YEar 3 Day 24

Year 3 Day 24


Pray (ACts)


Read - Mark 9:30-32


Message - Alan Burke


Jesus Christ was raised from the dead! That is the wonderful news that we are taught in the scriptures. He was raised for our justification and for our own resurrection, we will be raised also with physical bodies (Rom 6:5). Although we haven’t got to the crucifixion and resurrection in the gospel of Mark, we once more focus on it as we will do this Sunday as we think to this passage as Jesus once more predicts His death and resurrection to his disciples. Look back though if you have your bibles before you, in chapter 8:31, he had predicted that he must suffer, be rejected, be killed and after three days rise. Then earlier in chapter 9 after the transfiguration he told his disciples v9 as they were coming down from the mountain not to tell anyone until they had seen the Son of man rise from the dead, which the disciples discussed what it meant (10). 


Think back though to what we were learning of earlier in the week, the boy with an evil spirit. When Jesus commanded the spirit out the boy lay, looking like a corpse and people said “He’s dead” (26).  Yet in what looked like death there was something else, there was salvation, Jesus took him by the hand lifted him to his feet and we are told in v27 in the NIV that he ‘Stood up’ in the ESV and KJV it is ‘arose’. The same greek word is used in 8:31, it is also used in 9:10, v31 and 10:34 and two other times (12:23, 25), each time the word is used for resurrection from the dead. The disciples had discussed what rising from the dead meant and here Jesus shows them as he raises and restores this boy. It points forward to Jesus’ own death and resurrection. Jesus is teaching his disciples in the midst of this miracle of what he himself would do. Then once more he teaches them about his death and resurrection (31). 


For what faced Jesus, was betrayal, death and that he would rise (31). The betrayal into the hands of men is speaking of all humanity. Jesus came to be betrayed in to the hands of men, for humanity, it was our sin that made this necessary, it was us that caused him to be handed over to die, betrayed, killed, yet the wonderful hope that is portrayed here is that after three days he would rise. Although the disciples did not understand this, and they were afraid to ask him about it. The one whom through all things were made, who rules over the heaven and the earth, who is King of kings and Lord of lords, who came as one of us, gave up the highest pinnacle of glory to take on our humanity, instead of exalting himself he came and humbled himself, to betrayed, killed and rise. 


He who had the privileges that were rightly his as King of the universe, gave them up to become a baby bound for the cross. Jesus went to the cross out of love, demonstrated that he truly shared the divine nature of God, who is love (1 John 4:8).  And For this reason God raised him to life and highly exalted him, entrusting him with the rule of the cosmos and giving him the name that is above every name. There is none to be found either in heaven or in earth that is equal to his, name. In the death of Christ, see, and taste, and ponder, and feel, and recognise the unmerited goodness of God, and the love of Christ toward us, in the resurrection we see the wonder of what God has done and this work is applied to us by the work of the Holy Spirit within us, this great and immeasurable, wonder that our Saviour Christ Jesus regardless of his position humbled himself and his life for our sakes.


I’ll leave you with this. This coming Lord’s day is the day on which churches across this land and world will celebrate the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ, while there are others who are from the Orthodox tradition will celebrate the resurrection next Sunday (that’s the 24th). We often miss it but we there is a reason why we worship on a Sunday and not on Saturday which would be the Jewish Sabbath, it is because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Lord’s day, the resurrection day was a Sunday and every one of them and there is 52 in the year that we mark the resurrection of Jesus Christ, each is as important as the other. 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q29
How are we made partakers of the redemption purchased by Christ?
We are made partakers of the redemption purchased by Christ, by the effectual application of it to us, (John 1:11–12) by his Holy Spirit. (Titus 3:5–6)
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