I would venture that most Christians in our day, when they study the Bible, spend the majority of their time in the New Testament, because it reveals the covenant we are under today. Thus, for many of us, because of our unfamiliarity with the Old Testament, this proof of fulfilled prophecy has lost most of its punch. Yet it is still there and available for bolstering our faith in remarkable ways if we’re willing to pursue it.

Bob Deffinbaugh, in a lesson on the burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, tells an interesting story related to him by a friend. It seems this friend’s uncle was driving his convertible in the mountains one day with the top down. It was a beautiful day and he had his radio turned up quite loud as he enjoyed the scenery surrounding the winding mountain road. He was so intent on the music and scenery, in fact, that he failed to notice that a driver had come up behind him and was growing more and more impatient with his reduced speed. Finally, when there was room to pass, the furious driver went around the man with a blast of his horn and a shake of his fist, along with some not-so-well-chosen words. Rather than go all the way around though, the raging motorist forced the driver of the convertible to the side of the road, got out of his car, and screamed that he was going to beat him to a bloody pulp. The man’s uncle apologized profusely, but it seemed to have no effect on the hostile motorist. "Your apology is not enough," he raged. As the angry man closed the gap between them, the uncle reached under his seat and pulled out a .45-caliber revolver and aimed it at his attacker’s chest. With only a moment’s hesitation the aggressor blurted out, "I accept your apology!" At that point he returned to his car and drove away.

"The moral to this story," Deffinbaugh summarized, "is that the introduction of one unexpected element can completely change one’s perspective on a situation."(1)

That is precisely what happened on that resurrection morning nearly 2000 years ago. The Jewish religious leaders figured the crucifixion had finished Jesus and His followers. With the leader removed, the movement would now end. But the resurrection, like the sudden appearance of that .45-caliber weapon from under the seat, changed the whole picture. That’s what it has been doing so ever since.

This morning we’re going to take our lesson from the lengthiest passage on the resurrection in the entire Bible. Please join me at 1 Corinthians 15.

Someday we should do a study on this entire chapter since it holds so many good teachings on the resurrection. For now we’ll limit our consideration to these first 8 verses. They contain what are in my mind, two dynamite proofs of the resurrection. Paul says here that the death, burial, resurrection, and appearance of Jesus are matters "of first importance." This is a very important passage.

The apostles preached the death, burial, resurrection, and appearance of Jesus from the beginning. In the very first gospel sermon on Pentecost, recorded in Acts 2, Peter told his Jewish audience that their ancestor, David, "looked ahead and spoke of the resurrection of the Christ, that He was neither abandoned to Hades, nor did His flesh suffer decay. This Jesus God raised up again, to which we are all witnesses."(2)

Though the two proofs Paul presents here for the resurrection are not the only ones available, they were powerful arguments in his day. They remain so today for people willing to look. We’ll consider each of them, which I’ve simply called "Proof Number 1" and "Proof Number 2."

The words to notice for this proof are Paul’s twice-mentioned expression, "according to the Scriptures."

By "Scriptures" Paul meant those passages in the Old Testament that predicted the death, burial, resurrection, and appearance of the Messiah. Yes, the New Testament Scriptures contain many mentions of these things also, but most of the New Testament had not yet been written when Paul penned these words. First Corinthians is one of the earliest New Testament books.(3)

This appeal to the Old Testament Scriptures as proof of the things that were predicted about the Christ was a powerful argument among the first century people (especially the Jews) because they knew the Old Testament much better than many of us know it today.

I would venture that most Christians in our day, when they study the Bible, spend the majority of their time in the New Testament, because it reveals the covenant we are under today. Thus, for many of us, because of our unfamiliarity with the Old Testament, this proof of fulfilled prophecy has lost most of its punch. Yet it is still there and available for bolstering our faith in remarkable ways if we’re willing to pursue it.

The claim that much of the story of Jesus is foretold in the Old Testament Scriptures was a fairly common concept among the writers of the New Testament. Even Jesus stated it. For instance, the Savior said in Luke 24:44-46, "…all things which are written about Me in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled… Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and rise again from the dead the third day…"

When Jesus told his disciples in Matthew 26:24 that He would be betrayed by one of them and delivered up to be crucified, they questioned Him further about it. He responded with these words: "The Son of Man is to go, just as it is written of Him…." Written where? In the Old Testament Scriptures. Not a single letter of the New Testament Scriptures had been written when those words were spoken.

Elements of the entire gospel story are foretold in the Old Testament down to many of the tiniest details. Over three hundred predictions, some general, but many specific, tell of the birth, life, death, resurrection, appearance, and ascension of Christ. I’d love to share all of them with you. Such a study would greatly build your faith and mine. But of course our time is limited. Since Paul is referring only to those prophecies that foretold Jesus’ death, burial, resurrection, and appearance, I will mention just a few of them.

When I think of passages about Jesus’ death and resurrection that might come to the minds of Paul’s Jewish readers who savvied the Old Testament writings, I think of that remarkable passage in Psalm 22 that foretold specific details of the crucifixion 1000 years before they happened. Imagine that! The Jews singing about the crucifixion of the Messiah for ten centuries before it was fulfilled! Among some of the things predicted there, are those words of Jesus on the cross, "My God, My God, why has Thou forsaken Me?"(4) As you read on through that Psalm you find predictions of the sneering and mockery that came from Jesus’ enemies.(5) You find a vivid description of the suffering He would go through, including statements like, "all my bones are out of joint" and "My strength is dried up like a potsherd." His overpowering thirst is mentioned there in the words, "my tongue cleaves to my jaws."(6) An exceptionally vivid statement in that passage contains the words, "They pierced my hands and my feet"(7) and "They divide my garments among them and for my clothing they cast lots."(8)

Can’t you imagine some Jew, a contemporary of Jesus and the Apostles, a witness to the crucifixion, seeing all the things that happened at Golgotha? As he watches those horrifying events, suddenly the words of a song begin playing in his mind. It is the 22^nd Psalm, one he has sung in the Temple from his youth. Abruptly it occurs to him that he is seeing elements of that song fulfilled right before his eyes! Whether it happened exactly this way I don’t know. I’m just saying that the Jews knew the Scriptures and they couldn’t help but see some of the correlation between what was written and what they witnessed in the life of Jesus. Surely this was a powerful proof for those in that day that knew the Scriptures.

The act of offering Jesus gall and vinegar on the cross is foretold in Psalm 69:21. The beating of His back, the plucking out of his beard, and the spitting in His face are all mentioned in Isaiah 50:6.

Psalm 34:20 indicated that none of Messiah’s bones would be broken. Of course, John’s description in John 19 tells us that the Jews requested that the legs of the three on the cross (Jesus and the two thieves) be broken to hasten their death. But when they came to Jesus, they did not break His bones because He was already dead.(9) And of course, the Jew well versed in the Scripture would also know intimately that the bones of the Passover lamb were not to be broken. Perhaps all that would be needed for him to complete the picture of fulfillment would be Paul’s statement in 1 Corinthians 5:7, "Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed." Can you imagine some Jew whose family had gathered for the Passover all of his life, learning of this fact of Jesus’ death and wondering if it was simply a coincidence or something more?

Jesus’ betrayal by a close friend was foretold in Psalm 41:9. The replacement of Judas was foretold in Psalm 109:7-8. The Jews knew these things. This was a powerful proof! And I’ve only started. There is much more.

The prediction that Messiah’s death would be assigned with wicked men (Jesus was crucified between two thieves) yet He would be buried with a rich man was foretold in Isaiah 53:9. In fact, Isaiah 53, written 750 years before Christ, like Psalm 22, is a treasure-trove of specific predictions of the Messiah. He was despised and forsaken by those He came to help, 53:3; He was pierced for our transgressions and scourged for our healing, 53:5; He was silent when accused, 53:7; He was killed for the sins of His people, 53:8. Yet the prediction is also there that He would survive to see his spiritual offspring and His days would be prolonged beyond his suffering – clear indications of His resurrection in 53:10. Allusions to His resurrection are also found in Psalm 16:8-10, 49:15, and 86:13. His perpetuity on the throne of David, which would require his resurrection from the dead, is foretold in Isaiah 9:7.

I could go on, but I must stop for now because of time. Just a couple more quick questions a skeptic might ask…

First, if these things were so obvious among the Jews who knew the Old Testament Scriptures, why didn’t more of Jesus’ own people accept Him? Many of them did! We read in Acts 6:7, "And the word of God kept on spreading; and the number of the disciples continued to increase greatly in Jerusalem [the land of the Jews], and a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to the faith." Yet many of the Jews did not receive Him. John said in John 1:11, "He came to His own, and those who were His own did not receive Him." We need to remember that lack of evidence is not the only reason that people refuse to serve God.(10)

Secondly, how do we know that somebody didn’t just make up these Old Testament Passages, after the fact, to fit Jesus’ life? Were these things actually written before Jesus lived or were they, as some skeptics propose, written later to accommodate His life? Consider this: The oldest Bible translation in the world, commonly called the "Septuagint" was made in Alexandria, Egypt, where the Old Testament was translated from Hebrew into Greek for the benefit of the Greek-speaking Jews of that city. The first five books of this Old Testament version were translated before 200 BC. Other parts were translated before 100 BC.(11) This Old Testament text, along with the predictions I’ve been referring to, were well in place before Jesus’ birth. In fact, the Septuagint was the Bible used for preaching the gospel. Most of the Old Testament quotations in the New Testament are taken from the Greek Septuagint Translation.(12) These prophecies were not made up after the fact.

Thirdly, what if Jesus simply studied these Scriptures and structured His life so as to fulfill each prediction? The answer to that is quite obvious if we just think for a moment. How could Jesus control the place of His birth? (He was born in the tiny town of Bethlehem Ephrathah, just as Micah 5:2 predicted.) How could Jesus control where His parents went during his infancy (Joseph and Mary were forced to flee to Egypt while Jesus was a baby to escape King Herod, just as Hosea 11:1 predicted). How could Jesus control how others responded to his teaching? How could Jesus control what was done to him by His accusers, His judge, and His executioners? How could Jesus control what they did with his clothes or where they buried him? All these things were predicted in Old Testament prophecy. If Jesus had somehow been able to read the Old Testament and live His life accordingly, I think we would still have to accept Him as God because it would take a miracle to do all these things that were beyond the control of mortal man.

As Paul said in our text in First Corinthians, "…Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, …He was buried, and… He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures…."

We haven’t much time left so we’re going to have to move quickly through this point.

The first thing to note about Paul’s list of eyewitnesses of the resurrection here is that it isn’t complete. There were others who saw the risen Christ. For instance, Paul doesn’t specifically mention the women who were first to discover the empty tomb.(13) His point was not to be exhaustive, but rather to give some good representation of the fact that these things, as he once told King Agrippa, "didn’t happen in a corner."(14) There were many eyewitnesses to the resurrection.

The second thing to note is that many of the witnesses listed here were still alive when this was written. Note his words in verse 6: "…most of whom remain until now, but some have fallen asleep." Some had died but most were still alive.

What is the significance of that? It means simply that people could go interview eyewitnesses if they chose! Paul was issuing a challenge to his readers here to check it out if they needed to.

The first letter to the Corinthians was written within 25 years of the resurrection. It seems to me that 25 years is just about enough time for the newness and exuberance of a new movement to die down and for people to have had time to seriously think through what they are living for. ("Did I really see what I thought I saw or was I mistaken?") Yet it is not enough time for legends to begin to develop. I say the later because there are some today who claim that the story of the resurrection was never a fact in history, but rather a legend that developed as the story of Jesus was passed on verbally from generation to generation. 25 years is not enough time for even one generation to pass on!

Paul’s point, of course, is this: If you doubt, go check it out! Ask the very people who saw it. Many of them are still alive.

This is a remarkable statement. When people are trying to pass along a lie about a certain event, do they invite others to check with the eyewitnesses who actually say it happen? No. If they’re passing a lie off as truth, the last thing they want to do is have someone nosing around looking for the facts. In the face of such investigation, Paul (and the other Apostles for that matter) invited their generation to investigate.

By the way, the claim of the resurrection of Jesus was made in the sermons of the Apostles from the very beginning, in the very face of their greatest enemies. On Pentecost, Peter, standing in the presence of some of the very ones who crucified Jesus, made the claim of the resurrection. His words are recorded in Acts 2:22-24: "Men of Israel, listen to these words: Jesus the Nazarene, a man attested to you by God with miracles and wonders and signs which God performed through Him in your midst, just as you yourselves know-- this Man, delivered up by the predetermined plan and foreknowledge of God, you nailed to a cross by the hands of godless men and put Him to death. But God raised Him up again, putting an end to the agony of death, since it was impossible for Him to be held in its power."

That is a very bold statement! In case you hadn’t figured it out yet, all Jesus’ detractors would need to do in the face of such a bold claim to end this upstart movement would be to go over to the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, get Jesus’ dead body, and hang it up on Main Street in Jerusalem! That would have ended it once and for all! But they couldn’t do that. The body wasn’t there. Peter and the other Apostles are saying, in essence, "Go check it out for yourself!" By the way, most of the same eyewitnesses that Paul listed in our text were also available to those on Pentecost for anyone needing proof beyond the fulfilled prophecy.

People who are telling lies don’t do it in the very city where the event happened and it can be checked out! No. They go elsewhere, far away, to people who didn’t see, and tell their lies there, where they can’t be investigated.

You and I cannot look up the eyewitnesses today for verification of the resurrection. They’re all dead. But we can carefully investigate the boldness of those who made the claim of the resurrection at a time when the eyewitnesses were easily available.

It is interesting to me that those who opposed the preaching of the Apostles after the resurrection did not publicly challenge the validity of that great event, though that would seem an obvious move if it were untrue. Instead they did what all people do who are afraid of the truth. They attacked and attempted to silence the messengers. Peter and John, after being arrested for preaching Jesus in the city of Jerusalem, were ordered by the Sanhedrin Council, "not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus."(15) And what did Peter and John do? They went right back to preaching the resurrection. How could they do that with such boldness in defiance of the very ones who had already crucified their Master and could do the same to them? They believed that the power of Jesus could conquer anything because they had seen Him alive!

But it gets even better. Verse 6 tells us that "After that He appeared to more than five hundred brethren at one time…." Before Jesus died, according to Matthew 26:32, He told his Apostles, "…after I have been raised, I will go before you to Galilee." It seems very likely that this prearranged trip to Galilee after the resurrection was a public meeting between the risen Christ, His Apostles, and that group of more than 500 brethren Paul mentioned. There, in a very public setting, Jesus met with His followers, "presented Himself alive, after His suffering, by many convincing proofs," as Luke tells us in Acts 1:3, and gave them what we call "The Great Commission."(16) Again, the earlier point: These things didn’t happen in a corner.

Paul continues in our text, "then He appeared to James, then to all the apostles…." Many, including myself, believe that the James mentioned here was not James, the son of Zebedee and brother of John. That James was put to death by Herod, very early on(17) and there seems very little reason to single him out for mention here. Rather, this was likely James, the half-brother of Jesus, and elder in the church at Jerusalem mentioned in the account of the Jerusalem council in Acts 15. He was one of the sons of Joseph and Mary born after Jesus.

This James is significant because he was a particularly tough customer. John 7:5 tells us that he was not a believer for a long time. Like the other half-brothers and sisters of Jesus, he was highly skeptical that his older brother could be God in the flesh. Yet apparently, as Paul points out here, Jesus made an appearance to him. Whether he was converted to Christ before or after this appearance, we aren’t told. What is clear is that Jesus appeared to him and thereafter, like Paul himself, this former unbeliever was a radically changed man!

Finally, in our text, Paul mentions that Jesus also appeared to him. Talk about a tough customer! We don’t have time to tell the story of Paul the Persecutor here, but suffice it to say that such a man would not be turned for some kind of phony-baloney myth. Paul gave up all of his accomplishments in Jewish academia to take up with the very one that all his friends and associates rejected. That drastic change was motivated by something and that something was the risen Christ.

So what can we say about all this? We serve a risen Savior! Most of you have accepted Him and obeyed the gospel. You I challenge to strengthen your faith because most of us Christians are not as zealous as we should be. We’re lukewarm. The resurrection? Yeah, OK. Just hurry up and get me home in time from my Easter dinner. We should be alive in Christ! We have a story to tell – a message to get across.

And for any of you who haven’t yet accepted Him, I hope you will, very soon, while there is still time.

Footnotes: Please use your "back" button to return to your place

1. Bob Deffinbaugh, "Highlights in the Life and Ministry of Jesus Christ – The Burial and Resurrection of Christ." http://www.bible.org/docs/nt/topics/l&m/l&m-39.htm
2. Acts 2:30-32
3. Written about 54 AD, preceded only by Galatians and 1 and 2 Thessalonians. Source: Chronological and Background Charts of the New Testament, by H. Wayne House, Academie Books, Copyright 1981, Zondervan Corporation, p. 16.
4. Psalm 22:1
5. Psalm 22:7-8
6. Psalm 22:15
7. Psalm 22:16
8. Psalm 22:18
9. John 19:33
10. Romans 1:21
11. Nelson's Illustrated Bible Dictionary, Copyright (c)1986, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Article on Bible Versions.
12. Ibid.
13. Matthew 28:1
14. Acts 26:26
15. Acts 4:18
16. Read Matthew 28:16-20, especially verse 16 where it indicates that this happened in Galilee after Jesus’ resurrection.
17. Acts 12:2

Dave Redick is Minister of the Hwy 20 Church of Christ in Sweet Home, Oregon and Editor of The Preacher's Study. He may be reached at pstudysupport@comcast.net.

Copyright © 1996-2008 by The Preacher's Study. Permission is granted to subscribers to use this document in total or in sermon preparation in the context of the local congregation only. Publishing it in a book, on the Internet, or anyplace beyond the local congregation is prohibited.

All Scripture quotations and references are from the New American Standard Version unless otherwise stated.

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