”I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that He was buried, that He was raised on the third day . . .”
( 1 Corinthians 15:3-4)
Jesus died for our sins
Jesus buried
“I declare, first of all, that which received,’ how that the death and resurrection were the death and resurrection of the Christ, ‘for our sins, according to the Scriptures.’
These are facts which make Paul’s gospel the most reliable among all the rest. If you happen to run into someone who seems to dispute this and that from the Four Gospels, lead them here for the facts, because in this chapter, you will find a statement very much older than our existing written gospels.
This epistle is one of the four letters of Paul which nobody has ever even thought of disputing because this was written before
the gospels, and is thought with all probability within five-and-twenty years of the date of the Crucifixion.
It shows that the belief in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ was the subject of all the Christian teaching during that time and was accepted by all the Christian communities. Its evidence to that fact is undeniable; because there was in the early Church a very formidable and large body of bitter antagonists of Paul’s, who would have been only too glad to have convicted him, if they could, of any misrepresentation of the usual notions, or diverting from the truth of this type of teaching.
The subject of the death, burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ is historically true; and that within five-and-twenty years of the death of Jesus Christ every Christian community and every Christian teacher believed in and proclaimed the fact of the Resurrection.
In other words, unless the belief that Jesus Christ had risen from the dead originated at the time of His death, there would never have been a Church at all. Why was it that despite the persecution that did follow designed to tear down the faith that the church did not tumble to pieces, but became stronger?
In all fact. a dead Jesus Christ could never have been the basis of a living Church. If Jesus had not risen from the dead, the story of His disciples would have been the same as that which Gamaliel told the Sanhedrim was the story of all former pseudo-Messiahs such as that Theudas. ‘He was slain, and as many as followed him were dispersed and came to naught.’
If Jesus Christ’s body was still n the Sepulchre, how was it possible for belief in the Resurrection to have been originated, or maintained?
If His body was not in the grave, what had become of it?
If His friends stole it away then they were deceivers of the worst type in preaching a resurrection; and we have already seen that that thinking is, well, ridiculous!
If His enemies did take it away, for which they had no motive, why did they not produce the body and say, ‘Here you have it, we have the answer to all your nonsense, we don’t want to hear any more of these fairy tales of His rising from the dead.”
The Facts are in folks, two of the boxes are checked off, tomorrow we check off box #3
He died . . . according to the Scriptures
He was buried… according to the Scriptures
“He is here, He is Risen!… coming tomorrow!
I recognize that there are people from all over the world, from all kinds of different countries and nationalities who may be searching for answers like ‘Why am I here?’ And, ‘What happens to me when this life is finished?’ I’m here to tell you that both of these questions are pinned on the hope and future in Jesus Christ, His death, His burial, and His Resurrection.
If we accept with all our hearts and minds Paul’s Gospel in its fundamental facts, we need not fear to die, because Jesus has died, and by dying has been the ‘death of death.’
We don’t need to doubt that we shall live again, because Jesus was dead and is alive for ever more. If we rest ourselves upon Him, then we can take up, for ourselves and for all that are dear to us and have gone before us, the triumphant song, ‘O Death, where is thy sting?’ ‘Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.’
Today is the ‘Day After The Crucifixion’ the ‘Silent Day’ between the crucifixion and the resurrection
Acording to the Scriptures, after Jesus was crucified, His body lay in the tomb of a secret follower named Joseph of Arimiathea , who had been a member of the Great Sanhedrin.. the political and religious body who had put Jesus on trial and turned Him over to the Roman Procurator, Pontius Pilate. Members of that group then asked that a guard be placed at the tomb, because Jesus had told them He would rise from the dead.
No one in history had ever been resurrected. Jesus did raise Lazurus from death, but he was not resurrected.
Resurrection happens when a person dies, his spirit leaves his body, and then the body of flesh and bones, and its spirit are rejoined, with the body never more to be subject to death.
Jesus Christ was the first person who lived on this earth to be resurrected after His death. Jesus was resurrected, which means he became immortal—never again to die, and because He overcame death, all mankind will be joined again, body and spirit, after death.
Jesus Died. Buried. Raised ..but not until the third day.
Today, the day after the crucifixion of the Lord, the Gospels show very little activity among the disciples on the Jewish Sabbath day, from Friday at sundown to Saturday at sundown.
Based upon what we do know in the Gospels the day after the crucifixion leading up to Sunday, their activity was done in secretive fear and dread. The disciples had gone underground, fearfully hiding together behind locked doors.
Emotionally still reeling from the shock of the previous day’s rapid events. Reeling from the thoughts despair having devoted their lives to following a person who had been brutally and shamefully executed as a criminal.
Emotionally reeling in fear that the possibly of all their hopes for the establishment of God’s Messianic kingdom now appeared to be shattered like so many pieces of broken pottery.
Physically they must have been sleep-deprived and terrified of pursuit and prosecution by the same Jewish leaders who had helped crucify the Lord.
With Jesus openly executed for fomenting political sedition, they had good reason to be afraid and with Jerusalem still jam packed with thousands of Passover pilgrims, it would have been relatively easy to blend in and disappear; some of them may have fled to Bethany or elsewhere before sundown Friday.
Luke recorded that “On the Sabbath they rested according to the commandment” (Luke 23:56), most likely reflecting the emotional and physical turmoil of Jesus’s followers on the day after the crucifixion.
Matthew is the only disciple still reporting activity on this silent Saturday.
“Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate,
Saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again.
Command therefore that the Sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first.
Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch: go your way, make it as sure as ye can.
So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch.”
Matthew testifies that the chief priests and Pharisees approached Pilate and ask him to provide heightened security around the tomb the body of Jesus lay until the third day (Sunday).
The chief priests and Pharisees come together and tried to convince and explain to Pilate that the “impostor” had said, “After three days I will rise,” and they were expressing their “concern” that if the disciples stole the body and proclaimed an actual resurrection, “the last fraud will be worse than the first.”
Funny how your true motives eventually are revealed through your actions regardless of how correct and right you pretend to be.
The fact of the matter was that the Jewish leaders sent this delegation to Pilate on the Sabbath reveals their perception of the situation at hand……that they too are afraid as well. Their own fears may have been exacerbated by the unusual circumstances surrounding the day before within their own confines while the crucifixion of Jesus’s was in progress: the darkness, the tearing of the temple curtain, and the earthquake.
“And behold, the veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom; and the earth shook and the rocks were split.” (Matthew 27:51)
Why was this so important.? Why would this stir these religious leaders to the core, that, directly after the death of Jesus, the veil of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom? Maybe because it was all hitting too close to home, to all they cherished and occupied.
The meaning of the veil’s tearing is wrapped up in its old-covenant function to separate the Israelite’s from the direct presence of God. Ironically Matthew who wrote his account from a Jewish perspective in particular narrates the tearing of the veil in a way that reveals its epoch-turning significance. Basically, because Jesus had died on the cross, the gates to God’s presence are open, and the age of the New covenant had dawned.
I looked up the word for veil used by Matthew pronounced (katapetasma).
This is a technical term that, in the Greek version of the Old Testament (Septuagint), is used for three different hangings in the tabernacle and temple.
Matthew’s use of the phrase: “veil of the temple used in Chapter 27:51 is pointing to only one possibility, that the veil he was referring to was the only the inner veil….. before the holy of holies. This was the veil described in the tabernacle, that was made of blue, purple, and scarlet yarn and finely twisted linen, with cherubim worked into it by a skilled craftsman, according to (Exodus 26:31; 36:35).
It was to be hung before the holy of holies, which was according to Scriptures perfect cube of ten cubits per side, and was hung by gold hooks on an acacia-wood frame, overlaid with gold (Exodus 26:32–33), and the ark of the covenant was kept behind the veil and the Ark of the Covenant was behind it.
The veil was a physical, visible barrier indicating that access to God was strictly prohibited because of His holiness.
Remember that the holiness of God remains unchanged from all eternity — even after the veil was torn.
“Of old you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will remain; they will all wear out like a garment. You will change them like a robe, and they will pass away, but you are the same, and your years have no end. Psalm 102:25-27
What has changed is that the atoning death of Jesus on the cross had provided would be the appropriate, acceptable wrath-bearing sacrifice, one which the bulls and goats of the old covenant could not provide (Hebrews 10:4).
The writer in Hebrews says very clearly that: “we have confidence to enter the holy places” (Hebrews 10:19), because of the finished work by the blood of Jesus. This is the “new and living way” (Hebrews 10:20) that Jesus Christ opened for us through the veil, which, the author says, is through His flesh.
In other words, the breaking of Jesus’s body at the crucifixion is the unprecedented means by which……. believers have access to the presence of God. This is why we as believers on this silent day hold fast to “the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” (Jude 3).
Jesus had made several predictions of His resurrection, which the disciples either failed to understand or had difficulty believing……
The Jewish leaders have heard rumors of these predictions (or may even have heard them from Jesus Himself and wanted to ensure that Jesus’s disciples did not perpetrate a hoax by making it appear that the predictions had actually come
Pilate’s response, according to scholars was that he granted the Jewish authorities’ permission and providing them with a guard of Roman soldiers from the Roman military guard assigned to temple security, but he could have been denying their request and telling them to guard the tomb with their own Jewish temple police.
Either way, he allows them to go ahead and secure the tomb, their response by sealing the stone and setting a guard, possibly made up of both Roman and Jewish security forces.
And so it was on the day after the crucifixion on Friday
The disciples waited, because it was Saturday, and because it was the Sabbath, they had to wait and could not finishing Jesus’s body for entombment (Luke 23:54–56).
Their lives might have felt at a standstill, possibly going over and over all the previous days events, trying to make sense of the shock, and dejection in their hearts. (Luke 24:15,17)
‘Jesus was dead…,could this really be the end of Him?’
Sure, He did predict to them that He would rise on the third day.
But in their grief, they either forgot that promise or no longer believed it……or maybe never really understood it… and as the sounds and pictures in their minds kept on replaying the eerie quiet of the Masters presence seemed absent, and so they waited, but in a little while it would all change…. In one day the final check on the list would be accomplished.
Jesus is Risen! Just as the Scriptures said!
“And said to them, “Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead
Saying, “The Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”
From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. “For just as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth….
Luke 9:22-Matthew 16:21 Luke 24:21- Matthew 12:40
Resurrection Sunday was coming, and there was absolutely nothing they could do about it. The silence of Saturday would soon be shattered with the shouts of Sunday: “The Lord is risen! He is risen indeed!” Hallelujah, everything was about to change.
Charles Spurgeon said about the Resurrection of Jesus Christ:
“The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is one of the best attested facts on record. There were so many witnesses to behold it, that if we do in the least degree receive the credibility of men’s testimonies, we cannot and we dare not doubt that Jesus rose from the dead…..We have often asserted, and we affirm it yet again, that no fact in history is better attested than the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. It must not be denied, by any who are willing to pay the slightest respect to the testimony of their fellow-men, that Jesus, who died upon the cross, and was buried in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea, did literally rise again from the dead.”
Maybe today you’re searching for answers about your life, why you’re here and where you’re going. Maybe things seem complicated for you, since the physical buidlings we call churches are closed down due to the Corona virus panademic and you feel compelled to follow Jesus.
The Bible says you can receive forgiveness of your sins and receive salvation and everlasting life right from where you are.
Romans 10:9 says: “that if you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.”For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon Him.For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”
Simply pray this prayer and mean it from your heart and the Bible says you shall be saved.
Walking the Berean Road 