GREAT “I AM” DECLARATIONS OF JESUS
Who was Jesus? You will recall that He himself asked that question of His closest followers. First, He asked them, “Who do folks say I am?” Then He asked them a pointed question, “Who do YOU say I am?”
As we look back upon that encounter with His disciples, we soon realize that, just as it was wise for them to answer that very important personal question, it is wise for us to do likewise. It’s one thing to say that we are followers of Christ; it is quite another to know who He is.
As you know, it was the Apostle Peter who seized upon the question and blurted out the answer that all Christians ought to be able to give, “You are the Christ, Son of the living God.”
In this series of devotional messages, our focus is not on the question of who Jesus was based on public opinion; nor do we focus on Peter’s declaration of who Jesus was. Rather, we shall focus on who Jesus himself said He was – and hopefully still is in the hearts and lives of each one of His followers.
GREAT DECLARATIONS OF JESUS - SERMON IV: “RESURRECTION AND LIFE"
JOHN 11:25 . . .
I have always loved a parade – which is one reason why Palm Sunday is one of my favorite Sundays of the year. What a thrill it was for me, when I served with First Baptist Church of Augusta, to join with other ministers as we marched in the traditional Palm Sunday processional to the majestic sounds of the pipe organ.
On Palm Sunday each year, Christians commemorate the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. What a parade! Jesus rode on a donkey along the main route lined with people waving palm branches and shouting, “Hosanna!”
By the end of the week, though, the shouts of triumph had turned to accusations of anger demanding that He be crucified. What a stark contrast! It reminds us of the crazy, mixed-up world in which we live.
As the story of the crucifixion unfolds, we are stunned by the sudden deterioration of human nature, as it plunges from the mountaintop of joy to the valley of sorrow. What a dastardly deed done to the One who came to bring joy and love and forgiveness to the world!
The good news is that the scheme of wicked religious people did not then, nor will not in our day, undo God’s divine plan for the redemption of His creation. For, you see, that which evil conniving tried to get rid of, God the Father reversed by the resurrection of His Son – the One who had been unjustly crucified. What a tragic moment in history the crucifixion was!
My heart has always gone out to Mary the mother of Jesus, as she bowed grief stricken at the foot of the Cross and wept bitter tears of anguish due to the unjust execution of her son. Yet, I have always taken comfort in the fact that God the Father raised His and Mary’s son from the dead.
God is in the business of turning negatives into positives. He took the greatest negative the world has ever known – the crucifixion – and turned it into the greatest positive the world has ever known – the resurrection!
Thus, the words uttered by Jesus to Martha have always expressed the essence of my faith. It was easier for me to recite those words “I am the resurrection and the life” as the basis of my faith, than to deal with the agonizing death of Jesus on the Cross. I had much rather skip the unpleasant crucifixion story and fast forward to the triumphant story of the resurrection. I did not want to linger at the Cross with Jesus and His mother - to share their pain and suffering.
Then one day my faith was put to the test; my belief had to shift from theory to practice; what I had so readily proclaimed, in sermon and in song, had to be transformed, in my thinking, so that I would be forced to go back to the Cross and bear Mary’s burden with her.
On that fateful day in 2004 – a week prior to our annual remembrance of the crucifixion – I faced an unimaginable change in my life – a change as abrupt as the change in the weather recently when an unexpected tornado hit downtown Atlanta – a change so unthinkable that it shattered the core beliefs of my faith - those that I had taken for granted. My youngest son died.
How could this have happened? Like Martha, I railed at Jesus, “If you had been there, my son would not have died.” Not only did the bad news from the coroner scar my brain with psychological shrapnel, as if a hand grenade had exploded inside my head, but I found myself echoing the words of Jesus, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
And then one day, through the tears of anguish and a grief greater than any I had ever experienced, I was drawn into a movie theatre to sit through a film version of the Crucifixion of Christ. The stark reality of Jesus’ suffering and death transported me, in my mind, to Calvary; and I stumbled to the foot of the Cross. Soon I found myself beside Mary, watching helplessly as her son died. I wept for my son as Mary had wept that day for her son.
Through my grief and my tears, I looked up at Jesus who was dying on the cross. It was then that I realized what it really means to be a servant of God. It was in that moment that I could once again believe – now through personal experience – that “death has no dominion over us” – for also in that moment I caught a glimpse of the glory of the resurrection.
Unless we see the resurrection considering the crucifixion, we may miss the pertinent point of the week that deteriorated from triumph to tragedy.
Into every life there come times for weeping – weeping for your loved ones, weeping over your disappointments, weeping because of wars and poverty and injustices that we see so much of in our world. But hold on!
“Your weeping will turn to joy” on Easter Sunday morning - for God raised Jesus from the dead! He whose resurrection we celebrate gave us this promise: “Because I live, you shall live.” In those words, our Lord reiterated the promise He had given to Martha whose loved one had died.
On His way to Jerusalem - to be received triumphantly, to be rejected and crucified, then to be raised from the dead – Jesus had detoured to go to the home of his friend Lazarus who had become suddenly ill and died.
Martha expressed aggravation with Jesus for not coming sooner; but Jesus responded with words of hope: “Your brother will live again.”
Martha replied that she knew Lazarus would rise at the resurrection that was to come. It was then that Jesus spoke those immortal words that have come down to us through the centuries, “I am the Resurrection and the Life. He who believes in me will live, even if he has died; and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.”
Of course, Jesus was not thinking in terms of physical life when He said that everyone who believes in Him shall never die. We who believe in Jesus - we who live the Christian life – do, in fact, die physically. Jesus was thinking of life after physical death. His resurrection gives us the certainty that death is not the end of the NEW life that is ours in Christ.
There are those who think of this world in which we live as the land of the living; but it would be more correct to refer to this world as the land of the dying – as communicated in the last words of King Edward: “Weep not; I shall not die; and, as I leave this land of the dying, I trust to see the blessings of the Lord in the land of the living.”
Because Jesus lived and died for our sins, then was raised from the dead, we who trust in Him as our Lord and Savior know that when death comes to our bodies, our souls do not pass out of the realm of the living; our souls pass into the realm of the living.
As children of God, we know that we are on a spiritual journey, not toward the sunset, but toward the sunrise. We know that, by the grace of God - who loved us and gave Himself for us - we are not on our way to death; we are on our way to life.
How can this be? The word of God tells us how. We become God’s children – spiritual beings who are not of this world - when we believe in God’s Son, Jesus Christ, and accept everything He said as true.
Remember His words? “I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except by me.”
Folks, when I repented of my sins and confessed with my mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord, I did so to the glory of God the Father; God my Father granted me the privilege of becoming a child of God who would one day go home to be with the Lord. This I believe with all my heart!
When I die, if you hear someone say, “That’s Charles Cunningham in that casket,” or if you hear it said, “That’s Charles Cunningham in that urn,” don’t you believe it! My death, as was the death of my son and other loved ones, will be a transition from this life to the next.
The New Testament teaching of the believer’s destiny is made clear by Paul: “To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord” (2 Corinthians 5:8) . . . “and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (I Thessalonians 4:17).
Paul could make that dogmatic statement of faith because of his own personal encounter with the risen Christ; but Paul’s encounter occurred only because God had made the most dramatic statement ever made when God raised Jesus from the dead; after the resurrection, the angel of God made the most climactic announcement ever made: “He is not here. He has risen!” Amen.
