REFORMED CHURCH, BELLVILLE: SUNDAY 14 OCTOBER 2001: EVENING SERVICE
Our help is in the Name of the Lord,
Who made heaven and earth.
Beloved, grace and peace be to you from God our Father, and the Lord
Jesus Christ, through the mighty working of God the Holy Spirit.
AMEN
Psalm of praise: 42:1,5.
Prayer.
Psalm 89:1,17.
Scripture reading: Isaiah 53.
Text: Catechism Sunday 17; Isaiah 53:5
But He was pierced through for our transgressions,
He was crushed for our iniquities;
The chastening of our well-being fell upon Him,
And by His scourging we are healed.
The Bible here teaches us a number of things which we perhaps would not like to hear:
- We have transgressions
- and we have iniquities
- and we must first be chastened (punished) before we can enjoy peace with God.
- Furthermore, we are mortally ill.
And then, suddenly, something happens to drive away the darkness from
over us, and we find ourselves in the full light of life and grace.
- Christ comes to stand before the Lord in our stead and He bears the full punishment for everything we have done.
- This does not happen easily, because the Bible reveals that He was pierced through.
- He was also crushed and He was scourged.
- Eventually He was covered with wounds.
The fulfilment of this prophecy is described very fully in the New Testament. Everything resulted in His death and resurrection.
- Jesus' death was to bear the punishment,
- and His resurrection was to enable us also to rise from the dead.
- Isaiah says this was to restore our well-being.
What is described here is a very difficult situation, but the Lord
ordained that this should happen so that our well-being might be
restored, in other words, that we might live. I am resurrected from the
dead. Hear how directly and clearly this is described in Romans 8:11:
But if
the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who
raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal
bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.
This refers literally to our bodily resurrection from the dead: "...will also give life to your mortal bodies..."
The devil did not believe in this prophecy, or he wished to prevent its
fulfilment, therefore he went to tempt Jesus immediately after His
baptism. He thought that Jesus would be so terrified of the Lord's
punishment (death) that He could be seduced to abandon all thought of
establishing a way for believers back from the dead into eternal life.
In Luke 4:5vv it is stated:
And he
led Him up and showed Him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of
time. And the devil said to Him, "I will give You all this domain and
its glory; for it has been handed over to me, and I will give it to
whomsoever I wish. Therefore, if You worship before me, it shall all be
Yours!"
The self-confidence of the Satan was incredible!
- He confronted Jesus because he truly thought that the Lord would worship him rather than die.
- For that reason Jesus' death caused such an utter turmoil,
because what the devil had considered to be impossible, then happened.
- That which had been quite impossible up to that time, happened on the third day afterwards:
- Jesus rose from the dead!
- The first and only person in history to do so, rose from the dead in His own strength and became again alive.
On the Friday of the crucifixion there was already a prelude to this: a number of people who had died, rose from the dead!
- They had remained in their graves until after the resurrection and only then appeared to the people.
- But there is an important difference between the resurrection of
Christ and that of the people who returned from the dead during the
crucifixion.
- They were resurrected by God.
- Jesus Christ rose in His own strength.
What strikes one, is the anxiety of the unbelievers to hide these things from the people.
- The Roman authorities and the high priests were all aware of this resurrection.
- The guards testified truthfully to what had happened.
- But the guards were instructed to testify against the truth that the body of Jesus had been stolen.
- That was only one of the many unsavoury attempts of the Satan to cover up the truth with lies.
The plans of the Lord were, however, not blocked by the powers of hell
or by people. Therefore the apostle Paul proclaimed this news far and
wide.
- Sometimes the heathen ridiculed him, as during his speech on the Areopagus.
- The Greeks did not readily believe him, even though they listened very attentively.
- At first they considered Paul to be the most sensible person to
whom they had listened, but when he stated that death itself had been
overcome because Jesus, the Man who was also God, had vanquished death,
the entire audience in the arena burst out laughing and told Paul that
he could address them again some other day.
- The Jews did not fare much better.
- That is why the Bible stated later that the resurrection of the Lord Jesus was a stumbling block to the Jews.
- Every time they heard it mentioned, it was again a fresh cause of offence to them.
- The Jewish Council of the time had given judgement against
Jesus and the people had shouted that His blood would be on them and
their children.
If one looks at history, it is remarkable to what extent Satan controls people's belief.
Yet the Lord Jesus changed the entire situation. Think of the time when Samson broke open the city gates of Gaza.
- At the time it caused great commotion.
- These gates were so tremendously strong that an army with battering rams could barely break them down.
- Then a single Jew came and broke them down singlehandedly, carried them off and cast them away on a hill.
- This caused a sensation throughout the world of the time.
The significance of this action of Samson's was that it symbolized that
there would one day be a Man who would similarly break down the portals
of the enemy. He would break down the gates of death, so that all the
true believers would follow Him through the gates of death into eternal
life.
- And He did come.
- Jesus.
- Far more powerful than Samson, He broke down the gates of hell.
Listen to what God teaches: Romans 6:6,8 teaches us that God loves us.
- Therefore He would not leave us in the hands of Satan, where we had landed through our own actions after the Fall.
- He sent His Son to vanquish death for us, so that we could once again experience the grace of God.
When we were still weak, God died at the right time for the ungodly.
Therefore it is written in Romans 14:9 that Jesus died and lived again
that He might be Lord both of the dead and of the living.
- This means that we are also now ruled by Him.
- Then death and the grave cannot have the final word concerning
us, because Jesus lives and He reigns from heaven over His believers.
- After all, Jesus said, "...because I live, you will live also."
This means that our life, in fact, only begins to attain its true
nature after this earthly life. This is also very strongly emphasised
in Ephesians 2:4-6 where it is written that we have been raised with
Christ, and are already with Him in heaven.
This statement means that our life after death is so surely guaranteed
by God that we are regarded as already being in the hereafter. It does
not say that we will only get there one day. The fact of the matter is
so overwhelmingly powerful that that the Bible teaches us that we are
already there, together with Christ.
We must probably all die in this earthly dispensation. But you must not fear death.
- God Himself gives you peace of mind, because Jesus Christ takes away the fear of death.
- Death is followed by the resurrection.
- Of that, your proof lies in the resurrection of Jesus.
It is naturally so that the unbelievers do not have this consolation.
- Those who do not believe in Jesus Christ and His resurrection, will not enter into the joy of the Lord's hereafter.
- For them, death is the door to eternal torment.
We must, however, believe in the Lord, and live regenerate lives, because we share in the redemption of the Lord Jesus Christ.
- You are delivered from death.
- You are redeemed; through Jesus Christ you live for all eternity.
Let us see what we acknowledge concerning this in Catechism Sunday 17:
LORD'S DAY XVII
45. question. What does the resurrection of Christ profit us?
answer.
First, by His resurrection He has overcome death, that He might make us
partakers of the righteousness which He has obtained for us by His death1; second, we also are raised up by His power to a new life2; and third, the resurrection of Christ is to us a sure pledge of our blessed resurrection3.
1. Rom.4:25; 1 Pet.1:3; 1 Cor.15:16 2. Rom.6:4; Col.3:1,3; Eph.2:5,6
3. 1 Cor.15:20,21
AMEN.
Closing prayer
Closing Psalm:
The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
AMEN.
Rev. M.J. du Plessis
Reformed Church, Bellville
14 October 2001
Scripture quoted from NASB.