Saturday, April 23, 2005
Acts 13:29-31 Now when they had fulfilled all that was written concerning Him, they took Him down from the tree and laid Him in a tomb. But God raised Him from the dead. He was seen for many days by those who came up with Him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are His witnesses to the people.
THEY SAW HIM ALIVE
The apostle Paul spoke these words in a Jewish synagogue. He was relating to them the central fact of all history. God had foretold the coming of a Savior to the Jews who would be a blessing to all people in the world. Throughout His ministry on earth Jesus was fulfilling these promises to the Jews. Over and over He demonstrated that He was the one whom God had promised from the beginning to send into the world.
Now this was the main event: the death and resurrection of the Messiah, as foretold in Old Testament Scriptures. This was the message of all the apostles. In whatever they said about Jesus they always came back again to the main point: Jesus was crucified; Jesus was buried; Jesus rose again.
Because this was so important and so apparently unbelievable, God arranged to have many witnesses who knew Jesus before He died see Him alive again after He rose. He was seen for many days by these witnesses. Most of them were Galileans who had been with Him for over three years. They had walked with Him for many miles on the trails of the hold land. They had heard His words, they had seen His deeds, and they had become His dear friends.
How sad these friends of His were on that Friday when He died! Even though Jesus had often foretold His resurrection on the third day, they were not expecting any such thing after seeing Him apparently helpless on the cross, abandoned not only by His friends but by God Himself. They must have thought that Jesus' death meant He was a failure after all, in spite of all His wonderful words and deeds.
But how joyful were these friends of His on that Sunday and on the forty days following when they saw Jesus alive! There was not just one brief appearance during those forty days. There were many such appearances. God wanted these friends of Jesus to be witnesses to the people. Therefore they of course had to be absolutely sure of what had happened. There had to be no doubt in their minds that the same Jesus whom they had seen suffering, dead, and buried was now alive.
Two or three witnesses, I suppose, would have been enough to establish the facts in the matter: that Jesus died and rose again. But God arranged for many more witnesses than two or three. There were the eleven apostles first of all. There were the many Galilean women who loved Jesus deeply and rejoiced in His resurrection. There were 120 in Jerusalem who had seen Him. In fact, Paul tells us in one of his letters that more than 500 witnesses saw Jesus alive at the same time.
Thus all our Christian teaching is based on this central fact of all history: Jesus died and rose again.
