Far and Away

In a culture that devalued women, Jesus not only valued them as equally created in the image of God in the same way as men, but the value He placed upon them is seen through the New Testament writers as followers of Jesus. For example, the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) were all written by men who were sure to point out that it was a man by the name of Judas who betrayed Jesus and it was the male disciples in Jesus life who left Him and fled when He was arrested. However, it was the women in Jesus life, along with John, who were present while Jesus hung on a cross to die. If you were making up a story about a Savior in a male dominated society that viewed women as, in the words of Socrates, Incapable of reason and making rational choices, you would by no means portray them as being brave enough not to flee and hide like the rest of the disciples did. It is also worth noting that if Jesus resurrection was a made-up story told by a group of men, you definitely would not make women the first eyewitnesses to His resurrection! The inclusion of women in Jesus life serves as further proof that not only is the Bible for both men and women, but additional evidence that Jesus did rise from the grave. However, before Jesus rose from the grave, He was crucified and did indeed die! He was handed over by the religious leaders of His day to be sentenced to death by Pontius Pilate for treason, and although He was innocent of such crimes he was sentenced to death by crucifixion. Before He was forced to carry His cross, He was beaten, flogged, mocked, and beaten again. Jesus stood mangled and hemorrhaging before a jeering crowd who demanded with shouts: Crucify, crucify him! (see Luke 23:18-25). When Pilate told Jesus that he had the power to release him, Jesus replied: You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above (John 19:11). Pilate washed his hands in a bowl of water symbolizing his innocence and ordered that Jesus be crucified. Jesus was forced to carry His cross to the place of his execution known as Golgotha. Once He reached Golgotha, Jesus was stretched out by force upon the cross where His hands and feet were nailed to the wooden beams that made up His cross, where He would hang until His death. For six hours he hung on that cross and while on the cross, three of the seven statements that came out from His mouth that will serve as my main points this resurrection Sunday morning, were as follows: While the crowd mocked him and the soldiers gambled over his clothes, as Jesus hung on the cross stripped of His cloths and humiliated before the masses, He said: Father, forgiven them, for they know not what they do (Luke 23:34). While dying on the Cross under the wrath of God for sins we are guilty of, under the unrestrained justice we all deserved for our sins, Jesus cried: My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? (Matt. 27:27)? Just before He breathed out what air was left in His lungs, in case there was any confusion as to who was in charge, Jesus declared: It is finished (John 19:30). Jesus died. To prove that he was dead, one of the soldiers thrust his spear into the side and heart of Jesus, a man by the name of Joseph asked Pilate for the body of Jesus, and then His body was prepared for burial, placed in the tomb, and a stone was rolled in front of the entrance of the tomb to seal the grave shut. While in the tomb, Jesus was not unconscious and he didnt have a twin brother who pretended to rise from the grave; Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wanted to be impeccably clear that Jesus physically died on the cross and that His death was very important and very significant. Three days later, Jesus rose from the grave! The women in Jesus life were the first to see and witness His resurrected body, while the men in His life refused to believe it until Jesus appeared to them as well. They, and every other person who encountered the risen Christ, would never be the same! If Jesus remained in the tomb after His death, then all we would have to look to was a dead martyr. Jesus did not stay dead though, and His resurrection is proof that all that He said and did was legitimate and true. Jesus went to the cross to die a death each and every human deserved to die. To the Corinthian Church, Paul wrote to a group of people who had seen how a resurrected Jesus transformed lives: Now I make known to you, brothers and sisters, the gospel which I preached to you, which you also received, in which you also stand, by which you also are saved, if you hold firmly to the word which I preached to you, unless you believed in vain. For I handed down to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures (1 Cor. 15:14) Jesus lived the life none of us could and died the death that every single one of us deserved, and His resurrection from the tomb validates His death for our sins and triumphant victory over sin and death as true. This is the gospel of Jesus Christ, and it is, the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes (Rom. 1:16). Jesus Resurrection Proves that We Can be Forgiven by God (Eph. 2:11) It is the power of the gospel that the Christians in Ephesus experienced! Ephesus was the home of one of the seven wonders of the world: The Temple of Diana (Artemis). Horrible things happened in that temple and people from all over the world came to Ephesus to experience what the goddess Diana offered, and Ephesus economy benefited under the oppressive demonic power of Artemis, until the gospel came to that city. Those who became Christians were identified by those in the city as belonging to the Way after something Jesus said about Himself: I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except through Me (John 14:6). We are given a small glimpse of the kind of effect the gospel had upon Ephesus and the worship of Diana in Acts 19. Demetrius, a silversmith who made a living off forming silver shrines of Artemis, was particularly angry over the way the gospel impacted his business; listen to his complaint about the apostle Paul: You see and hear that not only in Ephesus, but in almost all of Asia, this Paul has persuaded and turned away a considerable number of people, saying that gods made by hands are not gods at all. Not only is there danger that this trade of ours will fall into disrepute, but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be regarded as worthless, and that she whom all of Asia and the world worship will even be dethroned from her magnificence. (Acts 19:2627) To those who heard about Jesus, repented of their sins and idolatry, and surrendered their lives to Him, Paul wrote: In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our wrongdoings, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished on us (Eph. 1:7-8a). Because of Jesus, these Ephesian Christians had a new identity that was now rooted in Christ instead of Artemis! Against the backdrop of a demonic temple, Paul wrote these words: These are in accordance with the working of the strength of His might which He brought about in Christ, when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. And He put all things in subjection under His feet, and made Him head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all. (Eph. 1:2023) To those rescued out of the paganism of Artemis through the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, Paul wrote in Ephesians 2:11-12a, Therefore remember that previously you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by the so-called circumcision which is performed in the flesh by human hands were at that time separate from Christ. They were at one time dead in their sins; under the guise of Artemis, they once, walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience (Eph. 2:1-3). But through the cross of Christ, they have been made alive with Christ because of the rich mercy, great love, and sufficient grace of almighty God! If you are a follower of Jesus Christ, if you have placed your faith and trust in Him as the only means for the forgiveness of your sins, then you who, were at one time separate from Christ (2:11), have been forgiven by God through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. Jesus Resurrection Proves that We Can be Reconciled to God (Eph. 2:12) On the eve of His execution, Jesus was abandoned and left alone with no one. If that were not enough, there was One more person who abandoned Him to leave him completely and desperately alone. We learn who that person was with Jesus words from the cross: My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? (Mark 15:34). Why would Jesus say such a thing from the cross? Because it was on the cross that Jesus was cursed in our place, which was the plan all along. It is the reason why John the Baptist cried out upon seeing Jesus in the early days of our Saviors earthly ministry: Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29)! While Jesus endured the humiliation of the cross, He experienced exactly what the prophet Isaiah described in Isaiah 53:5, But He was pierced for our offenses, He was crushed for our wrongdoings; the punishment for our well-being was laid upon Him, and by His wounds we are healed (Isaiah 53:5). When Jesus cried out, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me? He, in that moment, experienced the cursing of His Heavenly Father for sins we are guilty of. From the moment of conception, ours is a nature that gravitates towards opposition against our Creator. Oh, we are fine with a god of our own making, but the God who spoke the galaxies into existence, whose power fashioned more than 300 billion suns with a command, before whom the pure Seraphim shield their faces with one set of wings and cover their feet with another set of wings, while calling out to one another concerning God almighty: Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of armies. The whole earth is full of His glory (Isa. 6:1-3), we run from that God! Why? Because, as the Bible declares: There is no righteous person, not even one; there is no one who understand, there is no one who seeks out God. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Rom. 3:10-11, 23). That is the problem with humanity and that is why Jesus said, For the Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost (Luke 19:10). For our sin, Jesus was cursed so that you and I would not have to be, this is why the Bible states, Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us for it is written: Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree (Gal. 3:13). Aarons blessing is now for you Christian: The Lord bless you, and keep you; The Lord cause His face to shine on you, And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His face to you, And give you peace (Num. 6:2426). Aarons blessing is for you Christian, because Jesus drank every last drop of Gods wrath on your account by becoming a curse in your place. Jesus experienced the antithesis of Aarons blessing, which if the voice of God could be heard on that day Jesus hung from the cross: The Lord curse you, and abandon you; The Lord turn His face from you, and condemn you; may the Lord stand against you, and withhold His peace from you.[1] Jesus because a curse in our place because we were, strangers to the covenant of the promise, having no hope and without God in the world. Because of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, you have been reconciled to God! Jesus Resurrection Proves that We Can Become the Children of God (Eph. 2:13) The final statement from the cross came in the form of a final declaration: It is finished! All that was required for our redemption was accomplished on the cross! We who were hostile towards God, stood as an enemy of God, who walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience (Eph. 2:2-3), we who were once children of Gods wrath have now been reconciled to God and experience only His pleasure. If you are a Christian, then Ephesians 2:13 is for you: But now in Christ Jesus you who previously were far away have been brought near by the blood of Christ. The cross of Christ was enough to save lost sinners and the resurrection of Jesus is proof that all who are far and away from God can be forgiven by God, reconciled to God, and made a child of God through the Christ of the cross who lived the life we could not live, died a death we all deserved, and conquered sin and death on the third day by rising from the grave! Concerning Jesus: There is salvation in no one else; for there is no other name under heaven that has been given among mankind by which we must be saved (Acts 4:12). This is the gospel, and it is, the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes (Rom. 1:16)! [1] I heard this for the first time at the 2008 T4G Conference delivered by R.C. Sproul. For more see: https://www.ligonier.org/posts/god-cursed-him.