He Is Risen: From Good Friday to Easter!

He Is Risen: From Good Friday to Easter!

MESSAGE SUMMARY: Jesus was the perfect Passover Pascal sacrificial Lamb on Good Friday. The events of Holy Week changed the world with His Resurrection on Easter Sunday. 

Holy Week, this week leading up to the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Jesus, was a week full of events in Jesus’ earthly life – arriving in Jerusalem on Sunday to the adoration of vast crowds and being hailed as “King”; entering into Jerusalem through the “East Gate”, the gate predicted for the arrival of the Messiah; visiting, teaching and debating in the Temple; celebrating Passover with His disciples, thereby instituting the sacrament for us of the “Holy Communion”; on Friday, being tortured and crucified on the Cross, and taking onto Himself all the sins of the world and becoming the Sacrificial Lamb when He called out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”; completing the work, at His actual death on the Cross, that He come to earth to accomplish; nothing occurring on earth during His death on the remainder of Friday and Saturday; and arising, alive, from the tomb Sunday to be seen and to converse with His disciples. These seven days, in the life of the God-Man Jesus, changed everything for all the world!

After the events in the life of Jesus during this Holy Week, it was apparent to His friends and disciples that Jesus was who He said He was – Jesus was the Messiah sent by God to fulfill God’s New Covenant for those that had faith in Jesus as God’s son and followed Jesus in their lives. This promised Messiah opens up a spiritual world of communication directly with God for those of us that follow Jesus.

Not only did Jesus arise from the dead 2000 years ago, He is alive today and seeking a relationship with us! During Holy Week, Jesus left us a pattern for how to live an abundant Christian life today -- die in ourselves; take up His Cross; and follow Him – as Paul tells us in Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.". We cannot be “crucified with Christ” if we live with a life-focus on “me, myself, and I”.

He is risen, but do our lives reflect Jesus’ sacrifice for us; are we “crucified with Christ”?

 

TODAY’S PRAYER: Keeping the Sabbath, Lord, will require a lot of changes in the way I am living life. Teach me, Lord, how to take the next step with this in a way that fits my unique personality and situation. Help me to trust you with all that will remain unfinished and to enjoy my humble place in your very large world. In Jesus’ name, amen.    Scazzero, Peter. Emotionally Healthy Spirituality Day by Day (p. 129). Zondervan. Kindle Edition.

TODAY’S AFFIRMATION: Today, I affirm that because of what God has done for me in His Son, Jesus, I AM RIGHTEOUS IN GOD’S EYES. God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. 2 Corinthians 5:21

SCRIPTURE REFERENCE (ESV): Matthew 16:24-25; 1 Peter 4:1-6; John 12:24; Mark 8:34.

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