I am -- I'm very, very glad to become a new
teaching fellow here at Ligonier Ministries. I've had the opportunity to be with you so
many times in the past, but now in a particular way, and it is a sign that I want all the
world to know of how much I believe in this ministry, and also a sign of my indebtedness
to Dr. R.C. Sproul and all that he has meant to all of us as teacher, and mentor, and guide,
and encourager, and friend. I am thrilled to be here because the topic of this conference
is the gospel, and there can be nothing more important for Christians, biblically-minded
Christians, urgently motivated Christians, to come together to think about, and talk
about, and teach about. I noticed how careful Chris was in describing
this event. He said it's something like Thanksgiving. And he said it's something like the good parts
of a family reunion. And I've -- the good parts. That that's what we want; there are
the good parts of a family reunion. Crazy uncle Louis is probably here! But that's alright,
it's a family reunion. That's what happens. I ended up in a situation in which I was in
a church when it was celebrating its anniversary, and the pastor had saw someone coming at me
and he said, "This guy, he just has to come tell you that America was ruined when Jimmy
Carter gave away the Panama Canal. That's the -- what he wants to tell you." And he
came up to me, and he looked at me, and he said, "Preacher, I just want to tell you something."
He said, "You know when this country was ruined?" And I said, "When Jimmy Carter gave away the
Panama Canal." He goes, "Yes." And he walked away and I thought, "Okay, that was easily
handled. There we go. Stuck in the 1970s, but he's got a message." But let me tell you what encourages me about
this family reunion in a way that struck me profoundly today. And, that is how many young
people are here. Because there are so many young people I saw. There were a couple of
very nattily-attired young men holding the door open, just letting people in. There are,
there are young people, high school, middle school, college-age and younger here, and
I just want to tell you if you really, urgently care about the things we're talking about,
you care about whether or not there is the transmission from one generation to the next
of the faith once for all delivered to the saints. And that's what makes me particularly
happy today, and particularly urgent. My task is to speak about the gospel as historical
fact. And in order to speak about the gospel as historical fact, I want to tell you a tale.
There's a tale to be told here and, in one sense, it's a very modern tale. It's a tale
of the modern age, of the arrival of modernity and of the worldview that only became accessible
to Western peoples in the Enlightenment. And what you've got, in this very modern tale,
as you would not be surprised, is a very interesting cast of characters. These would include Hermann
Reimarus, who's known to us only because of Gotthold Lessing, a figure who himself lived
in 1729 to 1781. And Lessing, in the early period of the Enlightenment and its understanding
of history, came to the conclusion, based upon what he had read from the fragments of
Reimarus, that we cannot actually know what happened in the past. History is unknown to
us, it's unprovable. It is impossible, he said, to root what he called the the "facts
of reason," the necessary truths of reason, in what he called "the accidental truths of
history." Lessing said that to understand history right, you should understand that
between where we are and historical events, there is what he called an "ugly ditch." This
ugly ditch is a ditch that makes actual knowledge of the past impossible to us. We can argue
over different interpretations of history, but actually nothing argued -- we're arguing
over what happened. And his particular argument was that it really doesn't matter what happened,
because the worldview, in his Enlightenment mentality, had to be entirely predicated upon
reason; human rationality, autonomous human reason. But Lessing's ugly ditch sets the
stage for the fact that the modern age has become necessarily identified with historical
relativity, with the understanding that historical judgments are necessarily relative judgments.
And when we speak of history, we have to speak of the relative likelihood that something
actually happened and thus, also relativized, is the necessity of any historical events,
in terms of framing a worldview or establishing necessary truths. Emmanuel Kant, the most significant figure
in the Enlightenment, comes along, he's very influenced by Lessing. Lessing talks about
the ugly ditch of history. Emmanuel Kant will talk about the mighty chasm of history, making
the very same point. Kant, again, tried to rescue Christian morality by sacrificing Christian
theology and, in so doing, Kant tried to argue on the basis of a merely practical reason
that he believed was universal to humanity. And Kant argued that, once again, it's rationality
that will provide the authority, in terms of a worldview. Truths are established, or
they fail to establish themselves, upon the operation of reason, and reason alone.
Now, if you're following this, you'll understand that the Enlightenment was not just the overthrow
of a worldview that came before. The Enlightenment was an intentional overthrow, in terms of
especially its secular aspect, as represented by those we are citing here; as an intentional
rejection of Christianity. But specifically, it was an intentional rejection of the Christian
truth claim of revelation. And it was a complete rejection of the gospel of Jesus Christ, as
that gospel is predicated upon, established upon certain events that took place in space,
and in time, and in history; the saving acts of God, through our Lord Jesus Christ. Well, after Lessing and after Kant came others.
And you'll understand it wasn't a coincidence. Friedrich Schleiermacher, the founder of liberal
theology, came along with the suggestion that, of course, Kant had been right and, of course,
Lessing had been right. There is this ugly ditch. There is this mighty chasm. There is
no way we can establish the, the Christian religion, as he called it, on the basis of
some historical facts and then teachings that are understood to be immutably true by divine
revelation based upon those very facts, including the fact of revelation itself. So Schleiermacher
redefined the animating energy of theology as being "feeling," and this fits within German
Romanticism, which was also very much a part of this. But Schleiermacher, coming after
Reimarus, and after Lessing, and after Kant, comes along to say that religion is, most
of all, the Christian religion specifically, is a matter of feeling, a feeling of utter
dependence. Schleiermacher was arguing in order to defend the Christian faith, as he
understood it, over against its cultured despisers, what he called "the cultured despisers of
religion," the secular leading edge of the Enlightenment who'd, they had rejected Christianity
as a totality. He wanted to come back and say, "No, we can rescue Christianity from
the Enlightenment and from the the necessary operation of reason because there are parts
of Christianity that we can retain, and those parts have to do with emotion, and feeling,"
in a way that, in very haunting senses, points to the age we have now, in which people they're
spiritual, but not religious. He argued you can be Christian without being doctrinal,
and you can have Christianity even without the necessity of an historical Christ. Another rescue attempt was attempted at the
beginning of the 20th century. After the so-called "quest for the historical Jesus," when you
had so many people in, both in German-speaking Europe and also in English-speaking Europe
and elsewhere, they were doing their very best to say, "Look, we, we have to make a
distinction between the Christ of faith and the Jesus of history," making that, that separation.
The Christ of faith is the Christ the church worships, but the Jesus of history is a historical
figure to be evaluated and to be considered along with and alongside any other historical
figure, any other historical event that might be investigated. By the way, Albert Schweitzer,
one of the -- a theological liberal himself -- but one who at least understood the, the
ridiculousness of the quest for the historical Jesus, he pointed, and I'm paraphrasing him
here, he pointed to the ridiculousness of how much a liberal, German scholar's finding
Jesus who looks like a liberal German scholar. And, you know, he said famously that these
questers for the historical Jesus are like people who look down a well and see the reflection
of their own face and think it's Jesus. But at the end of the 19th century, there was
a great exhaustion in terms of the quest for the historical Jesus. There were many people
who, trying to rescue Christianity from its necessary truth claims in terms of orthodox
biblical Christianity -- that faith, once for all delivered to the saints -- and said,
"There must be another way to rescue Christianity from these necessary arguments about history." Along comes Rudolf Bultmann, one of the most
influential figures in New Testament studies, also in theology, especially in the early
decades of the 20th century. Rudolf Bultmann comes back to say, of course, of course, modern
historical consciousness means that we cannot take the New Testament seriously as history.
Of course. Of course it's impossible to trust sources that are, are, are so ancient, in
terms of the modern demands of historiography. It's impossible to take the New Testament
seriously as history. And, instead, he argued that the New Testament in particular, and
the stories of Jesus found in the Gospels in particular, and the teaching of the early
church, had to be, in his words, "demythologized." And he was suggesting that, if you demythologize
the Old Testament, he was arguing for a conception of myth in which what you have here is the
spiritual truth is being expressed through apparently historical claims but, even if
we don't believe the history anymore, then we can still extrapolate the myth and then
we can revise that myth, we can update that myth, we can bring it into a 20th century
context, and so we can rescue some meaning out of the New Testament even if the New Testament
is no longer to be taken seriously. It's either divine revelation or making historical claims.
Again, I'm going to paraphrase Bultmann to say -- he said basically this, "You're going
to have to deal with the modern age. The church of the Lord Jesus Christ is going to have
to understand the mentality of the modern age." And as he put it, "People who turn on
electric lights and use electric razors don't believe in heaven and hell. So you're going
to have to demythologize the New Testament." Another rescue attempt came later in the form
of neo-orthodoxy, especially as represented by Karl Barth. And in the 20th century, Karl
Barth argued that history itself had to be recovered if the Christian preacher was going
to be able to preach, but it had to be recovered in a way that would reflect the key insights
of the Enlightenment and, in particular, of Emmanuel Kant. Emmanuel Kant divided all meaning,
as you know, between two worlds: the phenomenal world that we can see and observe, the phenomenal
worlds where we can have a scientific laboratory, the phenomenal world is where we live and
experience, and the noumenal world, in which there was the realm of moral meaning and of
spiritual truth. And so there was a distinction between the phenomenal and the noumenal. And,
of course, Christianity, in terms of its truth claims, gets shifted up into the noumenal
world outside historical rational investigation. It's all about meaning, and feeling, and spiritual
truth. It's not about fact. It's not about history. It's not about space and time, and
the space-time continuum. You may recall that Francis Schaeffer, in
the 1970s, trying to explain this to evangelical Christians, said, it's a two-story theory
of truth, going back to the Enlightenment. In Emmanuel Kant, you've got the lower story
where things are facts, and the upper story where things are merely meaning. But the meaning
is separated from facts. The spirituality is separated from truth claims. The truth
claims are themselves reinterpreted so that there is no apparent claim that anything actually
happened in space, in time, and in history. So Karl Barth borrowed the phenomenal noumenal
distinction. He came up using two different German words for two different kinds of history.
There's Historie, which is history like, "In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue," and
then there's Geschichte. And Geschichte is history in which meaningful events take place,
and it's the meaning rather than the facticity that is most important. And in particular,
salvation history, he used the German to call it Heilsgeschichte. So you've got saving history,
but it's not to be confused with history, which is a matter of facts and space and time
continuum. Barth allowed that there could be moments when the two could intersect. That's
what's really interesting. Emmanuel Kant never implied the two could ever intersect. The
phenomenal and the noumenal remain ever separated. But Barth comes along and says, "No, here's
what happens. It is possible, possible at moments for Historie and Heilsgeschichte to
intersect, such as in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead." But
Barth went on to say that even as Heilsgeschichte and Historie could intersect in something
like the intersection of the Lord Jesus Christ from the dead, it would not be observable,
nor provable, nor assertable on the basis of Historie alone. One of the lessons I hope we get from this
immediately is that every rescue attempt of Christianity fails, because Christianity does
not need to be rescued. The gospel does not need to be rescued. In, in the modern age
or in any other age, every attempt to rescue the gospel ends up in a form of theological
liberalism. The theological liberals themselves, going back to the late 19th and early 20th
centuries said, "We've got the rescue Christianity from these truth claims, especially truth
claims having to do with historical fact and eternal meaning, present consequences." Rescue
attempt after rescue attempt has been tried. But the other thing we need to note is that
the pressing of the historical case against Christianity continues. It continues and it
continues. So you can go all the way back to Lessing, and then to Kant, and then to
Schleiermacher, to the quest for the historical Jesus, and by the time you get to the 1960s
you've got what's called "the new quest for the historical Jesus." And they continue to
press the case. By the time you get to the 1980s, you've got an academic establishment
that has so secularized itself, and it has become so much not only enamored with, but
established upon liberal foundations, that it finds the claim of revelation having to
do with historical events absolutely impossible to recognize as credible. So in the 1980s you get a group called "the
Jesus Seminar." The, you have the quest for the historical Jesus, you get the new quest,
and you get the Jesus Seminar. The Jesus Seminar was headed by a man by the name of Robert
Funk, a professor of New Testament who gathered together a bunch of scholars and they decided
they were going to use, here again, simply the tools of secular historiography in order
to determine how much of the New Testament was historically credible. And I'm not making
this up. They met together, and each participant in the seminar had four colored marbles. This
is esteemed, elite academia. Four colored marbles. There was a red marble which was
to indicate, especially when it comes to historical claims about what Jesus said, "We're pretty
certain He said this." Then there was a pink marble for "It's more likely than not Jesus
said this." Then there was a gray marble for "It's more likely than not Jesus didn't say
this." And then there was a black marble. Actually I just told you that backwards. The
black marble was "Jesus didn't say it." The gray one was "He might have said it." The,
you can follow on through. Let's just put it this way. There's very little red in their
Red Letter Bible. They came to the end of it and decided that the words of Jesus were,
were not historically credible, that Jesus could not have said these things, must not
have said most of these things. And so there's a lot of black "Jesus never said it," there's
a little bit of gray "maybe He said it, probably not," there's a little bit of pink "Jesus
probably said that," and, if Jesus said that, He sounded like a liberal New Testament scholar
in the 21st century, or "Jesus probably did say that. We're going to have to recognize
He said that." That's the red letter. It's very little. So you've got the quest for the historical
Jesus, you've got the new quest, you've got the Jesus Seminar. And, and you would look
at that and, and, and here's what's tempting. It's tempting to look at that and say, "Okay.
That's a long way from us." I mean, we don't really have to worry about this idea of historical
relativity and the dehistoricizing of the gospel, the historical relativizing of Christian
truth claims. That's not something that we have to worry about as getting to close to
us. But it is. Frighteningly close. And it is not over. After the quest for the historical
Jesus, and the new quest for the historical Jesus, there will be more quests of the historical
Jesus. In the 1980s, I can remember, in seminary,
being introduced to the work of Hans Frei and his colleagues at Yale. And this was being
introduced as the, "this is another rescue attempt." This was being introduced as the
next new thing in terms of how to rescue Christianity from its historic truth claims. Hans Frei
said that even though the vast majority of the New Testament is not to be taken as historical,
he said it's "history-like." It's like history. It should be read as being "like history."
"Well," you would say, "that's a long way off. That must influence people in the left
wing of Protestantism. There must be some people who would be attracted to that." It
filtered its way down into many evangelical institutions where students were beginning
to hear that the New Testament was "history-like," even if it was not to be understood as history. A recent book that was published by an evangelical
publisher, edited and written by those who claim to be evangelical scholars, entitled
Evangelical Faith and the Challenge of Historical Criticism, it came out just in the year 2013,
and the thesis of this book is that evangelicals, if we are to survive as a movement, must make
our peace with historical criticism. It's the same kind of argument that Schleiermacher
was making over against the culture despisers of religion. It's the same kind of argument
that the theological liberals were making in the early decades of the 20th century.
We're going to have to rescue Christianity from the necessary conflict between our historical
claims and modern historical reason. And the way to do that is going to be for evangelicals
to make peace with historical criticism. And so, when you look at the successive essays
in this book, they argue, for example, that it's not historically credible, of course,
to believe in an historical Adam, which means that we're going to have to find a way to
ground our biblical anthropology and our biblical theology in something other than an historical
Adam. But you'll notice something. You would say, "Well, this is a consequence of that
is that someone's later going to have to come along and write another article based upon
that saying how we're now going to have to redefine original sin because the fall didn't
happen." But, no, you don't have to wait for that because they do it in the same essay!
In a successive essay, they raise the issue of the Exodus, saying that there are "fantastical
elements in the Exodus account," which means they don't think they happened. Using the
modern, secular tools of historiography, they're, they're coming to the conclusion that, when
you read Exodus, there's just stuff there that probably didn't happen that becomes part
of the story -- the parting of seas and, well, you get exactly what we're talking about here.
And so, at some point, they say, "It probably is true that there is an historical germ,
there's an historical kernel, an historical cord in the fact that some proto-Israelites
did escape from some Egyptian captivity at some period, though not as depicted in the
book of Exodus. When it comes to the prophetic literature of the Old Testament, once again,
they dehistoricize it. And then you would think, "Well, if these
are evangelicals, certainly as horrifying as all that is, when they come to the, to
the Gospels, they're going to have to stop short. I mean, there's going to be a firewall
there. They're going to hit that. They're going to come up against it and they're going
to recognize, 'We can't continue this argument when it comes to Jesus.'" But they do. They
do. They continue the argument even as it applies to the Gospels. Oh, they do find a
firewall, by the way. They say that they hit the firewall when it comes merely to the death
and resurrection of Jesus Christ. There must be some true, historical foundation, in some
sense, to that, otherwise there is no Christian faith. But when it comes to the miracles of
Jesus, they say, "It's all likely that -- in all likelihood, again, there's these fantastical
elements that we see we're going to have to strip away from the story." Now, as I said, this is a very modern tale.
We're talking about modernity, and even the the cast of characters I mentioned, these
are all part of the Enlightenment and the post-Enlightenment. They're part of, of modern
theological liberalism or neo-orthodoxy. And even what we saw in this latest book, published
by an evangelical publisher and supposedly written by evangelicals, what we see is that
there is a very modern story. That's exactly the whole moral thrust of this new book. It
is that we have a moral responsibility simply to abdicate to modern historical relativity
and be done with it. "Save what we can so we can preach what we can preach." But what
I want to point out to you is that this is not such a modern heresy after all. As a matter
of fact, virtually all heresies are perennial heresies. As you have your Scripture before you, look
to 2 Peter chapter 1. One of the arguments made by Hans Frei and others, that what -- he's
the one that said that it was "history-like" so much in the New Testament. It's "history-like."
It's because the inference, if not the explicit statement is that these historical questions
are ultimately modern questions. No one asked them until modern times; you know, on the
other side of the Enlightenment and the rise of autonomous human reason. People now take
history more seriously than they did in the past. They're asking a different set of questions,
and those questions are going to invalidate the historic claims of Christianity. Well,
along comes Peter, inspired by the Holy Spirit, to let us know these are not new questions.
In 2 Peter chapter 1 and verse 16, Peter writes: "For we did not follow cleverly devised myths
when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses
of His majesty. For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice
was borne to Him by the Majestic Glory, 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,'
we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with Him on the holy mountain." "And," says Peter, we have something more
sure: "the prophetic word to which you will do well
to pay attention as to a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawns and the morning
star rises in your hearts, knowing this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture comes
from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of
man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." So Lessing, and Kant, and Bultmann, and all
the rest say, "Look, it's a modern age. Deal with it. It's a modern age. We're, we're just
going to have to separate the historic truth claims the Christian church has traditionally
and long-standingly made on the basis of the New Testament about Jesus, and we're going
to have to rescue out of that some spiritual meaning." And when you look at what so many,
so many denominations, churches, and folks who identify as Christians say when you see
them in public, you'll understand this is the worldview from which they are operating.
Trying to rescue a little meaning, a little significance for Christianity when they no
longer believe that the New Testament is true. It's a very modern tale, in terms of the fact
that it now comes to us as part and parcel of the modern world, but it is not a new question.
The apostles were absolutely determined to make clear that they were not preaching cleverly
devised myths. The New Testament, to be saved, doesn't have to be mythologized, demythologized.
It simply has to be preached. And Peter then goes on, with specificity, to make very clear
exactly what he's saying here. He is saying, "We were eyewitnesses of these events. We
saw them with our own eyes. We heard the divine majesty say, 'This is my Son in whom I am
well pleased' with our ears. We were there." Space, time, and history. You know, when you look at the New Testament,
it's clear that this isn't just Peter. Consider the Gospel of Luke, and how it opens. What
does Luke say as he writes to Theophilus, telling Theophilus what he's doing? -- the
prologue to the Gospel of Luke. Luke writes, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit -- "Inasmuch
as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things that have been accomplished
among us." These are things that happened. "Just as those who from the beginning were,"
here's that word again, "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, it's almost as if we said, "Let's somehow bring
someone back from the New Testament to speak to the quest for the historical Jesus. Let's
bring someone back from the New Testament to tell us what they were intending by what
they were doing in writing the New Testament under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Let's bring someone back to answer Barth, and Bultmann, and Lessing, and all the rest."
Well, I present to you Luke. And what does Luke say? Luke says there have been many who
have been trying to put together a narrative of the things that happened, things that had
been accomplished. But now, he says, "Oh most excellent Theophilus." Look at his words.
He speaks, again, of "eyewitnesses." "Those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and
ministers of the Word. They've delivered them to us." What's he doing? "It seemed good to
me also, having followed all things closely for some time past." There's historical investigation.
"To write an orderly account for you." Why? "That you may have certainty concerning the
things you have been taught." Well, at face value, in black and white, right
there in the text, we have Luke telling Theophilus and, by the gift of God's revelation, telling
us, the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, that these things were written because they happened.
And his very purpose, in writing the Gospel of Luke, was to make clear that they happened
in such a way that eyewitness testimony was the very basis for what was now to be related
to Theophilus in an orderly account so that you would have "certainty," he writes, concerning
the things that happened. Look at the prologue to the book of Acts.
Similarly, Luke writes, "In the first book, O Theophilus, I have dealt with" -- what?
-- "with all that Jesus began to do and teach, until the day when He was taken up, after
He had given commands through the Holy Spirit to the apostles whom He had chosen. To them
He presented Himself alive after His suffering by many proofs, appearing to them during forty
days and speaking about the kingdom of God. And while staying with them" -- notice all
the historical data, all the historical claims, all written to be understood as history, as
taking time in the space-time continuum -- "And while staying with them He ordered them not
to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of the Father, which, He said,
'you heard from me; for John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy
Spirit not many days from now.'" It's a modern tale, but it's not really a
modern tale. We need to note that the historical claims presented in Scripture do not begin
with the Gospels. The historical claims do not begin with the New Testament. We also
need to understand that an authentically evangelical, authentically faithful understanding of Scripture
begins, that the historical accounts from Scripture begin with Genesis 1:1 -- "In the
beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." And we come to understand that wherever
Scripture makes any historical truth claim, it is to be understood as revealing to us,
conveying to us history which is history, as in the space-time continuum, taking place
in exact accordance with what was revealed to us, not only in terms of the meaning of
the events, but the specificity of the events, the details of the events, and the historical
truth claims that are claimed about those very events, including not only what happened,
but what was said, because what was said is part of what happened. And we have to be very,
very careful that we don't all of a sudden shift into a mode where we say, "Well, the
first 11 chapters of Genesis, that's proto-history, that history-like." And then, when we get
to later parts of Genesis, all of a sudden that becomes history. Anything that begins,
"In the beginning," and says this happened, and then that happened, and then that happened
in the Scripture, that is what we know as history. And it is presented in just that
way, and given to us in just that way; the Exodus, and all the saving acts of God. You,
you realize that, in the New Testament, and even in Jesus' own self-attestation and self-revelation,
He grounds Himself and the historic nature of who He is and what He is doing, His own
Person and work, in the fulfillment of prophecy, and in the entire historical flow of the Old
Testament, including saving events, and including Noah. You can't sever history in such a way
that you say history becomes important in Genesis chapter 12, or history becomes important
only when we get to the New Testament. Jesus made very clear it's all history, to be taken
as history as it's presented as history. This happened, and that happened, and that happened.
And the bottom line is: thus we are saved. That point is made emphatically clear in the
most important text of our consideration, and that is 1 Corinthians chapter 15. In 1
Corinthians chapter 15, Paul writes: "Now I would remind you, brothers, of the
gospel which I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, and by which
you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you -- unless you believed
in vain." "For what I delivered to you as of first importance,"
he says: "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 the 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, then to all the apostles. Last of all, as to one untimely
born, He appeared also to me." Notice that Paul is not only making necessary
historical claims here; he is clear that he knows he's making necessary historical claims.
And not only that, he is raising these historical claims to of first importance, for he says,
"I received that which was delivered also to me and that is that Christ died for our
sins," space, time, and history, "according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried,
and that God raised Him from the dead according to the Scriptures." You can say, "Well, the
apostle Paul, it sounds like you're headed to the assumption that, if this didn't happen,
we're not saved." Look at the text. 1 Corinthians 15, beginning in verse 12: "Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from
the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? But if there
is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has
not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain. We are even
found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that He raised Christ,
whom He did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not
raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith
is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in
Christ have perished. If in this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people
most to be pitied." But. "But in fact Christ has been raisen from the
dead -- has been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep.
For as by a man came death, by a man has also come the resurrection of the dead. For as
in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive." Space, time, history. Christ, death, burial,
resurrection. Space, time, history, Adam. Space, time, and history. The first Adam,
and likewise the Second Adam. Matthew grounds the, the coming of Christ, the incarnation,
in prophetic fulfillment, predictive prophecy being fulfilled in such a way that we come
to understand that the Bible's understanding of history is not only that everything must
have happened as it is revealed it happened, but the Bible's understanding of history is
also that it must happen as the Scripture says it will happen. And thus, Matthew will
say, "These things took place in order that the Scriptures may be fulfilled." Luke, by
the way, when he's telling us exactly what he is doing in terms of relating an orderly
account of what took place, you'll notice just even as you Luke chapter 2, it begins
with such rich historical data. "In those days, a decree went out from Caesar Augustus
that all the world should be registered." This was the first registration, "when Quirinius
was governor of Syria." Brothers and sisters, that's not "history-like." That's history.
And it's not of importance to us merely because it happened, but because it happened, we are
saved. There are certain things that we get tired
of the longer we live, and one of the things that I get tired of is being told that the
modern age has changed everything. And I keep being tired of being told that the church
is going to have to come to grips and come to terms with the modern age or get left behind
by history. I get aggravated to be told that the people of the New Testament or of the
Old Testament, the apostles, were simply historically naive to believe that history is actually
what they were claiming. When Peter says, "Look at me. We were not following carefully
devised myths." When Luke says, "Look, Theophilus, these things happened, and I want you to have
an orderly account of exactly what happened so that you will be convinced as a believer."
I get tired of it, but it's not going to stop. It's not going to pass away. And the reason
for that is that the first, the first subversive question about the historicity of the Word
of God was the first subversive question about God in divine revelation: "Hath God said?"
Historical relativizing didn't begin with the Enlightenment. It began in the garden.
It was part and parcel of the fall. So you might think that what I'm telling you is that
Lessing was wrong and there isn't an ugly ditch. The ugly ditch is just an invention
of modern secular philosophy. It's one of the major features of the Enlightenment, but
we don't have to worry about it because the ditch isn't there. You might think that what
I'm going to tell you is, "Look, here's our confidence. We can place our confidence in
history, because history, rightly understood and rightly applied, will come to the right
understanding concerning Jesus Christ, His Person, His work, and what it means for us."
But that is not what I'm telling you. We are not here because of the right operation of
our autonomous human reason. We are here because that ugly ditch is transcended by the gift
of divine revelation. And, you know, that is exactly the point that Peter makes in 1
Peter, when you look back at that text once again. Peter says: "For we did not follow cleverly devised myths
when we made known to you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but we were eyewitnesses
of His majesty. For when He received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice
was borne to Him by the Majestic Glory, 'This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased,'
we ourselves heard this very voice borne from heaven, for we were with Him on the holy mountain." But notice where he goes. That was past. That's
the historical claim he's making. He's making very clear that the life of Jesus, the incarnation
of Jesus is exactly as it is declared in Scripture; that the virgin conception of Jesus is exactly
as it was revealed in Scripture, and is part and parcel of who Jesus is, and what He has
come to do for us. His sinless life, exactly as it is revealed. Everything He said is revealed
in the New Testament, and everything He did is recorded in the New Testament. And ultimately,
most important as that which is of first importance, that Christ died for our sins according to
the Scriptures and that God raised Him from the dead according to the Scriptures. And
also that, in the same sense, that Matthew says, "These things happened in order that
the Scriptures might be fulfilled," we are looking for a return of the Lord Jesus Christ,
bodily, in glory, in space, and in time, and in history! But you'll notice that Peter turns from his
absolute unconditional assertions about what happened to what we have now. Writing to the
church, he says, "And we have something more sure: the prophetic word to which you will
do well to pay attention." Do you understand what he's saying there? He's saying, "I was
there on the mountain. I saw Jesus with my own eyes. I heard the Majestic Glory with
my own ears. But you have something better! You have the Scripture! You have the prophetic
Word!" We don't have less than the apostles had; we have more! And it isn't that we are
in an inferior position, even to the eyewitnesses eyewitnesses to these events; we are actually
in a spiritually superior position because we have the entirety of all that God has given
us in the Scripture, in the prophetic Word. And this, just in case we might miss the point,
Peter goes on to say: "Knowing this first of all, that no prophecy
of Scripture comes from someone's own interpretation. For no prophecy was ever produced by the will
of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit." When I arrived at seminary in 1980 -- a very
different age -- in one of my first classes I was handed a book by a man by the name of
-- I was handed a book by a man by the name of
Van Harvey. He was the author. And the book was entitled The Historian and the Believer.
As a 20-year-old young believer, I read the book, and what Van Harvey was saying -- kind
of the left wing of the left wing of the left wing -- what he was arguing is that, given
modern historical consciousness, it's immoral to claim more of what happened in terms of
Christ and what is claimed in the New Testament than modern history can assure us actually
took place. He actually makes the charge that it's immoral to preach what we preach and
to believe what we believe. But, you know, I can remember reading that book and having
to mark it up knowing I was going to be tested on it and knowing I was going to have to talk
about it, I can remember reading that book and then thinking this: "You know, if it didn't
happen, it would be immoral to claim that it did. But if, by God's gift of revelation,
we know that it did happen, and we know that that's the gospel of Christ, received as of
first priority; if we know that salvation comes to those, to those who hear that gospel
and, hearing that gospel, believe, and, believing, are saved; we know that the gospel is true
and we know that Jesus Christ really was crucified for our sins and that He really was raised
on the third day, then, brothers and sisters, it's immoral not to preach it. It's immoral
not to tell it. It's immoral not to teach it. You know, at the end of the day, what rings
in my ears more than anything else, is Paul saying, "If Christ was not raised from the
dead, if we have hoped for Christ in this life only, we are of all men most to be pitied."
And I'm so thankful that the next word Paul writes is "but." But He is. Let's pray. Our Father, we are so thankful that we come
in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, whom we know was crucified for our sins as our
substitutionary Savior, who paid full atonement for our sins, and who whose atonement was
received as paid in full, even as You vindicated Him, as You raised Him bodily from the dead
on the third day. Father, may we be filled with confidence to preach this gospel, and
none other, knowing that it saves, that it's true, that it happened. And may we teach it,
and may we preach it until Christ returns in space, in time, in history, in fullness.
We declare this, and pray this, in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
