People tell us to have faith, but what is faith? How do you know if you have it? Will it do what you hope it will do? What is faith? We live by it everyday without even thinking about it. You got up today believing that your clothes would be in your closet, that breakfast would be served in the cafeteria, and that there would be a speaker here this morning. You did all of this up till this moment without questioning any of it. Yet, someone could have stolen your clothes, the cafeteria could have burned down, and I might not have shown up. Thieves, fires, and no-shows happen every day – they just don’t happen to us. You also take risks when you exercise this faith without thinking. For example, you go to doctors whose names you may not even know, receive prescriptions you can’t read, take it to pharmacists you’ve never seen, and take the medicine he gives you without understanding what’s in it. You do all of this without examining the credentials of the doctor, questioning the validity of the prescription or the accuracy of the pharmacist or investigating the effects of the medicine. You could be killing yourself, but you never think about it twice! You simply trust that things are as they should be, and this is the experience of faith. But the kind of faith we use every day is not sufficient when in it comes to the big decisions of life. Take buying a car for instance. I know a girl who went to a dealers to buy a used car. When asked what kind she wanted she replied, “yellow.” They brought her a yellow car and asked her if she wanted to test drive it and she said, no, I trust you. Not many of us would buy a car that way! What college you go to, what career you pursue, who you will marry – these are not things that you blindly accept – you study the benefits of each college, you study toward a career, and you think long and hard about the person with whom you hope to share the rest of your life. One of the most important decisions we will ever make will be where and with whom we will spend eternity. Yet, many people never question their faith or that in which they trust. However, if we are going to make spiritual decisions – life or death decisions – that count for both time and eternity we should be sure we understand what kind of faith God accepts.When we look at the meaning of faith in the Bible we find that the word in the Old Testament is a word we already know. The Hebrew word found there is “amen,” the word we use to usually end our prayers. It has the idea of “so be it,” but the basic idea is “to establish” or “make firm.” For this reason it is used in the Bible of pillars that support buildings. Without such support everything would fall down around our heads! The New Testament takes this word and gives a definition of faith. In Hebrews 11:1: “Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” If something can be assured it is because something is there to be assured. So, faith is first of all an understanding that that in which we have faith is real and not an illusion, a dream, a trick. This is why throughout the New Testament the writers challenged people to first examine the evidence of Jesus life, death, and resurrection. Luke, one of the Gospel writers said at the beginning of his book: “… having investigated everything carefully from the beginning, to write it out for you in consecutive order … so that you might know the exact truth about the things you have been taught” (Lk. 1:3-4). Does you confirm the reality of the things you believe before you believe or is your faith like that of the little boy who was once asked what faith was on a television program and said: “Its believing something you know isn’t so!” No, real faith is faith in real things – it understands that what Jesus Christ came and did was a historical fact, not fiction. But biblical faith is more than this. We see this again in our passage in Hebrews 11:1 in the words “the conviction of things not seen.” The word “conviction” literally means “to stand under.” Faith is not trying to create reality, but an assurance that rests securely in that in which it hopes. It is a conviction that the historical facts of faith are not just true in the same mundane way as the American or Texas history you have to learn in school, but truth that God has revealed for a purpose – the by which we can know Him personally.

But real faith is still something more. It is not just knowing, even being convinced, that something is true, but accepting it as true for you. Not true for the church, not true for a preacher, not true for your parents, not true for your friend, but true for YOU. Let me illustrate. There was once a famous daredevil named Blondin who regularly thrilled audiences by walking a tightrope stretched across Niagra Falls with a man riding on his shoulders. One day just as he was about to start across, he asked a man in the audience if he believed that he could do it. “Yes,” the man replied you can do it! He then asked him if he were sure that he could do it. ‘Yes, I’m really sure that you can do it!” “Good,” said Blondin, “because my regular man isn’t here today and I need you to ride over on my shoulders.” Now the man was faced with the real issue of faith – he had said that he had believed, but was he willing to stake his life on it? You see, faith is not faith until its all you’re holding onto. Do you remember when you were a little kid and your father or mother was teaching you to swim. The first step was to get you into the water. I can remember going through this with my own kids. I would get in the water and hold out my arms and say “jump!” Although my kids were at first afraid, soon trust in me replaced that fear and they jumped, believing that I would catch them.

This brings us to the final question of faith – the object of faith itself. Our faith is only as good as that in which it is placed. That is why we must make sure that our faith is in something that can do for us what it promises to do. No matter how much you may trust your parents, your religion, your church, your rabbis, priests or preachers; you know and I know that you cannot trust them to give you eternal life when you die. They may be able to help you here in life, but they can’t help you afterward, for they too must die. The problem is not that they don’t want to, the problem is that they have no power. The only One who can do that is God Himself, who came here as a man to die in our place and pay the penalty for our sins. He proved He has the power to give us life beyond death because He Himself conquered death and lives forever. He did what He promised he would do, and now He can do for you what he promised He will do – give you eternal life if you believe. But some may say, I don’t know if I can do that, my faith is not strong enough. Let me answer that by a little story. A young boy had waited for the first big freeze of winter so he could get back to the practice of ice-skating. Now that the big one had come, he ran down the snow-covered slopes and to the lake glistening with a newly-formed layer of ice. Confidently he ran out on the ice, but only a few feet out the ice cracked and he fell in up to his waist. What went wrong? He had really believed that the ice would hold him. The problem, of course, was not with his faith, but with the object of his faith – it was not firm enough to hold him. After a couple of more freezes he returned to the lake at the instance of friends. But because of his previous experience he was afraid to trust himself to the lake again. Yet, he reluctantly ventured out again, nervous and trembling as he went, but do you know what?; despite his faltering faith the ice held up firm. You see, it is not the strength of our faith that matters, but the strength of that in which we place our faith. A weak faith may receive a strong Savior, for salvation does not depend on our power but His!

Let me put this all together for you. If I take this chair and ask you if it will hold me up what will you say? I can study this chair and know that it is solid and strong. I can watch other people sit in it and come to the conviction that it is able to hold me up. But it will never hold me up until I do what? Until I sit in it. Even if I am not so sure, but I still take a seat and it is a strong chair, it will hold me up. Now let me ask you the all important question. Have you set your life in Jesus Christ to hold you up forever? You can understand what to do by taking each letter of the word faith and remembering this phrase Forsaking All I Take Him. That is what you must do. Forsake every other thing in which you have put your trust and trust only in Him. Faith in Christ is not faith, until He’s all your holding onto, but He is able to hold you forever and never let you go all the way through eternity. Let us pray.

All Christians are familiar with the events celebrated at Easter – the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. For most, these events have been communicated through seasonal sermons, illustrated storybooks, or dramatic recreations. It may, then, be a surprise to learn that the sites associated with this greatest story ever told still exists today. The science of archaeology has been the modern means of restoring much of the first-century world and enabling us to experience the reality of Easter in a way unavailable to Christians of the past. Archaeology confirms that the life-changing message of Easter, even though miraculous in nature, took place in the arena of actual history. This is significant for Christians for two reasons.First, because even though the message of Easter may be preached with passion from our pulpits and performed with pageantry in our Easter productions, people may mistakenly feel these are merely church “traditions” rather than historical truth. As with any truth that has become tradition it can lose the sense of its original setting in this world and feel it belongs to some other. This loss of connection with the real world context of Christianity, which defines our faith as fact, imperils our practice of the real significance of the season – our personal salvation provided at the cross and of resurrection life and the future hope of our own bodily resurrection. Archaeology has the ability to replace our unreal portraits of Jesus with a real figure from a real world that demands real faith. As archaeology uncovers the material remains of the Easter context, it does not diminish the miracle of the message but increases our faith in its historical fulfillment.

A second concern for archaeology’s importance to Easter grows out the first and relates to the problem of the present postmodern concept of Christianity as an experience transcending history. The problem of postmodern thought is revealed in a statement by Marcus Borg, Oregon State University professor and Chairman of the Jesus Seminar: “The truth of Easter does not depend on whether there really was an empty tomb … It is because Jesus is known as a living reality that we take Easter stories seriously, not the other way around. And taking them seriously need not mean taking them literally.” To the contrary, however, archaeological excavations have given sufficient evidence that there is every reason to take the Easter stories both seriously and literally. Let us consider the two central events of the Easter accounts, the crucifixion and burial of Jesus.

With respect to the fact of crucifixion, the method of execution perfected by the Roman government to punish criminals, archaeology has vividly revealed its existence in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus. In 1968 the remains of a crucified man from Giv’at ha-Mivtar, a northern suburb of Jerusalem, was discovered in an ossuary from near the time of Jesus. The name of the man, from an Aramaic inscription on the ossuary, was Yohanan ben Ha’galgol, and from an analysis of his skeletal remains he was in his thirties, approximately the same age as Jesus at the time of His crucifixion. His ankle bone was still pierced with a 7 inch-long crucifixion nail and attached to a piece of wood from a cross. Apparently the nail had hit a knot in the olive wood patibulum (the upright section of a cross) and become so lodged that the victim could not be removed without retaining both the nail and a fragment of the cross. According to one anthropological analyst, there were also marks of nails on the wrist bones and of a board had been used to support the feet. This find reveals afresh the horrors of the Roman punishment as recorded in the Gospels. They indicate that the position the body assumed on the cross was with the legs nailed on either side of the upright stake. Therefore, rather than the body being straight, it was pushed up and twisted, causing terribly painful muscle spasms and eventually death by the excruciating process of asphyxiation. This discovery supports the biblical statement of nailing crucified victims, refuting a previous theory they were simply tied to the cross. In addition, the fact that the bones of Yohanan were found in secondary burial within a tomb also disproves an old hypothesis that state criminals were cast into a common grave, for this crucified victim, like Jesus, had received a proper Jewish burial in a family tomb.

The place of Jesus’ crucifixion and burial has also been brought to light through archaeology. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre, located today in the Christian Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem, encloses a portion of a hill traditionally considered to be the true site of Calvary. Protestant Christian tourists most favor the Protestant site known as “the Garden Tomb” discovered in 1883 by the British officer Charles Gordon. Here in a serene setting outside the present -day walls of Jerusalem can be found a weathered tomb situated next to a deeply eroded limestone hill which Gordon identified as “Skull Hill” (now known as “Gordon’s Calvary”). However, archaeological examination of the site by Jerusalem archaeologists Gabriel Barkay and Amos Kloner have shown that the Garden Tomb is part of a system of Iron Age II type tombs in the area all dating from the First Temple period (8th-7th centuries B.C.). The most prominent of these tombs are located next door to the Garden Tomb on the property of the French School of Archaeology, the École Biblique. Since the New Testament says that Jesus was buried in “a new tomb, in which no one had yet been laid” (John 19:41), the Garden Tomb, already some 800 years in the time of Jesus, cannot meet the Gospel’s explicit criteria. However, the traditional site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre has a history going back at least to the fourth century A.D. based on its description in Byzantine sources and the existence of columns still in use today from the earlier church of Constantine the Great. Although today it is located within the present walls of the Old City, and the Gospels specify that Jesus was crucified “outside the walls” (John 19:20; Hebrews 13:11-12), the modern walls do not follow the ancient course. This was proven in the late 1960’s when British archaeologist Kathleen Kenyon discovered that the wall now enclosing the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was a “Second Wall” constructed after the time of Jesus (about A.D. 41). Therefore, when Jesus was crucified the site would have been outside the earlier “First Wall.” Furthermore, in 1976 Israeli archaeologist Magen Broshi uncovered a portion of the original Herodian wall in the northeast section of the church. This revealed that the area upon which the church is built was just outside the western wall of the city on the line of the First Wall. In addition, other archaeologists have discovered that a “Garden Gate” was on this wall, a fact which agrees with the Gospel’s mention of a garden in this area. Examination of the tombs in the vicinity of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre confirm that they are from the late Second Temple period (first century A.D.), the very time in which Jesus would have lived. The type of tomb also matches the precise type of tomb in which Jesus was laid.

Archaeological excavations to expose the rock enclosed by the Church have revealed that it was a rejected portion of a pre-exilic white stone quarry, as evidenced by Iron Age II pottery at the site. In this light, if this is the actual site it has been suggested that Peter’s citation of Psalm 118:22: “The stone which the builders rejected …” may have a double meaning (see Acts 4:11; 1 Peter 2:7). By the first century B.C. this rejected quarry had made the transition from a refuse dump to a burial site. It also gives evidence that it was located near a public road in Jesus’ time, another factor which helps to qualify it as the authentic site since the Gospels record that those passing by the place where Jesus’ cross was situated were able to mock Him (see Matthew 27:39).The nature of the rock site fits both the Jewish and Roman requirements as an execution site and it may be because of its association with a place of death that it was called in Jesus’ time the “place of the skull.” A portion of the rock can still be viewed today through a glass-covered section on the entrance level of the Church. This visible remnant of rock bears evidence of earthquake activity, a fact which accords with the Gospel story of an earthquake that accompanied the crucifixion (Matthew 27:51).

With respect to the burial of Jesus, in the first century two types of tombs were in use. One was the more common kokim tomb which employed long narrow niches cut into the chamber of the burial cave walls at right angles. The other known as thearcosolia tomb had shallow benches cut parallel to the wall of the chamber with an arch-shaped top over the recess. These type of tombs were reserved for those of wealth and high rank. This seems to be the type of tomb in which Jesus was laid because Jesus tomb was said to be a wealthy man’s tomb (Matthew 27:57; cf. Isaiah 53:9), the body could be seen by the disciples as laid out (something only possible with a bench cut tomb), John 20:5, 11, and the angels were seen sitting at both His head and feet (John 20:12). The “Tomb of Jesus” at the traditional site, though deformed by centuries of devoted pilgrims, is clearly composed of an antechamber and a rock-cut arcosolium..

Excavations conducted in the late 1970’s in the area of the tomb has provided additional support for this being the place where the original Easter drama was performed. In the lower sections of the Church were discovered the foundations of the Roman emperor Hadrian’s “Forumn,” in which his Temple of Aphrodite had been erected around A.D.135. Hadrian followed Roman custom in building pagan temples and shrines to supercede earlier religious structures. This was done at the site of the Jewish Temple, located not far from the Holy Sepulchre Church, and the fourth century church historian and Bishop of Caesarea Eseubius confirms that it was also done in this case: “Hadrian built a huge rectangular platform over this quarry, concealing the holy cave beneath this massive mound.” If the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is the actual site venerated by Christians as the tomb of Jesus, it would explain this location for the Roman building.

When the disciples first came to the tomb on that first Easter morning, the Gospels record: “the body of Jesus they did not find.” In the same manner down through the ages skeptics and critics have also come, whether literally or figuratively, and the verdict of history has remained the same as in ancient times – “His body they did not find.” In the final analysis, archaeology may bring us to the tomb, but only faith – informed by the facts – can bring us to Christ. Yet, because archaeology has shown us that the facts that support faith are accurate – an identifiable tomb attesting to literal events – our faith in the Christ of history does depend upon an historically empty tomb for its reality. Archaeology has revealed the persons (Caiaphas, Pilate) and events (crucifixion, entombment) which make up the story of Easter. The resurrection is interwoven with these facts so as to command the same consideration. And when considered along with the historical, social and emotional facts of the first Easter that surround the claim that Christ arose, archaeology adds yet another witness to Him Who has come and is coming again!