Peace to you!" 37 But they were startled and terrified and thought they were seeing a ghost. 38 "Why are you troubled?" He asked them. "And why do doubts arise in your hearts? 39 Look at My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself! Touch Me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have." 40 Having said this, He showed them His hands and feet. 41 But while they still could not believe1 because of their joy and amazement, He asked them, "Do you have anything here to eat?" 42 So they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish, 43 and He took it and ate in their presence.

Introduction

Ignorance of God is a moral evil – God is knowable
Our culture worships education and knowledge. Education is considered the solution to just about every problem. Whether it is war or AIDS or teen pregnancy or crime or poverty - the solution to everything is education. In our culture ignorance is considered a very bad thing – unless it is ignorance about God. They say it is crucial for you to know about history and science and language, but knowledge of the Creator, the all-powerful being who is the only standard of good and evil, and who holds the keys to heaven and hell is not necessary. 
One of the ugliest black marks of sin in the human heart is our natural tendency toward indifference about the knowledge of God. Most people think about God and say, “Maybe He exists, but I don’t know much about Him. And I would really rather just not think about it. I would rather watch TV than think about God.”
Ignorance about God is bad enough, but indifference about the knowledge of God – just not caring – that is flat out evil. Knowledge of the holy, knowledge of the good, knowledge of the most important reality in existence is a virtue – that is good. And therefore when you don’t care about knowledge of the good, that is evil.
People intuitively know that, and so they try to excuse their indifference. That is the whole purpose of agnosticism. An agnostic is someone who says, “I don’t know God, and it is okay for me not to know. I am ignorant about God, but that ignorance does not point to any moral deficiency in me. It is okay for me to be ignorant in this area.”
God wants you to know Him
And usually the way they justify that is by saying that it is impossible to know God. He is too distant to be knowable, or there are too many religions in the world to know for sure which one is the right one. But if it is true that knowledge of God is a virtue and God wants you to know Him, it stands to reason that He would make it possible for you to know Him, right? If it is true that God wants us to know Him, then you would expect Him to be like the God of the Bible who is the only God of any religion who backs up His claims with verifiable proof.  Every other religion takes what I call the “just trust me” approach. 
“God spoke to me in a cave.”
“Do you have proof?”
“No, just trust me.”
The God of the Bible outlawed “just trust me” type prophets. If some person came along claiming to be a prophet, and he did not have miracles to prove that he was a prophet, he was to be rejected. According to Deuteronomy 18:22, if he ever had even one detail of his prophecy that did not take place they were to regard him as a false prophet. So when you read on the pages of the Bible that the Jewish people accepted a person as a prophet, you can rest assured, that particular prophet was not one of the “just trust me” types. For the prophet to be accepted there had to be authenticating miracles, and those miracles had to be publicly verified by an adequate number of eye-witnesses. 
The true God is not limited to miracles in a private cave. He does things out in the open. And He makes claims that are verifiable or falsifiable. His prophets say things like, “I’ll put a sacrifice out before my God and you put a sacrifice out before your gods and we will see which one gets consumed with fire from heaven. And then they gather as many people as possible together to watch.

Isa.45:19 I have not spoken in secret, somewhere in a land of darkness.

Acts 26:26 These things were not done in a corner.

The people who hated Jesus accused Him of all kinds of things. They said He got the power for His miracles from the devil, or demons, or magic. Or that He had sinful motives. But one thing they never did was deny that the miracles happened. They couldn’t because those miracles were done publicly in front of many witnesses.
The reason for that lengthy introduction is to set the context for the greatest miracle God ever did – the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. This miracle is the greatest and most important, and for that reason God saw to it that it would have the most corroborating evidence. There is more compelling evidence, both biblical and secular, for the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead than there is for any other miracle claim of any religion in the world. In fact, there is more compelling historical proof of Jesus’ resurrection than there is for any event in ancient history period – miraculous or non-miraculous. 
My goal here is not to summarize all that evidence (if you want that you can take a look at the pastor’s blog page on TreasuringGod.com) but to explore why God gave that evidence and the effect it should have on our hearts. God’s purpose goes way beyond just convincing you that the resurrection happened.
The goal of all my messages is to show you the wonder and beauty and goodness and majesty and attractiveness and desirability of the glory of God. So in each message I want to highlight at least one attribute – one of the characteristics of God, and showcase what it is about that attribute that is so wonderful.
In this message that attribute or characteristic is the fact that God is knowable. He has the power to conceal Himself so that we could never know Him. But it is part of His nature to condescend to make Himself knowable to us. So as you read this message, enjoy being the child of a God who is like this.

Setting
We pick up the story at night, on the day of Jesus’ Resurrection. They had heard about the empty tomb, but were not convinced of the resurrection. So they head for Emmaus, seven miles away. But then Jesus appeared to them in Emmaus and ate with them, and they were so excited to tell the others that they walked all the way back to Jerusalem.
Ten of the Apostles and several other disciples are sitting there in the house in Jerusalem and suddenly “BANG, BANG, BANG” – someone is at the door. They open the door (and then lock it behind them), and two men come busting in, gasping and panting – all out of breath, saying, “Guess what! Jesus is alive! We spoke with Him!” But the Apostles responded by saying, “We know! Peter saw Him too. You’re right – He is alive indeed!”

Luke 24:33 That very hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem. They found the Eleven and those with them gathered together, 34 who said,  "The Lord has certainly been raised, and has appeared to Simon!"

The Apostles had not believed either when they heard the tomb was empty. But then Jesus appeared to Peter, so now they believe. Then here come these two men who also saw Jesus who had walked with Him, talked with Him, and ate with Him.  In verse 35 these two start telling their whole story, but they get interrupted. 

35 Then they began to describe what had happened on the road and how He was made known to them in the breaking of the bread. 36 And as they were saying these things, He Himself stood among them. He said to them, "Peace to you!"

So Jesus just suddenly appears there with them inside this locked room.
Truth Resistance: Why are you disinclined? 

37 But they were startled and terrified and thought they were seeing a ghost. 

What a strange thing to assume – a ghost. Why would they assume that? Most of the things we see have natural causes, and so it is reasonable to search for a natural cause for things you see. But that is not the reason for their doubt, because look at what they are thinking. They see Jesus and assume He is a ghost! They had seen more resurrections than ghosts.
The reason they were reluctant to believe was not just because of the natural tendency to be skeptical about things that seem to be supernatural. They were prepared to accept a supernatural explanation – just not the true one.
There is an aversion in the natural human heart to believing the truth about God. It is harder to deal with, because it confronts you with some big time implications. If what I am seeing is a ghost that is a little spooky, but there are not a lot major implications for how I live my life. But if it is God standing there, that is something I have to deal with seriously.
If the truth about God is really true, the implications for my life - the implications regarding my responsibilities before Him, and His ownership of me, and my guilt before Him - the implications of those things are so frightening that most people are prepared to accept even the most unlikely, irrational, unsupportable conclusions before accepting the truth. Natural or supernatural, it doesn’t matter as long as I can escape the frightening implications of the truth:  – a holy God to whom I belong, who I can’t control, who makes all the rules and determines everyone’s fate, and who makes demands of His creatures.
Accepting the reality of a God like that is going to call for such an upheaval in my world that the attitude of the natural human heart is to search for any other explanation. And even after we are born again and we receive a new nature and are changed, there is still some of that residual tendency in us. 
One of the most important things to ask yourself when you are either eager to believe something or reluctant to believe it is why? Don’t just focus on the evidence, as though that were the only factor – it is not. If someone showed me lots and lots and lots of evidence that my wife was a bank robber, I would doubt the truth of it even if I had no explanation for the evidence. It would really take some extremely airtight proof to ever convince me. But there are other people that if you just told me in passing that they were crooked I would be inclined to believe you. And it would hardly take any evidence to convince me.
I know why I’m slow to believe bad things about my wife. It is because I trust her. And I know why I’m quicker to believe bad things about some others – it’s because I don’t trust them. But let me ask you this – do you know why you are so slow to believe the things you are slow to believe about God? Do you know why you are quick to believe other things? 
Those are questions we should constantly be asking ourselves. If you are under the ridiculous illusion that you are completely unbiased and that you go wherever the evidence points without any inclination of your soul one way or the other, you are living in a fantasy world. Always ask yourself – what is it about this particular truth that makes me disinclined to believe it?

Doubts
Too good to be true

38 "Why are you troubled?" He asked them. "And why do doubts arise in your hearts?

This is fascinating. Jesus appears to them – He is standing right there; they are looking at Him with their own eyes. And they are doubting. They are not convinced. So Jesus shows them His hands and feet and side so they can see the wounds from the crucifixion. And He eats fish so they know He’s not a ghost. And he lets them touch Him. And even after all that, look at verse 41 – they still could not believe. The reason I say that is fascinating is because of what just came out of their mouths moments earlier. In verse 34 they were affirming to the guys from Emmaus, “Yes, He is risen indeed! Absolutely! Peter saw Him – we know He’s alive!” And then Jesus appears to them, and they are doubting! How can that happen? They had solid evidence that it was true, and they believed it. Now they are confronted with even greater evidence, and they go back to doubting. What’s going on?
Luke gives us the answer in verse 41. 

they still could not believe because of joy and amazement

It was joy that kept them from believing. How can joy keep you from believing something? 
When a fact is presented that is exceedingly wonderful, the more wonderful it is the more prone we are to be skeptical. That is why we have the saying, “It’s too good to be true.” And that is not a bad thing. It is wise to have a “too good to be true” type skepticism. You need that to guard yourself against believing things that are not really true just because you want to believe them. We are naturally skeptical about really good news. If someone calls you and tells you that you’ve won a coupon for a free salad with the purchase of any two full-priced entrees at some restaurant, there is no reason to doubt what they are saying. But if your phone rings and someone says, “You just won a one hundred million dollar sweepstakes,” chances are you’re going to be a little more skeptical. 
The joy of the fact of Jesus being back among them alive and well didn’t really hit them with full force when they just heard about it. It was not until they were actually in His presence that it really hit them, and then it was so amazing that it just seemed way too good to be true.
There is a sense in which Jesus’ appearing to them really put their faith to the test. The test of whether you actually believe is not what answer you would mark down on a theology quiz, or even what you tell people. The real test of whether you believe Jesus is alive is how you respond to Him personally when you are confronted with Him. The real test is whether you behave, when you are in His presence, as though He exists or doesn’t exist. The real test for me regarding whether I believe that Jesus rose from the dead is “Will I interact with Him and behave as though He is actually here, or will I ignore Him and think and act as a person thinks and acts when he is alone? When the reality of His resurrection starts having implications for how I live my life, will I accept the fact of His resurrection then?
Layers of faith
This passage reminds us how incredibly fragile our faith is. One minute we are assuring someone that He is risen indeed, and the next minutes we’re wrestling with doubt. Then another time we are living and thinking the same way we would if we did not even believe Jesus existed. 
And the reason for that is because there are layers of belief. Some things we believe at one level, but not at a deeper level. When you first accept a truth it does not instantly attach itself to all your other beliefs. You don’t fully believe something until that truth has had a chance to work its way through all your other believes, so that you understand the relationship between that truth and all the other things you believe. 
For example, suppose one day you learn for the first time that the only thing that can satisfy the longings of the human soul is the presence of God. You hear a sermon on Jeremiah two which shows that God is like water to the thirsty soul. Earthly pleasures cannot satisfy your deepest cravings. You say “amen” to the sermon and accept it as true. Now that you have accepted it as true, you believe it at one level. But it takes some time for that truth to attach itself to all the rest of the beliefs that you hold to be true. So the next day after learning that truth, you are faced with a choice between sleeping in or getting up early so you can spend some time with God before going to work. You are forced to choose – which one is going to be more satisfying to my soul, sleeping in or spending extended time alone with God? And for your soul (your soul is the place where all your desires and appetites are) - for your soul that choice is a no-brainer. You roll over and go back to sleep.
You were intellectually convinced that the principle was true when you were sitting in church on Sunday morning, but it is going to take a little doing to convince your soul that it is true in the context of an early Monday morning. In fact, it might take years for you to even realize that the principle applies to the context of an early Monday morning. 
A while later you get an unexpected letter from the IRS that says you made a mistake on your return two years ago and you owe them a huge amount of money. So you have to cancel the vacation you’ve been looking forward to, and you have to sell your nice car and some other things you really treasure, and you find yourself in a really bad mood.
Now, when that letter arrived, what happened to your ability to enjoy the presence of God? How did that affect the availability and accessibility of fellowship with God? It didn’t. God is just as available as ever. You have just as much access to him as you did before the letter arrived, and yet you are unhappy. Why? If you have just as much access as you did before to the only thing that can ultimately satisfy your desires, what’s to be unhappy about? 
You’re unhappy because your soul believes that principle in the context of Sunday morning, and it is starting to believe it in the context of early Monday morning, but it hasn’t made any connections in your brain yet with regard to vacations and money. And so now it’s another whole process to think through that principle in relationship to vacations and money, so that you believe it in that context as well.
There are layers of believing. And when a truth gets to the bottom layer - when you really, fully believe something, you view all of reality through the lens that principle. An example of that is your faith in gravity. Your mind and heart so fully believe in gravity that you consider it in connection with absolutely any and every circumstance. You don’t walk off a thirty foot ledge and say, “Oh, I didn’t realize gravity also applies in the context of thirty foot ledges.” You are fully aware of gravity in every context where it applies.
When you learn a revolutionary truth from God’s Word, your confidence in that truth usually does not permeate every level of belief in your heart right away. That is why the man in Mark 9:24 said, “Lord I believe, help my unbelief.” I have accepted the truth as a fact at one level, help it to filter all through my heart so it becomes a lens through which my very perception of reality is viewed.
Full belief in the resurrection results in full commitment to Lordship
So, what is the effect of believing in the resurrection at the deepest level? What happens when you believe with your whole heart that God raised Jesus from the dead? According to Romans 10:9 if you believe with your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead you will be saved. I was meditating on that passage this week and something struck me that I hadn’t really seen before. In verses six to eight Paul quotes from Deuteronomy thirty where God gave the people His law and then said, “Don’t say to yourself, ‘This is out of my reach’.”  Don’t say that – it is not out of your reach. It is not way up in the heavens or way down in the depths where you cannot go. It is near you. What God requires of you is accessible; it is near. It is so near it is in your mouth and in your heart.
Now, what does that mean that what God requires of me is not out of my reach, it is nearby and accessible to me because it is in my mouth and heart? It is not too hard. It is doable by my mouth and heart. What is it that my mouth and heart can do to satisfy the requirements of God? Paul explains in the very next verse:

Ro.10:8-10 The message is near you, in your mouth and in your heart. This is the message of faith that we proclaim: 9 if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 With the heart one believes, resulting in righteousness, and with the mouth one confesses, resulting in salvation. 

What struck me about this the other day was the unity of what happens with the mouth and the heart. Don’t think of the confession with your mouth of the Lordship of Christ as separate from the believing in your heart that God raised Him from the dead. Those are not two different things. They are two aspects of the same thing – faith. Now, that much I understood already. I realized that believing in the heart and confessing with the mouth are two parts of the same thing. They are both part of faith.
What was new to me was the parallelism here between resurrection and lordship. The two are essentially equated here. The truth has to be believed in your heart and confessed with your mouth. That truth is described first as lordship and then as resurrection. But they are talking about the same thing – not two different things.
Believing that God raised Jesus from the dead is the same as believing in the supreme lordship of Christ. Why? I believe Lazarus was raised from the dead, but I don’t regard him as Lord. I believe the widow’s son and the Centurion’s daughter and Eutychus were raised from the dead, but I don’t think of them as Lords of the Universe. So why is it different for Jesus?
Here is why: It is different because Jesus spent His whole ministry announcing to people that He was the Messiah, that God the Father was going to glorify Him above all and make Him the final Judge of everyone on Judgment Day. He claimed that He would come again someday and rule the Kingdom of God. He would reign as the absolute sovereign of the new heavens and new earth. And all the nations would bow before Him. And God the Father would validate all those claims by raising Him from the dead.
 When you have a person claiming all that, and saying, “God will verify the truth of all this by raising me up on the third day,” and then God does exactly that,  believing that God raised Him from the dead is the same thing as believing that He is the supreme Lord of all. It is believing that He is all He claimed to be.
Believing in the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is not simply a matter of agreeing that the event took place. Believing that God raised Him from the dead means believing in the validation of His massive claims to be the supreme Lord of all. And you can tell how many layers deep your belief in the resurrection goes by how responsive you are to His Lordship.
Think of the change that took place in the people who were convinced of the resurrection. For example, think of Jesus’ brother James. During Jesus’ lifetime James saw the miracles Jesus performed and was not convinced by them. In fact, in Mark 3:21 he concluded that Jesus was insane. When James heard His brother claiming to be the Lord of all James thought Jesus had literally lost His mind. I am sure James had a lot of embarrassing times when people asking about Jesus. “Yes I know – my brother the nutcase.” That is what Jesus was to James.
Then on the third day after the crucifixion the tomb was empty, but that didn’t convince James either. But then something happened that changed James forever. 1 Corinthians 15:7 says Jesus, after He rose from the dead, went and found His brother James. He appeared to James and did the same things with James that He is doing here with the Apostles – He gave proof after proof to build a faith that went all the way to the core. He appeared personally with such undeniable, compelling proof that James was not only convinced, but he believed at every level of faith – like your belief in gravity.
Later when James wrote his epistle listen to how he started his letter:

James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ…

He goes from, “Jesus, my brother the nutcase” to “I am a servant of the Lord Jesus Christ.” (That’s a very powerful piece of evidence for the resurrection by the way. Think of what it would take for you to say that about your brother – “I am a servant of the Lord Fred, the Christ.”?) Belief in the resurrection meant submission to the Lordship of Christ.
This is why Jesus provided such extensive and compelling proof of His resurrection over a period of almost a month and a half after He was raised.

Acts 1:3 After his suffering, he showed himself to these men and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God.

Now let’s go back to Luke 24 and watch how Jesus deepens their faith.
Force doubt to explain the evidence
I love the way Jesus responded to their doubt. If you think about it – what an awkward thing this is. Here are His disciples who had been with Him for years. He had told them repeatedly that He was going to die and rise on the third day. And now He has proved it to them. He is standing right in front of them. And they are doubting.
He knows they are doubting. They know they are doubting. This man they had called “Lord” is now standing there before them trying to convince them He is risen, and they are doubting. I am sure they know they should not be doubting, and this ought to be a moment of unmixed, exuberant joy instead - but the fact remained, they had doubts. What an incredibly uncomfortable, awkward moment.
I love the way Jesus handles it. He just lays it right out there on the table. He does not just ignore the elephant in the room or try to pretend nothing is wrong. He does not let them pretend nothing is wrong. Look what He does:

38 "Why are you troubled?" He asked them. "And why do doubts arise in your hearts?

One of the dumbest mistakes people make when they are struggling with doubt is to try to pretend they are not struggling with doubt. Doubt is one of the common obstacles of the Christian life. Even the greatest men and women of the faith have struggled with it. John the Baptist was the greatest man ever born up to his time, according to Jesus, and even he struggled with doubt at the end of his life.
Doubt is like an infection. If you ignore it, it can become deadly. You have to kill it. You have to take the full dose of your antibiotics until every trace of it is gone.
So how do you do that? How do you kill doubt? Do just what Jesus did here: 

39 Look at My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself! Touch Me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have." 40 Having said this, He showed them His hands and feet.

The way Jesus dealt with their doubt was to force them to confront the evidence. If they were going to continue to doubt they were going to have to come up with some explanation for this evidence. When your soul wants to doubt, take your soul by the back of the neck and force it to stare right in the face of the evidence. And force it to give you an alternate explanation for that evidence. “OK soul, you want to doubt? You want to imagine that maybe Christianity is not true?  Fine – you tell me what is true. You give me a viable alternative to the Christian world view. You tell me a non-Christian system of belief that doesn’t have massive holes in it.”
Alistair Begg has some great advice about doubt. I heard him say in an interview once, “I’ve learned to doubt my doubt. If I am going to doubt my certainties, I should also doubt my doubt.” So when a doubt comes into your mind, and your soul wants to act like it is plausible, start doubting the doubt and make your soul try to defend it.
Here is an example of how this might sound in your head: “Maybe Christianity is not really true. Most everyone in the world believes what their mom and dad taught them, I’m no different. I think I have evidence, but so do all the Muslims and Jews and Jehovah’s Witnesses and Atheists. We all tend to overstate the evidence in our favor and ignore the counter-evidence. What if that is what I’m doing?”
And your spirit overhears your soul trying to pass that doubt off as some kind of legitimate argument, so your spirit says to your soul, “Okay, fine. Let’s drop Christianity. We will start believing in some other system. But first, tell me what we are going to do about the resurrection of Jesus Christ.”
And so your soul answers: “Let’s just accept the common consensus of the majority of secular historians who do not believe in Christianity.” Most scholars of ancient history do not believe in the resurrection of Jesus Christ. 
If the doctors all agree that caffeine harms the lining of your stomach, I will accept that as true. If all the historians agree the Alexander the Great really lived, but some of the stories told about him are probably fictional, then I will believe that. That is the way I operate with regard to other areas of study, so that is what I will do here.
So then your spirit says, “Fine. Let’s just accept the version of events that the great majority of non-Christian experts all agree on with regard to Jesus’ death and supposed resurrection.” Here is a list of those facts.
Jesus’ appearances 
The consensus among unbelieving, secular experts of ancient history who have studied the evidence is this: They admit that the man referred to as Jesus in the Bible really did live at that time, and really was from Nazareth. So if you are going to doubt that you are going to have to go against the consensus of even the secular experts. They are not Christians, and so they have no reason to fudge the evidence on that point. They just all admit it is true because there is such compelling evidence. Another thing they agree on is that that Jesus claimed that He was the Son of God and that He would rise from the dead. Most scholars don’t believe the claims are actually true, but they do admit Jesus made the claims. This historical evidence cannot be ignored. Jesus of Nazareth died by crucifixion just outside Jerusalem under Pontius Pilate during the reign of Tiberius Caesar at Passover time. That part is established for sure. He was buried in the tomb of a rich man, and the tomb was sealed and guarded by Rome. On the third day that tomb was empty. Initially not even His followers believed that He was raised. Then something happened that convinced His disciples and thousands of other Jews and Gentiles that Jesus rose from the dead and was alive. They were so convinced that they were willing to die in great numbers for their belief. All of that is undisputed by the great majority of unbelieving scholars. There is an amazing unity of agreement on all those points.
So then how do the unbelieving scholars explain it? How could all those things be true if Jesus did not rise from the dead? What happened to the body? At this point the amazing unity splatters out into a shotgun variety of explanations - none of which enjoy a majority consensus among scholars.
That means no matter which one you pick, you’re going to have to go against the majority of scholars, because the majority of scholars reject every single one of them. So at this point you have to go with a minority view.
The view that Jesus’ body could have been stolen? - Rejected by the majority of scholars. It contradicts the evidence.
The view that Jesus didn’t really die – untenable. Completely rejected by the majority of scholars. 
The view that the hundreds of eye-witnesses had hallucinations? Not only rejected by the majority, but really just silly. The Disciples neither expected nor believed the resurrection at first. Imagine someone using that kind of reasoning in court: “Yes judge, all these eye-witnesses claim to have seen me rob the bank, and all the other evidence points to that, and there is no counter-evidence, but you see judge, you have to consider the possibility that all those witnesses had a hallucination.” Or “There is no such person as President Bush. Everyone who claims to have seen him are all having hallucinations.” You have to really, really be desperate to resort to that kind of argument - especially when you are dealing with hundreds of eye-witnesses.
What about the theory that the story was invented by the Apostles? These men who gave the world the highest ethical system it has ever known and who lived out that ethic in remarkable ways - those men made up a lie and died for what they knew was a lie? That theory is so counter to the evidence that it has been completely rejected by most scholars.
Now, if you throw Christian scholars into the mix; if you consider the whole body of scholars, do you know which of the theories enjoys the most support and agreement and greatest consensus? It is the view that Jesus actually rose from the dead. Granted, that is still a minority view, but it enjoys more support than any other view.
So there is a mountain of compelling evidence in favor of the resurrection. What about the evidence against it? What do the scholars who reject the resurrection offer for counter-evidence? 
The only piece of counter-evidence is the assumption that miracles can’t happen. That’s it. The problem is, that is not evidence. It is just an assumption. And when you start out by assuming the very thing you are trying to prove, that is called circular reasoning, and it’s a logical fallacy. 

So, the next time your soul wants to doubt Christianity, follow Jesus’ example. He did not just pretend their doubts did not exist. He brought them right out into the open and forced them to reckon with the evidence. Force your soul to stare the evidence right in the face and deal with it. Say, “Soul, you want to doubt Christianity? Fine. Just give me some reasonable explanation of the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus.” Don’t let your soul get away with mindless doubting. If it is a serious doubt, fine. Serious, genuine doubts are actually good things, because they drive you to examine the evidence with an open mind. But do not let your soul get away with mindless doubting that doesn’t think through the question seriously.
I wish we had time to take a look at verses 44-46, where Jesus points to another absolutely undeniable, unarguable proof: prophecy. The “just trust me” religions know better than to try to put prophecies in their scriptures because if you have a humanly authored book you are going to be exposed in a hurry if you start making announcements about the future.
But a God who knows and controls the future is not afraid to do it. According to the Encyclopedia of Biblical Prophecy 27% of the verses in the Bible announce some future event. That is well over 8000 verses. When a book makes specific, detailed predictions of what will happen in the future 8000 times and never gets one wrong, it is pretty obvious that it is of divine origin. 
Conclusion
I have talked about a lot of things this morning and I want to make sure my main point is not lost. So let me close by stating it as clearly as I know how. When you think about Jesus resurrection, think lordship. Believing in the resurrection means being responsive to and submissive to Jesus Christ as the absolute, sovereign Lord of everything, because the resurrection was not just a body coming back to life - it was divine validation of the claims of Jesus. When you study biblical prophecy and the evidence for the resurrection of Jesus, don’t just do that to get ammo for your next debate with an unbeliever. Study those things to make your faith penetrate to deeper and deeper levels of your being, so that you will be more and more responsive to the lordship of Christ.
And when you do testify to the world about these things remember that you are testifying not just to the fact that a first century body came back to life. You are testifying to the fact that God the Father validated Jesus claims of absolute lordship. 
That old worship chorus has it exactly right: “He is Lord, He is Lord. He has risen from the dead and He is Lord. Every knee shall bow, every tongue confess, that Jesus Christ is Lord. 

Benediction:
2Co 4:14 we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you in his presence. 16  Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.