Keith Battle - Resurrection Lessons

I want to use as a subject today «Resurrection Lessons». Let’s pray:

Father, please help us now as we share Your Word. I pray that as we have a conversation around Your Word, You would please enlighten us and open up truths that will transform our lives, inspire us, and inform us. I pray that You will say things in this service specific to our needs, for this group of people and for those listening to this message. Would You please speak to us in personal and powerful ways? We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.

When it comes to the person of Jesus Christ, there are about nine things that frame the existence of Christ that are very important theologically. When you think of who Jesus is, it all starts with the pre-incarnate Jesus. There is a Jesus who existed before He came to the earth; He is God in eternity past. He is not just the Son of Man; He is the Son of God. When He says in John 8:58 that before Abraham was, «I am,» He is referring to His pre-incarnate state before He became flesh, before He became man. He was God. When the Bible says in Genesis 1:26, «Let us make man in our own image,» Jesus was in that conversation: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. He is God, and He was God before He became man. When He became man, He didn’t become any less God; He is now the God-man. The pre-incarnate Jesus is a very important part.

Then you must understand the incarnation of Jesus Christ. When He became man, He came into the earth born of a virgin. It was predicted and prophesied that He would be born of a virgin, and so He came in an incredibly miraculous way; He was incarnate. The life of Jesus is an important part of the framework of His story because it is evident that He lived on this earth. By the way we measure time, the way we put calendar time into BC and AD is centered around the life of Jesus. Even our calendars acknowledge that He was here. It is important that the historical Jesus be recognized as a person who really lived and truly walked on this earth. Although Jesus didn’t travel the world, He was in a specific area in Jerusalem and the broader region of Israel.

Next, we must focus on the death of Jesus. Before we can celebrate a day like this, the day of His resurrection, we must understand that He really died and that the purpose of His death was different from that of other people. All people who are born end up dying, but Jesus died for a reason; He died for the sins of the world. His death was substitutionary; it was a sacrificial death, an atoning death. It was a death that ended a system that had existed for centuries. Before Jesus’s death, if you wanted your sins paid for, you had to go to a place called the tabernacle. In the outer court of the tabernacle or temple, you would bring an animal based on what you could afford. You would bring that animal into the inner court where it would be sacrificed, slain, and cooked. There would always be blood, cutting, and smoke; that smoke, cutting, and sacrifice would go up to heaven, so that God would see people worshiping Him and pleading for mercy on their sins. Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission of sins.

Can you imagine being an animal? The animals might think, «Lay me on the altar and stop sinning, man! I hope I’m not next!» That system ended when Jesus died. A system that had been in place for four millennia came to a close when Christ came. The Bible says that priests stood around the clock; they always stood at their posts. But when Jesus, who was the Lamb of God, was sacrificed for us, He went into the Holy of Holies and shed His blood once for all. Then He didn’t stand; He sat down at the right hand of the Father, where He ever lives to make intercession for us. When He sat down, it was finished—a whole system was completed. You can’t tell me Jesus wasn’t important when an entire system ended. You don’t see anyone sacrificing bullocks, goats, pigeons, doves, or turtles for their sins anymore because we had one Lamb who was slain on our behalf, and He was perfect. He who knew no sin became sin for us.

But there’s not just the death of Jesus; there is also the burial of Jesus, which is important in the scope of His framework. He had to be buried; someone had to take His remains and put Him away. They placed Him in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. Joseph owned cemetery property; Jesus didn’t need to own property. You don’t need to own something to use it for just three days; you can rent it, you know? But the reason why His burial is so important is that many religions try to minimize the deity of Jesus.