Faith in the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth unites all true Christians worldwide. Fundamental to Christianity is the absolute confidence that on the first day of the week Christ defeated death. Let’s quickly review what we all believe concerning the Person and Work of the Christ in 12 brief points.
- Jesus Christ eternally existed before His physical birth as the 2nd Person of the Triune God of the Bible. He has no beginning, nor will He have an end. He was present and actively involved in bringing about the Father’s will in the OT without the name “Jesus.”
- At the right time, about 2,000 years ago, He, God’s Son, left the glories of heaven to be united to humanity in the womb of the virgin, Mary. He, like every other human, developed a physical body within His mother until the time of His birth. Jesus would now forever be fully God and fully man.
- At His birth, His mother and father gave the Psalm 2 “Anointed One” and Psalm 110 “Lord” the name Jesus because He would save His people from their sins.
- Jesus’s early childhood was altogether quite normal, with one glaring exception—He never sinned. He was the perfect baby, born without an inherited Adamic sin nature. In fact, He did what no human had ever done—He kept the Law of Moses perfectly.
- At 30 years old, the Christ, God’s Anointed King, publicly began doing the will of His Father as a Rabbi, a teacher sent by God, starting with a head-to-toe baptism in the Jordan River. Anointed by the Holy Spirit, Jesus began proclaiming that the Kingdom of God had arrived. All must repent and believe the good news.
- As the Deuteronomy 18 Prophet, Jesus publicly proclaimed the message of the Father, as He trained and taught His followers to be fishers of men. (His disciples would go on to turn the world upside down through the proclamation of Christ and His gospel.) In addition to teaching, Jesus validated His claim to be God’s Son through innumerable supernatural manifestations of divine power, such as turning water into wine or raising the dead, and everything in between.
- At the time and place of His own choosing, God orchestrated the public crucifixion of Jesus through His own people’s rejection of their Messiah (God’s Anointed King). In one week, Israel went from hailing Jesus as their King to insisting He had to be put to death in the worst possible way. They had no king but Caesar.
- On a wooden cross, just outside the city of Jerusalem, God made Him who was completely without sin “sin” so that sinners could be saved from sin and death. On that fateful Good Friday, God’s own Son became the ultimate Lamb who would make the salvation of humanity possible. As the priests offered temporal animal sacrifices for Israel, Jesus, the ultimate High Priest, offered an eternal sacrifice for humanity.
- Early on that first resurrection Sunday, the Triune God bodily raised the Son from the dead. “He is Risen” became the battle cry of all who have followed Jesus as their Lord and Savior for the last two millennia. Christ’s resurrection serves as the ultimate validation of the Person and the redemptive work of Christ.
- For forty days, Jesus remained on the earth, appearing to His followers and teaching them about the Kingdom of God. Before His Ascension (return to heaven), Jesus gave His body to the mission of making disciples and promised to be with them until He returned.
- As a reward for the Son’s perfect obedience to the Father, even to the point of death on a cross, God highly exalted His Son and gave Him a name above every name—Lord. Seated at the right hand of God the Father, Jesus intercedes on behalf of His followers, forgiving their sin and guaranteeing them that their salvation will be brought to fruition. While simultaneously ruling and reigning as King in the hearts of all believers.
- Finally, we believe that Christ is coming back to this earth as the KING OF KINGS to raise the dead, judge all who have ever lived, and ultimately establish an eternal kingdom with all who believe in Jesus as God’s Christ and their Lord and Savior.
Will you be part of that eternal kingdom? The alternative is eternally incomprehensibly horrific.
If you desire to know for sure that you will be raised from the dead and welcomed into God’s kingdom, see me after the sermon. I will be up front waiting for you.
