Isn't the Resurrection a Fairytale?

That's how we begin some of our best stories. They may not be true stories, but they're great stories nonetheless. Some of our most famous fairy tale openings go like this, and I don't expect you to know these. These are from the original books, not the Disney movies, but here are some of the most famous fairy tales and their opening lines. Once upon a time, there lived a king and a queen.

Don't know if you can get that one, that's Sleeping Beauty. Once upon a time in the middle of winter, when the flakes of snow were falling like feathers from the sky. There's a little hint in there, the word snow, Snow White. Well done. Well done.

I didn't expect anyone to get these. Well, here's my personal favourite. Once upon a time, there was a lovely princess, but she had an enchantment upon her of a fearful sort, which could only be broken by love's first kiss. Now, you have to have a particularly refined taste to know what this one is. Does anyone know?

Shrek. Yes. My favourite fairy tale movie, or a spoof of it. Anyway, "Once upon a time" normally signals a particular kind of story, a fairy tale story, a good story, but not necessarily a true story. And some people think about the resurrection like this in Australia, that it's a nice enough story, but there's no way that it could be true.

It's more like a fairy tale. And yet the four gospels that we have in the New Testament, the major sources that tell us of the resurrection, they don't start with "once upon a time." Actually, they start like this. Luke's Gospel, Luke 1:1, it says, "Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished among us, just as those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word have delivered them to us, it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught." Now that hardly sounds like the beginning of a fairy tale, does it?

Luke, the author, he was a physician. He paid careful attention to the things that had happened, and he puts together this orderly account for this man called Theophilus, probably a Gentile, a non-Jew, who was probably a statesman of some sort who had become a Christian, and Luke wanted to give him assurance that the things that he'd heard about Jesus were true. Now you might be here, and if you're exploring or maybe even been dragged along to an Easter Sunday service, you might think, well, great, they claimed these things to be true, but why does it really matter anyway? Well, it matters immensely. If you're a Christian, it matters immensely because if Jesus did not rise from the grave, then you are still dead in your sins.

You are still under God's judgment. You do not have hope beyond this life. If you're not a Christian, the resurrection still needs to be grappled with because it's not just something that's of no consequence whether you believe it or not. It's not like believing in fairies. You can believe in fairies, but that's not really gonna change your life.

Maybe if you're walking through a park, you might look under a few flowers every now and again. But believing in fairies is not gonna change your life. But if the resurrection is true, it has massive implications for how you live. If Jesus rose from the grave, then you must listen to what He said and taught. If Jesus rose from the grave, it can give meaning to your suffering. It means this world is not all there is.

It means you do not have to live your best life now. It means that there is something coming that affects how we live today. The resurrection must be grappled with because it has huge consequences for our lives if it is true. Now you might be surprised to know that even the leaders of Christianity, the apostles themselves, didn't think it could be true at first. When they were first told that Jesus' tomb was empty, Luke tells us in Luke 24:11, these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe it.

Seemed like a fairy tale. Seemed like nonsense to them. So what changed their mind? Well, we're going to be asking that question together as part of a mini-series called "I Have a Question." We started this series a couple of days ago on Good Friday, and we're asking some of the difficult questions of Christianity that people have.

On Good Friday, we asked, how could a good God allow suffering? Today, we're asking, isn't the resurrection a fairy tale? And then next Sunday, we're going to ask, are the gospels trustworthy? Are the accounts from which I'll be reading and interpreting today, are they even reliable at all anyway? So we're gonna turn to our question today, isn't the resurrection a fairy tale?

And I want to give you four pieces of evidence that we find in the passage that Rob read for us earlier, in Luke 24:1-12. So if you haven't already, turn your Bible to Luke 24:1-12. And I think there's one more thing I need to deal with before we look at the pieces of evidence, and that is if you're here and you're not a Christian and you are committed to what we call naturalism or materialism, it's a philosophical worldview that says just what we can touch and taste and smell, that's all there is. There is no spiritual realm. There is no divine creator.

There is nothing greater. If you are committed to naturalism or materialism, it doesn't matter how many facts I give you, you're just gonna say that it's just not possible. The resurrection couldn't have happened. But I just want you to be open about the fact and open to changing your mind on that, perhaps, because materialism or naturalism isn't a fact, it's a belief system. It's an assumption.

It's a presupposition. For example, how do you explain how the universe began? The Big Bang Theory is the most established, prevailing view of how the world began these days, and actually, interestingly, the scientific community was really reluctant to adopt it when it first came. The prevailing view when it was first proposed was that the universe is eternal, that the universe always has been and always will be, so they didn't have to explain the beginning. The Big Bang Theory actually helps and points to a worldview where there is a God, because it shows us that there was a beginning, that there has to be a beginning.

Like, whether you agree with the details of the Big Bang Theory or not, it still claims that there is a beginning. And so if you're a naturalist, you have to have enough faith to believe that eternal particles crashed together, that these particles have always existed. Or you can believe what is logically, you know, logically has to happen, that someone uncreated and eternal and all-powerful began the universe. Which of those answers do you think has a better grip on reality? I think it takes more faith to believe in eternal particles that crashed together and created everything.

So just be open about the fact that if you're committed to naturalism or materialism, it's an assumption that you have. It's not an established fact. It's a belief system that you have to have faith in still. So with that being said, let's take a look at the four pieces of evidence and be open to the fact that maybe the resurrection is true, if you haven't considered that before. Here's evidence number one that comes in Luke's passage, the empty tomb.

So in verses one to three, it says, 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. So Luke tells us that the tomb was empty. Now maybe you think, well, I don't trust Luke because his account is in the Christian Bible, so obviously he wants us to believe this. Well, here's an account from Josephus.

He was a Jewish historian who lived in the first century as well. He was not a Christian, and here are some things that he said about Jesus and the resurrection. He said, "And in this time, there was a certain Jesus, a wise man, if indeed one ought to call him a man, for he was a doer of incredible deeds, a teacher of men who received truisms with pleasure. And he brought over many from amongst the Jews and many from amongst the Greeks. He was thought to be the Christ."

So Josephus doesn't believe that, but he says he was thought to be the Christ. And when Pilate had condemned him to the cross at the accusation of the first men amongst us, just to note there, no one at the university level of historians debates whether Jesus existed or whether he was put to death by the Romans. That's all accepted as historical fact. People might debate the resurrection, but Jesus was a historical person put to death by the Romans. Josephus continues, "Those who at first were devoted to him did not cease to be so, for on the third day, it seemed to them that he was alive again, given that the divine prophets had spoken such things and thousands of other wonderful things about him."

"And up till now, the tribe of the Christians who were named from him has not disappeared." So notice that Josephus acknowledges that Jesus was a real person, that it was not debated, that he died under Pontius Pilate, the Romans. And then he says that the Christians believe that he rose again on the third day. And notice what he does there. He doesn't argue that the tomb wasn't empty or that Jesus didn't leave the tomb.

The ancient critics of the resurrection, they never argued that the tomb still had the body. They had other arguments against Christianity. They had other arguments against the resurrection. If you want to deny the resurrection, you have to come up with a reason for why the body was not in the tomb. That's what I'm trying to get at.

The claim that Josephus and others were dealing with was that Jesus was alive, as the Old Testament prophets had predicted, but none of the critics claimed that the tomb wasn't empty. So that's the first piece of evidence in Luke's eyewitness account. The second piece of evidence is Jesus' predictions. So in verse four, we read, while they were perplexed about this, the ladies, 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 among 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. See, Jesus predicted this would happen. Jesus predicted He would rise from the grave before He was ever crucified by the Romans.

That's a pretty incredible piece of evidence. Luke records one of Jesus' predictions in Luke 18, which is the second time in Luke's gospel that Jesus predicted His resurrection. It says this in Luke 18, "And taking the twelve, He said to them, 'See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished, that He will be delivered over to the Gentiles and will be mocked and shamefully treated and spit upon, and after flogging Him, they will kill Him, and on the third day, He will rise.'" Jesus predicted His resurrection. Before He'd ever been taken into custody by the Romans, He said this would happen.

Even His disciples who were told this couldn't really believe this at first because it seemed too fantastical, but it's what Jesus said. Now, you might be here and you might be skeptical still and say, well, you know, why would I trust the twelve apostles or Luke, they're all Christians. They probably made this up because they want me to believe. But the thing is, Luke's gospel doesn't read like a fiction. It doesn't read like a fabrication.

It doesn't read like it was made up to trick us into believing. It's orderly. It's restrained. And if it was fabricated, then Luke's done a pretty poor job of it. Why do I say that?

Well, the account has all these embarrassing details in it. And this is the third piece of evidence. Let's look at them next. So we've looked at the fact that the tomb was empty, that Jesus predicted it, and now we're gonna look at the embarrassing details that tell us that Luke's account seems to be trustworthy. So verse nine, we read, and returning from the tomb, the ladies returning from the tomb, they told all these things to the eleven and to all the rest.

Now it was Mary Magdalene and Joanna and Mary the mother of James and the other women with them who told these things to the apostles, but these words seemed to them an idle tale, and they did not believe them. That's pretty embarrassing for the apostles. The leaders of the early Christian movement did not believe the ladies when they told them that the tomb was empty at first. If you were going to start a cult and you're going to say, listen to me, I am without error, I claim to know the divine God,

you're not gonna show these little kinks in the armour. You're not gonna show these weaknesses and these embarrassing details unless you're just being honest, and this is what's happened. The second thing that was embarrassing back then, but we don't see today in the twenty-first century, is that women were the star witnesses of this story. Now for us, that's not a big deal. But in the ancient culture that they lived in, unfortunately, women were looked down upon.

In Jewish culture, they were not even allowed to be witnesses in a court of law. Craig Keener, he's a New Testament scholar and historian. He says, "Many men considered the witness of women nearly worthless because they regarded women as unstable and undependable." Now, it's a sad thought, isn't it? Obviously, that's not how the Bible depicts women.

Men and women are equally created in the image of God, equally valuable and glorious, but that's how they thought in that culture. So if you were going to make up a story in that culture to try and trick people, you would not put women as the first star witnesses of the resurrection. That would be embarrassing in that culture. The only reason you would write that is if it was true, if you were telling the truth. Luke's account comes across as trustworthy, as reliable, as restrained, as orderly.

It's something that we need to grapple with. Now, you might say, well, yeah, Luke might be honest, but maybe he's gullible. There could be other reasons why the grave was empty. Maybe somebody stole the body of Jesus and these naive Christians thought, oh, he's risen from the grave. Well, if you know a little bit about the ancient context, grave robbers were actually a common thing back then.

They would go into these graves and they would steal valuables. So maybe it was a grave robber that stole the body. But that would make no sense either, given our final piece of evidence, the leftover grave clothes. So we've looked at the empty tomb, Jesus' predictions, embarrassing details, and now evidence number four, the leftover grave clothes. We see this in verse 12, when Peter ran to the tomb, stooping and looking in, he saw the linen cloths by themselves, and he went home marvelling at what had happened.

Now what's significant about this is the fact that linen cloths were a valuable item. They were highly valuable in that day and age. So if you're a grave robber, you don't take the body, which is not worth anything, and then leave the valuable item there. So that's why it's an important detail, and if you're an ancient reader, that would make more sense to you. Also, we need to consider the fact that even though the Old Testament predicted that the Messiah would rise and that there would be a resurrection for God's people, the way that the Jews thought in the first century was that it would be a corporate resurrection of all of Israel.

They didn't expect the resurrection to happen in the middle of history, and then all the problems to keep going on until the final resurrection. They didn't expect that. So that's one of the reasons why we can say that if they were going to concoct a story, this wouldn't have been something that the Jewish people had imagined. They expected the final resurrection to include all of God's people at once, not to happen in the middle of history like it did with Jesus. See, we have these four pieces of evidence from Luke 24.

He wants us to know that the tomb is empty, that Jesus predicted this, that it seemed to be an honest account because it includes the embarrassing details, and that the grave clothes remained. You see, the most plausible explanation for the evidence we have is that Jesus rose from the grave. But I don't just want to say it's the most plausible explanation. I want you to know that God's word, God wants to say to you that Jesus has risen.

He is risen from the dead. The tomb was empty. He is alive and well, reigning and ruling in heaven. The eyewitness testimony of Easter Sunday gives you certainty that Jesus rose from the dead. We're not here today because we're just religious.

We're not here today because of a nice story. We're not here because we believe in fairy tales, or because we're more gullible than the rest of Australian society. We are here gathered along with billions of other Christians around the world because Jesus Christ has risen from the grave. We celebrate and we party because Jesus has won, death has been defeated. Jesus' resurrection is a preview of what God will do for us all one day, all those who trust in His Son. That's what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15.

He says, "But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. For as by a man came death, by a man has come also the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." See, Jesus is like a first fruit of this great harvest, that one day God will reap that harvest, and we will all rise with Jesus, with glorious resurrection bodies. Jesus is the beginning of the new creation breaking into our world.

Jesus' resurrection is the beginning of the kingdom of heaven breaking into this earth. Jesus is risen. Death has been defeated. One day, Jesus will return, and we'll all rise with Him in the power of resurrection, and we will walk in a reality that is so good that it is beyond description. It is beyond our imagination.

That's why one Christian once said, from heaven, or from the new creation, the most miserable life on earth will look like one bad night in a dodgy motel. That's how good it will be. That's not to downplay our suffering in this world, but it's to upplay how wonderful the new creation will be. It is so good that even the worst suffering will look like one bad night in a dodgy motel. I know that this life can be hard, but be of good cheer.

Jesus has overcome the troubles of this world, and Jesus has secured an incredibly bright future for His people. Believing in the resurrection isn't like believing in fairies. If the resurrection is true, it completely changes your outlook on life, gives you hope for the future, and it gives you courage to face the big bad enemy of death. There was a man, an Australian man named Andrew Chan. You might have heard of him.

He was part of the Bali Nine, convicted and sentenced to death. They were trying to get rich quickly by smuggling drugs into Australia, and they were caught. But while he was in prison, something changed. He became a Christian. It didn't seem like a surface-level thing.

He seemed to become deeply convinced about Jesus. He began reading the Bible, studying theology, and he even became like a pastor to other inmates in the prison. And when the day came when Andrew knew he was going to die, he didn't face it with panic, but with peace. In his final hours, he was praying and even singing. You can find an ABC article that says that he, along with some of the other fellow prisoners that were being executed, were actually singing Amazing Grace, and then they continued to sing before the order to shoot was given.

You don't sing on your way to death unless you are absolutely convinced that death is not the end. The resurrection of Jesus is not something to merely consider. It's something to stake your life on. Because if Jesus really walked out of that tomb, then death was not the end for Him, and it is not the end for those who belong to Him. The eyewitness testimony of Easter Sunday gives certainty that Jesus rose from the dead and secured life beyond the grave.

He is risen. Amen. Let's pray together. Jesus, You are risen indeed. Hallelujah.

We praise Your name. You are the King of kings and the Lord of lords, and You have been exalted to the right hand of the Father. You're the One who has been appointed to return one day and to judge the living and the dead, and we stand and we sit and we pray in awe of You this morning. Jesus, we ask that Your Spirit would give us such an assurance and confidence in Your word that You are risen, and that You would fill us with joy and great hope today that is infectious for our neighbours and our family, that they will see the hope of Christ in us, and that they will ask us to give them a reason for the hope that we have. And we pray, Father God, for opportunities to do this with gentleness and respect.

We thank You for this time together, and we pray this in the name of the risen Lord Jesus. Amen.