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I’m willing to bet that many of us have considered what the death of Jesus Christ must have looked and felt like to His disciples. We seem to have indicators in the text of scripture that they were forlorn, afraid, and running.
Honestly, I can’t blame them. I would have been heartbroken after seeing the dead raised, demons cast out of people, watching the Lord walk on water… I would have wondered what on earth was happening!
How do you get a grip on watching the One that you put your hope in die in a brutal, tortuous, and unjust fashion? I can only imagine how the disciples, all of them, to a man or a woman must have felt, and I feel a great deal of sympathy for them in that moment. These were people who were courageous, and felt the greatest possible let down that a human heart could endure. My heart breaks for them at that moment.
Remember, they had been shown that the coming of the Messiah was an event that would lead to justice and restoration. Initially, they thought that the restoration would be for the nation of Israel to be free from its captors and the evil influences through idolatrous worship of pagan gods from the surrounding nations.
The Israelis of that day and time had a long and storied history of supernatural encounters, and many of those events stagger the imagination, but they are true.
Then, to see the long prophesied messiah take blow after blow on the cross and die from His injuries, well, that would lead anyone into despair. At that moment, we would have likely felt that either evil won and God lost, or we would have thought that we were somehow deceived into believing in a man who was not the Messiah of biblical prophecy.
Either outcome would have been debilitating. Painfully debilitating. How would we have recovered from this?
What did the ensuing days look like for the disciples? We can only imagine, and our hearts go out to them if we think about this deeply.
Yet, as is true in the Kingdom of God, all hope was not lost. In fact, it was far from it.
Jesus Christ was fully aware that He was essentially the centerpiece of a vast, age spanning military conflict in the heavenly realms that had spilled over into the earth. He also apparently felt that there was great value in not fully disclosing His and the Father’s intent until just the right time.
We’re told in 1st Corinthians chapter 2, verses 7-8 that “…we declare God’s wisdom, a mystery that has been hidden and that God destined for our glory before time began. None of the rulers of this age understood it, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.”
The rulers of that age were the members of the heavenly realm that we spoke about in the last blog and podcast, entitled “Palm Sunday.” These beings knew that they had come to the earth to usurp God’s will here, and to take control of the human race through deception and sin. They thought that they had succeeded. Yet since God keeps His own calendar, He had a plan, eternally conceived of, in which He would act to restore creation completely. Evil was not going to be allowed the last word.
What an incredible move on God’s part to offer Himself to remove the accusations leveled against us by the god of the world. The Almighty would have none of it. The greatness and the grandeur of His incredibly loving heart was willing to go into the darkest corners of creation to find that one last person who needed to know that he or she is loved by our Maker.
The Lord knew what He was walking into when He came into Jerusalem on a donkey. He knew what would happen and yet He continued on. Sin had come to roost in God’s creation, and it had to have a method that represented love and truth and justice to bring its eventual removal.
Sin causes death, in one way, shape, or form or another. And it was such a mess that only God could deal with it with the end result being life, and not decay and destruction. He came to rescue His human creation from the claws of the god of this world.
When humanity gave in to sin, from a Hebrew perspective they believed that this allowed humanity to be under the dominion of evil and under a being who they understood to be the lord of the dead. Make no mistake, the deception in the Garden of Eden was a kidnapping attempt of God’s human family that would have led to our eternal captivity apart from God Himself intervening.
God, Whose purposes cannot be thwarted, would not allow His creation to be taken from Him.
So, to eliminate the legal case against humanity, on the basis of sin that had to be legitimately dealt with, He became the sacrifice and died a death to restore us all. He simply is not and was not willing to let us go. I cannot communicate how thankful I am for this.
So as the story progresses in scripture, we see Mary Magdalene coming to visit the One whom she thought was dead. She came early, while it was dark, to see the Lord. We know the story from here. The stone was somehow moved. It would have taken several men to make that happen. In her surprise, she thought that the Lord had been moved somewhere else, and ran back to the disciples to report just that.
As Peter and John ran to the tomb, upon arriving they discovered that his burial cloths had been removed and the face cloth was rolled up by itself. Then, after that profound moment, the two men turned and went home. The scriptures teach us that they did not yet understand the testimony to Jesus in the text itself. But that would change. That moment was coming.
I imagine the exultant relief and heartfelt shock when Mary Magdalene later encounters her risen Savior, mistaking Him for the gardener. Yet, even in that moment of mistaken identity, her heart for the Lord shines through with clarity. She wanted His body returned. She was unwilling to accept that His remains had been removed. Apparently not recognizing the angels nor the Lord Himself, her grief overshadowed all, because she still considered Christ to be her Lord. She says in John, chapter 20, verse 13, when the angels were asking why she was weeping,”…She said to them ‘Because they have taken away my Lord and I do not know where they have laid Him.” What a marvelous saint Mary Magdalene was. So worth our admiration and respect. She had come in faith, not able to reconcile the reality of the situation with her grief, and not knowing how, if at all, things would work out.
Little did she know at that time that after the crucifixion, a profound proclamation was issued to the underworld and to the evil beings who had sought to deprive God of His creation in humanity.
In 1st and 2nd Peter, we’re told that the good news, or the proclamation of what the Lord won via the cross and resurrection for humanity, was delivered “even to those who are dead, though they are judged in the flesh as men, they may live in the spirit according to the will of God.”
Jesus, in a sneak attack on the kingdom of darkness, surrendered Himself to death on a cross, and by rising again, the Kingdom of God issued an incredible proclamation, that in Jesus Christ and in Him alone is salvation found from the accusations, judgment and death that would result from humanity following the lord of the dead and not the Lord of all life!
Descending into the underworld was a victory march, and day of delirious rejoicing, for creation had found its way forward into freedom at last!
This God Who has brought this about is not like the gods of old, resplendent, luxurious, using humanity for their own gain.
No, this God is holy, truthful, just, loving and He is the heart and soul of humility. And Mary Magdalene, in her grief, had no idea of the forces that the Lord overcame, and why His death was necessary at that time to bring about the freedom, both that day and eventually, of God’s creation.
Evil would never have the last word. The last word on God’s creation is that the trumpet blast of hope, healing and deliverance came through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the ancient beings dedicated to opposing the Lord were out-flanked, and in what they thought was their victory, they found profound defeat.
Resurrection morning stands to this day as the emblem of the Kingdom of God. Our abba, our Father in heaven loves us with an eternal love, and His one and unique Son, equal with Him in every way, demonstrates His love for us in that while we were still lost in our delusions and sins, He provided our rescue!
Then, after the Upper Room experience where the Holy Spirit descended and empowered the disciples, that same dear Spirit speaks into our hearts that our Lord is alive, and though the darkness lasts for a night, our morning is coming!
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is the reason why we can confidently put our hopes in the Lord, and follow Him through the world.
Darkness has lost. The future does not favor the expansion of evil.
It favors the expansion of the Kingdom of God. No one will be able to stop this advancement, for the Lord Himself came for us all, to a man or woman.
No one will be left behind. God is faithful and will deliver you. If you’ve felt drawn to the Lord here on earth, you would not have been able to come to Him apart from Him.
May your heart rest and be at peace. May we know Him in the power of His death and the glory of His resurrection.
Original writing by Wes Ruff – REVIVALin20/20©