Post-Resurrection
Scripture: Luke 24:44-53; Isaiah 53; Romans 10:17
The title of my message this morning is “Post-Resurrection.” If you are familiar with the word “post” you know that it has several meanings. It could refer to a piece of wood or metal fixed in the ground in an upright position or it could refer to the backing of an earring to keep it in your ear. It can also mean to publish something electronically online – you “post” it. These definitions are not what I am talking about as it relates to the resurrection, although this message will be “posted” online for others to read. No the definition I want you to think about when I say post is how the word is used as a “prefix.” A prefix is a word attached to the beginning of another word to modify its meaning. Therefore, post-resurrection is the period following the resurrection. During this specific period of time something happened that continues to affect our lives today.
Last week I shared with you that had Christ not risen from the dead everything that we do or have done in His name would have been in vain. I told you that had He not risen, when we die we would be dead “for real” and destined for an eternity in hell. This is not the case for us because He rose from the dead. When He rose from the dead Christ appeared to some folks to encourage them that His resurrection was real. This is what I want us to think about today – how do we really know He rose from the dead some 2000 years ago and what does that mean for us today – besides our not dying and going to hell because we accepted Him as our personal Savior? I want us to place ourselves in the minds of Jesus followers who did not realize that He was going to rise from the dead. Think about how depressed and confused they felt between the time He died and the time He rose from the dead. Now focus on the feelings they experienced when they knew and believed that He had actually risen from the dead. Can you see it? Can you feel the joy they felt? Now hold that thought.
Have you ever participated in a sporting event where you competed against others and made it to the championship game and won? Maybe you did not participate personally, but your school team or your favorite college or professional team did. Do you remember the day of the event and the celebration that took place after the win? Do you remember opening up the newspaper the next day to read about the event? Do you remember coming into contact with friends and acquaintances and everyone was talking about what had happened the day before “in the big game?” Think about what happened after the Royals won the World Series and the celebration that took place afterwards? What about when the Chiefs won the Super Bowl and that celebration? Those celebrations engulfed the cities on both sides of the state line. People will remember where they were when those championship games were played and won. Those who attended the celebrations downtown will remember them for the rest of their lives. Following those games you could not open or turn on the news or read the news online without someone commenting on the outcome of those games. If you ever played for a championship team or had a family member play during a championship game, you know what I am talking about. All of these victories are celebrated for days following the event and people who follow the events talk about it for days, weeks and even years later, especially if they were the victors. Some people go to their graves decades later relishing in the memories of that one important victory. They did not just celebrate it and remember it on the day it happened, they talked about it whenever the opportunity presented itself. They were proud of the event.
Now let’s go back to last week. What did you do on Monday morning? Did you get up and start your day as any other day? Were you dreading what was planned for the day as you thought about your calendar and what you had scheduled for Monday? What did you do? Let me ask you another question. On Monday, did you tell anyone about your resurrection Sunday celebration? What about on Tuesday? Should I even ask about Wednesday? Last Sunday every one of us celebrated the most important day in our lives. Last Sunday we celebrated Christ’s resurrection, which opened the door for us to have eternal life. Last Sunday we sung praises to God with raised hands as we celebrated Christ’s resurrection. Last Sunday our celebration started in the morning and for most of us, it ended on Sunday afternoon. However, unlike when we win the big game, we do not talk about this victory with our friends and neighbors post Easter Sunday. This victory does not get reported on the news on Monday and if you searched every newspaper in the country you would have a hard time finding an article on any celebration happening after Easter Sunday. Now there are plenty of stores having “after Easter” sales, but that is not the celebration I am talking about.
For Christians, in the weeks leading up to Easter, there is a lot of “Spiritual” activities taking place. We see people fasting and giving up other things temporarily as they prepare for their Easter celebration. Some start this period 40 days before Easter, a time known as “lent”. On a secular basis, the stores gear up for Easter by bringing in their new spring line of clothes with bright pastels signifying that spring is here. During the weeks before Easter many people go out and shop for new clothes to wear to that special Easter morning service. When Easter morning finally arrives, we dress in our new clothes and head to Church to celebrate Christ’s resurrection. We celebrate the newness of our “resurrected” life in our new clothes with an emphasis on enjoying a highly spiritual-lifting worship service. During the service we think about what Christ’s resurrection means and we are glad that He chose to die for our sins. The music is special and we get our Easter sermon from the pastor. Leading up to Easter the pastor may have started a special series that covers Palm Sunday and what Jesus experienced on His way to the cross, but on Easter Sunday, the special Easter sermon is preached on His resurrection. When the service is over, we would fellowship with our fellow members for a little while and then go to Easter brunch or home to enjoy a great dinner with family and friends (before the pandemic.) We relax and enjoy this time of internal reflection about what it means to be a Christian and to have had Christ die for our sins some 2000 years ago. When all of the celebrations are completed, we go to bed and wake up to another Monday morning. Another Easter Sunday has passed. Another holiday has come and gone. Another season of buying new clothes is behind us. Now it is time to go back to the daily routine of living. After the resurrection celebration, we go back to normal and we do not take the celebration into the days and weeks that follow.
Does this sound familiar to you? As I said, this morning I want us to focus on what happened after the first Easter and compare that to what happens today. Last week do you remember how you felt when you celebrated Christ’s resurrection? When Monday morning rolled around did you feel the same way? You weren’t going to Church, but Christ still had risen from the dead. Did you think about it or did you focus on what you had going on that day? Christ’s resurrection changed us forever when we accepted Him as our personal Savior and yet we are often quiet about the most important victory we will ever experience. We are not celebrating it days or weeks later. We do not have the euphoric happiness of being so grateful that nothing can bring us down. It is important to understand that how we see Christ in our circumstances will determine how we relate to the resurrection. We could be standing at the foot of the cross helpless and lost and thinking Christ is not with us; we could be standing at the empty tomb confused about where Christ is in our situation; or we could be standing in Galilee conversing with the Master knowing that our life has been changed forever. Wherever we are standing will determine how we respond to the resurrection and what we will do in the days and years after we experience His resurrection. You see, Monday will always follow Easter Sunday, but it does not need to be the same old Monday.
Each year when we celebrate Easter there is some level of excitement and expectation. However, when the hype of the celebration is over, we go back to our lives and place the power of the same resurrection that we were just celebrating on the back burner, waiting for next Easter. If you are a cook you understand what it means to place something on the back burner. The food you place there does not require your immediate attention and focus. God wants us to take the resurrection off of the back burner and put in on the front burner. He wants us to turn the burner up to high so that what resurrection accomplished FOR us will burn brightly IN us for the world to see. New Light, God wants us to pay special attention to the power of the resurrection and in order for us to do this we must take it off the back burner. Our post-resurrection activities can’t be the same as they were when we were not focusing on it. Now, we have to live out its meaning!
When you read Luke the twenty-fourth chapter, you see the disciples’ response when Jesus first appeared to them post-resurrection. Initially they were afraid (Luke 24:37) but they came to understand that it truly was Jesus who was standing before them. After He showed them His hands and feet, they still thought they were seeing a ghost so Jesus asked them for some food. It was only after they witnessed Him eating did they accept that He had risen from the dead. Once they accepted that He had risen from the dead, Jesus did something that we often overlook when we read the story. Luke 24:44-45 records “Then He said to them, ‘These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.’ And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.” Verse forty-five says that He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures. In other words, Jesus gave them a history lesson so that they would understand that He was the one who had been prophesied about in Scripture. We need to remember that the Jews were expecting a Messiah, a military leader, who would free them from the tyranny of Roman rule. So, the disciples needed to understand the prophecies pertaining to Jesus in order to appreciate why He had risen from the dead and what that would mean for them. So Jesus took the time to reveal to them what had been hidden from their understanding. Now, I don’t want you to miss what Jesus was doing. Romans 10:17 says, “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” (Romans 10:17) By revealing what had been prophesied about Him and helping them to understand from a historical viewpoint, the first thing Jesus did was give the disciples “the Bible” they needed for their faith in Him and what He accomplished to grow. Although they believed what they were seeing with their eyes, it took Jesus teaching them the Word for their faith to catch up to what their eyes were seeing. And that’s why the disciples were able to come to terms with the “why.” When Jesus was taken, they did not understand why He had to be crucified. Even though He had told them, their minds were not able to grasp the meaning and without that understanding their faith was at an all-time low. You see, the same is true for us today; our faith comes as our understanding of the resurrection becomes clearer and more focused and our actions are based on what we understand post-resurrection. So Jesus took the disciples to the Scriptures.
The Old Testament is complete with prophecies about Jesus and He fulfilled every one. When Jesus taught His disciples after He was resurrected, He probably took them to Isaiah chapter fifty-three. This whole chapter is a prophecy about Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. Let’s read this chapter – it is rather short with only twelve verses, but it says a lot. This will give you a small understanding of what He taught His disciples that day.
“Who has believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed? 2For He shall grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: He has no stately form nor splendor; and when we shall see Him, there is no beauty that we should desire Him. 3He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from Him; He was despised, and we esteemed Him not. 4Surely He has borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem Him stricken, smitten by God, and afflicted. 5But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him; and with His stripes we are healed. 6All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned everyone 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 is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth. 8He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare His generation? For He was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was He stricken. 9And He made His grave with the wicked, and with the rich in His death; because He had done no violence, neither was any deceit in His mouth. 10Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise Him; He has put Him to grief: when you shall make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His offspring, He shall prolong His days, and the will of the LORD shall prosper in His hand. 11He shall see the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied: by His knowledge shall My righteous servant justify many; for He shall bear their iniquities. 12Therefore will I divide Him a portion with the great, and He shall divide the spoil with the strong; because He has poured out His soul unto death: and He was numbered with the transgressors; and He bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.” (Isaiah 53:1-12)
Everything that Jesus went through was summarized in this one chapter by Isaiah some 700+ years before He was born. God revealed this to Isaiah so that once the prophecy was fulfilled; people would recognize Jesus as the true Messiah. But there is one point we all need to understand. In verse twelve of this prophecy Isaiah writes that Jesus would share the spoils that He took with us. Those “spoils” that He took was the power and authority that He held when He rose from the dead.
New Light, I want you to also see what the “spoils” included and this is why Jesus’ resurrection is the crux of the Christian life. In Colossians chapter two and verse fifteen we read “And having spoiled principalities and powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it.” (Colossians 2:15) The word “spoiled” in the King James Bible is also translated “disarmed.” When Jesus rose from the dead, He rose as the conquering King and fulfilled what God spoke to the serpent in Genesis chapter three verse fifteen – “He shall bruise your head, And you shall bruise His heel.” New Light, this is the power that Jesus is sharing with us – when we remember and walk in the power of His resurrection. The resurrection should be a reminder to us that Satan is defeated in our lives because we share in Jesus’ spoils! Until this point the disciples had a limited understanding of the Scriptures, but moving forward they would now be able to be a witness for Christ in power. They would have confidence that they never had before. This confidence came because of their foundational knowledge and understanding of Jesus. After Jesus taught them, their faith grew just as Paul had captured in Roman 10:17. Faith truly does come through our hearing the “Word” of God and believing it! Jesus is the Word so when we listen to Him, our faith will come. When we believe what we hear from Him, our faith will come. Once the disciples understood who Jesus was from a historical viewpoint the fear that they had operated in began to dissipate and was replaced with faith.
Let’s go back to the twenty-fourth chapter of Luke. When Jesus finished the history lesson with His disciples, Luke 24:46-49 records the following: “And said unto them, ‘Thus it is written, and thus it was fit for Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day; 47and that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.’ 48And you are witnesses of these things. 49And, behold, I send the promise of My Father upon you: but tarry you in the city of Jerusalem, until you are endued with power from on high.” (Luke 24:46-49) Before Jesus left His disciples, He blessed them and they returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually praising God. This was a radical change from where they were prior to them understanding that Jesus had risen from the dead.
After the resurrection once the disciples understood its meaning, the first thing they received was joy. Joy was one of the outcomes of the resurrection. Luke 24:52 records “And they, after worshipping Him, returned to Jerusalem with great joy and were continually in the temple praising God.” After Jesus ascended to heaven, the disciples were filled with joy. As I stated earlier, last week when we celebrated Easter, there was joy in the room, but when we got up on Monday morning, for some of us that celebration was already in the past and another Easter had come and gone. It was not so on the first Easter. Luke records that the disciples returned to Jerusalem with great joy and continued in the temple praising God – they did not stop on Monday morning. What they had witnessed on Sunday carried into Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, the next Sunday, the next month, the next year for the rest of their lives. Easter was not just an annual celebration for them; they lived in the Easter moment every day once they understood what Christ had done for them. Not only did they live in the moment, they took it to heart and went out to share it with others.
Last week we celebrated Easter – we praised God for Christ’s resurrection. On Sunday afternoon many of us had dinner with family and friends as we enjoyed the holiday. On Sunday night, after a day of celebrating, we went to bed fulfilled and possibly tired. We may or may not have thought about the first Easter after we left the morning service, but at least for a couple of hours we did remember and celebrate Christ’s resurrection. On Monday morning, unlike the disciples who got up and continued praising God for what had been revealed to them and the gift that had been given to the world; unlike the disciples who were filled with joy and understood that their new found faith could one day cost them their lives; unlike the disciples whose heart had once been filled with fear but was now filled with a burning fire; we got up and started our normal routine and the reasons for our Easter celebration was a distant memory. We got up and started doing what we normally do on the first day of the week. The celebration was over. Easter had once again come and gone.
What would our week have been like if we responded to Christ’s resurrection the way the disciples did? Would we be here today thinking about everything we have to do this week or would we be praising God right now. Would we be late to work or school tomorrow because we woke up praising God and forgot to look at the clock? Where are you on this first Sunday following Easter Sunday? The disciples believe Jesus had risen from the dead after they saw Him and He ate with them. They understood why He had to die and be raised from the dead after He taught them the Scriptures. They believed and stepped out in faith after they understood, believed and accepted as truth what He taught them. Then and only then were they able to go out and accomplish His work. Where are you this morning? Are you seeing Him for the first time? Are you listening to His teaching about the why? Are you understanding, believing and accepting what you are hearing? Your answers to these “post-resurrection” questions will determine if you are truly ready to go out and accomplish the work that He has for each of us to do in His name.
Until next time, “The Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up His countenance on you and give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26)
(We are once again conducting live services on Sunday morning beginning at 9:15 a.m. We will continue to broadcast live on Facebook Live at 10:00 a.m.. Please tune in to "New Light Christian Fellowship Church" and like our page if you wish to watch our broadcast and be notified when we go live. If you are ever in the Kansas City, KS area, please come and worship with us at New Light Christian Fellowship, 15 N. 14th Street, Kansas City, KS 66102. Our service Sunday worship starts at 9:15 a.m.. We also have Thursday night Bible study at 7 p.m. via Zoom that you are also welcome to attend – please email me for the link. Also, for use of our social media, you can find us at newlightchristianfellowship on FB. To get our live stream services, please make sure you “like” and turn on notifications for our page so you can be notified when we are live streaming. We also have a church website and New Light Christian Fellowship YouTube channel for more of our content. We are developing more social media streams so please stand by and we will notify you once those channels are up and running. We look forward to you worshipping with us. May God bless and keep you.)
