He is Risen

Dear Weekly Readers!  

I hope each of you have a very Blessed Easter and Holy Week!

This time of year is so precious to us as Christians, because it is not only a time to remember, it is who we are.  The events of this week give us our very life, our very being, and our true identity!

This week I want to share with you just a few points from Mark chapter 16, which is where I spoke from in our church on Easter Sunday morning.

We first notice in verses 1-4, as the women were walking toward the tomb where Jesus was laid, that they began to talk about the large stone that was blocking the entrance to the tomb.  They began to worry about the practical things in their life at the moment.  They wondered how they could get in to where Jesus was with the stone in the way.    Notice that they kept walking toward where Jesus was while they wondered about this.  They did not give up on their attempt to see Jesus and return home, but they continued on.

How many times do we as people begin to worry about the practical things in life?  We spend so much time focusing on the natural things, the practical things of life.  Let us make sure that even though we have to deal with these things, that we do NOT alter our course.  Let us make sure we continue on toward the Lord Jesus Christ!  As in Philippians 3:14… I press toward the mark of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus.

Do not get sidetracked.  Do not allow the devil to take your eyes off the prize, off the goal!  Keep your eyes fixed upon Jesus so you do not begin to sink like Peter sank in the water.  If we do that, we will realize that God will move the “stones” from the way, and we will see Jesus.

We notice in our text in verses 5 and 6 that when they entered the tomb, there was a man sitting there.  Another Gospel tells us this was an angel.  We see that the angel is having a conversation with them, just as God still speaks to man today in any number of ways. The angel said not to be afraid.  He said to look at the place where they laid him.   He is not here, He is RISEN!!    We still have these words to live by today.  He is risen!  What a wonderful thing!     Because He is risen, the grave has lost its sting.  Victory has been won.  Because He is risen, we can pray in Jesus’ name because He is alive and is on the right hand of God, making intercession for us!   Because He is alive and has conquered death, we as Christians live!

What a wonderful and Victorious Lord we have.  He wants to show us the risen Lord today!  He wants us to hear His Voice and follow him!

I love how in verse 7 the angel of the Lord instructs them to go tell Peter.  God wanted Peter to know that Jesus is risen.  Why?  We can read in scriptures that Peter, while a great man, also had many failings.  He failed to keep his eyes on Jesus and sank in the water.  On the last days of Jesus’ life on earth, Peter denied Jesus three times.  We see how after the third strong denial by Peter, the rooster crowed.  Then Jesus looked at Peter.   Jesus did not condemn him or strike him dead; He just looked at Peter.  Peter was then deeply convicted, saddened, and went out and wept bitterly.  

Let this be a lesson for us.  No matter how far we have fallen, Jesus still looks upon us with love.  He wants us to know and be assured that because He is alive, we can believe that His complete work has covered our sins and washed them away.  He wants us to know that He is Lord, that He loves, He forgives, and He is Risen!  He is the Living Lord Jesus and wants us to hear His voice and come to Him. 

He wants us to come just as we are!  Do not look at our surroundings.  So often we can begin to grumble that things are not so good or perfect.  Do not look at our past sins or troubles.  But LOOK TO JESUS, the author and finisher of our faith! Look to the one who shed all His Blood on the cross to wash our sins away!  Look to the Risen Lord and Live because HE lives!  Live in the Power of His resurrection!  We of course know that we cannot come to faith and believe this unless God calls us and gives us the faith to do so!  So let us humbly call upon Him and hear His voice.

Philippians 3: 10 That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and fellowship of his sufferings, being made conformable unto his death…

May each of us believe by faith in the complete redemptive work of Jesus Christ the Lord today!

 

May God Bless your entire life in the Lord Jesus!

The Resurrection News

Dear Weekly Readers!

May God grant each of you a most Blessed Holy Week and Easter Sunday.  May the knowledge of what Jesus has done and accomplished during this time, be our very Life as we continue onward in Him through eternity!

Please enjoy the article below!

God’s Peace!  John R.

THE RESURRECTION NEWS IS THE most glorious and far- reaching word that has been uttered by mortal tongue. It offers blessings of inestimable worth. There is no greater joy than to have risen with Christ, and to possess living, victorious faith in Him.

The resurrection message does not consist only in a teaching or a doctrine about which we learn and to which we give mere intellectual assent. It is not just a subject that we should be able to discuss theologically in an intelligent manner. Neither is its essence something that is seen fulfilled regularly in nature when it awakens from the dormant, death-like sleep of winter and puts on the fresh, new beauty of spring.

Concerned about the true understanding of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Martin Luther wrote: How is a dead man profited, however much life may be preached to him, if that preaching does not make him alive? Or of what use is it to preach righteousness to a sinner if he remains in sin? Or to an erring, factious individual, if he forsakes not his error and his darkness?

Even so, it is not only useless, but detrimental, to listen to the glorious, comforting, and saving doctrine of the resurrection if the heart has no experience of its truth; if it means naught but a sound in the ears, a transitory word upon the tongue, with no more effect upon the hearer as if he had never heard.

The key to the resurrection experience lies in the personal realization that Jesus was delivered to death for our offences, and was raised again for our justification. (Romans 4:25) Its effectiveness is found in the individual awareness of our sinfulness, and of our need for grace. When I spoke of personal salvation with Christian friends in Latvia, they often emphasized their belief in the basic Biblical truth that the knowledge of sin must precede the knowledge of grace.

The word 'death' is used in Scripture as a means to identify the condition of those who are not in fellowship with God. It is referred to as being dead in trespasses and sins. (Ephesians 2:1) Of himself and his experience, Paul said, For I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died. And the Commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death. (Romans 7:9-10)

Now we know that what things soever the law saith, it saith to them who are under the law: that every mouth  may be stopped, and all the world may become guilty before God. (Romans 3:19)

The Gospel message provides the foundation upon which rests the hope of our salvation. Our Saviour Jesus Christ...hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. (2 Timothy 1:10)

How can this simple message do such great things? How can this Word even raise the dead? The power is that of the Holy Spirit, which calls, gathers, enlightens, sanctifies the whole Christian Church on earth, and preserves it in union with Jesus Christ in the one true faith. In His instructions to the disciples, the Lord told them that the means by which His ministry is made known and available is through the preaching of repentance and the forgiveness of sins in His name. In many ministries today, this order no longer exists. The invitation to embrace Jesus as Savior has been replaced by the familiar, commonly used injunction to "make Him the Lord of your life by submitting your life in service to Him."

If it is in this way that citizens are enlisted into His kingdom, we are in danger of depriving them—and the Lord Himself—of His primary purpose for coming into this world. Jesus explained His mission by saying that the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. (Matthew 20:28)

Our relationship to Jesus is not established upon our service to Him, but upon our being the beneficiaries of His sacrificial service to us. The primary emphasis in ministry must have as its foundation the order of grace that the Bible established. Otherwise, we will never truly know the joy of being risen with Christ, or of living in victorious faith through Him. When the grace of God, which brings salvation, appears to a convicted sinner, he finds that he is no longer his own, but the Lord’s, possession. It is then that he rises with Christ; and the new man, who has been created within him, seeks those things which are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God. (Colossians 3:1)  All that Christ is, and all that He has done, become ours through faith. We can rest in the assurance that, because He lives, we, too, shall live.

Through Him, we are victorious by the power of faith—and that faith is a gift of God. His love has won the love of our hearts. He is our Savior, the blessed and only Potentate, the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. “Crown Him the Lord of life, Who triumphed o’er the grave, And rose victorious in the strife For those He came to save;  His glories now we sing, Who died, and rose on high, Who died eternal life to bring, And lives, that death may die.”

The late Pastor Alvin Holmgren