Resurrection
CCCAG, April 9th, 2023
Scripture: Luke 24:1-6, but starting in Rev 2
Introduction
We are going to take a break from our study in Colossians to celebrate the resurrection of our LORD.
I want to talk about something that is making news everywhere and seemingly tearing at the very seams that hold this country together.
It seems like we are living in a world that is making less and less sense. People who are normally nice, kind, and seem to be people that use common sense in most areas of their lives seem to have been blinded by the culture and what is popular.
It’s this insidious ideology called being woke. It’s important for us to address this head on because it’s only going to get worse, so I want to dig into that this morning so you have an idea as to it’s origins and the spiritual forces behind it.
The first thing I want to say- this is nothing new. Over the course of human history, this kind of thing has reared it’s ugly head many times, and it’s one of the things that Jesus HIMself addresses in the 7 letters to the church’s in the book of Revelation.
In Revelation chapter 2, the resurrected Jesus dictates 7 letters to the Apostle John that he is to send to the churches of Asia Minor. In the letter to the church at Thyatira Jesus says this-
Rev 2:18-25
These are the words of the Son of God, whose eyes are like blazing fire and whose feet are like burnished bronze. 19 I know your deeds, your love and faith, your service and perseverance, and that you are now doing more than you did at first.
20 Nevertheless, I have this against you: You tolerate that woman Jezebel, who calls herself a prophetess. By her teaching she misleads my servants into sexual immorality and the eating of food sacrificed to idols. 21 I have given her time to repent of her immorality, but she is unwilling. 22 So I will cast her on a bed of suffering, and I will make those who commit adultery with her suffer intensely, unless they repent of her ways. 23 I will strike her children dead. Then all the churches will know that I am he who searches hearts and minds, and I will repay each of you according to your deeds. 24 Now I say to the rest of you in Thyatira, to you who do not hold to her teaching and have not learned Satan's so-called deep secrets (I will not impose any other burden on you): 25 Only hold on to what you have until I come.
Two thousand years ago, Jesus used the Apostle John to speak to an actual church that existed at that time. In doing so, Jesus also prophesied what the world would be like in 2023.
Jesus predicted what it meant to be woke.
Being woke means to take on a series of beliefs that fly in the face of God’s order, natural order, and common sense. From the biblical and spiritual perspective, being woke means to surrender to the influence of what is known as the Jezebel Spirit.
Let me speak to what the Jezebel spirit is-
The name of Jezebel first appears in 1 Kings 16, and then spoken more about in 18-21. She is the queen of Israel and wife of the wicked King Ahab. Jezebel served very evil foreign god’s, and she enticed and then forced Israel to do the same.
Sound familiar? It starts with an optional lifestyle choice, then everyone is forced to accept it and then practice it themselves.
The gods that Jezebel served used sexuality as an act of worship, particularly deviant sexuality having to do with all kinds of perversion that I won’t burden you with this morning- because all of you see it on the nightly news. This is what Jesus was speaking about in the letter to the church at Thyatira when he uses the phrase- satan’s so called deep secrets- that you can experience freedom through following these so-called gods and participating in acts of deviancy.
The Jezebel spirit is also seen in church’s through people usurping spiritual authority. When the church trades in biblical doctrine to be popular with the world, the demonic power of the Jezebel spirit is behind that move.
That Jezebel Spirit is what is destroying us today.
But, it’s also nothing new. The enemy has deployed this tactic over and over again throughout history. He wants to destroy any chance of us coming to faith in Jesus and he does so by destroying that image of God within us.
The enemy did that in the beginning with Adam and Eve. He destroyed the image of God within everyone who was born since that time, causing us to be dead men walking.
But then Jesus came. (Repeat)
Jesus said truly truly I say unto you you must be born again.
In the original languages of the Bible they didn't have the same sentence structures that we did so to bring emphasis to something they would repeat that word. Jesus saying truly twice here is being absolutely clear that anyone who wants to see heaven and avoid hell has to be born again.
In other words we all need a resurrection.
Our nation needs a resurrection
Our culture needs a resurrection
You personally need a resurrection.
It’s the only thing that can defeat this thing we call being woke and the Jezebel spirit behind it. It’s why the enemy is trying to hard to bring the church down because we are the only ones that hold the truth that we all must be born again and resurrected into new life.
This morning we're going to be focusing on this idea of resurrection.
We are going to look at Luke’s account of the women at the empty tomb this morning and find out what is keeping Us as individuals and corporately as a society from completely resurrected.
Luke 24:1-6
On the first day of the week, very early in the morning, the women took the spices they had prepared and went to the tomb. 2 They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, 3 but when they entered, they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus. 4 While they were wondering about this, suddenly two men in clothes that gleamed like lightning stood beside them. 5 In their fright the women bowed down with their faces to the ground, but the men said to them, "Why do you look for the living among the dead?
Prayer
I. Blocks to resurrection (Things that keep you bound)
In the medical field, when a person either comes into the ER or during their stay suddenly decompensate or dies we do our best to bring them back to life, or if you will resurrect them. Whether we are successful or not when we are finished with that crisis situation we do a debriefing. During the briefing we discussed what went well what didn't go so well and how we could the next time.
That's kind of how I'm approaching this account of the women at the empty tomb this morning.
The first thing I noticed is in the first verse it said that the women took the spices they had prepared and went out of the tomb.
Now undoubtedly, while they were doing this out of tradition, they were also doing this out of love for Jesus and and making sure that his body was properly prepared for burial. Remember- Jesus was crucified on the eve of a high holy day and sabbath so they had to rush him into the tomb as fast as possible to properly observe the Jewish law. They are now returning to do the job right and give HIM a proper burial. All of this was done out of deep love and reverence for our Lord and I don't want to take that away from them.
Saying that- for 3 ½ years these woman had heard the same teaching, the same prophecy, and the same predictions as the disciples.
Jesus told them in 3 days HE would rise from the dead.
Yet they were so caught up in their grief that they fell back onto their tradition to try and get them through.
And that is the first thing that can block our personal resurrection- trusting in tradition.
This last week I was listening to a podcast that was featuring a man who is an apologist for the Christian faith. An apologist is a person that is able to take bible truths and make them make sense to us today.
He was talking to two well known Christian conservatives men who grew up in the church. The apologist was discussing what it takes to be free of your sins and eventually go to heaven when you die and he asked these two political commentators what they believed we're God's criteria to enter into heaven.
Do you know what they both said?
Be a good moral person and God will forgive you and let you into heaven. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Two guys that are out there talking about what is right from a Christian perspective lost the salvation message because they grew up with tradition and not the Gospel.
But that's humanities default isn't it?
We cling to what is comfortable. Tradition brings comfort, even if the tradition isn’t the best thing for us.
By the way, the Jezebel spirit uses that against us- twisting tradition to make the church fall away from the truth.
I saw an interesting tattoo this week on the arm of a woman I was trying to start an IV on. It was in Latin and I could pick up some of what it said, and I asked her what the saying was-
She said, “It means ‘Tell me the hard truth rather than the comfortable lie”
Some of what the bible tells us is best for us may be uncomfortable. But God is a good father and wants what is best for HIS children.
Tradition can get in the way even with salvation. I was sharing at an interfaith men’s breakfast once about a person in hospice that I prayed the salvation prayer with. The person had asked if I could baptize them, so I got a cup of water from the sink and baptized them in their bed. The person died soon afterwards.
One of the guys at the breakfast said, “Well, that didn’t do any good. They weren’t immersed in the water, and therefore were not baptized and wasn’t saved.”
His tradition said that full immersion in water was required for baptism and salvation and he held onto that no matter how much we tried to convince him otherwise.
I use that just as an example to ask you this question-
What is holding you back from receiving a resurrection in your life? Is there a tradition, or
bad belief that is holding you back from experiencing God in all of HIS fulness in your life?
If you are clinging onto that thing that is blocking you from truly living for God in every way- then the angels described in Luke 24 have a question for you today-
Why are you looking for the living among the dead?
You can’t experience true life while lugging around parts of you that are dead- the dead parts will eventually rot the rest of you.
Col 2:13-15
13 When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, 14 having canceled the written code, with its regulations, that was against us and that stood opposed to us; he took it away, nailing it to the cross.
My friends, we need to get back to the simple Gospel.
Let God resurrect you and show you the way. Let go of all of those things that hold you to this world, and experience the freedom of the new life that Jesus died to give you.
You need this, because the deception of the enemy is at an all time high.
Millions are getting deceived by this Jezebel spirit, swallowing the lies, and turning against God.
We need to understand this, and that brings us to the second point of resurrection-
There is going to be a fight involved-
II. The fight
In order to win any battle, you have to first identify the enemy. We’ve been doing that this morning- recognizing satans attacks and the type of spirit he is deploying at this time in history.
If this seems a little out there, I remind you what the bible says about the enemies we face-
Eph 6:12-13
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.
This is why I’ve been talking about this and the spirits behind woke-ism.
We are seeing an incredible onslaught of demonic deception in our day.
You really can’t call it anything other than what it is- demonic. As the book of Revelation 12:12 says, Woe to the inhabitants of the earth. The devil comes with great wrath because he knows his time is short.
That’s why we who are God’s children are astonished on how fast our nation’s soul is rotting away.
How normally good and moral people now suddenly support some of the most vile garbage ever promoted in a culture.
I had an example in here but took it out because it was just too vile to really describe it from the pulpit in this forum. I cleaned it up and the only way I can describe it was a grown man dressed in drag dancing provocatively in front of 8-year-olds in a school.
Let me be clear about that- in a sane world, That man should be arrested. The teachers and principle should be fired and lose their teaching licenses permanently, and the school board recalled and replaced.
I’m glad I wasn’t a parent of one of those kids….I’d be phoning this sermon in from jail.
But that’s where we are. Even our children are being brainwashed into believing these things are ok.
And it’s not happening in distant cities, or Canada.
Schools throughout Wisconsin are telling teachers to have regular conversations with children of all ages to ensure they are picking the right gender for them.
There are multiple federal lawsuits being filed about this. I did a deep fact check on this and it’s true- even Eau Claire schools are involved with it now.
The devil is coming with great wrath. He is shaking and attacking the foundations of our nation, our families, and even our church’s.
But before you get all depressed, nervous or scared- do you know who else is shaking things or allows things to be shaken?
God. The author of Hebrews alludes to the time that the FATHER spoke to the nation of Israel at Mt Sinai before he says this-
Heb 12:26-27
At that time his voice shook the earth, but now he has promised, "Once more I will shake not only the earth but also the heavens." 27 The words "once more" indicate the removing of what can be shaken — that is, created things — so that what cannot be shaken may remain.
Being shaken isn’t a bad thing.
A lot of us need some shaking this morning, and as much as we complain about the devil messing up everyone around us, perhaps instead we should ask the question-
What is God trying to shake loose in me?
Are there hidden sins that need to be dragged into the light?
Are there gaping holes in your spiritual armor that need to be fixed before the final few years before the rapture or tribulation?
Does God need to develop some spiritual toughness and resiliency in you?
Does God need to teach you to stand and see his salvation?
Or, does your Father need to teach you the language of heaven, otherwise known as-
III. Faith
Luke 24:6-8 the angels tell the woman
Jesus is not here; he has risen! Remember how he told you, while he was still with you in Galilee: 7 'The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men, be crucified and on the third day be raised again.'" 8 Then they remembered his words.
You have to wonder if the angels were smiling a little at the woman when they proclaimed this. It’s almost as if they were thinking,
“Come on ladies! Jesus told you this was going to happen! Why are you here?”
Those same angels would tell us today- Christian! Why are you here? Why are you so afraid of what might be coming?
Jesus told you this was the way the world would be in the last days! Be of good courage, because HE has overcome the world!
The angels appealed to the most important foundation of all- faith.
Faith.
The jezebel spirit is terrified and cannot stand against a Christian filled with faith and the Holy Spirit
Satan flees when confronted by a saint who is wearing their armor, fervent in prayer, and standing for God, believing HIS word even when the enemy is coming in like a flood.
All the forces of hell will flee when one person stands in full resurrection power.
It’s at that moment that we shine the brightest glory of God upon a darkened world.
Jesus saves.
He wants to bring you new life this morning.
All Rise- close with Jesus Saves by Travis Cotrell.
