Jr High Small Group Questions:

1. Christianity isn’t primarily a faith about teachings and principles, like other religions. Instead, Christianity is about something that happened: a historical moment – the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. How does this inform your faith, and how you live?
2. What do you think is the most convincing argument for the resurrection of Jesus?
3. Put yourself in the disciple’s shoes, and you met the resurrected Jesus, what would you have done?
4. Why is Christianity the most hopeful religion?

Sr High Small Group Questions:

1. What was your emotional response to the story?
2. What are some key things your learned from this session?
3. What are some of the ways people in our culture determine how best to live?
4. What are some principles from this series, “The Human Project”, that you will be able to implement in your life?

THE MAIN POINT

Christianity isn’t primarily a faith about teachings and principles, like other religions. Instead, Christianity is about something that happened: a historical moment – the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

THE BIBLE

John 20, Acts 2:24, Ephesians 1:20

THE CONTEXT

Christianity isn’t primarily a faith about teachings and principles, like other religions. Instead, Christianity is about something that happened: a historical moment – the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus.

Christianity rises or falls on one moment in the entirety of history, DID JESUS RISE FROM THE DEAD? The outrageous claim of Christianity is that ‘death is not the end.’ The irreversibility of death has been reversed through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. If true, Christianity is not only the most truthful in the marketplace of religious ideas but is also the most HOPEFUL.

You can visit the tombs of the founders of other religions. You can visit the graveside of Abraham, the burial place of Muhammad, but you can’t do that with Jesus. Well, you can but the tomb is empty. The foundation of Christianity is a historical moment that could be potentially proven false. Christianity is rooted in history, in a place, in a time. If someone were to find the bones of Jesus then it would be over. Christianity is confident enough to stake its entire religion on a historical event that invites historians, scientists, philosophers and the regular person like you and me, to investigate it.

THE CORE

A Summary of Relevant Facts

• Medical & Historical Evidence. Crucifixion was designed to kill. And kill gruesomely. Nobody survived the Roman crucifixion.
• Evidence of the missing body. Given Jesus’ tomb was a public location, and how motivated the Romand and the Jews would be to find his body, the missing body (that was never seen dead) is an important fact.
• Evidence the body wasn’t stolen. The grave was guarded by Roman troops and the empty grave was discovered with Jesus’s grave clothes neatly folded. Grave Robbers would have stolen this valuable fabric.
• Evidence of Jesus appearing to many (1 Cor 15:3-9) including skeptics like James and hostile unbelievers like Paul.

Three popular pushbacks to the Resurrection of Jesus

• “Jesus didn’t really die.” (This is the position of Islam) – Firstly, 10 writers outside of the Bible including Josephus mentioned that Jesus died. These writers were not christians and some were anti-christian. Secondly, the Romans knew how to kill criminals. The idea that the Romans messed up the crucifixion is wishful thinking and doesn’t hold up to serious historical scrutiny.
• “They went to the wrong tomb.” – this is an objection based on nothing. The idea that in their grief, Jesus disciples went to the wrong tomb. This also means the Romans forgot which tomb their guards were guarding. Historians throw out this argument because the people in power could have easily used Jesus body as evidence for stop the early church before it got going.
• “The Story was an Elaborate Hoax.” There are many arguments against this pushback but the most fascinating is the fact that many of the early church leaders, those who claimed to have seen Jesus, literally died for this belief. Any person that is skeptical about Jesus resurrection must give an adequate reason for why his disciples would create a hoax which they would die for. Most martyrs die for a set of beliefs that they have been taught and become convinced of. In the disciple’s case, they are not merely dying for a set of beliefs but for their testimony that they had personally seen the risen Jesus – Andrew was crucified, Bartholomew was flayed to death with a whip, John died in exile, James was beheaded, Luke was hanged, Mark was dragged by a horse to death, Matthew was killed by the sword, Matthias was stoned then beheaded, Peter was crucified upside down, Philip was crucified, Thomas was stabbed to death with a spear. They weren’t dying for a set of principles or religious teachings, but for a claim of what happened to Jesus AFTER he died.

THE APPLICATION

• Because the resurrection is true, it is the beginning of a new creation, a new life. Therefore everyone who gives their life to Jesus will also become a new creation, and receive new life, everlasting life. Paul writes in Romans 6: “We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.” Resurrection was about Jesus, but it also is about us.
• Religion crushed Jesus, so that it doesn’t have to crush us. The hope of the resurrection not only promises new life in the future but new life today. We can walk in the freedom of Jesus living life lightly.