Victory!
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Today we are celebrating our risen savior, Jesus!
Risen from the dead! That is what makes the difference, isn’t it?
The world is full of different religions, all of which have rules for what is good living, and the hope of a better future if you perform well enough in this life.
However, none of the men who started those religions are alive today. They all passed away. Their graves can be found. They were powerless to save their own lives. Where is the evidence that what they said was true?
However, Christianity is completely different! Jesus not only talked about God’s righteous standards, He lived them. Then, when evil men put Him to death, He rose again from the grave! Just like He said He would! What He said was true! He proved it by rising from the dead!
The Resurrection is key to our faith. The resurrection is the essential element of the good news of Jesus!
Paul writes it this way.
Now, brothers and sisters, I want to remind you of the gospel I preached to you, which you received and on which you have taken your stand.
By this gospel you are saved, if you hold firmly to the word I preached to you. Otherwise, you have believed in vain.
For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures,
that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures,
and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve.
After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep.
Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles,
and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born.
Witness, after witness, after witness. When the New Testament was written, these witnesses were alive. Had there not been witnesses, Christianity would not have lasted. People would have found out if it was not true.
That sets Christianity apart! Jesus rose again! Jesus told the truth and proved it! Jesus was victorious over death! this is something that no one has ever done before, nor since!
That is why the Apostle Paul wrote about the importance of the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15.
Our key verses for today are from that chapter. Look with me at 1 Corinthians 15:55-57.
“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Victory! That is what we are talking about this morning.
Let’s pray and ask God to remind us of the great victory that Jesus won for us.
Victory!
As I was thinking and praying about the message this morning, I found an article about Waterloo. Does anyone remember Waterloo?
It was June of 1815. Napolean had returned to power in France and was on the move against the Prussians and English.
He defeated the Prussians the first day, and forced the British to withdraw.
Then on the third day of fighting… The British were victorious with the aid of the Prussians.
From an old clipping, here is the way the news of the victory at Waterloo arrived in England. There were no telegrams or telephones in those days, of course, but everyone knew that Wellington was facing Napoleon in a great battle, and that the future of England was in great uncertainty. A sailing ship semaphored (signaled with coded flags) the news to the signalman on top of Winchester Cathedral. He signaled to another man on a hill, and thus news of the battle was relayed by semaphore from station to station to London and all across the land. When the ship came in, the signalman on board semaphored the first word: Wellington. The next word was defeated, and then the fog came down and the ship could not be seen. “Wellington Defeated” went across England, and there was great gloom all over the countryside. After two or three hours, the fog lifted, and the signal came again: Wellington Defeated the Enemy. Then all England rejoiced.
Can you imagine what those two to three hours were like? Britain thought they were defeated. They wondered what would happen now that Napolean had returned, and was victorious.
But then came the news of victory! Can you imagine what those hours were like when the British thought they were defeated?
I imagine that is the way it was for the disciples.
Jesus had been arrested.
Up to that point, though the priests wanted Jesus dead, they couldn’t do anything because the people loved Him. And His disciples claimed they would be loyal and fight for Him.
However, that night Jesus was arrested, the disciples fled. They abandoned Jesus. Then Jesus was crucified, died and was buried.
They mourned. That thought it was the end. Jesus, their master had been defeated. There was no hope.
Or, so they thought.
Then came that glorious morning. They women went to the tomb with spices, and came back excitedly proclaiming that Jesus was alive! He rose from the dead!
Peter and John ran to the tomb.
It was open. The stone was rolled away.
The body was gone! But, rose from the dead? John believed. But Peter couldn’t believe it.
Later, still living in fear, the disciples were in a locked room when Jesus appeared to them. John records it this way.
On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”
After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.
Victory!
Jesus rose from the dead! His resurrection made all the difference in the world!
Now, these men who were living in fear, became bold. They became the witnesses who travelled throughout the world spreading the good news of the death, burial AND resurrection of Jesus!
The resurrection really is key.
The resurrection brought the victory that changed these men into the bold apostles that turned the world upside down!
When the resurrected Jesus appeared to Paul, it radically changed His life.
Paul lived in a rigid system of works. If you perfectly kept the law, you would be righteous.
And in his fervor to keep the law, he went so far as to kill Christians.
Paul would have been in Jerusalem when Jesus was there. He would have been with the Pharisees, the group that Jesus kept having run-ins with because He would heal people on the Sabbath, breaking their traditions. You see, they came up with a lot of traditions to keep from breaking the law of not ‘working’ on the Sabbath. Jesus broke their traditions, so they were against Him.
Later, they were against those who preached about Jesus. Thus, Paul began killing Christians.
While He was traveling to Damascus to get Christians there, the resurrected Jesus appeared to Him.
Paul had not repented nor believed upon hearing the gospel from the apostles, nor from other believers like Stephen.
however, when the resurrected Jesus appeared to him, he was a changed man.
From that point in his life, he was no longer on mission to take lives. He was on mission to save lives by sharing the hope of Jesus! And he was willing to endure all kinds of hardships, beatings and imprisonments for it!
Why? Because Jesus won the victory! There was nothing to fear! Jesus defeated the worst foe of all, the one that no one else has ever defeated! Jesus defeated death itself!
Paul knew the power of the resurrection, that is why he wrote the verses we read earlier.
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Victory over death!
Death is our biggest enemy. It is the biggest fear people have. Why? Because no one can beat it!
I have read that a famous man of Nazi Germany, Alfred Krupp the minister of manufacturing, feared death. He feared it so much that he would not allow anyone to speak of it in his presence. He even shunned his own wife for speaking of it.
At one point, he offered a reward for any doctor who could prolong his life by 10 years. However, no doctor could guarantee that.
And he is not alone. Our culture today is dominated by the ideas of health and well-being. Much of what is in the news surrounds healthy eating, and medicine. TV is overrun with ads about medicines. All of which are guaranteed to make you healthier and live longer, with the possible side effect of death...
Everyone seems to be bound in the fear of death!
However, there are some who seem to not be afraid. They seem to even have a peace and joy…
From Our Daily bread I read of Dan Richardson.
One of the most dreaded sentences a patient can hear is, “You have cancer.” These words bring a chill to the heart. Although great progress is being made in treating this disease, recovery can be long and painful, and many people do not survive.
An enthusiastic believer in Christ, Dan Richardson, lost his battle with cancer. But his life demonstrated that even though the physical body may be destroyed by disease, the spirit can remain triumphant. This poem was distributed at his memorial service:
Cancer is so limited …
It cannot cripple love,
It cannot shatter hope,
It cannot corrode faith,
It cannot eat away peace,
It cannot destroy confidence,
It cannot kill friendship,
It cannot shut out memories,
It cannot silence courage,
It cannot invade the soul,
It cannot reduce eternal life,
It cannot quench the Spirit,
It cannot lessen the power of the resurrection.
If an incurable disease has invaded your life, refuse to let it touch your spirit. Your body can be severely afflicted, and you may have a great struggle. But if you keep trusting God’s love, your spirit will remain strong.
Our greatest enemy is not disease, but despair.
And why would we despair when...
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Victory over death!
These verses remind us that we do not need to fear death! Jesus has conquered death! Death is not to be dreaded, but welcomed by the believer.
For believers, Death is not good-bye, but see you later! I’ll be waiting for you in Paradise! Death does not rob us of life. Death is our entryway into a much better life with our Savior!
But these verses have something else for us to keep in mind. The resurrection does not just defeat death. The resurrection defeats the very cause of death, and the device that empowers the cause.
Read them again.
“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Victory over Sin!
The resurrection defeated sin.
Jesus said that whoever sins is a slave to sin.
It is as though sin was our master. It called to us, and we needed to obey.
Jesus says, that sin itself is defeated. We no longer have to obey it. Rather, we have a new master, a resurrected Savior! The very One who defeated death, is the one who removes us from captivity to sin.
This is Yapata.
Yapata taught me about traps.
The pig would die in the trap.
Unless it was released.
Victory over Sin!
The sting of the trap was the vine.
The garden is the thing we want. The garden can be a nice thing. But God knows it isn’t good for us. He puts a fence around it. He tells us, keep away. Not because He wants to keep good things from us. Rather He wants to protect us.
However, like that pig, we see something we want, and not matter the consequences, we go after it.
Then, the trap snaps, and we are caught.
That is sin. Sin is the vine that gets around us. It holds us in its grip, and we cannot get out. Not on our own.
Jesus defeated sin. He took the sting of the trap for us. The vines of sin that were around us, God put on Jesus. He took that sting of death, sin, and bore it on the cross. He died, and broke the vines. He paid the price removing the sting of sin.
He brings victory over sin!
We no longer have to live in the trap of self-centeredness. He sets us free.
We no longer have to live in the trap of hatred and bitterness.
We no longer have to live in the trap of anger.
We no longer ahve to live in the trap of adultery.
We no longer have to live in the trap of addiction.
We no longer have to live in the trap of gossip.
We no longer have to live in the trap of worrying about what others think of us.
Jesus has died to pay our penalties. And Jesus has risen from the dead to be our loving savior. He has risen from the dead to give us new life, a new way of living, a new power within us to live for Him, and no longer for ourselves!
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
New resurrected life! Free from the power of sin!
Victory over the law!
The vine is powerless without the trees that pull it tight.
The trees are the law.
The law is the thing that pull sin tight around me. I know the commands. I know what is good. I know what is wrong. But I am powerless against the pull of the law. The law is good, but it awakens the pull within me toward the things I should not have.
Paul saw this in his own life and writes
So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.
For in my inner being I delight in God’s law;
but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me.
What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?
Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
Victory over law!
I cannot overcome the law on my own. Rather, the law simply condemns me. No one is able to keep a standard 100%! We are weak.
However, though I am powerless, Jesus is powerful! He defeated death! He defeated sin! He defeated the law that pulls the noose of sin tight around me!
As Paul wrote,
For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in the flesh,
in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.
Jesus won the victory by rising from the dead!
I no longer have to fear death.
I no longer have to fear sin, or obey its passions and desires! I can be a new man, live a new life in Christ!
I no longer have to fear the law! Jesus took all the commands that condemned and were against me!
He defeated them all! He won the victory!
“Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?”
The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.
But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus defeated death.
Jesus took away the sting of sin.
Jesus cancelled the debt that the law put upon us.
We have been freed from the trap!
Now He calls to us, arise from the dead! Do not live in defeat! Do not live in fear of death!
Do not live as a slave to your passions and desires!
Come live the resurrected life of power and joy in Him!
He is risen!