The Victory

I love this time of year. There is something very special about Easter isn’t there? You could think it’s just because it’s autumn and the mornings are crisp, the sky is blue, the colours and the light is different than any other time of year. It’s more than that. I’ve been in England for the opposite season when it is spring and it’s the same feeling. I wonder if it is different in countries with other religions whether other times of the year are more special.

One good thing about preaching on Good Friday – you know exactly what you’re going to talk about!  If you’ve been a Christian for some time, and even if you haven’t every one of us knows and believes that Jesus died on the Cross on Good Friday for our sins and then on Sunday he rose again!  It is an amazing message and certainly ought to get our attention if nothing else.

I’ve joined Twitter! I can follow all the latest trends and it’s really interesting to see what people are saying about different topics. Through the last weeks the Easter theme has been building up. It’s been really interesting to see what people are saying about Lent, Palm Sunday, Holy week, the Cross. It’s good to know what people think about Jesus. People are talking! I feel connected. I aspire to tweet something good each day - a word of wisdom, a meaningful proverb. I’m changing the world one tweet at a time! Only problem is I’ve only got two followers : )

Now I’m going to say a few things today that I normally wouldn’t say. I’m not saying them about myself and I’m sort of poking my head out from behind the true Victor - Jesus. But I think it’s a good day to celebrate the Victory Jesus won for us on the Cross. I think it is right to celebrate being on the Winning Side!

But even though it is a simple message and I believe it, there always seemed to be more going on than I could understand. How could Jesus’ death on the Cross pay for the sins of all mankind? Why was the Cross at Calvary the Victory in the Great Spiritual War that had started before the dawn of time?

Pre-history we can read how this Great War started. How Satan had plotted to overthrow God’s throne but had failed miserably. Count the number of times Satan boasts “I will” in this passage from Isaiah 14:12-16;

 ¹² How you have fallen from heaven, morning star, son of the dawn!
You have been cast down to the earth, you who once laid low the nations!
¹³ You said in your heart, “I will ascend to the heavens;
I will raise my throne above the stars of God;
I will sit enthroned on the mount of assembly, on the utmost heights of Mount Zion.
¹⁴ I will ascend above the tops of the clouds; I will make myself like the Most High.”
¹⁵ But you are brought down to the realm of the dead, to the depths of the pit.

God hates Pride and that is why the Bible warns us that Pride comes before a fall and not to make too many plans!

Now I don’t know why but somehow Satan managed to persuade a third of the angels to join his failed rebellion and they got thrown out of Heaven too. What a bunch of LOSERS!

Amazingly Revelation 12:3-4 tells us

³ Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on its heads. ⁴ Its tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth. The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that it might devour her child the moment he was born.

I guess they were anticipating a final victory for Satan. Everybody loves to back an underdog but surely not the flea on the underdog.  Sometimes you’ve got to know when to cut your losses.

Satan has a big vendetta against God for throwing him out of Heaven but God keeps blowing him out of the water hardly lifting a finger. And he’ll do it again in the future so we do not have to fear Satan or the future.

At man’s fall, God promised Satan that “he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.”           

What I would like to know why the Devil didn’t see it coming?

 It wasn’t like the first time the Devil had tried and failed to defeat God after all;

• Killing all the Israelite babies in Egypt except the right one… Moses
• The entire Egyptian army drowned in the Red Sea…Pharaoh
• Thinking that a 10 foot giant warrior soldier would squash a small shepherd boy…David
• Confusing all his soldiers into killing each other until they all lay dead on the ground…Jehoshaphat
• 850 of his followers pleading and cutting themselves with razors so their god would come out of the toilet and act only for the one true prophet to call down fire from Heaven on a soaking wet altar to blow it to ash …Elijah
• Hoisted by his own petard…Haman etc. etc.

It was a long list of humiliating defeats.

During Jesus’ lifetime, Satan had tried to kill him several times.

At Jesus birth, we know that Herod tried to kill him by murdering all the young boys in Bethlehem.

The 2^nd temptation of Christ was for him to jump from the temple and to prove he was the Son of God

For claiming to be the Messiah the Jewish leaders picked up stones to kill him in John 10:31-33

The strong wind that rose up on Galilee threatening to sink the boat with Jesus and the disciples in it, that travelled to Gerasene across on the other side of Galilee on the way to deliver the man possessed by demons.

At the Cross, Satan finally saw the opportunity that he had long been waiting for to murder the Son of God and make the way to take over the throne he coveted. He couldn’t help himself! Satan was exposed as the liar and murderer that he is and utterly defeated. It was a brilliant victory for Jesus because it was disguised as utter defeat. It was a complete humiliation for Satan that God at his weakest, stripped of all his power, dying in darkness had defeated every force of evil that Satan could muster. Amazingly he had fulfilled exactly the battle plan that had been laid out for the enemy to see in advance. Imagine that! You even tell the enemy exactly what you’re going to do and he still walks right into it!

Colossians 2: 15

And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

In the book by CS Lewis, the White Witch has Aslan on the Stone Table ready to kill him. She has him there because of the Emperor’s law that said there must be blood shed for a traitor otherwise all Narnia will be overturned and perish in fire and water. Edmund had betrayed his brother and sisters. Aslan had taken his place and had to die. But the White Witch did not know or understand the Greater Law which said that if another took the Traitors place, that the Deeper Magic would take effect and Death would be reversed.

God had written Greater laws that came into effect the moment Jesus died.

“Cursed is Him who hangs on a Tree”. Deuteronomy 21:23 tells us “you must not leave the body hanging on the pole overnight. Be sure to bury it that same day, because anyone who is hung on a pole is under God’s curse. You must not desecrate the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.” This is why the Jews took the body down on the Friday night. Through these words God had both laid out what would happen and also made it possible to place the sins of the World on Jesus.

Similarly in another place, the High Priest laying his hands on the goat and transferring the people’s sins on to it (Leviticus 16:21-22)
Remember the Serpent on the pole that if the people looked at it, they would be healed of the snake bites. (Numbers 21:8-9). John 3:14-15 “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up,¹⁵ that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.”

In another place referred to in Hebrews 9:22, the passage that said that without bloodshed, there could be no forgiveness of sins.

So many things that God had also said that came into effect the moment Jesus died cancelling out our sins!

So we see how easily the Devil was defeated.  Now having understood how foolish Jesus made the Devil look before the entire Heavenly court and the Underworld as well, I want to change the emphasis away from the Devil to Jesus.

We tend to think of Resurrection Sunday as being the day of triumph but spiritually speaking Jesus defeated the Devil at the Cross. Instead of doom and gloom, we ought to start celebrating Victory on Friday! It is our V-Day!

Even so in the hours leading up until that triumphant moment, Jesus suffered physical torture and spiritual anguish that we cannot understand. I would like to read some passages from work by Seventh Day Adventist Pastor Jack Sequira that gave me a new appreciation.

“As God, all that is true of God is true of Christ. Likewise, as a man, all that is true of men was true of Christ (Hebrews 2:14-17). Therefore for Christ as God to become like us men, Christ had to empty Himself completely of all His divine prerogatives. Only then could He be made in all points like unto us and qualify to be our Saviour and substitute.

As a man, Jesus was totally dependent on the Father. He could not do anything without the Father. Incidentally, now we can live like Jesus did, dependent on the Father but with the empowering of God’s Spirit.

All this throws important light on His death on the cross. For not only was Christ as the Son of man totally dependent on the Father for His every need, but even when it came to the resurrection, Christ (who even though He possessed His own uncreated, unborrowed, divine life) could not raise Himself from the dead without the authority and direction of the Father. It is for this reason that Scripture clearly teaches that Christ was raised up from the dead by the glorious power of the Father (Romans 6:4; Acts 2:24, 32; Ephesians 1:20)

Romans 6:4 We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

In the garden of Gethsemane, we hear Him pray three times in agony: “O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt” (Matthew 26:39-44).

What exactly did He mean by the cup? The answer can be found in the three angels’ message of Revelation 14. “And the third angel followed them, saying with a loud voice, If any man worship the beast and his image, and receive his mark in his forehead, or in his hand, the same shall drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is poured out without mixture into the cup of his indignation” (Revelation. 14:9, 10). The cup is clearly the irrevocable curse of God, which is the second death

This is something that I had never thought of before. Jesus died as we do but also he tasted the 2^nd Death. Jesus had emptied himself of all that was divine and become a man who must pay the ultimate price for his sins – the 2^nd Death. That is the depth of love that he has for each one of us. It was just like when Abraham was about to kill Isaac and had the knife poised to strike. In that moment Abraham was willing to kill Isaac. In those moments leading up to Jesus death, he was willing to be separated from the Father for our sakes! Jesus was experiencing our penalty of the 2^nd Death and the wrath of God. That is why the Earth went dark. That is why Jesus cried out “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”

Have you ever faced something in your life where you were sure you could handle it right up until the moment it was about to happen? Even though Jesus had spoken “Destroy this Temple and in 3 days I will raise it up”, when the actual moment came it felt like utter defeat, hopelessness and despair. God wasn’t there.

If I can draw another analogy from Anzac Day, it was like the men who signed up to go to Gallipoli in World War 1. Those brave men were willing to give up their lives and they did so with bravery and in confidence. But I’m sure that when the moment came, when they were facing the hail of bullets from the machine guns, the full horror of their sacrifice was known to them. There have been many people in history who have laid down their lives for others but no-one like Jesus. Even the bravest of men who is willing to give up their life cannot match the sacrifice Jesus made.

 

So while Christ was suffering untold mental anguish under the wrath of God, the devil, once again using the world as his agent comes to the Saviour with fierce temptations that can never be fully understood by mortal men: “He saved others, let him save himself, if he be Christ, the chosen of God . . . If thou be the King of the Jews, save thyself” (Luke 23:35-37)

At this point Satan knew Jesus was close to death. Was he simply mocking Jesus as the Crowd were, because he thought he had won? Or was it possible that God’s plan was being revealed and Satan was in panic trying with all his might to change Jesus mind? You decide, either way he was about to lose!

Finally the moment of Victory came. Jesus had endured until the end. The Devil had lost. When Jesus died he cried out “It is finished!” It was a Victory Cry! The price was paid, the wrath of God ended, the temple curtain torn in two signalling our relationship to God being restored. Now we can live in peace.

I would like to finish by reading the famous passage from Philippians that proclaims the magnitude of Jesus’ Victory that will one day be acknowledged by every person that’s ever lived.

  

Philippians 2:9-11

 ⁹ Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name,
¹⁰ that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
¹¹ and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

Amen