Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - The Proof of the Resurrection | New Testament | Luke 24

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

What makes a legitimate eye witness testimony? Matching stories? Small differences? How can you be sure Jesus's resurrection was true? In today's episode, Patrick uses Luke 24 to discuss various pieces of evidence to prove Jesus's resurrection. Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now. Join the TMBT community in reading the entire New Testament in one year. Get your FREE reading plan here. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Luke 24

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 Patrick Miller. A while back, I bought my first smoker. And after I bought one smoker, I ended up buying some more smokers because let's just say I love smoking meat. Now, this is partially because I've got a whole group of friends who have the same smoker and love smoking meat just like me. We've got a fun little group text where we share photos of what we're smoking. I love it, even though sometimes it causes me a little bit of meat envy. One thing we've been getting into is smoking hot wings.

Now, when I say hot wings, I'm not talking about Buffalo Wild Wings. I'm talking about hot, hot wings. We usually do five or seven sauces. Each one escalates in heat. And the last one usually creates about seven to ten minutes worth of agony so acute that you can't even talk. And you're reduced to a state of panicked pacing with milk gallons in your hand, trying to drink as much as you can and shouting, when will it end? Well, you know, it's fun for me.

It might not be fun for you. Now, here's the deal. If my last comment is confusing to you and you've never had an experience like that, I have to tell you, you've never experienced true hot wings. As you can imagine, we love to retell our stories of people saying how they can't feel their bodies anymore because the wing is so hot. And I've done exactly that to my poor wife. I remember telling her about one tastebud rager and described how each person reacted. A few days later, we were hanging out as couples and it came out that I left one person entirely out of the story. It also came out that several of my hot wing compatriots were saying that I, how shall I put this, lost my stomach and vomited. Well, I said that that was wrong. It was not the case.

They mistook me gargling and spitting out milk for, well, you know what. Now, I'm not trying to be gross. I'm trying to get to a point here. Look, here's the question. Did I lie? Was my story to my wife false? Was my story faulty? Did they lie?

Was their story false? Was their story faulty? How you answer those questions says a lot about you. It also says a lot about your understanding of eyewitness testimony. You could ask the same questions of any documentary you watch, any news article you read, whatever. They're all based on eyewitness testimony, but rarely include every possible angle on a story. Maybe I didn't think I vomited, but maybe spinning out that gargle milk was vomit. It's tough to tell.

It depends on your angle. And one fact of eyewitness testimony is that people can only see things from their angle. They're telling of the same event, always pick and choose and focus on different parts of the story. In fact, one way crime investigators determine if witnesses are telling a made-up story is by seeing if their story is too similar. If you all memorize a made-up story with the exact same details, your testimonies will sound very similar, and it's a sign that you probably made it up. A hallmark of eyewitness testimony are slight differences,

not outright contradictions, but different perceptions, different angles, different focal points, points. One person's gargles spit is another person's spit up. In one person's story, they highlight everyone present. In another person's story, they only focus on a few relevant players. This is all along pre-able to introducing you to one of the earliest eyewitness testimonies of Jesus' resurrection. For a long time, people have noted that there are differences between the eyewitness accounts in the gospels, all about Jesus' resurrection. Differences in who was present. Differences in what exactly was said or in what order. and detail that are included or excluded?

And for a long time, there were some scholars who tried to use these differences as proof that the stories of Jesus' resurrection were made up. See, they'd say, they can't even get their story straight. But as modern scholarship has shown, the opposite is true. If the story was made up, we would see almost no differences. But if the story was real and as shocking as it must have been, we should expect each eyewitness account to be slightly different from another. Not contradictory, and none of them are, just different, different perceptions, different focal points, different levels of detail, different people mentioned in different stories.

Richard Bacham, he's a preeminent New Testament scholar who wrote the Oxford Press's guide to Jesus, so he's no slouch. And he's argued and shown conclusively that whether or not you believe in the resurrection of Jesus, the gospel accounts have every possible mark of genuine eyewitness testimony. One of those marks is the fact that they all agree that women saw the empty tomb first. The first century was a patriarchal, misogynistic era. Gentiles and Jews both wrote extensively about the unreliability of women and both refused to admit a woman's testimony in court. So if you were going to make up a story about the resurrection of Jesus, about an event that everyone in the ancient world would have thought was ridiculous, the idea that someone

could be resurrected after a crucifixion, if you are going to make up a ridiculous story like that you would not make your chief and first eyewitnesses women. The only reason to say women were the first to see him was because that's what really happened. Let's read in Luke chapter 24 verse 1. But on the first day of the week at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared. And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel. And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, why do you seek the living amongst the dead? He is not here, but has risen.

Remember how he told you while he was still in Galilee, that the son of man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise. And they remembered his words. And returning from the tomb, they told all these things to the 11 and all the rest. Now, it was Mary Magdalene, Joanna, and Mary, the mother of James, and the other woman who were, with them who told these things to the apostles. But these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe him. Let's just pause for a second. The idea of Jesus's resurrection not only sounded ridiculous to most ancient people, because they didn't believe in resurrection. It sounded ridiculous to the disciples. They don't even believe Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary.

They don't buy the story at all. You see, the disciples, they expected a great resurrection at the end of time, of all people. But there's another reason why many people, Jews and Gentiles, staunchly denied the reality of resurrection. Sure, they might say the soul goes to heaven and some sort of spiritual bliss, but the body and the material world are bad. And for that reason, many Gentiles didn't believe in resurrection. Why would you want to be resurrected into a material world? This is why scholars in Athens literally laugh at Paul. They laugh him out of town when he talks about the resurrection. It sounded like uneducated backwater, make-believely If the first followers of Jesus were trying to make up a story that would at least seem plausible

to their first century audience, they could have claimed to see a vision of Jesus, perhaps a ghost, but not a corporeal, bodily form. Just like today, many people in the ancient world were open to the idea of supernatural events and even ghosts, they might have believed in ghost Jesus. But hardly anyone would have thought one person being resurrected in the middle of time made much sense at all. It's a crazy story to make up, unless it's true. Verse 12, but Peter rose and ran to the tomb, stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves, and he went home marveling at what had happened. This story is remarkable. It has the mark of being an eyewitness testimony. Just pause and let that sink in. These aren't just stories. These aren't just history pass. Jesus rose from the dead.

He is still physically, bodily alive. He is physically and bodily sitting on the throne of heaven. People actually witnessed this, and they told their stories. Why? Because the true story reinterprets all of history. It tells us that whatever appearances may be, there is only one everlasting, never-dying, king of reality. Jesus, and he is reigning now. Ask Jesus to help the true story of his resurrection sink into your heart.

Ask him to make his living reign in heaven a reality in your earthly experience. Before you forget, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talks newsletter. Hit the link in the show notes and you'll get an email every Wednesday that's going to help you beat that midweek slump and go deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.