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Thoughts from Pastor Pierce
We delight to see a person that others despise become the most honored person in the town. Jesus' humiliation ended with His burial. His enemies were glad that; His friends were sorrowful, disappointed, and fearful at the same event.
Jesus greatly changed everything by what He did. Jesus destroyed sin and death and the demands of the law on all who trust Jesus as their Savior and deliverer. The first audience to see Jesus in His living glory, and established in divine power and majesty were the devils and those unforgiven people in hell. Jesus did not descend into hell to be cursed because He was totally cursed by God the Father in His suffering on the cross. Jesus rather declared His complete victory over the devil who deliberately decives man into doubt of the LORD'S threat of death for disobedience and encourages man to transgress God's warning word. As Genesis 3 said, the human Savior born of a woman would be wounded in rescuing and forgiving us, but the devil's head would be crushed to his defeat by Jesus' foot. Jesus openly declared His victory over the devil and his followers, and to the humans already permanently under God's curse. The Son of God asserts His mastery and His triumph to His foes. They can cringe and gnash their teeth in misery and hatred of Jesus Christ. They are helpless captives and prisoners under the authority, judgment, justice, and punishment from the risen, glorified, exalted, and regning Son of God and Man.
On the fortieth day after Jesus' bodily resurrection, Jesus ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father. We read in Philippians 2: 9-11: "Therefore God exalted Him to the highest place and gave Him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father." When we worship God, that includes the everlasting Son of God, once limited to time to live under God's law without fault and to perish in our behalf as the one cursed by God. Now He is risen to life in His body, and reigns with everything in submission to Him. We honor the Father best in declaring Jesus is Lord Himself. He is restricted to nothing.
We pray to Jesus believing that He still looks after our temporal and eternal interests. No major injury or threat of death is beyond His authority and power. We trust Him to deliver us from evil even when that means He takes us to heaven. Sickness and death cannot follow us into heaven. When we are faced with temptation, Jesus' work and the Holy Spirit's Word take away our desire for it and our obedience to it. Instead we flee to Him and with Him into holy desires and godly obedience. In a matter of time, dear Christian, we will see Him with our own eyes and with our resurrected body live in the glory that belongs to Jesus.
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