Genesis 1:2

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God has built a training into how life works into every moment of your day. This occurred to me recently, and it occurred while I was studying the Holy Spirit, and that the word that is translated spirit in the Old Testament in the original language is this word ruach. Hebrew is a really fun language. You get to clear your throat all the time. Ruach. You say it with me, Ruach. And it’s a word that literally means spirit or means breath or wind. And so you have this beautiful picture in Genesis one of the Spirit, the ruach of God, the breath of God, hovering, and actually that word too describes like a bird hovers. So here we get this beautiful already an image of the Holy Spirit right there, over the waters. And the breath of God as it’s breathed out is what’s there kind of stirring things up and getting creation started.

So as I was thinking about the breath of God, I realized, what do we have to do each moment of our lives? We have to breathe in.

We won’t live if we don’t breathe in this breath that comes from outside of us. If you hold your breath and try to do it yourself, you don’t get very far. We can’t manufacture breath in and of ourselves. Our very existence is dependent on breathing in something from outside of us. God’s training us every moment that we have to receive life from him. Isn’t it foolish, then, that we have this idea, this tendency to try to do it on our own? But that’s what sin is. Sin is trying to do life to live your own way instead of God’s way, acting like we’re God, not him. That’s what happened with Adam and Eve in the garden. That’s what we do again and again today. I’m going to live life my way. But really, that’s just holding our breath. And while it might work for a bit, it only gets us so far. Doing life for our own way, living like we’re God, it’s a path towards not just sin, but also death and eternity separated from God.

But we have a loving God who has made a way for us to breathe in life again. Jesus came, lived, and died and rose again. He has taken away your sin, your guilt, your shame, everything that separated you from God. He defeated death itself to give you life again. And now the Holy Spirit, the Ruach of God, has breathed new life into you. Spiritual life, the ability to believe in God again, to have life from him again. And he’s even built into our daily life as Christians a new way for us to really practice and exercise this. When you take the Lord’s Supper, the bread and the wine with it, you get the body and blood of Christ. What do you have? The life of God. You are taking it into yourself again.

So today, breathe in. Breathe out.

Think about your breathing. Not too hard, that’s when breathing gets weird. Is when we think too hard about our breathing. But just think about the fact that every moment you have to take in something from outside of yourself. And that’s something, is the life that God has given you. And God today has given you new life through the death and resurrection of His Son, and by the work of the Spirit. So breathe in this life that comes from God, today.

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We’re continuing now, our talk and discussion about these other theories regarding the resurrection of Jesus Christ. People saying, no, he wasn’t resurrected. Here are better theories to consider. So this time we’re looking at what we can call the wrong tomb theory. And this theory basically says that the women on Sunday morning, they went to the wrong tomb. And of course, if you go to the wrong tomb, there’s not going to be a body there.

So does this sound like a reasonable explanation for what took place? Well, just like the previous one, there’s no historical evidence for this, but let’s look at this in a little more detail. First of all, we know that at least five women followed Joseph of Arimathea to the tomb where the body of Jesus was placed. It’s probably more like six, maybe seven. And they not only saw the tomb, but they were close enough so they could see how the body was laid in the tomb. That was on Good Friday, and then on Sunday they come back again. A minimum of five women. They start out when it’s dark by the time they get there, the sun had risen to some degree. And so they, it’s not like they couldn’t see what was going on or where they were. They knew exactly where they were. And if you have 5 or 6 or more women there and they were at the wrong tomb, you would think one of them would have said, hey, are we at the right tomb? You have the bodies gone, but maybe we’re not at the right tomb. So it’s really hard to explain that the the women got confused because there were so many and because it was light by that time.

Another thing to keep in mind about the tomb it was a well known tomb. It was the tomb of Joseph of Arimathea. He was a member of the Sanhedrin. If the women had gone to the wrong tomb, the other members of the Sanhedrin would have questioned Joseph and said he was buried in your tomb, right? And then they would have gone to the tomb themselves, the right tomb, and they would have discovered the body. And so they could have said, you women, you’re a bunch of idiots. You went to the wrong tomb and they could have simply disproved the wrong tomb theory themselves.

If the women went to the wrong tomb, that also means that Peter and John went to the wrong tomb. It also means that the guards who were guarding the wrong tomb as well. So we can see that there’s a lot wrong with this wrong tomb theory. And again, there’s no historical evidence for it. So again, the wrong tomb theory just falls short. It doesn’t hold water. And again, we as Christians we say the historical evidence is there, but that historical evidence is included in those eyewitness testimonies that we find in John, we find in Matthew, and we find also indirectly in the Gospels of Mark and Luke as well.

Next time we’ll look at another theory. My name is David Thompson, the director for The Center for Apologetics and Worldviews. Thank you for joining us.

Psalm 1

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Psalm one begins with three postures or positions of the believer. He doesn’t walk alongside the wicked. He’s not going in their direction. And the believer doesn’t stand in the way of sinners. They’ve stopped walking, now. They’re standing there. They’re discussing things. Maybe they’re planning, planning to sin, but the believer is not with them. And third, the believer doesn’t sit alongside, sit with scoffers. He doesn’t break bread with those who mock God, God’s way, God’s word. This doesn’t mean we don’t have friends, family members, coworkers who are unbelievers. It means we’re not participating in their sin.

Instead, the psalm goes on. It tells us what the believer delights in. God’s law. God’s word. More than just the commandments, all of God’s word. That’s his comfort. That’s her companion. Let’s look at an example from nature. A tree or any other plant, it needs water to survive. Back home in Washington, where I live, I can walk outside and I can see trees that are over 100ft tall. And I don’t have to be a great botanist, a great scientist, in order to know at least one thing about any tree that’s lived that long and that has reached that kind of height. It’s a tree that’s well watered well. Psalm one verse three says that the believer is like that. You don’t have to be a great theologian to look at someone, maybe someone that you admire, that you sort of look up to, maybe at church, a kind elderly person. You don’t have to be a great theologian in order to realize that person is well watered, watered with God’s own word, the water of life. Psalm one begins by telling us this is essential to spiritual life. God’s word is. Its essential to producing fruit, to growth.

And it contrasts that with the life of unbelievers, despite any seeming profit or success, that their sin may give them. Their unbelief and their sin have already determined their end. And so verse six, the last verse, it makes one last comparison, the comfort that the Lord knows the way of his people, and that means he knows where we are. He knows what we face. He knows what we struggle with and wrestle with in this life. In fact, the Lord is intimately aware of it all. In fact, we could even say he is personally aware of it. How? How can God, who is spirit, God who is perfect, be personally aware with all that that we wrestle and struggle with and as we try to produce fruit and at times we don’t produce the fruit, we should?

Psalm one is a perfect description of Jesus who did delight in God’s Word and who submitted himself to God’s law. But because of Jesus, because of him, his relative Elizabeth once called him the blessed fruit of Mary’s womb, because of him and that fruit all of God’s people are blessed. We’re blessed in him, and we are like trees that are living beside streams of water, trees that are well watered.

So Psalm one, have a read of it yourself, and in it, first and foremost see Jesus, your Savior, the Blessed One of the Book of Psalms, the Righteous One in whom we’re nurtured and in whom we grow. So it’s about him. And because it’s about him who took on our nature, it’s about us, our brother, our Savior. God bless you and we’ll see you again.

1 John 4:16, John 3:16

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Are you familiar with Pascal’s Wager?

Blaise Pascal was a 17th century mathematician, physicist, and philosopher. And his wager, his argument is that if he is wrong, as a Christian, if Christians are wrong, if atheists are right, and there is no God, then there’s nothing is lost at the moment of death. Nothing happens. Christians haven’t lost anything. They’re just wrong. The other side of the argument, though, is that if Christianity is true, if there is a God, and if there is a heaven and a hell, then there’s something great to be gained for the Christian, for the believer, and there’s a whole lot to be lost for the atheist. Eternity in hell.

So basically, it’s a good bet. It’s a safe wager to believe in God.

That argument might have some force. It might be used when we’re talking to an atheist about the importance of thinking about things spiritually and about the importance of considering Christianity.

But is that why we as Christians believe?

Is it just to hedge our bets just in case there is a God, we better believe in him. Is it because we’re afraid of going to hell?

It’s not. We believe because by God’s grace, he has worked faith in our hearts. And he has brought us to know Jesus as our Lord and Savior. And we know his love for us. And so we’ve grown to trust him. As we read in first John 4:16.

We also have come to know and trust the love that God has for us. (1 John 4:16)

So we believe because God has worked faith in our hearts. We love because by God’s grace, we know the love of God, that God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

This makes all the difference for us.

We have peace because we know the peace that Jesus has won for us, in paying for all of our sins, and in forgiving all of our sins. And so we are at peace with God, and we have an eternal future secure for us in heaven. And so we have eternal hope. Hope that doesn’t change. Hope that doesn’t fade away.

And that’s why we tell others of God. Not to brag. Not because we have to. Not just in case. It’s because we want them to know the hope and the joy and the peace and the love that we have in God.

May God bless us as we walk in that love, live in that love and share that love. Amen.

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In the last video, I mentioned that there are basically four different theories that try to explain away the bodily resurrection of Christ. And so we’re going to look at one of those right now, namely the swoon theory. It’s a very interesting theory. And it used to be more popular, but it’s not nearly as popular today. And the swoon theory basically says that Jesus never really died on the cross. Rather, he swooned or went into a coma and they took his body down thinking he was dead, but he was still alive. And they put him in the tomb. And then somehow he revived and came out of the tomb and presented himself as the risen and glorious Messiah and Savior.

So is this a legitimate, reasonable theory? Well, let me point out, first of all, that there is no historical evidence for this swoon theory, but here are some other things to consider about this theory. First of all, if he’s taken down from the cross alive in a coma and then put in the tomb and he then he revives somehow. Well, first of all, he has to take off of himself all these strips of burial linen that have been put around his body, plus a shroud. Now, you may think, well, that’s not so difficult, is it? Well, it is because of this one extra reason. And the church Father Chrysostom tells us this. He says the myrrh that was combined with the strips of linen. And there’s a 75 pounds of myrrh and aloes connected with the strips of linen that were placed on him. That myrrh acts like a glue.

So it had been very, very difficult for a man, especially a man who had just been crucified and was in a coma next to impossible for him to remove these strips of linen by himself. But let’s suppose he does that. Okay, so he removes the strips of linen. And then what? Well, he has to get up and move the stone. Okay, well, how big is that stone? Well, at a minimum, it’s 440 pounds, but more likely it’s a ton or even two tons. Some people even say maybe it was three tons. So imagine a man who had just been in a coma had just been crucified, moving this stone and trying to do so from inside the tomb, where he doesn’t have the leverage that he could have from the outside.

But let’s suppose he does it. So he takes off the the burial strips of linen, he moves the stone, and then he comes out of the tomb. And then what does he have to do? We probably have to scare away the Roman soldiers that are guarding the tomb. Okay. Well, let’s suppose he does that too. Well, then, what happens next? Well, then we read that, you know, keep in mind that he had been crucified with the nails through his wrist, the nails through his feet. He appears several miles away on a road walking on this road. He shouldn’t be able to walk at this point because the nail through his feet. But he’s walking along this road with these two disciples on the road to Emmaus. He’s walking for several miles, and they don’t figure out there’s something terribly wrong with this man? I mean, he shouldn’t even be able to walk in those conditions, but even if he was able to walk, obviously he would appear very, very distraught and injured. And he should not be recognized as the Messiah.

But then 2 or 3 hours later, what happens? He appears to all of his disciples, minus Thomas. And again, keep in mind he had just been in a coma. He had been crucified. He had the nails through his hands and his feet. His side was pierced. He’s going to try to convince them that he is the glorified and crucified Savior and Messiah. I don’t think so.

Let me mention several other things about the crucifixion that are important to keep in mind here too. In many cases, as in the case of Jesus, the crucified victim was first of all whipped or flogged, and the flogging was very painful, but it also resulted in a great loss of blood. You know, the Jews were limited to 40 lashes, not the Romans. And this was a Roman flogging. So it was probably, well, more than 40 lashes. And so there was a great loss of blood. In all likelihood, he was state of a critical state at this point. But then there’s the crucifixion itself. And those medical authorities who have studied the crucifixion, realize this is not only extremely painful, but it always results in death, always results in death. The Romans perfected crucifixion. It was practiced by other cultures in the area too, before this time. But the Romans perfected the crucifixion. They knew how to kill somebody by crucifixion.

Plus, we know that when it was reported to Pilate that he was dead, he was a little concerned. This was awfully quick, he thought. But it was confirmed by the centurion. Yep, yep. He was dead. The centurion wouldn’t have told Pilate he was dead unless he knew he was dead for sure. Otherwise, the centurion would have been taking a big risk, risking his own life for not being accurate in what he reported. We also have one of the soldiers piercing Jesus side. It wasn’t just a random pierce, but it was probably very, probably very strategic. He knew exactly where he was piercing Jesus. And out comes what? A flood of blood and water. What does that indicate? Well, again, the medical authorities who have research said this indicates heart failure. The man is dead.

So crucifixion results in death. There is one exception to that. Josephus reports that there were three men who were crucified. But Josephus knew these three men. And so he asked the Caesar at that time, who was Titus, to have them taken down, because they were apparently his friends. So these three men who were crucified are taken down, two of the three still die. And the third one, he lives. But he lives not because the crucifixion was fulfilled, but because it was stopped. So everything else we know about crucifixion, it always leads to death.

Well, one more thing to mention here that’s very important when it comes to a crucifixion and this swoon theory. We not only have the testimony of the gospels that said he was dead by crucifixion, we also have non-Christian historians. Both Josephus and Tacitus say that he died by crucifixion. So there’s ample proof. Even from non-Christian sources, that he was dead by crucifixion.

So that’s an understanding of the swoon theory. But of course, Christians say the swoon theory is not true. It’s not correct. It can’t be correct. It’s just too crazy to believe in. Christians say the scriptures which were written, especially the Gospels of John and Matthew, were written by eyewitnesses. Mark and Luke were written by those who had contact with the eyewitnesses. They all clearly say that Jesus really rose from the dead. And if that’s the case, then we have one who truly is the Son of God and one who, prior to his resurrection, died. Why? For the forgiveness of our sins.

In the coming video, we’re going to look at another theory to see how that holds up. Again, my name is David Thompson. I’m the director for The Center for Apologetics Worldviews. See you next time.

John 20:25-29

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Kids will argue about the strangest things, won’t they? I’d be willing to bet that on any playground in America, there’s an argument going on going something like this.

“My dad’s so strong that I saw him lift up an entire house.”

“Nuh-uh. That’s impossible.”

“I saw him do it. Really?”

“Well, then prove it.”

As silly as that sounds in the moment, it feels very real to those children, doesn’t it? On one hand, the child isn’t crazy for having faith in his father. In his mind, his father can literally do anything, right? But on the other hand, the kid he’s arguing with he isn’t crazy either, because he wants proof to prove this outlandish claim. In our text today, we have a situation just like this in the Gospel of John, where the disciples tell Thomas that Christ has risen from the dead. And Thomas says,

“Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.” (John 20:25)

In essence, this interaction is like the two kids in the playground shouting prove it! I’m guessing that if we were in Thomas’s shoes, we’d be saying the exact same thing. And then eight days later, Jesus appears to the disciples and to Thomas, and the first thing he says is, peace be with you. But the next thing he does is approach Thomas and say,

“Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” (John 20:27)

And Thomas replies, my Lord and my God. (John 20:28)

And Jesus later says,

“Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” (John 20:29)

Now I think we’d all like to believe that we would be one of the ones who would believe without seeing. Right? But the reality is, is that if you and I were at this, in this room that day, it’s very likely that account would be about you and me. They would call me Doubting Scott. And the reality is, is we’re all guilty of that same doubt in our lives. We all doubt the resurrected power of Jesus when we can’t clearly see him. Sometimes we doubt him when we receive that cancer diagnosis, or when our marriage is struggling, or when our prayers go seemingly unanswered, or when we lose our job, or when our child gets sick, and maybe we don’t say it in the same way that Thomas did, but with our thoughts and our sins, we proclaim that I won’t believe it unless I see it.

But notice that Jesus doesn’t rebuke Thomas for having doubts or questions. No, he comes to Thomas with his word, his comforting word of peace. And he says, place your hand into my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe. And although we don’t get to place our hands into the side of Jesus the same way Thomas did, Jesus is still approaching you in the same way he approached Thomas through his comforting word, the word that attests that he appeared over 500 people after he rose from the dead and engaged all of their senses to prove to them that he really was the resurrected Christ, the same Christ they had seen crucified on a cross only a few days earlier.

And those people were so moved by what they saw and sensed with all of their senses that Jesus was truly alive. They went around the world proclaiming in an outlandish way that my God is so strong that he raised Jesus from the dead. And today, Christ is proving his resurrection to you today through His Word, through your baptism, and through Holy Communion. He’s engaging all of your senses to prove to you that he really did rise from the dead. And if he really did rise from the dead, then you can have full comfort and confidence and conviction that your sins are truly forgiven, that you too will rise again, just as Jesus did on the last day. And don’t you doubt it.

So may the grace of our risen Lord Jesus Christ. Guard and keep your heart in undoubting belief and faith and obedience to him. Amen.

Hosea 13:14, Zechariah 2:8

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Our reading today is from Hosea the prophet, chapter 13, verse 14 And God says,

O Death, I will be your plagues!
O Grave, I will be your destruction!
Pity is hidden from My eyes.” (Hosea 13:14)

There are times when snakes will climb up into tall trees and go way up into the nest of, let’s say, an eagle or some other bird, and they might start eating the eggs or the little chicks that are in that nest. And those tiny birds are just completely powerless from such a deadly predator. And that’s really kind of symbolic of how we are that when it comes to death by ourselves, we are completely powerless to do anything about death. We can’t hold it off. We can’t keep it away from us. In fact, it frightens us to such an extent that we don’t even like to look at it or think about it. We even pay people a lot of money to take care of it for us when it happens to one of our loved ones.

And that’s why the Bible often speaks about death in Scripture as an enemy of ours. It describes it as a prison. It describes it with words like being a sting. And Martin Luther said about it, even the nature, he says, even the pig squeals at the slaughter. So there’s something inside of all of us that just recoils at the concept and the idea of death. Because we’ve been made to be alive, our bodies want to live.

There’s also a type of eagle that’s called a brown snake eagle, a brown snake eagle, and it actually likes to eat snakes as a source for food. And if a poisonous snake were to go up into the nest of this eagle and attack one of the small eagles in the nest, this mother eagle, the brown snake eagle will not only take and kill the snake, but consume it and swallow it whole. A lot of ancient writers in the church used to use that type of a bird to depict what Jesus has done. He’s gone into death itself, and he’s taken death on, going into the grave, on Good Friday we know he was laid in the grave, cold, dead, in order to go in and destroy it. By allowing himself to be taken into death he has now destroyed death and consumed it. And he’s done all of this on your behalf and my behalf. He takes absolutely no pity on death and the devil. That’s why he says here. Pity is hidden from my eyes.

But thank God he has taken pity on you and me. Because through faith in him we have this wonderful power now over death because of what our Savior has done. He wants you to be able to live forever without fear of death in your future.

Note something here that death and the grave are not merely our enemies or the enemies of Christ’s church, but they’re also the enemies of Christ Himself. And he is the Lord of all life. And he’s more powerful than anything like a fallen angel the devil could ever do. And so to those who belong to Christ, the prophet Zechariah tells us from God. Whoever touches you touches the apple of my eye. (Zechariah 2:8) Isn’t that a great line? Whoever touches you touches the apple of my eye, your gracious God says. Amen.

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I want to talk to you about the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but also whether or not there might be other possibilities as to what really happened, rather than a bodily resurrection.

But first, I want to talk about the concept of Messiah.

Throughout the centuries, there have been many messiahs. In fact, the last one, who was said to be a messiah, died in the year 1994. So just a little over 30 years ago, Josephus, the historian, the Jewish Roman historian, pointed out that between the years 45 B.C. and about 100 A.D., there were over 12 messiahs. So, for example, there was a man by the name of Theudas who died in 44-45 A.D. He gathered a large number of Jews out at the Jordan River, said he was going to part the river. It didn’t happen. And so he and the rest of his followers, they were all slaughtered, and his head was taken and dragged through the city of Jerusalem.

There was another man by the name of Bar Kokhba. In the year 132 to 135, he led a rebellion against the Roman Empire. The last rebellion by the Jews. He lost. They were slaughtered. Many of them were sold into slavery. Some of them were simply dismissed from their Jewish area. But that was the last one that took place of any significance, at least in that area. We know that these people who had been given the title Messiah, that that title didn’t last for them. It didn’t stick.

Why? Well, because they all died and they stayed dead. On the other hand, this man by the name of Jesus of Nazareth was called the Messiah. But the title Messiah has stuck with him. Why? Well, he died. But according to the historic Christian faith, according to the reliable documents, he didn’t stay dead. He arose from the dead. He was resurrected. Now we know that there were prophecies of the Messiah being raised from the dead in the Old Testament. Jesus himself talked about himself being raised from the dead many times. Even Jesus enemies realized that he had predicted his own resurrection. And so we have the apostles and others saying that he rose from the dead. So the resurrection of Christ is stated as if it is a reality within the Christian church.

How important is the resurrection of Christ to Christianity? Well, it’s very important. So, for example, when the authority of Jesus was challenged, he said, destroy this body and I will raise it again in three days. His authority was proven by his resurrection from the dead. Saint Paul tells us that his person, as the Son of God, is proven by his resurrection from the dead. In Romans chapter four, Paul points out that our justification is intimately connected with the resurrection of Christ. Peter tells us in his first epistle that our hope of everlasting life, and the fact that our baptism saves us, is intimately connected to the resurrection of Christ. But perhaps the best description of the importance of the resurrection is found in First Corinthians chapter 15, where Paul says, If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile. You are still in your sins, and we are found to be false witnesses about God. Because we testified about Jesus that God raised him from the dead. In other words, the resurrection of Christ is essential to the truthfulness of Christianity. Without the resurrection, Christianity is simply one big lie. But we also know that there are many people who say that the resurrection of Christ never took place.

Why do they say that? Well, they’ve come up with a number of theories as to what they think really happened. And that’s what I want to talk to you about in some more details. And there’s basically four different theories that people have promoted over the years. There’s what we can call the swoon theory, the wrong tomb theory, the hallucination theory, and the stolen body theory. In our next video, we’re going to take a look at these theories in some detail, and I hope you join me for that. My name is David Thompson. I’m the director for the center for Apologetics and Worldviews. Thank you for watching.

1 Corinthians 15:56-58

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Our devotion today is based on First Corinthians 15, beginning with verse 56.

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! (1 Corinthians 15:56-57)

Back in 1933, during construction of the Golden Gate Bridge, unemployed men would stand waiting at the foot of the bridge to see if other workers up on the bridge would end up falling to their death, hoping to take their place and take their jobs. They were 750ft high in the air, and ultimately 11 men fell to their death during that construction.

Our text talks about the sting of death. There’s kind of a double pain when it comes to death. The hurt that takes place, just like venom going into our veins, has a double impact. It’s hard to watch other people die in our families, and to see loved ones have to deal with loss. But it also points each of us to our own mortality when we watch people go through it as well. On Good Friday, the evil serpent of the devil dug his fangs into the body of our Lord Jesus Christ, who took that venom. But he has then come out alive, victorious, and he himself has now become the very antidote of death itself. That’s why Paul says he gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

And in a sense, Jesus has defanged your death. All this is now yours, this victory of Christ, through a little activity that God places in your heart the gift of faith to trust in Jesus as your Savior. And the mission of the church is to implant that faith in us and to cause it to grow so that we can ultimately be death defiers, just like our Lord Jesus. Because of this victory, we can now stand over the graves of our loved ones who have fallen asleep, asleep in Christ, and sing wonderful hymns of victory. I know that my Redeemer lives, and so on. I remember at my mom’s funeral, I just love singing a hymn verse that had this line in it. I’m going to quote, and every time I sing it, it makes me think of her victory as well, and her now life in heaven. This is the line: Death itself is transitory. I shall lift my head in glory.

Death is now nothing but a passing for us. When they were building the Golden Gate Bridge, they designed a safety net, finally, because so many had died that would catch the workers below. And it saved the lives of 19 men. They called themselves jokingly, the Halfway to Hell Club because they felt that they had cheated death. And the man who came up with that idea knew that it would save lives. But he also knew that it would give greater confidence to those who were doing the work. The resurrection of Jesus Christ not only spares us from our future death and giving us life. In that way, it’s the ultimate safety net, but it also gives us tremendous confidence to carry out the work and things that we do on behalf of God’s church.

And that’s why Paul concludes this section with these words, knowing that we have the resurrection, our own Easter coming.

Therefore, my dear brothers, be steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the Lord’s work, because you know that your labor is not in vain in the Lord. (1 Corinthians 15:58)

May God grant all of us a blessed celebration of our Lord’s Easter and our own future easters. Amen.

John 17:20-22, Romans 8:34

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What does Jesus pray for? Well, what do you pray for?

We probably pray that God will bless us in different ways, right? That he would give us good health, that he would restore us to health after we have a medical issue or an illness that we’re dealing with. We may pray for our loved ones, that the Lord would bless them, that he would help us in our relationships. We pray that he would watch over our community, maybe our nation. But what does Jesus pray for?

What would it surprise you to know that Jesus prays for you? And you’re not just somewhere on his prayer list, you are a pressing concern for him. And we see that the night of his betrayal and arrest, the night before his crucifixion. And you think about, man, there’s got to be the most distressing night of all for him. He knows it’s all coming. He sees it coming. And yet what’s on his mind? You are on his mind and he prays for you. And by the way, it’s in the book of John that we see this John 17. We see his prayer. He prays for himself, but it’s so that he has the strength to bear the cross for you. And then he prays for his disciples. And then he prays for those who might hear the message of his disciples. And that’s you and me.

We read in John 17,

“I am praying not only for them, but also for those who believe in me through their message. May they all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. May they also be one[a] in us, so that the world may believe that you sent me. I have given them the glory you gave me, so that they may be one, as we are one:” (John 17:20-22)

How awesome is that? That on that most stressful, anxious night that Jesus was praying for you. And then it was even more awesome as what happened after that, that he allowed himself to be betrayed and arrested. And he went to the cross, and there he took the punishment for the sins of the world and your sins and my sins. And there he paid for those sins, and there he conquered Satan, death, and hell.

Three days later, he rose again to show that his payment was accepted so that you can know you are forgiven. And through faith in him you’re a child of God. You’re an heir of eternal life in heaven.

And then 40 days later, he ascended into heaven. And what does he do now?

He prays for you. He intercedes for you. We read in Romans 8:34.

Who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus, who died and, more than that, was raised to life, is the one who is at God’s right hand and who is also interceding for us! (Romans 8:34)

And so when you fall into a sin and Satan goes to God and he says, “look at that person, they have broken your trust. They’re not worthy to be your child.” Jesus stands in for you and he prays for you. And he says, “yes, they have sinned, but I paid for that sin on the cross. They are forgiven. You promise that they are forgiven through faith in me, and they are your child. And you promised that they have eternity in heaven waiting for them.” Isn’t that so awesome? Jesus prayed for us on that most distressing night, and that he continues to pray for us and intercede for us as he leads us on to that heavenly home that he has won for you.

May God bless us as we bring our prayers and petitions to our Heavenly Father. Amen.