Resurrection Series

Jesus has resurrected from the dead and I want to talk about His life before He rose from the dead and a little bit after. There is a teaching of Jesus I feel we have missed because He spoke a little about but His whole life was about it. That is to have faith. Jesus lived a life of faith that manifested through His performing miracles. From the first Miracle of turning water to wine to the last miracle of rising from the dead and eventually ascending to heaven. Jesus showed us a life that is possible if we have faith. He knew one Important aspect of our life: that we are born into flesh, and we grow to believe in things we can see and touch. It’s like we are born upside down. We are born because we are made by the unseen. Parents can come together to consummate a child, but they can never ever decide on the character and personality of that child. Today I understood the scripture in Matthew 17 verse 20 “Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.” Today I understood the message of Jesus. Jesus is telling us here that the unseen controls the seen. You can touch faith with your hand, you can’t smell faith with your noise, you can’t hear it with your ears. However, you can see its work manifests in the physical world. Faith is what makes things take place.

Today I finally saw that Jesus calls us to be rich in faith. To be rich in the unseen so we can control the seen. To have a positive balance in the Bank of Faith

The Resurrection of Jesus is one of the most debated aspects of Christianity. People ask, “How is it possible?” It the biggest known miracle in History. It is not easy for people to believe because they have little faith. Their faith is limited by their belief in the physical world of seen and touchable. The unseen world is unlimited. Because it is made of God; the unseen has no beginning and no end. And so is its power. Jesus is saying a tiny particle of the unseen can move a mountain. The resurrection was possible because of faith. The resurrection is a manifestation of a belief that Jesus had. His resurrection is not the only miracle of resurrection that happened in the bible. Lazarus was also raised from the dead. And it seems that it’s easier for people to believe that Jesus raised Lazarus than it is to believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. It was like this even for Thomas, ‘The Twin’, as the Bible describes him. He was a disciple of Jesus and likely to have been there when Jesus raised Lazarus from the dead and yet Thomas did not believe that Jesus was raised from the dead. The Bible explains that Lazarus was dead for 4 days, his body had started to decay and was smelling when Jesus resurrected him. I believe the miracle of Lazarus was important for true believers. It was there to show us that the dead can rise so we know the level we can reach with our faith.

Another thing that stood out for me and I missed for years is that Jesus raised himself from the dead. The miracle is bigger than I thought. I always believed that God raised Jesus from the dead. Matthew 26 verse 61 “This man said, ‘I can destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days’”. John 2 verse 19 “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it.”

If there is a person here who doesn’t believe that Jesus was raised from the dead – I am here to tell you that it’s not because you are a bad person or a bad Christian for that matter: You just have little faith. Then you say Mfundisi (Priest), how do I get my faith up? Then I Can tell you that the Bible says, “Faith without works is dead”. James 2: 26 To get your faith up, you need to use it and see its results. That scripture tells us that faith is like a muscle you can train, and it will be strong. The message for the resurrection is “Go train your faith”. The sermon can end there.

It could be that Thomas believed in Jesus the man/ Jesus the person and His power. He believed in Jesus the person that Jesus the person has the power to heal and raise people from the dead and did not believe in the source of that power. Maybe he believed that Jesus was born with the power to heal, but I don’t know. Or it could be that Thomas believed because he Jesus with his own eyes performing miracles. When he was not there to see, he didn’t trust him. His faith was little, or it did not exist at all. When I realized that there are Christians that don’t believe that Jesus rose from the dead, my heart was sore. But the Holy Spirit taught me that it’s because they have little faith. Jesus says in John 20 verse 29 “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” Not seeing and yet believing is the essence of all faith. Those who believe that Jesus was raised from the dead are blessed because they have faith. If you have faith, you can perform miracles. If you believe that Jesus did make a blind man see, then it is easy for you to believe that Jesus will take care of your needs because most of them are smaller than being blind. Church is a school that teaches about the unseen.