Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Do You Have a Reason for Your Faith? | Mark | 1 Peter 3.15

Starting point is 00:00:05 Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life in the time it takes to get to work. I'm Keith Simon. And I'm Patrick Miller. If this podcast has been helping you in your walk with God, would you take five seconds to help us? Hop onto Twitter and follow our new Twitter account at TMBT Podcast. If you go there, you can see our latest episodes. You can also follow Keith and I and send us messages. We'd love to follow you back and see what's happening in your life.

Starting point is 00:00:34 Right now we are asking who is Jesus. Why do you believe in Jesus? It used to be I would hear people tell me, oh, I just have faith. But I find that interesting because that's not the kind of answer that the Bible calls us to give. Peter wrote a letter to early Christians in modern day Turkey, and this is what he told them to do. He said that you should always be prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for the reason for the hope that is in you. yet do it with gentleness and respect. He said, you need to give a reasonable reason for your faith, not like a jerk,

Starting point is 00:01:13 but he also is not saying, just tell them that you just believe, that you just have faith. This was the approach of the earliest disciples of Jesus. They didn't believe that he rose from the dead because they made some sort of irrational leap of faith. They believed it because they saw it with their own two eyes, and they were prepared to make a reasonable defense. When I'm talking to someone who's curious about the claims of Christianity, maybe that's you. Maybe you're listening to this podcast right now because you're Christian curious. You wonder, is there really a good reason to believe in the resurrection?

Starting point is 00:01:49 Well, if that's you, you might ask me where to start. How do you start determining whether you can trust Jesus in the Bible? And my answer is always the same. Start with the resurrection of Jesus. It's the only place to start because every person, whether you're, a Christian or not must answer this question. Was the resurrection fact or fiction? Evaluating the 2,000-year-old claims of the resurrection is notoriously difficult. Short of a time machine, we only have eyewitness testimony. Now, look, let's pause here. We only have eyewitness

Starting point is 00:02:25 testimony for everything that comes before the camera and videography. So there's nothing unusual about this. But we should start with what everybody agrees on, whether they're Christians, non-Christian, secular scholars, or Christian scholars. Our earliest eyewitness testimonies, everybody agrees on this. Our earliest eyewitness testimonies all agree that Jesus rose from the dead. Now, that doesn't mean that he actually rose from the dead, but everybody agrees that the earliest testimonies say the same thing. One of those early accounts from 1st Corinthians 15 says that five, five, people actually saw Jesus, and the author, Paul, invites others to investigate this for themselves. Now, again, there are no scholars, Christian, secular, or otherwise, who deny that this letter,

Starting point is 00:03:13 the letter to the Corinthians, was actually written by the Apostle Paul just a few decades after Jesus' death. So again, our earliest documents from Christianity, everybody agrees. They all claim that Jesus rose from the dead and that there were eyewitnesses to that event. So the question becomes, how do we evaluate it? whether these claims are fact or fiction, true or false, reality or fairy tale make-believe stuff. And at bottom, we simply need to ask, were the stories of the resurrection made up by the disciples, or were they real? And the stories were made up by the disciples, which lots of people

Starting point is 00:03:53 would ultimately have to claim if they want to deny the resurrection. If these stories were made up by the disciples, we should ask a further question. question. Is this the kind of story that someone would have made up? In other words, if I was telling a lie, I would want to tell that lie in the most credible manner possible. Otherwise, people will catch me in my lie. I want to say something that sounds believable to others. And so the exact same thing goes for the story of the resurrection. If people were lying about Jesus's resurrection, you would expect that they would say it in the most credible way possible. You would expect that they would concoct a story that people could really believe. And so let's just look at the evidence that we have from these eyewitness testimony accounts to determine whether or not that was the case. First of all, let's start here. People died torturous deaths rather than deny the resurrection. So we have to ask the question. Why did Jesus' disciples die for what they knew was a lie?

Starting point is 00:04:51 If they made it up, you would think that at least one person in their conspiracy would at some point be willing to say, you know what, it was all invented, we made it up, I don't want to die. for a lie. Now, I know what people will say. They'll often be like, well, lots of people die for things that are false, and that's true, but that's not what we're talking about with the disciples. You might die for something that you believe but didn't see. They died for something that they claimed to see. So again, to die for something that you claimed to see that you knew was false, why do that? What's the advantage? Another thing we should consider is this. In Rome, a woman's testimony was sometimes inadmissible in court, or at least it was often diminished in court. And yet, whoever created the stories of the resurrection, if they were make-believed, they did something really stupid because they made the very first people to see Jesus' resurrection women.

Starting point is 00:05:42 If you were making up the story of the resurrection, you wouldn't pick women in that world as the first people to see Jesus, because people thought that women weren't as credible as men. If you were making it up, men would be the first people to see it. And yet, in every single gospel, it is women who see Jesus first. and this tells us that this is probably not a made-up story, because if he made it up, you wouldn't say that. Here's another thing to consider. Crucifixion was shameful, not heroic. We easily forget that the Bible was written in an honor-shamed culture. And so if you wanted to have a hero, you would want to say honorable things about that hero.

Starting point is 00:06:20 There was nothing more shameful in the ancient world than dying on a cross. There was nothing less heroic than dying on a cross. In fact, this was one of the major issues that the early Christians had. People wouldn't believe in Jesus because they couldn't possibly entrust their lives to a king who had been crucified. What complete and utter shame. Now, again, if you were just going to make up a story about Jesus and you were going to invent a resurrection story, you wouldn't make the crucifixion a part of it. The only reason why you'd have a hero who was crucified, who then rose from the dead,

Starting point is 00:06:54 was that, well, he actually went through this shameful experience of being crucified. If you're making up a story, you don't start with a crucified hero. Let's keep going. Back then, resurrection was laughable to people. You see, back in the ancient world, most people did not believe in physical, bodily resurrection. Now, the disciples could, if they were making up a resurrection story, they could have said a lot of things that people probably would have believed back then. They could have said that Jesus came to them as a spirit. A lot of people would have believed that.

Starting point is 00:07:25 They could have said Jesus came to them in a vision. Well, again, there'd be people who would believe that. But to claim that Jesus bodily rose from the dead, to the average person, that is a ridiculous claim. They simply didn't believe in any resurrection, past, present, or future. So if you were making up a story, if you're just inventing it off the top of your head,

Starting point is 00:07:48 you wouldn't pick to have a resurrected hero. You would talk about visions. You would talk about ghosts. You would use things that seemed at least a little more credible than a guy bodily coming back from the dead. Another thing to consider, Jesus wasn't the only crucified Messiah. You see, in Jesus' day, there were thousands of Jews and would-be saviors crucified by Rome. There were thousands of Jews crucified in the first century, and many of them, some of them, actually even claimed to be Israel's Messiah. So when people say, look, the reason why Jesus became

Starting point is 00:08:21 famous was because he died as a messianic figure, that's just ridiculous. There were other messianic figures who died the exact same way, and yet none of them begins a worldwide movement that lasts for millennia. You see, you can't account for what happened with Jesus' followers just by looking at the crucifixion. Lots of people were crucified. Lots of people's lives ended in that way, and yet none of them start a movement. The best explanation for how this movement begins, a movement which changes the entire world, is that people actually saw Jesus rise from the dead, that changed how they thought, it changed how they talked, and allowed them to give a reasonable reason for their faith. Namely, I and 500 people all saw this guy walking around after he had been crucified,

Starting point is 00:09:09 and he is the king of the universe promising to do for others what had happened to him. You see, this list could just go on and on and on. The simple reality is that if the disciples had wanted to just invent a story that they expected to be believed, in order to start this new movement, they did it in the worst way possible. At every turn, they made bad choices. They were terrible liars. They made their first eyewitnesses people who were discredited by their patriarchal culture. They chose a hero whose shameful death made him repulsive in the Honor's Shame Society of Rome. They chose a centerpiece to their story, the resurrection itself, which made them look like insane fools. I mean, just go read Acts 1732 for fun. People thought Paul was insane.

Starting point is 00:09:53 In every instance, they could have easily made other choices if they were just lying, but they didn't. Worst of all, they chose to die for it, despite the fact that at the time Christianity was a tiny movement that offered nothing in the way of power, prestige, influence, or wealth. They had nothing to gain by dying, nothing except claiming the truth. Why did they die? Why did they make these claims that seem so insane or would have seemed to be. insane in their day. Well, the best explanation is that they were telling things as they really happened. These events really occurred. They weren't just making them up as they once long.

Starting point is 00:10:35 If you want to claim that the resurrection was a fiction, you have to give a credible explanation for why the disciples told the story in the way they did and why they were willing to die for it. Moreover, you have to explain why so many people, despite incredible odds, believed the story. story. You have to explain why Jesus was the only crucified criminal to start a movement after his death. Once that happens, you just have to ask yourself a question. Everybody agrees. There were people who claimed to be eyewitnesses of the resurrection. Does my version of how that happened? Does my version of how that unfolded? Does that sound more fabulous, more outlandish than the idea that it actually happened? And if it doesn't, then shouldn't I consider maybe Jesus didn't

Starting point is 00:11:23 stay dead? You see, Jesus still isn't dead. Jesus is alive. He rose. He is on a throne. And that explanation for the events that happened 2,000 years ago, that explanation changes everything. Thanks for listening. If you've enjoyed this content, please subscribe and give us a rating. That helps other people find this podcast more easily. Also, ask yourself, who could you share this podcast with. Texting an episode to a friend or a family member is a great way to help them grow spiritually. If you want to go deeper, check out our show notes for book recommendations.

Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Do You Have a Reason for Your Faith? | Mark | 1 Peter 3.15

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