The Breakthrough Of The Resurection Series

Intro: What a wonderful passage its fast paced, filled with espionage, excitement and the supernatural. Sounds like something Hollywood dreamed up doesn’t it? However as we look at this passage it is not filled with lights and sounds but the light of the world and the darkness of men.

This is Matthew’s version of the resurrection story. It includes

• The Lord Jesus’ resurrection

• The religious deception

• The great commission’s inception

Before we dive in with both feet we need to remember what was said last week. Do you remember last week? We talked about the reality of the creator. That there is a God and he created us. There is a corruption in the creation. The letter to the Roman’s says it clearly all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Sin is looking at God’s best and saying uggh. It is turning our nose up to God in rebellion and rejection of His rule as creator and King of the universe. What does that rebellion and rejection of God’s rule lead to? (emptiness)

Jesus said in John 10.10 the thief comes to steal, and kill, and destroy but I am come that you may have life and have it to the full.

Do you realize that the devil comes to take your life? He comes to steal, or kill, or destroy the full life God had in mind for you before you were formed in your mother’s womb.

Think about the devil comes to take, Jesus comes to give. When you come to Jesus he doesn’t forcefully take your life. If you hear the gospel the good news and accept the life He offers you have the option to bow your heart and bend your knee before the true King of the universe and your true king. Jesus wants to give you fullness of life! So what does that fullness of life look like?

Jesus took the burden of the cross. He substituted in your place so that you could live in the breakthrough of the resurrection. Romans 6 tells us that if we are baptized into Jesus – by the Spirit not just water, we were crucified with Him, we were buried with Him, we were also raised with Him. As our substitution he took our punishment for rebellion and disobedience. As our substitute and representative he shattered sins hold on us and defeated death forever. Death is not the absence of physical life. True death is the absence of God’s life. The God life, life under the loving, caring, protective hand of God is what fullness is.

So the women hurried away from the tomb, afraid yet filled with joy, and ran to tell his disciples

The women were afraid. They did not yet understand what we get to hear about on a weekly if not daily basis. Jesus was alive. There were scared to death but filled with Joy! They were filled!

Let me give you four truths of a breakthrough or resurrection life.

I. A life that is full is not controlled by the past

When Jesus left the borrowed tomb, He left the sins of the world in the tomb, we, too, have resurrection power available to us to walk in freedom from the control of sin if we will be filled or controlled by His Holy Spirit.

“He is not here, he has risen,” Jesus was no longer where the sins of the world were.

Jean-Pierre de Caussade in The Joy of the Saints told us how to not be controlled by the past or consumed by the future.

To escape the distress caused by regret for the past or fear about the future, this is the rule to follow: leave the past to the infinite mercy of God, the future to his good providence; give the present wholly to his love by being faithful to his grace.

God has cast our sins into the graveyard of forgetfulness. What is even more wonderful than that is that God will use our broken past to bless someone else in their greatest time of need.

Guard against being controlled by your past. It is forgiven by the shed blood of Jesus. Guard against staying in the past. Our God is the God of the present. He is the God of the living. We don’t live in the victories of yesterday but God’s grace and presence right now.

Jesus paid for my past and yours, He provides for your present and paved the way to the future. What you must ask is do I trust He knows what is best for me.

Some will accept that they are going to heaven but not that they are forgiven while they still live on this earth. Bruce Larson tells the true story of a Catholic priest living in the Philippines, a much-loved man of God who once carried a secret burden of long-past sin buried deep in his heart. He had committed that sin once, many years before, during his time in seminary. No one else knew of this sin. He had repented of it and he had suffered years of remorse for it, but he still had no peace, no inner joy, no sense of God's forgiveness.