Three Days Of Victory

“THREE DAYS OF VICTORY”

Easter is defined in one dictionary as “the most important and oldest festival of the Christian Church, celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ and held (in the Western Church) between March 21 and April 25, on the first Sunday after the first full moon following the northern spring equinox.” In another dictionary Easter is defined as “an annual Christian festival in commemoration of the resurrection of Jesus, held on the first Sunday after the date of the first full moon that occurs on or after March 21.”[1]

There is a high degree of uniformity among those who identify as Christians that Easter is a Sunday celebration of Christ’s bodily resurrection from the dead following His crucifixion by the Romans. Theological liberals and antisupernaturalists will frequently celebrate Easter along with the rest of us, but they frequently do so by quietly and hypocritically denying that Jesus Christ rose from the dead in a glorified physical body, and they will instead maintain some philosophical fiction by suggesting that though He died a martyr’s death the Lord Jesus Christ is somehow with us in spirit.

It is to maintain clarity that we at Calvary Road Baptist Church embrace what the Bible teaches about Christ’s resurrection, and pointedly insist that Jesus Christ actually rose from the dead, that the tomb in which He had been buried was left empty because there was no longer a dead body in it, and this because God worked a great miracle to raise His Son up from the dead.

But they are not only theological liberals and antisupernaturalists who take issue with the Bible and those of us who embrace its message about Christ’s resurrection. Muslims, as well, insist that they honor the Lord Jesus Christ as a genuine prophet of God, while Islam maintains that He did not rise from the dead because He did not, in fact, die an excruciating death on the cross.[2] Add to that the almost complete absence of religious instruction provided to American children for the last half-century, and you have an astounding number of people, in this the most religious country in the West, who are at least somewhat confused about not only Easter but everything connected to Easter.

To address these problems, and to celebrate as great victories what too many in this world decry as defeats associated with the death of a religious leader, I want to bring a message titled “Three Days Of Victory.” The message will be basic; I will cover what for many of you is familiar territory. But we like to hear the old, old story again and again, do we not?

First, THE VICTORY OF CHRIST’S CRUCIFIXION

Again, there are some who deny the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ, such as the triumphalist religion of Islam that sees the crucifixion of a prophet as an unacceptable defeat.[3] Then there is the occasional community college history teacher who pretends scholarship by denying even the existence of the Lord Jesus Christ as a historical figure, though “No serious scholar has ventured to postulate the non-historicity of Jesus.”[4] Christ’s crucifixion is as historically indisputable as His life.[5] But enough time has been spent pointing out Christ’s death on the cross. The question I want to address this morning is whether His crucifixion was a defeat for Him or a victory.

First, let us consider the crucifixion of Jesus Christ as seeming to some to be His defeat. Why would I suggest that the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ on a cruel Roman cross was thought by some to be a defeat for Him? For two reasons: First, His enemies certainly thought they had thereby defeated Him. And, second, His disciples thought the Lord Jesus had thereby been defeated. Let me establish that Christ’s enemies thought He had been defeated by crucifying Him. Had they not plotted to kill Him?[6] Did He not call them out for their intention to kill Him? Yes to both questions. Do I now need to prove to you that when someone’s enemies plot and conspire to have him executed, and they succeed in having him put to death, they conclude their victory to be their victim’s defeat? Of course. As He was hanging on the cross, did they not taunt Him by reviling Him, by wagging their heads, by ridiculing Him, by criticizing Him, and by mocking Him, Matthew 27.39-43? They certainly did. Why would they come to see Him hanging on the cross except to gloat? Of course, they undoubtedly saw His death on the cross as their victory and as His defeat. And no wonder, for that is certainly how the Lord’s disciples saw His death by crucifixion. Remember, they envisioned Him as recently as the Sunday before, during His triumphal entry into Jerusalem, as the King Who would put down Roman rule and establish the Davidic dynasty once more. And while they were certainly correct in what they understood Him to do someday, they were entirely wrong about when He would do it. When came the time of His arrest and subsequent crucifixion they descended into despair. Would Simon Peter have denied the Lord three times had he imagined his Master to be experiencing victory? As our Lord hung naked between two thieves, can you imagine His mother, or John, or the other women conceiving what was transpiring before them to be victory? And when He gave up the ghost and died, did they then understand that to be a win for their side? Hardly.

We now turn from perception to reality, and from what the crucifixion appeared to be to witnesses to what the crucifixion was; a great victory. Just four of many things I could point out had we the time: First, in dying on the cross, the purpose of the incarnation was fulfilled. Why did the Lord Jesus Christ leave heaven’s glory to be born of a virgin named Mary? Primary among the reasons was to die on the cross of Calvary in fulfillment of many prophecies, 107 to be precise.[7] In addition to those predictions, there is Revelation 13.8, which identifies the Lord Jesus Christ as “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world.” Certainly, if it had always been God’s plan for His Son to be slain on that old rugged cross, then His death on the cross was a goal attained, a purpose fulfilled, and a mission accomplished.[8] That is the very definition of victory. Second, in dying on the cross, His identification with sinful men was now complete. Remember that He became a man when the Holy Spirit overshadowed that virgin named Mary. He took upon Himself human nature, yet without sin.[9] And when He died, He experienced what every man before Him had experienced, save for Enoch and Elijah. If His goal was to become a man so that He might identify with mankind, and His life on this earth ended as every other man’s life ends, in physical death, then this too was a victory and not a defeat. Third, when Jesus Christ died on the cross of Calvary His purpose to provide Himself as the substitutionary sacrifice for sins was accomplished. Let me read but a few of the phrases found in the 53rd chapter of Isaiah, predicting our Lord’s substitutionary sacrifice:

“Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows . . . But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. . . the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all. . . for the transgression of my people was he stricken. . . when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin . . . for he shall bear their iniquities. . . and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.”

Christ’s substitutionary sacrifice predicted by Isaiah cannot be denied. Then, the well-known retrospective declaration made by the Apostle Peter in First Peter 3.18:

“For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit.”

If one plans to die as a substitute for others and one succeeds in dying as a substitute for others, I would suggest to you that is not a defeat but a victory. Fourth, the defeat of death could be assured only by dying. One does not defeat death by avoiding death. One defeats death by dying and then rising from the dead. But the first step to victory over death is to die, something God could not do apart from becoming a man in every sense of the word. Thus, yet again we see that the death of the cross was not the defeat His enemies imagined it to be as they celebrated His death, as they gloated over His savagely beaten body, and as they filled their nostrils with the stench of His slaughter. Neither was our Lord’s death by crucifixion any indication of His impotence, despite how it must have been perceived by His followers. Set your perceptions aside, my friend. We have been called to faith, not sight. We have been given the grace to trust God and His Word, not trust as infallible our five senses and our ability to conclude. That understood, understand, as well, that the death of the Lord Jesus Christ was a great and stupendous victory!

Next, THE VICTORY OF CHRIST’S BURIAL

Do you not think of someone’s burial as a defeat? After all, the burial of a dead body means the battle to remain alive has been lost, the struggle against enemies (be they men or diseases) has been lost, and the effort to maintain one’s hold on life has ended in futility. Such was thought to be the case when Pilate was begged for Christ’s body when His body was placed in the tomb where it was then prepared for burial, and finally when the massive stone was rolled in place, sealed, and then guarded by soldiers to prevent the removal of His body. Who would have denied that Christ’s burial was an indication of defeat?

The burial of a dead body presents the appearance of defeat, does it not? After all, what threat remains to your enemies once your body is buried? What likelihood of success is there for your cause once your body is buried? Additionally, what control of circumstances do you have any longer once your body is buried and after the vault is sealed and guarded by soldiers with weapons? The burial of Christ had all the appearances of defeat. Why else would Mary have wept when she came to the empty tomb?[10]

Let us once again turn from the deceitfulness of perception to the reality of what actually happened during the time of the Lord Jesus Christ’s body being buried. There is with every human being both the material and the immaterial part of our existence, is there not? You and I have both physical bodies and the nonphysical aspects of our existence that are variously referred to as our soul, as our spirit, as our heart, as our mind, as our conscience, etc. The same is true of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that when He “yielded up the ghost,” Matthew 27.50, when His spirit left His physical body, He experienced physical death. His body died. His body was then taken down from the cross and placed in the rich man’s tomb. The question I want to answer is what happened to His spirit, the ghost He yielded, His soul? What happened to the Him part of Him when His body died? Where did He go? If you are a Christian who dies, your body goes to the funeral home to prepare for burial, but your soul, your spirit, the immaterial part of you, you go to heaven. If you are lost, your body goes to the funeral home, while your soul goes (you go) to Hell, when you die. The question few address is where did the immaterial part of Jesus Christ go while His body was in the rich man’s tomb? Once you grasp the notion that the abode of the dead used to have two occupied compartments, one being the place of suffering for the unsaved dead and the other being variously called paradise or Abraham’s bosom for the righteous dead, then the issue begins to clear up. Hades, what we identify as Hell, has not always been a uniformly bad place for those who have departed this life to go. The wicked dead certainly went to a place of torment, but the righteous dead were kept in comfort in paradise, come to be called Abraham’s bosom. This is where everyone saved before the time of Christ would go when they died, including such as Rahab and Ruth, Sarah and Esther, Isaac and Jacob and Joseph and Moses and David and Daniel. Where did the Lord Jesus Christ go during the three days His dead body was in the tomb? What did He do during the three days following His death by crucifixion and His resurrection? May I suggest for your consideration without time to establish conclusively that the Lord Jesus Christ descended into the paradise side of the place of the dead, to Abraham’s bosom? There He proclaimed His accomplishments to those who had lived and died and believed in anticipation of the promise of a Redeemer that He fulfilled. There and then He proclaimed the victories He had already realized, the victories He was laying hold of, and the victories soon to be accomplished by His resurrection and ascension. You might turn to Ephesians 4.8-10, where the Apostle Paul seems to be summarizing the 68th Psalm and also alluding to Christ’s descent into paradise by writing,

8 Wherefore he saith, When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men.

9 (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?

10 He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things.)

Of course, Paul in this passage deals with Christ’s descent while His body was in the tomb, Christ’s ascent at the time of His resurrection, and also Christ’s ascension all the way to the Father’s right hand with the Old Testament saints (leaving the paradise side of Hell now empty), which matters are beyond the scope of this message. To be sure, those alive at the time would certainly have considered Christ’s body buried in a sealed tomb to be an indication of defeat. But that is what happens when you consider only the physical realm and are profoundly ignorant of spiritual realm realities. Christ’s death and burial enabled Him to visit the faithful of past ages who trusted Him in anticipation, to inform them, to encourage them, and to prepare them to be led as prizes in victory from where they had been comfortably maintained for so long to heaven’s delight and bliss. Can Christ’s accomplishments whilst His body was in the tomb of Joseph of Arimathaea be understood, therefore, as anything but victory?

Finally, THE VICTORY OF CHRIST’S RESURRECTION

You might have difficulty imagining how anyone could interpret Christ’s resurrection from the dead as anything but a victory over sin, death, Hell, and the grave, but remind yourself that most who witnessed His crucifixion, and most who were aware He had been buried, and most who had heard that He rose from the dead refused to believe it and refused to believe in Him. There are such people with us this morning.

The reason for the refusal of the majority, in my opinion, is that Christ’s resurrection had (to them) the appearance of defeat. Consider a few facts with me by way of explanation. How many people saw the risen Savior? Three or four women? Peter? The remaining apostles? His brother James? Paul several years later? Then there were 500 who saw Him, First Corinthians 15.6, probably on the occasion of His final ascension, Acts 1.9-10. Then, of course, there was Stephen as he was being stoned to death. The point that I seek to make is that very, very few of the several hundred thousand residents of Jerusalem ever saw the risen Savior. The astonishingly high percentage of more than one billion Christians who since then have not seen the risen Savior is a testimony of God dealing with people by faith; “of things not seen,” Hebrews 11.1. What am I suggesting? I am suggesting that the overwhelming majority of Christians over the last 2,000 years have not seen Jesus Christ with their physical eyes. They have believed. On the other hand, the overwhelming majority of unsaved people who have lived over the last 2,000 years remain unwilling to believe anything they do not see with their own eyes, quite ignoring the reality of faith as in fact being something that is not seen. Someone who lives by the axiom of “I won’t believe it until I see it,” is a person who does not grasp that if you see it, faith simply cannot be a part of the experience because faith involves “the evidence of things not seen.” Thus, if you have to see Jesus Christ, you will still not be saved from your sins because saving faith has to do with “things not seen.” So, for you, not seeing the risen Savior means defeat. You are so materialistic, so dead to spiritual reality, so committed to relying only upon your five senses, with your thinking so distorted by sin, that you cannot grasp the impossibility of being saved so long as you cling to the notion of “I won’t believe it until I see it.”

But you are so tragically wrong. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was not a defeat at all, regardless of the opinions of those God has turned over to a reprobate mind, and regardless of the conclusions drawn by those who have changed the truth of God into a lie. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is a victory over sin. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is a victory over death. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is a victory over Hell. The resurrection of Jesus Christ is a victory over the grave. And the resurrection of Jesus Christ affected our justification and made possible the deliverance of the Old Testament saints into the presence of God. That you haven’t seen the risen Savior is not a liability, but rather a great asset and a boon to your soul, because having not seen Him you can, therefore, have faith in Him. That, my friend, is a victory.

Do you grow weary, as I do, of the Lord Jesus Christ being portrayed in film and literature and contemporary culture as an effeminate man, as the feminist ideal of a metrosexual man, and as a tentative and timid sort of fellow?

My friends, He was none of those things. The Lord Jesus Christ was the perfect man. He was the ideal male. He was the perfect Son of His heavenly Father. Look throughout the Word of God and such men as Enoch, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, Joshua, David, Daniel, Peter, Paul, and all the others who were but poor reflections of the Savior they loved and served.

How inconceivable it is to imagine that anything the Lord Jesus Christ would ever involve Himself in would result in defeat and not astonishing victory, for even when God chooses to use a Christ-honoring man or woman who is themselves weak in the flesh, He does so specifically so that what Paul wrote in Second Corinthians 12.9 would be true of us:

“My grace is sufficient for thee: for my strength is made perfect in weakness. Most gladly therefore will I rather glory in my infirmities, that the power of Christ may rest upon me.”

Does it sometimes look to the Christian that defeat is being experienced or that victory is slipping from our grasp? Oh my, yes, if you fail to take into consideration the spiritual part of reality and the promises of God. But when you reflect on Christ’s victories, on our Savior’s character, on His incomparable nature, and the fact that His victories are our victories, then we can sing the great old hymn of the faith “Faith Is The Victory.”

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[1] Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, (New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1996), page 571.

[2] Norman L. Geisler, Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics, (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 1999), pages 143-146.

[3] Anis A. Shorrosh, Islam Revealed, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1988), pages 107-117.

[4] Josh D. McDowell, The New Evidence That Demands A Verdict, (Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1999), pages 120-136.

[5] Gary R. Habermas and Michael R. Licona, The Case For The Resurrection Of Jesus, (Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 2004), pages 48-49, 84-103.

[6] Matthew 26.4; Luke 22.2; John 5.18; 7.1, 19, 25; 8.37, 40

[7] Tim LaHaye Prophecy Study Bible, (AMG Publishers, 2000), pages 1455-1459.

[8] Psalm 40.6; Hebrews 10.5-10

[9] Hebrews 4.15; 9.28

[10] John 20.11-13

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Pastor@CalvaryRoadBaptist.Church