Vindication

Our gracious Heavenly Father, once again, we ask that you would be with us during this time to help us to hear your words, to understand, to prepare our hearts, to give a reason for the hope that's within us.

We thank you for this freedom that we have to gather in the name of Christ. We ask that you would bless this time with His honoring glory, we pray in His name.

Amen. Vindication. Vindication.

What does that term mean? When someone has been vindicated, when someone is seeking vindication, what are we referring to?

Vindication would be the demonstration of someone's truthfulness. Very frequently it's a vindication of someone's claims over against those who have denied that what the person is saying is true.

In older theological writings, very frequently, you would see this term being used.

Even in a sermon, someone would give a vindication of a particular assertion that has been made, a particular theological point that has been made.

If you read much of the Puritans, you have read this term very often. It was, for some writers, a standard of their presentation to where once an assertion had been made, there would be a vindication.

Sometimes this would be the exegesis of the text. Sometimes it would be the explication of the systematic theology involved.

The point being that a vindication is a demonstration that what has been said is true.

Now, this morning, we looked at a particular text of scripture in 1

Corinthians chapter 15. If you weren't with us, I will briefly read through the relevant section once again.

Then we will look at a vindication of this text. 1

Corinthians chapter 15, now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preach to you, which you receive and which you stand, and by which you are being saved if you hold fast to the word

I preach to you, unless you believe in vain. For I delivered to you as of first importance what

I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas then to twelve.

Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have fallen asleep.

Then he appeared to James and to all the apostles, last of all as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me, for I am the least of the apostles, unworthy to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God, but by the grace of God I am what

I am, and his grace toward me was not in vain. On the contrary, I worked harder than any of them, although it was not

I, but the grace of God that was with me. Whether then it was I or they, so we preach, and so you believed.

Now, this morning I presented this material to you, this section. We went through it, we interpreted it, we didn't go overly in depth, but we looked at the centrality of this text, and we alleged that verses three through seven in particular are an ancient fragment of a confession of the church.

And I mentioned that a number of scholars would seem to indicate that this goes all the way back to some would say within just a few years or even a few months of the crucifixion event itself, that this is one of the earliest windows we have into the first Christians and how they lived, what they believed, what was important to them, and that the gospel, the historical event of the crucifixion, the burial, and the resurrection of Christ in reference to sins, that this is the very primitive proclamation of the church.

But how would we vindicate that section of scripture?

Well, I do so within a context. As I hope most of you know, and I would covet your prayers, in less than two weeks

I will be debating nationally known, and I'm not misspeaking here,

Christian atheists. I'll let that one sink in for just a moment. This is the description he uses of himself.

Dr. Robert Price, yes, a fellow of the Jesus Seminar, but you need to understand Dr. Price believes that the

Jesus Seminar is far too conservative. Dr. Price is probably the most radical individual

I have debated, and the fact that he identifies himself as a Christian atheist would give you that idea.

He is a former Christian. He was the head of his InterVarsity Fellowship group.

He was a member of conservative churches, not so much Reformed churches, but conservative

Bible -believing churches. But then he went to seminary, which has had an odd effect upon a lot of people over the years.

And it was in seminary, at Gordon -Conwell Theological Seminary, in fact, that he just decided that this

Jesus story didn't make any sense. And so he began that swing off into liberal

Christianity, where you no longer believe the Bible is really true, but you sort of like the stories a bit anyways.

And even he will say he never dreamed he would end up holding the radical positions that he does today.

Now, I forgot to bring it with me. I apologize. But I was going to hold up for you a DVD. Actually, I believe it's in my bag over there.

But if you want to see it later, there is a movie that came out not too long ago called

The God Who Wasn't There by another former Christian -turned -atheist.

And in it, he tells his story of apostasy. And he interviews various people. And one of the people he interviews is

Robert Price. That's why you might want to listen this evening, because that material is online.

It's very popular on your university campuses. And I've known many people who have seen this and have raised the questions that Dr.

Price raised. When I say he's become very radical, I truly mean very radical.

Dr. Price does not believe that Jesus existed as a historical person. If you had walked the streets of Jerusalem or Galilee in the 1st century, you never would have run into someone named

Jesus of Nazareth. The Gospels then, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, he believed were written in the 2nd century, no earlier than 120

AD, probably later than that. And so there's no eyewitness testimony whatsoever to anything

Jesus said or did. But even more so interesting is the fact that if there was a

Saul of Tarsus who became Paul, it never wrote anywhere. None of the Pauline epistles were written by a man named

Paul in the 1st century. Instead, they were written in the 2nd century.

Why you would attach the name of someone who actually didn't do anything to books you'd write 100 years later, even

I haven't been able to figure out over the last number of months of study, but that's the theory that is being presented.

It's called the Dutch radical school, those poor Dutchmen. If you don't have the spirit of God with Calvinism, the results are pretty ugly.

And so what does this have to do with 1 Corinthians 15? Well, if it couldn't get any worse, here is

Dr. Price's theory. That 1 Corinthians, when it was written, didn't contain verses 3 -11 of 1

Corinthians 15. This is an even later insertion into the text.

Now why would we say that? Well, it's a very complex theory. But fundamentally, it's based on theories that he has come up with as to what the early church was like.

For example, the early church could not possibly have had creeds. They could not have been interested whatsoever in summaries of the faith or any of these things.

And besides the Christology of substitutionary atonement and things like that, that had to develop so much later that it would be impossible for this to be any type of primitive belief at all.

And besides, we know that all of these groups were fighting with one another. And so you had the people who follow

Peter and they wouldn't have been friendly to the people who follow Paul. And so there was this theory you come up with as to what this early

Christian movement was like. I'm not really sure how it started. There wasn't any Jesus and there wasn't any

Paul. I'm not sure how you could theorize about anything as to what the early Christian movement looked like or why it started or anything else.

But you have these theories and then you work the text to fit that. For example, when you think about Paul's writings, if someone were to say to you, well, why do you believe these were written in the first century?

Why do you believe that Paul's writing around 50, 51, 52 in that area, why do you even believe that?

Most of us would go, well, because the pre -church church said so. And that's understandable.

But if we were to go beyond that, what kind of an answer would be given? Well, it's interesting.

We find some of the earliest Christian writers outside the New Testament making reference to Paul's epistle.

We have, for example, what's called First Clemens. It's a letter written by the elders of the

Church of Rome to the elders of the Church of Corinth. Corinth historically continued to have problems.

I would like to report to you that having two apostolic letters sent to a local body fixed all their problems.

I'd like to report that to you, but I'd be lying if I did. Because historically we know that right toward the end of the first century the people of Corinth kicked all their elders out.

Well, isn't that shocking? They kicked their elders out and so the Church at Rome, not a single individual at Rome, they didn't have that concept of papacy yet, but the

Church at Rome, the elders at Rome, wrote a letter to the Church of Corinth basically rebuking them.

And today we call this First Clement. And it's fascinating to me that verses 8 and 9 of 1

Corinthians chapter 15 are quoted in First Clement. Now Clement's somewhere around 95 to 100

AD. So what would Dr. Price do about that? How can you have somebody quoting a letter that hasn't been written yet?

Well, we've dated Clement way too early. It's much later than we thought too.

Well, what about people like Ignatius, who likewise shows a knowledge of Paul's writings?

Well, I know that it's standard to date him at 107 -108

AD, but he was actually much later as well. And so you see, any fact of history, once you have established certain theories by which you are going to read all of history, well, any fact becomes somewhat pliable.

It can be recast and reformed. Now you might say, well, that's all fine and good.

That's what you do. You go out and debate these people, and there's going to be a couple thousand people at this debate, and some well -known people are going to be there.

There's going to be some pressure, there's no question about it, but you do weird stuff. So why are you bothering us with it?

Well, I will notice, I will mention to you, the fact that I love the patience of this people. Back when

I debated John Donovan Cross, I think a few of you got tired of listening to John Donovan Cross in Sunday school, and you haven't listened to a word of Robert Price yet.

So this is the one shot that I'm taking along those lines. But, in reality,

I would say to you that if you are truly familiar with the text of Scripture, it's not just a body of proof text, where you read something here, you read something there, but if you read the

Word of God for all its worth, and you become familiar with the outlines of the book,

I don't think this is something that should be strange to any believer after a period of time.

It shouldn't be difficult for us to go, well, the primary theme of the book of John is this, and the flow goes like this.

The constant exposure that we should be having to the Word of God, this shouldn't be difficult for us to do. I would like to suggest to you that aside from the esoteric backgrounds of knowing the date of 1

Clement or Ignatius or something like that, I understand that's rather peculiar type of information, just simply looking at the text,

I think that if we really are familiar with the Word, should be able to provide a response to some kind of assertion like that being made, because as I said, it'd be one thing if it was just Dr.

Price off by himself, and on most of his conclusions, it is just Dr. Price off by himself, but there's this thing called the internet, there's this thing called publication, there's this thing called the media, and so people grab onto these scholars and what they say, and so this stuff does come to our hearing, it does come to our young people's hearing, and so I actually do believe that if we were to just look at this text, we might be able to provide somewhat of a response, even if it's not a response to some of the external information.

Why do I say that? Well, let's consider just the text. Now, remember this morning, we looked at these 11 or 12 verses, and we did so the way we normally do the interpretation description.

We read the text, I provided you with the necessary background, we looked at the words, we followed the flow of thought.

Now, I went through a larger chunk than we normally do, because what do we normally do when we look at a text description?

We would have expanded certain points. We would have made practical application in a number of areas of our life, various points as we walk through the text.

I made some brief application. When Paul says, by the grace of God, I am what I am, I made a practical application that all of us can say that, that we all need to recognize that where we are in life is where God has placed us.

We made application. There is everything fine and proper in doing that. But there is also the need at times to be able to step back and look at a text in its larger context.

And I should try to provide a little bit of that this morning. How does this text function in 1

Corinthians as a whole? Remember what I mentioned when I gave you some of the background information.

I said, Paul is about to speak to one of the primary issues, and that was a question concerning resurrection.

And many times, as I have preached here, and Pastor Fry has as well, we've mentioned what resurrection means.

We've always had to mention, as we've talked about this, what people around the

Christians in those early years believed about resurrection. We've talked about what the

Jews believed about resurrection, and some of the controversies that they had. But we've especially emphasized the fact that there were those in the

Greek context of that day that believed that salvation was getting the good spirit in you out of this evil fleshly body.

That's why, in Acts chapter 17, when Paul preaches the gospel on Mars Hill, when he's in Athens, the people listen to him.

Up to what point? The point where he mentions the resurrection. Anastasis, that which died coming to life again.

And immediately they begin to mock. Why? Because that was fundamentally opposed to their entire worldview.

Their entire understanding of what salvation itself is. And so, keeping those background issues in mind, we look at what

Paul is doing here, and he's about to refer to these problems that have cropped up amongst the

Corinthians. There were some people saying, there is no resurrection of the dead. And so, to introduce that, notice what he says, now

I make known to you, brethren. Remember, Dr. Price says it's verses 3 through 11. The original writing, which wasn't by Paul anyways, the original writing ended at verse 2 and then picked up at verse 12.

Now, let me just mention in passing, he admits, there is absolutely no physical evidence of this.

No one has ever found a manuscript, an ancient compiling manuscript of 1

Corinthians, that goes from the end of verse 2, beginning of verse 12. He admits that's the case, he just simply says, yeah, but the earliest manuscripts we have are too late to actually address this.

Well, actually, the earliest manuscript we have of this particular section goes back to about 175

AD. If he's pushing Paul back to about 120, we're closer than basically any other ancient document we could ever talk about, as to how early we have attestation of it.

But, he says, still, could happen, it's possible. And so, with that aside, we recognize there's no physical evidence of this, would there be anything in the text?

If we were just to look at the text, don't have to read the original languages or anything like that, was there something in the text that would help us to give an answer, if not to Dr.

Price, to someone who's been influenced by him? Because his views then get repeated by, well, those wonderful local community college professors, who like to have a notch on their gun when they find some

Christian and cower them in the silence. Well, I think that there is. Notice, Paul says,

I make known to you the gospel, which I proclaimed to you, which

I gospeled to you, which you received. If you jump immediately down to verse 12, verse 2, where does he do that?

Paul never makes known the gospel, if you go from verse 2 to verse 12.

Then there's something else to notice, and again, this is something that might be a little bit more difficult for us to see.

But I pointed this out this morning, and sometimes I realize that some of my dear brothers and sisters here might think that I just point things out that don't really have any particular purpose.

Everything I point out this morning had a purpose. If you don't hear it this evening, if you get to watch the video of what takes place in a couple weeks, you'll see that it had a purpose.

One of the things I pointed out to you was that in verse 1, which I gospeled to you, which

I proclaimed to you, which I preached to you, in English translations, very often, two

Greek words, euondolizomai, to proclaim the gospel, and keruso, to proclaim, but it's a different word, and it's frequently used more along the lines of the herald of a king, for example.

With keruso, he would proclaim a new law, or a new holiday, or some decree from the king.

Two different words. Now notice that the word that's found in verse 1 is euondolizomai, that is, to proclaim the gospel.

The gospel which I proclaimed to you, which also you received, et cetera, et cetera.

And then, again, it's found in verse 2 as well. If you hold fast to that gospel.

Now, if you cut verses 3 through 11 out, and then just go right down to verse 12, what happens?

Well, how does it start off? Now, if Christ, if we proclaim that Christ is raised from the dead, that's not euondolizomai.

That's keruso. Well, where have we seen keruso? Well, look at verse 11. Verse 11 says,

Whether then it was I or they, so we preach, and so you believe. The preach here is a different word.

It matches what's in verse 12, but if this section, verses 3 through 11, wasn't original, then you would have two different terms, one referring back to a different term in the preceding context.

What's more is, you'll notice that we've gone to plurals, because Paul is now talking about the apostles have done these things in verse 12.

There's no transition there if you don't have the section, verses 3 through 11, to provide that transition at all.

There are all sorts of breaks in the text if you just rip this out.

But what's more is, and this is where we as believers really think we need to be striving, it's great to read the

Bible, it's great to read the Bible regularly, but then sometimes we get tired of that if we don't have more goals.

And I challenge you to read the Bible with an understanding of the text and the flow of the text.

Be able to take these steps backwards. And when you do so, you look at this and you go, it seems to me that verses 3 through 11 are absolutely central to providing the very foundation upon which

Paul says everything else in the rest of this chapter. You take these words out and you no longer, not only is

Paul saying, I make known to you the gospel and he skips doing it, but you're missing the connection the apostle himself makes between the centrality of the gospel and the fact that resurrection is inextricably linked to all the actions in the gospel.

What's the core of the gospel again? Death, burial, and what? Resurrection.

And he keeps going back starting in verse 12. If we preach Christ has been raised from the dead, Christ raised from the dead,

Christ raised from the dead. Makes no sense whatsoever if you take verses 3 through 11 out.

And so, how do we vindicate, how do we provide a vindication of what the apostle has presented to us here?

Well, what I will say is that there is absolutely no reason whatsoever to embrace the theories that Dr.

Price or anyone else wants to push into the history of the New Testament. It's amazing to me that people can say, well, you know, there just isn't enough information for us to know that Jesus existed.

But there is for us to know exactly the nature of the conflicts amongst early Christians outside the

New Testament. Excuse me? There aren't any other writings outside the

New Testament that give us any insight into Peter or Paul or any type of divisions or arguments.

So it seems extremely strange to me that we could have confidence in knowing these theories about the form of the early church, but at the same time, we don't really know if Jesus existed.

In fact, at one point, I heard Dr. Price say on an interview he did in Australia.

Yeah, I've been listening to a lot of Dr. Price. In an interview he did in Australia, he said, even if the gospel narratives had been written 10 minutes after the events took place, we still couldn't know where they're from.

Well, it would seem that unless you had multiple CNN reporters on site, there's no way to know anything that has taken place in history at all.

This kind of radical skepticism seems very odd for someone who can then come to conclusions like, well, this text wasn't original.

I would think that the best someone like that could say is, we just don't have any early idea at all. The problem is, why is he doing a debate on whether the

Bible is true if he has no early idea at all? That's going to be one of my arguments.

But, aside from that, we can look at this text and we find nothing inconsistent with the rest of 1

Corinthians. Dr. Price does play up very strongly his allegation, and this is why

I mentioned it this morning, that Paul could never have said when he says,

I deliver to you what I also receive. Paul could never have said that because Galatians 1 .11,

that Paul, whoever that was, insisted that the gospel he received came directly from the

Lord. There was no human intermediation. He calls it mere harmonizing and that this is a screaming contradiction between the two.

Now, I'm going to point out that Dr. Price has written a number of books and interestingly enough, the books do not all sound the same.

They address different audiences and different subjects and I think Dr. Price would allow and would want people, after he's died, to allow people to read him and to harmonize his statements.

To recognize differences in context and some of his books are very scholarly.

Some are written more for the lay person. I think he'd want to allow people to harmonize his statements and not just automatically assume that he was a bumbling contradictor.

But he never allows that for the New Testament writers at all.

So as I mentioned this morning, there is no contradiction between Paul's assertion that I, like you, receive this gospel.

We all stand in the same tradition of the gospel and his statement that I received it directly from the

Lord Jesus Christ. He's not just simply saying oh, there's no difference between how

I receive it. He did, of course, receive that when he met with Peter and the others. He did receive,

I'm sure, more information than he had just simply from his encounter with the Lord Jesus. But there is no contradiction between the two statements at all unless you just absolutely have no interest whatsoever in allowing the

Apostle Paul to have any differences whatsoever in his emphasis, in his audience or anything else.

And that, unfortunately, is what we hear in so much of this type of writing, this type of teaching, of his algebra.

An absolute willingness to allow for that kind of freedom that we demand for ourselves.

But then beyond all of that, we can go to the text and we say look at the flow of the text. Look at how this is intimately connected with what comes afterwards.

You have a consistent argument on the part of the Apostle all the way through here.

And might it just be, might it just be that one of the real problems that many people have with a text like this is that it's fundamentally supernatural.

I mean, is a resurrection really supernatural? If you're a naturalist, if you believe that all that exists can be measured and tasted and put on a chart and demonstrated by electronic equipment, anything beyond that doesn't exist.

If you're a good naturalist, when a body dies, that's it.

It decays, it goes back to the dust, and that's it. There is no resurrection. You can come up with spiritualized words if you want.

Like I said, this man attends an Episcopalian church as an atheist. I'm not sure if that says more about him or the

Episcopalians. But you can spiritualize these things all you want.

But resurrection, as Paul is talking about resurrection, is a supernatural event. And that's where the problem is.

Because you see, Dr. Price has very much went into what's called analogy.

Analogy. The principle of analogy. And he explains it over and over again. If you're going to do meaningful history, you have to practice principle analogy.

And that means if it ain't happening today, so he looks the world around him and says, well, some weird things happened, but I think there's a natural explanation for all of them.

Therefore, any ancient document that refers to unusual happenings in the past, especially those that would be supernatural, simply cannot be taken seriously.

We must reject a priori as a presupposition.

Any intrusion of the supernatural into the natural realm, or we can't do history.

In other words, God, keep your hands off. Or our textbooks will, messed up.

And that really is what I've discovered over the years. And again, I speak to the young people.

When you sit in a classroom and you hear a man with all sorts of degrees after his name telling you that your faith in the

Word of God is outmoded, it cannot be substantiated, it cannot be... No one really believes this.

May I tell you something? Based on a number of decades of research debating these men directly, reading them, listening to,

I don't know how many thousands of hours of their lectures. May I tell you something based upon my experience?

If you would just have the time to sit down with that person, make them take some kind of pill that would make them honest in their responses.

And you would begin pushing, and you begin asking questions. You discover, first of all, that most of them are going upon second -hand information.

Oh, they may be scholars, but there's so much data out there today that no one can be an expert on everything.

When you hear people say, oh, all scholars believe, only a small percentage of them have actually ever done original research in the field.

They're going with what somebody else has said. Very common. But beyond that, as you peel that layer off, the next layer off, what you're going to find is a set of presuppositions.

They may not even know they're there. They may not be conscious of exactly what they look like or what they contain.

But fundamentally, it's going to get down to a, well, why do you believe that? Why do you believe that? Remember when kids were two years old?

Why? Why? Why? And eventually, we're all like, because. It's just the best you can do.

It's the 47th why question in a row that finally pushes you as the parent back to the because I said so level.

In other words, you get to the ultimate authority level, eventually. Same thing with anybody.

I don't care how many letters they have after their name. You get back to a point where fundamentally they're either going to be open to a recognition of the nature of their presuppositions and open to a recognition that God may well have been active in this world, or you're going to find that right there, right then,

I just don't believe that can happen. I just don't believe that.

In the majority of situations, if you were to push past then, you'd find all sorts of reasons.

From hurts in their past, problems in their families, sin in their life, there's always that.

But fundamentally, you'll come down to a presupposition that says, I am not going to accept any evidence against my position.

And the more degrees they have after their name, the better they are at covering that over with all sorts of verbiage and maybe enough citations to keep you from ever even asking them a question.

But it's there. It's there. So the fact of the matter is, folks, there is vindication for God's truth.

It may take time, it may take effort, but I can tell you my experience now over all these decades of doing this work is the more you dig in, the deeper you go, the more amazed

I am at the consistency and harmony of God's word. And the more amazed

I am at the consistency of the fact that when you start dealing with human beings, guess what? God has described us accurately in this world.

We may try everything to get out from underneath that microscope, but I've discovered God knows our hearts and our minds.

And there really isn't anything new under the sun. Oh yeah, we've got more gadgets and technology than we ever had before, but we use them the exact same way to hide from God and to hide from His truth.

There is nothing new under the sun. And so of vindication, there is no reason to accept this kind of theory.

There is no reason to reject. I have the appalling authorship of this material. There's no reason to believe that this was inserted at a later time whatsoever.

There's no reason to reject that this was written in the middle of the first century. That it actually contains the earliest

Christian tradition we have going back to the time of Jesus. There is no reason to reject any of that.

The reason people believe that is not just for wishful thinking. It's because as long as you don't start with a set of presuppositions that says that can't be true, that it's consistent, the facts bear it up.

Of course, you and I both know that outside of the work of the Spirit of God, you can stare a mountain of facts in the face and still engage in self -deception.

We know that ultimately it is only by the grace and mercy of God that any one of us have bowed the knee even to that which is so clearly true.

That's the power of sin. That power of sin is no match to the power of God's grace.

When that grace moves to open our hearts and minds, it causes us to bow the knee to the Lord Jesus Christ.

Let's close the work. Indeed, our gracious Lord, we thank you that you have by your work upon Calvary's tree, by the sending of your

Spirit into our hearts, opened our hearts and minds and removed that root of rebellion, that self -centeredness, that deafness, that blindness to the beauty and harmony of your truth.

And so, Lord, we do pray that you have been glorified this day in the proclamation of your Gospel and we pray indeed that you will be glorified in the coming weeks when we have an opportunity of doing this yet again.

I pray for that encounter. I pray that you will give me utterance and that you, indeed,

Lord, would be with those people who hear that they might see by your

Spirit. And Lord, as we have opportunity of testifying in this world, we would ask that you would give us boldness, you would give us understanding, and that we would always be first and foremost concerned about pleasing you in our proclamation.

We love you for what you have done for us. We desire to be your servants and to live in a way that pleases you.