The Embarrassing Gospel!

     
Have you ever done something that was really, really embarrassing?  I sure have.  I once volunteered to be a part of a strength exhibition at our church.  I was going to pull a 40,000 lb fire truck!  Hundreds of people were there to watch and when the fire truck showed up, it was actually 80,000 lbs and it had begun to rain.  That didn’t stop me from trying!  On my third attempt to pull the truck, I pulled so hard my harness snapped!  Needless to say, the firetruck never moved and I was rather embarrassed.  If I had been making up this story, it definitely would have had a more triumphant ending.

     There were a group of men who have told a story and unfortunately they have been accused of making it up.  I am talking about the Disciples of Jesus of Nazareth.  They shared their accounts of the life of Jesus in the four gospels of the New Testament.  Their accounts have endured endless criticism. 

     I submit one line of evidence among many for the reliability of their accounts: Their Embarrassing testimony. 

     Have you ever lied to make yourself look good?    Probably.  Have you ever lied to make yourself look bad? Probably not.  This is why the embarrassing details of the gospel writers is deemed to be reliable.  If you are going to make up a story you are more than likely going to make you and your friends out to be heroes, not bumbling idiots.

     There are several categories of the embarrassing details, one of which is that the disciples were cowards! 

     When Jesus is captured, all of the disciples run away in terror!  Mark even includes in his account of a follower who ran away naked! Many scholars believe that Mark is referring to himself as the naked coward.

     After Jesus is captured, Peter denies that he even knows him, three different times.  When he is confronted by soldiers? No, when he is confronted by a middle school girl!

     After Jesus is crucified, the women followers are the only ones brave enough to go and discover the empty tomb!  This embarrassing detail is quit revealing considering the culture at that time.  In a court of law, a woman’s testimony was not on the same level as a man’s.  Consider this quote from the Jewish religious text “Sooner let the words of the Law be burnt than delivered to women!”  Women obviously occupied a low rung on the Jewish social ladder.   This is evidence that if the disciples where making up a story, they wouldn’t make women the first to discover Jesus resurrection.  But the women were the heroes of the story!

     I want to highlight two lessons we can learn from these embarrassing details of the Gospel accounts.

1.    The Gospel Accounts are FACT not fiction! 

If they said Jesus said it, he actually said it.

If they said Jesus did it, he actually did it.

2.    God will use cowardly imperfect people to change the world if they will only put their faith in him!