“the Victory We Have In The Risen Christ”

The Victory We Have In the Risen Christ”

I. Intro

As Christians we are celebrating the most triumphant and victorious day in the history of mankind. This is the day Jesus defeated death and hell and gave us as His people a sense of immortality.

As we celebrate this great and significant event that took place almost 2000 years ago, I would like to focus our hearts on, in this message, the victory that Jesus accomplished through His death, burial and resurrection.

II. The Death and Suffering of Jesus.

Before we can really appreciate the victory that we have in Jesus Christ, because of His resurrection, we need to fully comprehend and understand the amount of suffering He went through on our behalf and the great price that He paid for our victory.

Matthew's gospel, in Chapters 26 & 27, gives us a detailed description of the suffering that Jesus went through for us. In these two chapters of scripture we find many of the sufferings that Jesus endured on our behalf so that we could have the victory we now have in Him.

1. He was betrayed by one of His disciples.

2. He suffered an agonizing night in the garden of Gethsemane.

3. He watched as one of his most beloved and loyal disciples denied Him three times.

4. He faced the Sanhedrin where the chief priests and elders rejected His testimony.

5. He endured the crucifixion and the nailing to the cross.

6. The greatest price He probably paid was that of being rejected for a time by His own Heavenly Father when He cried out "My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me".

The Book of Isaiah gives us a vivid account of the suffering that Jesus would go through because of the sins of mankind.

Isaiah 53:1-7 Who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed? 2 For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, And as a root out of dry ground. He has no form or comeliness; And when we see Him, There is no beauty that we should desire Him. 3He is despised and rejected by men, A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him; He was despised, and we did not esteem Him. 4Surely He has borne our griefs And carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted. 5But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. 6All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all. 7He was oppressed and He was afflicted, Yet He opened not His mouth; He was led as a lamb to the slaughter, And as a sheep before its shearers is silent, So He opened not His mouth.

III. The Death, Burial and Resurrection: The Purpose for Which Jesus Came.

Although Jesus accomplished many wonderful things in the few short years that He had among the people as God in the flesh, it was this moment in His life and ministry for which he was sent for.

John 1:29 When John the Baptist saw Jesus coming toward Him, he said, "Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!"

I John 3:5 And you know that He was manifest to take away or sins, and in Him there is no sin.

Hebrews 9:26,28 He has appeared to put away sin by sacrifice of Himself, so therefore Christ was offered once to bear the sins of many.

It was at this moment on the cross that Jesus was actually taking on the sins of the world. he was, in fact, becoming sin for us.

2 Corinthians 5:21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.

Jesus, at this moment in time, was now taking the sins of mankind upon Himself by becoming sin, and God could no longer look upon Him and it was in this moment of darkness that He cried out with a loud cry, "My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?"

IV. The Victory that Was Accomplished Through the Cross and The Resurrection.

When Jesus went to the cross and then rose from the dead, He accomplished a great victory for mankind. In this portion of the message I want to look at some of the things that He as accomplished for us so that we can walk in the fullness of the victory He has made available to us.