The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid; for I know that you are looking for Jesus who has been crucified. He is not here, for He has risen, just as He said. Matthew 28:5-6.
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in Me will live even if he dies, and everyone who lives and believes in Me will never die.” John 11:25-26.
For those whom He foreknew, He also preordained to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He preordained, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified. Romans 8:29-30.
Today your LORD (יהוה) God (אלהים) says:
When I raised Jesus from the dead as the firstborn of many brethren that was the greatest display of My power that had ever occurred—more than creating the world and the universe. Why? Because not only did I take a body mangled beyond recognition upon which all sin had fallen, been condemned, and punished by death, death on a cross, out of the lowest pit of hell to the highest place in Heaven at My right hand as the first born again Man with an immortal glorified body, but in Him I raised every believer from the beginning to the end of time and seated them with Him and in Him in Heaven.
“Behold, My servant will prosper, He will be high and lifted up and greatly exalted. Just as many were astonished at You, so His appearance was marred more than any man and His form more than the sons of men. Thus He will sprinkle many nations, kings will shut their mouths on account of Him; for what had not been told them they will see, and what they had not heard they will understand.” Isaiah 52:14-15.
What does the miracle of resurrection mean to you? Everything. It is your lifeline, your eternal lifeline. It means you are called, justified, and glorified by the redemption of possession. It means you will be forever in My Kingdom shining with the radiance of My glory in you, on you, and surrounding you. It means you who have received Him as your Lord will never die. It means we shall enjoy one another’s fellowship and joy forever. It means you have a future and a hope that is beyond all you can ask or imagine. It means life from the dead. And it is the reason you can overcome any trial for the joy that lays before you, a joy no one can take from you. It is My gift to you.
So in today’s life lesson about living days of Heaven upon the earth we will consider the miracle of resurrection. You have it and you can begin enjoying it even now.
This is a miracle of miracles for in it substance is changed, time is changed, and it turns the mortal into the immortal, the weak into the strong, and makes all things beautiful in their own time.
My Son raised people from the dead and so did His disciples but this is very different from resurrection. This is a calling back from the passageway of death into mortal existence, lengthening your time on earth but still ultimately resulting in the death of your mortal bodies. It enabled them to complete their assignment in this world but not to live forever in this world.
The resurrection of your bodies from the dead will be very different. It is the complete shedding of your earthly body to be formed anew as a heavenly body that will never age or die. No pain, no mourning, no sickness, no death.
My servant Paul, to whom I had shown the third Heaven where I dwell, prayed you would understand the greatness here. “I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened, so that you will know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints, and what is the surpassing greatness of His power into us who believe 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.” Ephesians 1:18-21.
But first let us consider the resurrection of Jesus. And act in time with eternal consequences.
Jesus had been betrayed, abused, scorned, scourged, crowned with thorns, mocked, forced on the long trek to Calvary, and crucified. He hung on the Cross most of the day, thirsty, loosing blood, and hard pressed from every side—physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually. Every sin was on Him from the beginning to the end of time and you can never understand the depths of the darkness and suffering He experienced in expiating all sin. He was very alone. Abandoned in darkness. He asked why I had forsaken Him, but My eyes are too pure to look on sin so I had to turn My gaze away from Him for the first time. He was covered with sin and dying the death of the damned. Finally He finished the work I had given Him to do by fully drinking the cup of My just wrath so that you would never have to drink it, and commended His spirit into My hands at the hour for evening prayer, the 3:00 hour when the daily sacrificial lamb is offered and died.
“Thus says your Lord (Adonai), the LORD (YHVH), even your God who contends for His people, “Behold, I have taken out of your hand the cup of reeling, the chalice of My anger; you will never drink it again.” Isaiah 51:22. He drank the cup of which I had given Him to drink, the cup of My wrath, the cup of your sins, and you will never drink from it again. He tasted death once for all.
And when He finished the work of redemption by His blood and died in His flesh, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split. His followers later got permission to take Jesus’ body down from the Cross and lay it in the new tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, a wealthy man. And I had foretold even this detail through My prophet Isaiah.
“By oppression and judgment He was taken away; and as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off out of the land of the living for the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due? His grave was assigned with wicked men, yet He was with a rich man in His death. Because He had done no violence, nor was there any deceit in His mouth.” Isaiah 53:14-15.
And even after this day of darkness and signs and wonders in the sky and on the earth, the chief priests and the Pharisees did not repent. Instead they went and had the tomb secured to stop any attempts to remove His body and say the promise He had made to rise after three days had been fulfilled. The attempts to stop My Son continued on after His death and resurrection in the persecution of His followers despite all the miracles that took place. There are none so blind as those who have been blinded by Satan. They are pulled into his fury against My Son.
But no seal on or guards stationed around the tomb could keep Jesus in it. When you are hit with resurrection power nothing can hold you back. It is a force that raises up your mortal bodies and transforms them. It is metamorphous.
And on the third day, amazing events began to take place, but these were hidden from worldly eyes and revealed to those who knew and loved Jesus. As His mangled and marred body lay silent in the burial cloths in that dark tomb, His soul had descended to the lowest parts of Hell. He went there so you would never go there. He was abandoned so you would never be abandoned. He suffered My just anger for sin so that I would never be angry with you again.
I have redeemed you. “For this is like the days of Noah to Me, when I swore that the waters of Noah would not flood the earth again; so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you nor will I rebuke you. For the mountains may be removed and the hills may shake, but My lovingkindness will not be removed from you, and My covenant of peace will not be shaken,” Says the LORD who has compassion on you.” Isaiah 54:9-10.
Now let us consider the events of the resurrection. The gospel accounts fill in the details and incidents, of which there were many encounters and varied emotions from despair to joy going on in the followers of Jesus that day, but by evening after having first appeared to Mary Magdalene, then Mary and the other women, privately to Peter, to two followers on the Road to Emmaus and then to them all but Thomas in the upper room that evening they all were filled with joy and wonder that He who had been so hideously disfigured in His sufferings now stood before them whole and in perfect form and figure filled with light and able to travel through closed doors and be in various places to surprise them with the joy of His delightful presence. It gave them the joy that no man could take from them that Jesus had promised.
And what were Jesus’ first Words to them? “Shalom, peace.” You know the plans I have for you, plans for your shalom (wholeness in every area of your life—spiritual, physical, emotional, mental, financial, and relational) and not for evil, to give you a future and a hope! Nothing missing, nothing broken, and no one alone. The household of faith. Jesus made peace between you and Me forever. He came to preach peace to those near and those far, down the generations to your very day. He released you from your sins by His blood and made you a kingdom and priests unto Me with Him.
And in Psalm 2 Jesus (named as Adonai) recounts how I raised Him from the dead. By My Words and you too are born again by the imperishable seed of My Word. “I will surely tell of the decree of the LORD: He said to Me, ‘You are My Son, today I have begotten You. Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, and the very ends of the earth as Your possession.” Psalm 2:7-8.
And that is the same thing I say to you on the day you receive Jesus as Lord and are born again from above. “The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ.” Romans 8:16-17. “But as many as received Him [Jesus], to them He gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in His name, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.” John 1:12-13.
It is the power of My Word that raised Jesus and it is that same Word that will raise you with a shout on the Last Day. The Word, Jesus, and My Spirit in you will raise you up to a glorified body, “For the Lord Himself will descend from heaven with a shout (cry of command), with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are alive and remain will be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air, and so we shall always be with the Lord. 1 Thessalonians 4:16-17.
And Jesus Himself assures you that it is He Himself who raises you, just as I raised Him, and He is the one who comes for you even now when you die to this life, for He is the resurrection and the life, “All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.” John 6:37-39. And Jesus said again, “Do not let your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself, that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way where I am going.” Thomas said to Him, “Lord, we do not know where You are going, how do we know the way?” Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.” John 14:1-6.
Your resurrection is a redemption of possession. It is all tied in to Jesus—your substitute and sin bearer who gave Himself for you so that by His poverty (emptying of Himself for you) you might become rich with all the merits and benefits He gained for you. In Him you pass through the same portal that He passed through to come behind the veil into the very Holy of Holies in Heaven. He is the gate that leads to eternal life. He will come back and take you with Him, usher you in before Me holy, blameless and beyond reproach under His work on your behalf.
Jesus prayed to Me the night He was betrayed, “I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” John 17:20-24.
The resurrection raises up your flesh from mortality to immortality. It changes the structure and material from which your body is made entirely. Never get passive about this. Be diligent to keep yourself ready for you are
“See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him. Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.” 1 John 3:1-3.
You shall become as you see Him as He is. And you can start that now. “But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit.” 2 Corinthians 3:18.
But I want to point out to you the three points of the resurrection that are the results directly to you now and forever. In the resurrection of My Son after His sufferings to take away all your sins and the punishment do them, which results in no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus your Lord, in His resurrection I have called you, justified you and glorified you.
“For those whom He foreknew, He also preordained to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren; and these whom He preordained, He also called; and these whom He called, He also justified; and these whom He justified, He also glorified.” Romans 8:29-30. Jesus was delivered over because of your transgressions, and was raised because of your justification. Romans 4:25.
And this matches up with the prayer of Paul by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit—that you would know the hope of My calling on your life (called), the inheritance that is yours in Me with the saints in light (justified), and the surpassing greatness of My power in you in accordance with the power with which I raised Christ from the dead and seated Him with Me in Heaven exalted above all (glorified).
And what is the hope of My calling? I have called you to fellowship with My Son (conformed you to My Son), 1 Corinthians 1:9; Romans 8:29, and to My own Kingdom and glory. 1 Thessalonians 2:12. I have called you to My eternal glory. 1 Peter 5:10.
And the inheritance? You are a joint heir with Christ, the firstborn of many brethren. I have given Him everything and in Him it has pleased Me to give you everything. I have blessed you with every spiritual blessing in Heaven, given you all you need for life and godliness, and it has pleased Me to give you, His little flock, the Kingdom and all the benefits that go with citizenship therein.
And the power? Resurrection power to raise you up and seat you in Heaven with Christ.
“But now Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who are asleep. For since by a man came death, by a man also came the resurrection of the dead. For as in Adam all die, so also in Christ all will be made alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, after that those who are Christ’s at His coming, then comes the end, when He hands over the kingdom to the God and Father, when He has abolished all rule and all authority and power. For He must reign until He has put all His enemies under His feet. The last enemy that will be abolished is death.” 1 Corinthians 15:20-26.
And what will your glorified body be like? You will look like you do now but absolutely perfect in form, figure, and age. “There are also heavenly bodies and earthly bodies, but the glory of the heavenly is one, and the glory of the earthly is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars; for star differs from star in glory. So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown a perishable body, it is raised an imperishable body; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power; it is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body. If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So also it is written, “The first man, Adam, became a living soul.” The last Adam became a life-giving spirit. However, the spiritual is not first, but the natural; then the spiritual. The first man is from the earth, earthy; the second man is from heaven. As is the earthy, so also are those who are earthy; and as is the heavenly, so also are those who are heavenly. Just as we have borne the image of the earthy, we will also bear the image of the heavenly. Now I say this, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God; nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep, but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For this perishable must put on the imperishable, and this mortal must put on immortality. But when this perishable will have put on the imperishable, and this mortal will have put on immortality, then will come about the saying that is written, “Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law; but thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, knowing that your toil is not in vain in the Lord.” 1 Corinthians 15:40-58.
I love you. The resurrection is sure. I raised Jesus and I raised you with Him. Soon it will be your turn to walk through that portal and realize the hope of your calling. Glory!