We can lose sight of the reality of Resurrection Life. in so doing, we lose overcoming faith. “Keep the Faith”! As we saw in Mark 16:14, the disciples did not believe Christ had been raised from the dead, yet they had walked with Him and seen His miracles.
What happened to change their perspective?
Well, firstly what did not happen is that it was NOT a cognitive understanding of Christ's “penal substitutionary sacrifice”! A man being raised from the dead defies rational thinking! Whenever your Christianity boils down to equations and formulae and rituals and patterns, you can be sure you have lost sight of resurrection faith. You have lost the wonder! Is there the thrill of spending time alone with Jesus? Is Jesus your hobby, asked Michael Eaton? What do you spend your spare time and cash on, asked JI Packer? Is there still “shattering astonishment”, asked Eugene Peterson? Are you still beholding the glory of God, asked Charles Spurgeon?
Christ’s resurrection power is the power of our very transformation from glory to glory...2 Cor. 3:17-18 "Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with open face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord". This is not some book learning or church liturgy - this is actually seeing Jesus!
The Message Translation of 1 John 1:1-4 says, “From the very first day, we were there, taking it all in—we heard it with our own ears, saw it with our own eyes, verified it with our own hands. The Word of Life appeared right before our eyes; we saw it happen! And now we’re telling you in most sober prose that what we witnessed was, incredibly, this: The infinite Life of God himself took shape before us. We saw it, we heard it, and now we’re telling you so you can experience it along with us, this experience of communion with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. Our motive for writing is simply this: We want you to enjoy this, too. Your joy will double our joy!”
The lesson? You cannot control, plan and neatly manage your own spiritual growth. Sorry. And that is the swine for the Modern Man. Such a man seeks to understand and apply knowledge to his benefit. In your job you are rewarded for this kind of knowledge. Faith means nothing to your employer; the afterlife means nothing to your shareholders. But none of these count for anything in the first instance when it comes to the resurrection. We are encountering the God of the impossible. The Lord over death and hades. The God of the galaxies. The Face of Flaming Fire. The Source of all Light and Heat and Matter!
But we live in the culmination of an age that cannot stand any fraction of mystery, of the Unknown. We send telescopes to space and nanoprobes into the human body. We have electron microscopes. In every field of endeavour there are tens of thousands of people with doctorates. We have been to both poles and on top of every high mountain. The internet promises a never-ending diet of knowledge and awareness of….everything.
But you cannot learn this over the net or from a book or conference. You learn this only because it has been revealed to you. John 6:44 “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day." Even as Mary and the other ladies were hanging around the tomb, this kind of “knowledge” is only for those preoccupied with death…seeking a way through death…hoping that there is power over death.
Here are 5 thoughts on faith that comes from revelation of the resurrection of Jesus Christ:
1. It comes to the least of us
Mark 16:1 When the Sabbath was over, Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of James, and Salome bought spices so that they might go to anoint Jesus’ body.
Mary was a prostitute from whom Jesus had cast 7 devils! These women were sincerely desiring to bless Jesus in his dead state. They were in mourning. They were minor actors in the gospel drama. Often, resurrection faith escapes those in the centre, because the system of church or living has created momentum for us to get on without Him. Times of need and desperation cause us to look at the death of Jesus on our behalf. And when you start to think on his death, you are not far from his empty tomb.
2. You cannot just summon it up in your mind
It is a revelation! Mary ““Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’” (Mark 16:6-7)
If you lack this revelation today, you can “ask God"! John 20:13 They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?” “They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.”
3. It happens out of the public eye
It happened in a cemetery garden. None of the apostles were there! We think by going to every conference, finding the man with the golden touch, we will somehow find Jesus. But Jesus is near you, with you, close to you. He was in the garden next to the tomb!
Luke 17:20-24 “Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.” Then he said to his disciples, “The time is coming when you will long to see one of the days of the Son of Man, but you will not see it. Men will tell you, ‘There he is!’ or ‘Here he is!’ Do not go running off after them. For the Son of Man in his day will be like the lightning, which flashes and lights up the sky from one end to the other.”
4. Revelation of the resurrection produces awe and wonder
Mark 16:5-8 “As they entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side, and they were alarmed. “Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “You are looking for Jesus the Nazarene, who was crucified. He has risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter, ‘He is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him, just as he told you.’” Trembling and bewildered, the women went out and fled from the tomb. They said nothing to anyone, because they were afraid.”
In the parallel account in John, it says of Mary that her eyes were opened as Jesus called out her name. And then she cried “Rabboni!”. Can you dare believe Christ, the living Christ is calling out your name?
When Mary Magdalene ran back to the disciples to say his body was missing, they did not believe her. You can never package a sense of awe and sell it! It's not easy to convey a sense of wonder, to another. E Peterson “It's the very nature of wonder to catch us off guard, to circumvent expectations and assumptions. Wonder can't be packaged, and it can't be worked up. It requires some sense of being there and some sense of engagement”.
5. It inspires others to see Him
After Mary told the disciples, John 20:3 says “So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb. Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first.”
I love the fact that neither disciple encountered Jesus here. Verse 9-10 says they did not understand that Jesus had to rise from the dead, and “they both went back to their homes”.
Later, in John 21, Jesus calls to them from the beach, John shouts, “It is the Lord!” – and all the disciples start to row hard for the beach!
6. It happens in normal everyday life
Luke 24:32 "They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?”"
On the Sabbath and during the week. In times together like the disciples fishing, and in times alone like Mary in the garden of Gethsemane. In times of forlornness. In times of despair. On the road and around the supper table...I love this!
7. It produces courage, single-mindedness and deeply sacrificial lifestyles
Phil 1:20-26 “I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, so that through my being with you again your joy in Christ Jesus will overflow on account of me.”
What can we say when we encounter Peter in heaven one day, who one time cursed the knowledge of Jesus, but ended up as a pillar, crucified upside down? Or what of James and John, boastful and competititve, but then becoming apostles and servants to the death?Where did Wigglesworth get his zeal? What drove pimply Bruce Olson to the Motilone Indians of Columbia? What took frail Hudson Taylor to China or little Jackie Pullinger to Hong Kong? What did David Brainerd see? Or Murray MacCheyne? What of the millions of unnamed Christian heroes across the world and through the centuries? Those who have suffered persecution, ridicule, and even death for the sake of the “Name”…
Surely there is a God in Heaven, and His Son is with Him too. He longs for us to be where He is, and the sure knowledge, the evidence of things unseen beyond the grave, is what becomes the nuclear generator in every saint looking to Christ. No-one stole His body; no-one looted His tomb....He was raised from the dead, and in Him every blood-washed saint has also been raised, and will be raised!
love, Nick
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