Jesus' Resurrection

Jesus Resurrection: What did Jesus do during the days of unleavened bread?

Jesus Foretold His Resurrection

Mark 14:28 – egiro to rouse from sleep, to stand or rise from sitting or lying down, from death. From a base word meaning to gather, as in gather your wits about you, regain consciousness. Matches the biblical depiction of death as a form of unconscious sleep. Other verses: John 2:19-20, Matt 16:21; 17:23

Jesus Proved His Resurrection

I Corinthians 15:3-6 Jesus appeared in a resurrected body 11 times to around 500 people

Jesus only appeared before and thus proved His resurrection to disciples, the faithful or you could say those who already answered His call and followed Him. Why didn’t Jesus appear before and prove Himself to the Sanhedrin, the priests, the scribes, the Pharisees, the Romans? Wouldn’t that be the perfect opportunity to prove Himself to the skeptics?

God’s first priority is to strengthen, encourage, comfort, teach, and make Himself known to those who are willing to hear His voice, to respond, and take it seriously.

The disciples themselves were skeptics

John 20:1-10 verse 9 even though He had taught them about His own resurrection (and implicitly their own resurrection) they didn’t understand. I think they understood it or believed it in the sense of all being resurrected at the last day. See John 11:21-24.

Perhaps this is what John (the other disciple) was thinking when he saw the empty death clothes. Mark 16:14 indicates that the disciples didn’t believe the testimony of others but had to see it for themselves. And after 40 days it stopped and they did not see Him again.

Convincing the Un-Believers… The World?

God does not make spectacular, supernatural appearances day after day, year after year, generation after generation to make His point, prove His existence, or prove Himself to each and every person who lives… nor to the world at large. Instead, He proves and confirms Himself to those who already believe through faith. He then commissions them to go forth and testify to others. You are the beneficiaries of that long trail of testimony and witness to God’s limited but highly important interventions or appearances on the stage of human history.

Consider: Israel had God present with them in a spectacular pillar of fire and cloud every day for 40 years. When He moved they moved, when it stopped they stopped. The visible glory of God came into the tent of meeting… it did not put to rest every doubt, it did not stop every sin, it did not silence every dissenting voice. Neither would it today… God could say “been there, done that”.

Why does God ask humans to perform the ongoing task of witnessing and testifying to the truth of God and preaching the good news?

The first and most obvious answer is that allowing us to participate in His plan of salvation prepares and trains us in matters of faith. We act on faith, we walk in the spirit, we trust God. All this prepares us for our future roles in His family and in the Kingdom of God. The United Church of God makes this point very thoroughly on a regular basis so I am not going to go over this material today.

A second possibility is that delegating this ministry of witness and proclamation to flesh and blood creates a necessary degree of separation between sinful mankind and shields them from wrath and destruction by a glorious, righteous, all-powerful God who hates all forms of sin and cannot bear to have sin in His presence?

God Appeared To Israel In His Glory

As previously mentioned… God appeared to the nation of Israel in a way that everyone could see and experience. A pillar of fire, the Shekinah glory of His presence in the tent of meeting, etc. However, the people’s direct access to Him was greatly limited by layers of protocol… a shroud of cloud and smoke, priests, washings, sacrifices.

Only the priests could enter the tent of meeting with a sacrifice, everyone else had to stop at the doorway and could go no further. The tabernacle was situated in the middle of the camp. This tabernacle was surrounded by a protective ring of Levites who were there to guard against anyone approaching the tabernacle and presence of God without going through the proper procedure… lest they be consumed by His wrath. All of this was for their protection.

God Appeared to Israel as Flesh & Blood

This same member of the God family, the Word, was willing to put off the glory that was His and dwell among us as flesh and blood. The people around Him had full access to Him, to touch, talk, smell His body sweat, and look him in the eye. As a man Jesus was not filled with the mighty power of God, the powerful works He performed were the power of the Father working through Him.

How Did Men Respond to the Presence of God in Glory?

Israel took the presence of YHWH for granted, as the generations passed they considering it no big deal and began to break their promises of obedience. God punished them with defeat and captivity for that but mercifully restored them after 70 years. After their severe punishment and restoration, they reacted by focusing so much on the protocol that they missed the substance of the covenant… mercy, judgment, faith. Which Jesus sternly rebuked them.

How Did Men Respond to God in the Flesh?

With full and unrestricted access to God in the weakness of the flesh… they used this freedom of access to the point where they beat Him to a pulp and executed Him. If Jesus were to keep reappearing to each generation to “top them up” or keep them going” how would we react? Would we get overly familiar with His appearing and consider it no big deal? Would we focus so much on the physical event that we would focus too much on the physical proof rather than the spiritual indwelling and growth? Or would we just beat Him up and kill Him each time?  Instead, God says “once is enough”… “once for all”.

First, God revealed Himself full of power, glory and majesty teaching lofty ideals of judgment, mercy and faith through His commands and statutes. Then, in the person of Jesus, God revealed the more intimate aspects of His relationship with us. Jesus allows us to see God more as a person, with thoughts, feelings, emotions, love and caring… not a concept or a big white cloud of pure intelligence floating in space… STAR TREK ANALOGY intelligence in the universe.

Jesus Makes a Very Personal Appearance

Mark 16:9-11 Short and to the point, however, John must have talked at length with her about what it felt like to be the first to see Jesus resurrected from the dead.

Mary Magdalene (that was her hometown) was nobody special really. She was not destined to be one of the great leaders of the Church (no further mention in Bible)… why would Jesus appear to her? And before all others for that matter…  not Peter or John. Jesus is not all about the organization… I don’t think He sees the Church first and you as a part of it. He sees each of you individually and each of you then as part of the body of the church.

He’s dealing with you one on one in a loving caring relationship beautifully illustrated by His appearance to Mary outside His tomb.

People try to spice up the testimony by making Mary out to be an alluring reformed prostitute who either seduced or tempted Jesus… this is just guesswork and speculation which the scriptural record does not say anything about.

What we do know is: Mary was one of several women who traveled with Jesus and His disciples contributing to His ministry from some money that she had. Formerly, she had been tormented and in bondage to seven demons, whom Jesus drove out from her. Anything outside of that is non-scriptural. But this is enough to tell us that she had every reason to love Jesus and appreciate what He had done for her personally. And her sorrow over His death was deep and personal.

John 20:11 the others John, Peter etc. have gone home, Mary stays behind crying (klah'-yo) the word here means sobbing her heart out, there is a different word in Greek for just crying silently… Mary was sobbing loudly … because Jesus was gone. She would never see Him again… and now even His body had been taken away. Could it really be over?

She’s not thinking theologically, or of prophecy… she just knows He’s gone and she’s alone.

Verse 12-13 now the angels who do know the plan and the spiritual reality of what’s going on ask her “why are  you crying?”

But Mary doesn’t know He’s resurrected. She looking for closure, to take care of Him and serve Him one last time, to prepare His body properly and redo the hasty last minute job done by Joseph and Nicodemus so they could get Jesus body in the tomb before the Holyday Sabbath three days earlier.

Verse 14 Mary turns around and she is looking at Jesus but doesn’t recognize Him. Why? If we were to read some of the other instances where Jesus appeared to the brethren they too did not immediately recognize Him. Mark 16:12, Luke 24:13-16, Matt 29:17, John 24:15… read them and you’ll see that in each case it was only when Jesus revealed Himself to them that they recognized Him.

And so I was with Mary… Verse 15-16 Jesus first words to her are a bit distant… He refers to her as “woman” and repeats the angels' question “why are you crying”. She’s probably still sobbing when she begs for His help in finding the body that is supposed to be there.

Then He says her name… Mary. When she hears His voice like the sheep who recognizes the shepherd, she recognizes Him and cries out to Him… Rabboni, which means – lord, master, teacher. 

Jesus Christ Knows Your Name

He knows everything about you. Every hair on your head and every thought. He knows how to call out to you in a way that you too will recognize Him. Do you know and recognize the voice of the shepherd?

Why Did Jesus Appear to the Disciples?

1. To offer comfort and reassurance to those He loved so much during His life in the flesh
2. To commission them go and tell others about what they had seen and heard. To testify to the truth to others and to live it themselves, and this is what He told Mary.

Verse 17 Jesus tells Mary “Go and tell my brothers”. This is a new thing, they had spoken of servants and masters, then He called them His friends… but now He is speaking of them as brothers. He also says “I am going to My Father and your Father, to My God and your God”. He is speaking to them (and us) as if we are equals, living on the same plane of existence. Christ of course, has the pre-eminence of the firstborn but we are brothers… in the family of God.

Hebrews 2:12-15

Colossians 1:18-23