God's Not Dead--But He Was!

April 5 2015 Easter

God’s Not Dead—But He Was!    NOTES NOT EDITED

John 19:28-20:0, et. al.

SIS— Jesus Christ, God the Son, suffered a real death and experienced a real resurrection so that we could have the gift of eternal life.

This has been a remarkable week.  If you have been following the news you realize that Obama’s Administration has been negotiating feverishly to strike a deal with Iran that would put Iran’s path to nuclear weapons on ice for at least ten to fifteen years.  Or, so that is what the “spin doctors” are promising us.  The hope is this would avert a war in the Middle East as Israel will most surely bomb Iran to prevent them from getting a nuclear bomb—just like they did June 7, 1981.  Most people, especially Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanayhu, have no confidence in Obama’s negotiations with Iran.  I can see why.  Iran’s national slogan is, “Death to Israel.” Also, many American senators and congressman—from both sides of the aisle—remain skeptical that Iran can be trusted in any way or to any degree.  After all, Iran has a national holiday celebrated the first time on November 4, 1987 dubbed, “Death to America Day.”  The Middle East is a bubbling cauldron of hate for both Israel and America, and Obama’s negotiation have been wildly acclaimed by Iran—our sworn enemy—and soundly denounced by Israel—our only true friend in the Middle East.  This has been an historic week indeed.

But, that’s not why I said this has been a “remarkable week.”  This has been Holy Week, the week leading up to the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.  Sadly, both Obama and the Easter Bunny have received more press than Jesus Christ this week.  Yet--and listen real closely to this--this week is memorializes the most important event in the “history of the universe!”  The death of Jesus Christ on the cross literally divides eternity into two parts.  We even date our calendar (or we used to until a few years ago) by B.C, before Christ, and A.D., in the year of Our Lord.  The most significant event that has ever taken place—and that could ever take place—in fact DID take place about 1,982 years ago on a hill called, Golgotha, just outside of Jerusalem.  God died on April 3, 33 A.D. about 3 0’clock in the afternoon.  For most people it seems absurd that God could die—let alone have the exact time.  It is not absurd.  The death of God is the most significant event in the history of the universe.  The death of God raises many questions to be sure.  Who actually died on the cross? How is that possible? Who was running the show in the three days Jesus' body lay in the tomb? Where was Jesus on Saturday? Why is the resurrection so important? Can we prove the resurrection was history and not a hoax? I have more questions and I'm sure I won't answer them all.  God’s Word does answer many questions as we examine what happened on the last three days of the first Holy Week.

Let’s begin by reading from John 19:28-30, then 20:1-9. 

Keep your Bibles handy as we will be walking back and forth through the gospels examining the events of the last three days of Holy Week.

FRIDAY:  The Day God Died

We just read in John: 19:30 that “Jesus gave up the spirit.”   Luke says that Jesus, “breathed His last” (23:46).  Mark uses the same language in 15:37.  Matthew closes the story of the death of Jesus saying as John did that “Jesus gave up the spirit” (27:50).   The four accounts of Jesus death use slightly different language but they all declare without question:  Jesus died.  He died a real and painful death.

In general, people are uncomfortable with death.  This is evident by the number of different expressions people use to avoid saying that someone “died.”  My casual search turned up 87 different expressions describing death and dying—87!  And, I bet I don’t have them all.  Some your basic “euphemisms” (more gentle or polite expressions) like, “to go to a better place” or “to pass away.”  Other expressions are more direct—almost obscene—like “to take a dirt nap,” or “dead as a dodo.”  There’s even a phrase for someone fond of gardening—“pushing up daisies”—and one former Navy vets can appreciate like, “to go to Davy Jones’s locker.  Some just don’t make any sense to me like the Australian phrase, “to go bung,” or the English slang, “Brown bread.”  Texas provides us with an unusual twist—pun intended:  “To go to a Texas cakewalk.”  How sweet, if you enjoy public hangings. 

The four gospel writers had slightly different descriptions of the death of the Lord.  English has at least 87 different—some quite colorful—ways of describing death—or, ways to avoid saying “dead.”  All these expressions come to the same end (another pun)—death!  However we want to describe what took place on the cross that first “Good Friday,” it comes to the same end:  Jesus died!  That was the very purpose of crucifixion and it was not only horribly and disgustingly painful, it was absolutely 100% affective! 

The death of Jesus Christ was not, physically speaking, all that much different from the death of thousands of other persons that were crucified by the Romans.  The Romans had used that method of execution for at least 70 years before Jesus was Crucified. Around seventy years before Jesus' Crucifixion, in around 40 BC, in Rome, a historian recorded that 2,000 people were crucified in a single day, for the entertainment of Quintilius Varus, a Roman general! About 40 years after Jesus' Crucifixion, the Romans crucified around 500 per day in 70 AD.

What made the death of Jesus Christ unique among all deaths (before or since, or for that matter, ever) was His identity.  Jesus Christ was no mere man.  He was the God-Man.  One hundred percent God and one hundred percent man with no division whatsoever between His natures.  Jesus is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, God the Son.  He is as much God as the Father and the Spirit.  Yahweh is One God existing in three persons that are completely unified and yet unique.  Distinguishable but not divisible.  The greatest of all mysteries. 

Throughout His ministry, Jesus identified Himself as God numerous times.  One such time

Others identified Jesus as God, proven to be so by the miracles He did.  The Jewish leader and former skeptic, Nicodemus declared:

“Rabbi,  we know that You have come from God  as a teacher,  for no one could perform these signs You do unless God were with him.” (Jn. 3:4)

At the moment Jesus died upon the cross even one of his exectutioners exclaimed:  “Surely he was the Son of God!” (Mt. 27:54).

God, Himself, had to die for our sins or there could not be “propitiation” for our sins.  Propitiation simply means: “a payment that satisfies the debt of sin that we owe.”

The death of a mere mortal, however good that mortal might be, could never pay the eternal price for sin.  The Bible describes this “heavenly transaction” that took place upon the cross (2Cor. 5:21):

²¹ He made the One who did not know sin  to be sin  for us,  so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

There is no doubt Jesus died.  The scourging alone that took place the night before would have eventually ended His life.  Crucifixion never failed as I said, and to make sure He was dead the Bible says that a Roman soldier ran a spear into the Lord’s chest, puncturing the sack around His heart and out flowed blood and water—indicating His heart had already ruptured (Jn. 19:34).

Here’s the indisputable, historical facts of Friday:  Jesus died.  Jesus was God.  Therefore, God died on Friday.  So, if God died on Friday and did not raise again until Sunday, who was running the universe during that time?  That’s a fair question, and can be answered quite easily when one understands this one fact:  death is not the end of existence but a change in dimension.  Death is not the end of activity, but merely a change in the context of one’s activity.  Notice again Jn. 19:30:  “Jesus gave up the spirit”—that is, entered a new realm.

Death is not the end of existence but the separation of the spirit from the body.  It is a change in location so to speak.  Upon His death, Jesus did not cease to exist—nor, did He cease to be God.  In fact, Saturday was a very busy day for Jesus.

SATURDAY:  The Day God Spent in Hell

As we read just a moment ago, “Jesus gave up His Spirit.”  Where did Jesus go “in the Spirit.”  The Bible tells us in two separate places what Jesus did on Saturday.  He went to hell.

^{1Pet: 3   18} For Christ also suffered  for sins once for all,  the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring you  to God, after being put to death in the fleshly realm but made alive in the spiritual realm. ¹⁹ In that state  He also went and made a proclamation to the spirits  in prison  ²⁰ who in the past were disobedient, when God patiently waited in the days of Noah  while an ark was being prepared.

^{Eph. 4  8} For it says: When He ascended  on high, He took prisoners into captivity;  He gave gifts to people.  ⁹ But what does “He ascended” mean except that He  descended to the lower parts of the earth?

N.T. scholars debate these two verses.  Experts are uncomfortable with declaring that “Jesus went to hell.”  That phrase has many different meanings for people, and none of them positive.  To put the Son of God, God Himself, in hell is troubling indeed.  Yet, the language is quite clear.  Jesus was somewhere on Saturday.  As we have said, His Spirit was separated from His body on the cross at the point of death.  The body went to the tomb.  Jesus went to hell.

Now, there are several images of hell and different words for hell in the Bible.  Sheol is the Hebrew word for hell which refers to a “shadowy place the body and soul rests after death.”  The O.T. does not have a developed theology of the afterlife.  In the N.T. the word used to describe where all spirits went after death was, “Hades,” another word for hell.  This place had two regions: one region holding the souls of those who died without faith in God.  This was a place of great torment.  It is the place the wicked “Rich Man” went to in the story of Lazarus and the Rich Man (Luke 16).  Lazarus, who died with faith in God as you recall went to Abraham’s Bosom, or the other region of Hades which was a place referred to as Paradise. 

No one could enter into heaven, the abode of God, prior to the death of Jesus, and His subsequent resurrection.  As we read in Ephesians, Jesus “descended to the lower parts” to gather all of the saints who had died before Jesus died and paid for their sins.  Now, the “Paradise” side of Hell, or Hades, remains empty.  The Bible tells us that now those who die having placed their faith in Jesus go straight to heaven.  Paul described it as (2Cor. 5:7):

“being absent from the body and being present with the Lord.”

The “punishment side” of Hades continues to be filled with those that die without accepting the free gift of salvation purchased for us by Jesus when He died in our place on the cross.  The Bible tells us that at the end of time, “Hades and everyone in it will be case into the Lake of Fire” which is eternal punishment (Rev. 20:14).

In the passage we read from 1Peter 3:18-19 it refers to Jesus “preaching to those that are in prison.”  This is NOT evangelism.   This is not a “second chance.”  The word for preaching the good news is “euangelion.”  The word used in 1Peter is “kerusso.”  This word means an “official announcement.”  It is the declaration of a king.

So, what “official announcement” did Jesus make to those that were in “prison in the lower regions?”  In this announcement Jesus declared that He is God, the Righteous Judge.  What we gain from understanding the activity of Holy Saturday is that the rule of Jesus Christ is absolute and extends far above the heavens and to the lowest parts of the earth.  This means that our salvation is secured by the very Person and Power of Jesus Christ who overcomes both sin and the grave.  Easter gives us the firmest foundation for absolute confidence that Our Lord controls everything, everywhere.  1Peter 3:21-22 gives us the grand assurance:

²¹Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ. . . . ²² Now that He has gone into heaven,  He is at God’s right hand  with angels, authorities, and powers subject to Him.

Saturday, Jesus spent the day in hell so we can spend eternity in heaven.   This brings us to

SUNDAY:  The Day God Conquered Death

What Jesus did for the O.T. saints on Saturday, He completed for all the saints that would ever be on Sunday.  On Sunday, the body of Jesus reunited with the Spirit of Jesus in some glorious, indescribable union to shatter the grip that death and sin holds over the souls of men.

Jesus died a criminal—but arose a King!  He died in disgrace but rose again in glory.  The entire enterprise of the Kingdom of God and the reality of our salvation and fulfillment of our eternal inheritance rises or falls on whether the resurrection is, as Josh McDowell declared, “A Hoax or History?”

Unlike all other religions of the world, Christianity rises or falls on whether or not the resurrection of Jesus Christ actually took place on that Sunday, in the spring of 33 A.D.  If the resurrection of Jesus is nothing more than an elaborate hoax to support a religious idea, then Christianity is false—and even more so, “useless.”  The Bible says,

^{1Cor. 15:17} And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is worthless; you are still in your sins.

The resurrection is the supreme evidence verifying that Jesus is in fact Who He says He is—Almighty God.  If there is no resurrection there is no such proof and there is no reason to believe that life has any meaning or any purpose, and certainly no existence beyond death.  Everything in regard to Christianity rests on the resurrection being a historical event that can be verified beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty.  Therefore, let me list the evidence for the resurrection being a historical fact.

1.  Jesus, as we discovered earlier did die.  2.  The fact of the empty tomb.  There is not “one” historical account that declares that Jesus’ body was in the tomb on Sunday.  In fact, those hostile to Jesus and responsible for His death—that is the Jewish leaders—could have easily squashed the Christian faith before it was born simply by producing the body.  They could not produce the body.  The best the Jewish authorities could do was to concoct the story that “the disciples stole the body.  3.  The stone, the seal, and the soldiers make this story preposterous.  A two-ton stone was rolled over the opening.  A Roman seal was placed upon the stone.  Breaking the seal would be punishable by death.  Roman guards, and perhaps Temple guards also, were set to guard the Tomb.  The body was not stolen.  4.  Far from hatching a plot to steal the body and create a hoax, the disciples went to their home and locked the door in fear.  5.  Less than two months after the resurrection (Fifty Days), Peter preached a public sermon including a bold declaration of the resurrection (Acts 2:29-32).  The crowd included Jewish leaders.  There is no historical record that any Jewish leader stood in protest of the resurrection.  They could not because they could not produce the body and they could not prove that it was stolen.

There is further strong, circumstantial evidence to the resurrection.  6.  The cowering disciples became courageous witnesses—even to the point of suffering horrible, torturous deaths.  Would anyone do that for a lie they knew to be a lie?  7.  The rise of the Church declares the power of the resurrection.  Christianity went from an illegal, persecuted tiny band of unorganized, uneducated men and women—many who were slaves—to a force overcoming the Roman Empire in less than three hundred years.  That’s a powerful movement to account for as being based upon a lie.  8.  The worship practice of the Jewish converts to Christianity went from Sabbath Day worship to Sunday Celebration in just a few years.  9.  Believers baptism by full immersion picturing the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ became the exclusive practice of the church before the age of the disciples ended.  10.  Communion, celebrating the broken body and shed blood of Jesus became the focal point of Christian worshp.  11.  The strongest circumstantial evidence for the historical event of the resurrection are the millions upon millions of lives that have been, and continue to be eternally transformed by the power of the gospel—even to the extent that many, even in our day, accept being tortured and killed rather than denounce their faith in the Resurrected Savior.

No event in all of history has been studied more or slandered by more scholars, or denied by more skeptics than the resurrection.  By the same measure, nothing is more central nor more important to the life of faith than the resurrection.  On Friday, God died.  On Saturday, God spent the day declaring victory over death.  On Sunday, Jesus came out of the tomb to take full control of His Kingdom as the King of Kings. 

Easter is so important because it establishes historically both Who Jesus is and What He accomplished in those three important days.  I hope you will consider surrendering your life to Jesus Christ and becoming a citizen of His great Kingdom. 

I like to end each Easter with a traditional message from a beloved pastor, S.M. Lockridge, now with the Lord.  “That’s My King!”

VIDEO

Is He your King?

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