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Chapter 1: Why does the resurrection of Christ matter in the 21st century?
The resurrection of Christ happened. It's a historical fact as much as the fact that George Washington was the first president of the United States. As Christians, we believe in the resurrection of Jesus, and we should be bold in those convictions. But could you defend it if someone were to challenge your beliefs?
Hi, I'm Nathan W. Bingham, and welcome to the Saturday edition of Renewing Your Mind. As we approach Easter, on Saturdays, we'll be featuring messages from Gabe Fleur's series, Alive! How the Resurrection of Christ Changes Everything.
So as you're having conversations with family and with friends, we trust that these messages will help you know what you believe about the resurrection and why you believe it.
If you'd like to own the complete eight-message series, we'll send it to you on DVD when you give a donation in support of Renewing Your Mind's proclamation of these key truths of Christianity at renewingyourmind.org before midnight tonight. We'll also unlock all the messages and the study guide in the free Ligonier app. Well, to start this series, here's Gabe Fleur.
One of my favorite films is the movie Miracle on Ice by Disney, which tells the story of the 1980 US hockey team, which some of y'all may remember. And at the end of that game where they beat the Russians for the first time in 20 years, It switches in the movie to the call made by Al Michaels, who was the broadcast announcer that evening.
And his question that he blurts out as time runs out on the clock and the U.S. beat the Russian national team is, do you believe in miracles? And that's a question, I think, that, you know, all kidding aside and movies and everything else, that all of us are going to ask at some point. Do we believe in miracles? And the scriptures tell us clearly on every page that miracles happen.
Miracles are real because of who God is.
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Chapter 2: How can Christians defend their belief in the resurrection?
Now, we live in an age that has been described as the age of anxiety. The age of anxiety, and you look all around us, and you look in your own heart, you talk to people, and what are they? They're anxious, they're worried, they're nervous, especially in the times in which we live. Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre captures how most people go through life in the title of his book, Nausea.
Sartre was an existentialist philosopher in the middle part of the 20th century, and he thought that life was nausea. He thought it was so much anxiety, so much being distraught with things that he titled it nausea. Now what's strange, I think, about this age of anxiety, this age of nausea,
is that we live in the time in world history of the most material plenty of any generation that has walked this earth. Any generation. We live in the most materially plenteous time of any time in world history. And so here's the question. Why are we so full and yet so empty? And so I think one explanation we have for this is that we have lost faith.
We're coming off an election in which a lot of people are saying in the media that we've lost faith in the electoral process, in our governments, in our leaders, and I think in ourselves as human beings trying to make it through this world. People have lost faith in the human race. But I think the far more serious loss is the loss of faith in the Scriptures and in the truth of the gospel.
Now, let's go back for just a moment though and say that when we lose faith in things like leaders, governments, ourselves, that might not be a bad thing. Because when false faiths die, what we really are seeing is the funeral of idols, of false beliefs, false systems. And when those die and we have a funeral for our idols, then resurrection faith can enter in.
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Chapter 3: What evidence supports the historical fact of the resurrection?
And so as we launch into this series, here's our goals. We want to look at the evidence for the resurrection. We want to see that the resurrection of Christ happened. It's a historical fact as much as the fact that George Washington was the first president of the United States. Then we're going to examine the scriptures together.
and walk through the Old and New Testaments and see what they teach us about the resurrection. And then we're going to apply our results that we've gleaned from our studies and apply them to daily life.
What we need to do when we start thinking about the resurrection of Christ, miracles, the supernatural, is understand where we are right now in terms of thinking and worldviews and how most people would hear something like, hey, do you believe that Jesus was raised from the dead on the third day? How have people been conditioned to hear these kinds of claims?
And what we've seen in the past 50 years or so is the rise of what one scholar calls scientism. And scientism is the belief that the natural sciences are the surest, if not the only way, to know the truth. So prior to probably 1850, and again, it comes into its own in the early 20th to mid-20th century, people believed that theology could give us truth.
People believed that philosophy could give us truth. And then with the meteoric rise of the technological advancements of the 20th century, people now believe that science alone is the only authority. The problem is nobody can live like that. Nobody can live as if the physical sciences alone give us truth. We all feel, we all have deep emotions that the sciences can't explain.
And so as we see this corresponding rise of the authority of science, we also see a corresponding decline in church attendance, in belief in the biblical truth, And we see a despairing kind of skepticism about the gospel. And so people today, it's almost not even a hostility towards the gospel in so many quarters, as it is an outright apathy to it.
So that people living their lives day to day just kind of assume whatever science says is true. We don't question it. And science has told us the supernatural isn't real, that God isn't real. And so therefore I have to carve out some little way to make meaningful statements and make a meaningful life for myself. And the scriptures, of course, challenge that.
And we'll come back to that in just a moment. But notice as well with this rise of scientism, spirituality is not going away, my friends. It's not as if people who believe in the authority of science to give them truth alone have all of a sudden stopped being spiritual people, stopped being what John Calvin described as homo religiosus, man the religious man.
No, people still are very much spiritual, but what's the phrase they use now? I'm spiritual, not religious. I'm not into all of this organized religion, and I'm certainly not into any religion that says there's a book without errors that tells a story about blood, which is what the Bible gives us.
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Chapter 4: How does modern anxiety relate to belief in miracles?
In other words, we weren't gullible ancient people who would believe whatever was offered to us when we talk about somebody being in the tomb and then the tomb being empty. It's so easy to act as if, you know, well, they just probably believed that Jesus was some kind of Superman who got out of the tomb. As we're going to see, that was the last thing on their minds.
Because ancient people know, like modern people, dead people don't come back to life on their own. Tombs don't just magically empty themselves. And that's why Peter and Luke and the rest of the scriptures are concerned for us to see the verity, the truthfulness of the message they bring us about the resurrection of Christ. A couple of other things here.
And one of the main realities we have to come to grips with as we read the scriptures, especially about the resurrection of Christ, is is that it was not, and miracles in Scripture and generally are not just things that happen. They're not just facts out there. They are part of a larger story. They are part of a larger framework.
And I emphasize that because today, again, given the assumptions of the culture makers and opinion makers all around us, it can be easy to see miracles as something like a violation of natural law. That's how we hear them defined in secular terms. Miracles are a violation of natural law.
Well, the scriptures don't have that category of some kind of laws of nature that operate independent of the creator of nature. So miracles are not a violation as if God somehow started the world, left it to its own, and then every now and then decides to put his hand back in it. No, God sustains the world moment by moment. Hebrews 1, 1 through 3 among many places tells us.
And when God acts in history and does a supernatural miracle, whether it's a floating ax head or the resurrection of Christ, that's part of a larger framework, part of a larger history that again and again tells us that when God acts, he's doing so for purposes, for reasons. And we'll talk about that when we come to the Old Testament prophesying the resurrection.
Now, something else we need to realize when we think about the resurrection of Christ and our coming resurrection as believers is that the resurrection of Christ and our resurrection are not two separate events, as one scholar put it. Now, that's how we think of it, right? There was Jesus' resurrection 2,000 years ago.
There will come a time when he returns, the dead will be raised to life, and we will be judged. And that is all true. But the scriptures frame it slightly differently. So that when you get to 1 Corinthians 15 and Paul begins to speak about Christ is the firstfruits from the dead, That's Jewish feastal language, the feasts of Israel, the feast of first fruits.
And even today in agricultural societies, the first fruits are what is going to be indicative of the rest of the crop. So the way the scriptures look at Christ's resurrection and our coming resurrection is not two separate events, but two episodes of the same event. So that Jesus' resurrection begins the resurrection harvest that will be brought to completion on the last day.
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Chapter 5: What is the significance of losing faith in contemporary society?
But be quick as this offer ends at midnight. Atheists try and dismiss the resurrection of Christ. So what is the evidence? That's what we'll learn next Saturday here on Renewing Your Mind. Renewing Your Mind