Living in Resurrection Victory

Audio Transcript

Well, it’s great to see you on this very special day, and may I just encourage you, if this is, you know, one of the times that you come to a place like this, I would encourage you to come back next Sunday and the Sunday after that and continue on with us in this journey of learning and understanding what it means to be a follower of Christ, not just a churchgoer, but what this really means.

You know, we have one shot at this in life. One shot to try to understand what all of this represents, what it means to us, and to put our heart into it, and to really live this out. We have one shot at this, and the people here in this church, they’re not perfect by any means. I mean, look around there… and look up here.

Did I get an amen on that? Linda, oh my word. On Easter Sunday. That cut deep. But no, but I tell you, we’re people here where the majority of people here that I know are tired of doing church. They’re tired of playing church in some cases, and so we’re all here really together taking this journey, understanding what it means the best that we can, and devoting our lives to living for Christ.

And so I encourage you to come and be a part of this journey. You’re welcome here.

I have spoken about the resurrection, I don’t know how many times. It’s been an awful lot. We’ve looked at it from every possible angle, and this morning I don’t want to go into the details of the resurrection. I don’t want to look at the timeline of the trial and the crucifixion and the burial and the resurrection. We’ve done that many times. This morning I’m going to speak to you for a few minutes about what it means to live in resurrection victory.

Because the resurrection of Jesus Christ wasn’t just an event. It was the turning of a page that changed everything from that point forward. And if we merely see the resurrection as an event that happened back then, and we reflect on it once in a while, then we have missed completely what the resurrection was for.

Today we’re going to be in an unusual passage for this Sunday, but I ask you to turn to the book of Ephesians, chapter 1, and we’ll be in verses 15 to 23 today, and then next Sunday we’ll pick right back up in our Through the Bible study. Ephesians chapter 1, verses 15 to 23.

Imagine with me for a moment that one of the world’s richest people transferred $1 billion into your bank account. And they said to you, “This is yours, all of it. I want you to use this money to make your life better, and I especially want you to use it to transform and improve the lives of everyone around you.” And you check your balance a few days later and sure enough, there’s a billion dollars.

Now imagine that you went on to live your whole life and never touched a penny of that money. You struggled to pay your bills, you panicked over financial issues, and you didn’t help anyone else who was in need, and all the while you had a billion dollars untouched in your bank account with your name on it, and years later you died with that incredible gift completely unused. What a waste that would be. People would look at your life and say, “Boy, how could someone have been given so much but live as though they had nothing?”

And yet that is precisely how so many Christians live their lives right now. Not because God has been stingy, but because they’re not using what He has already given them.

On this Resurrection Sunday, as I said, I don’t want to go into the details of the– we’ve talked about that countless times. This morning, I want to focus on what the resurrection of Jesus Christ has given us and how that should affect our lives every single day. Because knowing that the resurrection happened and living in the power of the resurrection are two entirely different things.

Author and speaker Paul Tripp said this, “The Christian life is not about getting information and making better decisions. It’s about the transforming power of Jesus, reaching into the places you cannot reach yourself.” That’s exactly what today’s verses are going to teach us. So let’s look now at the text before us, Ephesians chapter 1, starting in verse 15, and if you’re able, may I ask you to stand one more time out of respect for God’s Word, and that’ll give you a break before the three-hour sermon.

Ephesians 1:15, Paul writing, “For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love for all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.”

Verse 18, “Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know the hope to which He has called you, the riches of His glorious inheritance in the saints, and the immeasurable greatness of His power to us who believe, according to the working of His mighty power that He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come.”

Verse 22, “And He put all things under His feet and made Him head over all things for the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him Who fills all in all.” Amen. You may be seated. This is, I believe, if I’ve got it right, the second longest run-on sentence in the Bible. Paul outdid himself in Colossians, one that’s a little bit longer than this. His English teacher was having fits reading this paper of his. But Paul did this on occasion because he got so excited about what he was sharing that he couldn’t pause to take a breath, and he pours out this passionate statement on what the resurrection means.

And I hope that this will be a tremendous encouragement to all of us this morning as we take a few minutes and we look into this. I want you to know, remember now, Paul is writing to Christians, to the believers at the church in a city called Ephesus. Paul is writing this to Christians. They know about the resurrection. They’ve believed already on the risen Lord. So why is he telling them this? Why does he say to them, “I want you to know, I want the eyes of your heart or your understanding”–it can be interpreted–“to be open, to be enlightened to these truths”? He’s telling them this because so desperate for them to grasp what had already been deposited into their lives because Christ rose again.

Three things we’ll see. Three things were transferred to their account the moment that Christ walked out of that tomb. He says, “I want the eyes of your heart to be enlightened so that you can see what the resurrection has accomplished for you. Not so that you’ll have more information, but so that your life can be transformed by it.”

We live in a church culture that is drowning in information, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Christian podcasts, Bible apps, commentaries, conferences, devotionals, books. We’re flooded in information about Christianity, and yet so many Christians who genuinely love Jesus are living frustrated, defeated lives. Could it be that we know the details of the resurrection, but we’ve never accessed what has already been deposited into our account? Paul lists three things that the resurrection has given to us.

Number one, we have a hope that can never be shaken. We have a hope that can never be shaken.

Now when you and I talk about hope, we say things like, “I hope my team wins. I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow. I hope I do well on this test,” but that’s not at all what hope in the Bible means. When it says here in verse 18: “…that you may know the hope to which He has called you.” It’s not talking about wishful thinking. The word means a joyful, confident expectation of something that is guaranteed, but has not yet arrived. It is a joyful, confident expectation of something that we know will happen, but it’s just not here yet. It’s not a feeling, it’s an anchor that holds when everything else fails.

I think Hebrews sums this up better than anywhere that I know of. Hebrews chapter 6, verse 19 says, “We have this hope,” and what is it? It is an anchor for the soul, firm and steadfast. And the resurrection gives us that sure hope, both for today and for the future.

I know this is not something anybody wants to talk about on Resurrection Sunday, but let me be the one to go ahead and bring it up. We’re all going to die one day. Now people over the years have spent fortunes trying to outsmart death, trying to outlive death. They’ve come up with potions and elixirs and protocols and sleep chambers and all kinds of things saying if you do this, if you buy this, you’ll outsmart death, and there’s been a zero percent success rate so far. You and I will not be the first to outsmart death.

And looking at this life, just looking around, this life is filled with wonderful things and beauty and joys, but it’s also filled with trials and hardships and suffering and pain and loss and setbacks and discouragement. And so when you sum all of that up and you look at the brevity of a human life, what is it, 70, 80, 90 years maybe? You look at that in the span of all of history and the span of eternity to come, it’s not even a blip on the radar. So is this life all there is? If it is, how could we possibly find lasting hope in this existence?

Paul himself asked the question, or made the statement, I guess, “If in this life only we have hope, we are to be pitied more than all men.” As believers, our hope, our certainty is in the promise that because Christ rose, we too will rise.

This life is not the end. Death itself is not even the end. It’s amazing how people live their lives terrified of death. Why? As believers, this is our greatest hope, that we will close our eyes one second and open them the next in glory. The resurrection promises us that because Christ arose, all who’ve put their faith in Him will rise too. Death is not the end. We have the promise of eternal life in Him.

So whatever trials come your way in this life, you can look at them and say, “My hope is not in this circumstance. My hope is not in hoping that something good or better will happen tomorrow. My hope is anchored firmly in the risen Christ, in the finished work, and that hope can never be shaken.”

There is coming a time, the Bible tells us, when those who have rejected Christ, the offer of salvation that He gives to anyone who believes, when those who have rejected Him, it says, even the greatest men on earth on that day will cry out to the mountains and the rocks to fall on them, because that will be a better conclusion than facing Christ and knowing that you have rejected His offer of salvation.

Where is your hope for beyond this life? You’re anchoring all your hopes in your investments, are you? All the best with that. You’re anchoring your hopes in your retirement, that it’s going to turn out exactly like you’re planning? Let me know how that works out. You’re anchoring your hopes that your children are going to grow up and be exactly how you want them to be? Anchoring your hopes in that promotion and that raise–all those things are fine. But none of those things will last. None of them. Where is your hope this morning? If your hope is attached to anything in this world, it is going to pass away. Make sure that your hope is in Him.

First, we have a hope that can never be shaken. Second, we have an inheritance that can never be lost.

When you accept Christ as your Savior, you are made a child of God, and you become a joint heir with Christ. Romans chapter 8 says this beautifully. It says, “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ.” An heir is the person who will receive the inheritance that the father has set aside and kept for him.

Now, earthly inheritances aren’t guaranteed by a longshot. Families often argue and fight and even go to court over an inheritance, and sometimes they lose what they thought they’d get. It’s amazing how people get upon the death of a parent. Really shocking. You know why? Because their hope is in the things of this life. “Well, this was promised to me!” People fighting over a chair or a table or a ring. It’s both sad and disgusting at the same time.

Our inheritance is not in those things that can be shaken, and our inheritance is in Christ, and it can never be lost. Peter sums this up better than anywhere. 1 Peter chapter 1, he says this, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. By His great mercy He has given us new birth into a living hope. How? Through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil, or fade, kept in heaven for you.” Now that’s an amazing thought, and yet I want to say to you that the passage we’ve read here in Ephesians is saying something even more profound than that, more beautiful than us getting an inheritance.

Look at it again, Ephesians 1:18. He says, “the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.” You need to know that you are God’s treasure that He has laid claim on. You are God’s inheritance. Moses wrote about this way back in Deuteronomy, about God’s people are His inheritance, and God will never lose His treasure. As hard as it is for me to understand, for us to understand, because when I look in the mirror, I don’t see treasure. I see a stunningly handsome man, but other than that, I don’t see treasure, really.

And it’s true, every day. But all of us, surely, when we look at ourselves, is there anything in us that says, “Yeah, you’re treasure, man. You’re God’s treasure!” There’s nothing. I look at myself and I identify immediately with what Paul wrote at the end of Romans 7. “Oh, wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” He says, “The things I want to do, I never seem to do, and the things I don’t want to do, I seem to keep on doing.” Anybody there? We all live there. If we have an ounce of honesty in us, and yet, because we are God’s creation, made in His image, when we receive the gift of salvation, He takes us from a lost, dark condition and brings us into the kingdom of His Son, makes us His child, and not only makes us an heir of everything that is His, but we become His treasured inheritance.

And there is nothing in this life that can change that. We have the Holy Spirit in us if we are saved, a seal that guarantees what is to come. John 10:28 says this, Jesus said, “I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish. Neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.” If you have believed on the Lord Jesus Christ, you are secure for all eternity. And on that day, God will inherit His treasure, and we will inherit Him forever. And that is only possible because Christ rose from the dead and conquered death.

What a promise. We have a hope that can never be shaken. We have an inheritance that can never be lost. And thirdly, we have a power that can never be defeated. We have a power that can never be defeated.

As I said, Paul wrote this letter to the believers in the church in Ephesus, and he wants them to know, verse 19, “the immeasurable greatness of His power to us who believe.” What makes this statement really come alive in the context of this, of who Paul was writing to, is that the people of Ephesus were deeply immersed in occult power. Archaeologists have discovered these things called the Ephesian letters. There’s a photo of one of them there. These were considered magical documents. They contained demonic names and incantations that supposedly gave people power. Now, if you rewind the clock from this Ephesian letter and you go back to Acts chapter 19, that’s when Paul was in Ephesus, and he was preaching the gospel, and people were being saved, and he was beginning to build what would become the Ephesian church, who he’s now writing to many years later.

But back there in Acts 19, we’re told that when these Ephesians came to Christ, these pagans, these occult-practicing people, that they gathered their magic scrolls and burned them, it says in Acts 19, and the value of those scrolls was 50,000 pieces of silver. And now, years later, those people who burned their magic scrolls, who practiced occult worship, now they’re reading Paul’s letter.

And before they were saved, they had chased after occultic power. They paid enormous sums of money to try and get that power, and now Paul writes to them, and he says, “Now that you have Christ in you, I want you to know the immeasurably great power you really have.” And verse 20 says it’s the same power that raised Jesus from the dead. You know, I think we read that statement and we just move on like, “Okay, cool, what’s for lunch?” This is the power that raised a dead man back to life. That power, Paul says, is in you this morning if you are saved.

Death is the fiercest enemy of every living being. But early on that Sunday morning, there was a violent collision between life and death. And death was forever defeated. The stone was rolled away, the tomb was left empty, and the angel announced those words that have echoed down through history for 2,000 years. “He is not here. He is risen.” Jesus conquered death. And that power, the very Holy Spirit power that shattered death, is living inside every one of you if you’re saved.

When is the last time you’ve faced a crushing circumstance and paused to remind yourself of the power that is in you through Christ? You are not a weakling. You are not defeated. You are not helpless. You have the power of the Holy Spirit Who raised Christ from the dead living in you.

Sad to say, the Holy Spirit rarely gets talked about in churches. I think it was Francis Chan who said He’s the forgotten person of the Trinity. Do we understand what we have in the presence of the Holy Spirit? A.W. Tozer wrote this, listen to this, “The Holy Spirit is not enthusiasm. He is not goosebumps. He’s rushing wind of Almighty God Who raised Jesus from the dead, and He lives in you.” That is the power that is ours in Christ.

And Paul himself never stopped hungering for it. He had it. The power was placed in him when he was saved, but there’s that constant battle between the Spirit and the flesh—that constant battle—and Paul lived his life longing for more of this late in his life before he was executed. Paul wrote these words in Philippians 3:10. He said, “I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection.” And you go, “Wait a minute, Paul, you know Christ! You know Christ better than anybody but the Apostles who were with Him for three years. What do you mean you want to know Christ? What do you mean you want to know His power?” And you can hear the heartbeat, you can hear the life’s focus of Paul. Late into his life, after ministering for decades, after starting churches all over the place, Paul still sits there and says, “Oh, it’s not enough. I want to know Him, and I want to know the power of His resurrection.”

That was his lifelong pursuit. So the question is not just do you believe in this power intellectually, the question is do you long to know Christ’s power more and more in your life?

I sometimes try to wonder how different our lives would look, our families would look, our communities would look, our churches would look, our nation would look if every true believer longed for more of Christ and more of His power in their life. Instead, so many people who prayed a prayer when they were five or eight or fifteen for Jesus to come into their heart, They’ve never been told this and they live their lives like Eeyore: “Oh, poor me, I guess I’m just doing the best I can.” Look, we all get there. We all have days or weeks or months or years where life feels like that, and we feel like we’re just dragging through. But at some point, we’ve got to snap back to the reality of what God’s Word tells us is true about us. We have the power of the Holy Spirit living in us.

Are we living in resurrection victory, or are we just Christians barely making it through another day waiting to cross over Jordan? My word, how different would this world look if we as Christians made this our prayer, “I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection.” By the way, don’t read the rest of that verse unless you really want to have your false teeth rattled, because it gets ugly right after that point. He says, “I not only want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection,” whoopee, everybody shouts, and he says, “and the fellowship of His sufferings.” Uh-oh, time to go. “Being made like Him in His death.” That’s the other part of the Christian life, see.

And then, as we wind this down, Paul adds an exclamation point to these three truths. Look at verses 20 and 21 again, back in Ephesians 1. He says, “God has seated Him,” that’s Christ, “at the right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come.” I imagine that phrase “above every name” would have hit the Ephesians hard. Their entire industry of occult power in Ephesus was built on names.

You can visit it today. The Temple of Artemis was there, about four times larger than the Parthenon in Greece. Ephesus was a massive city, a theater that held 25,000 people. These were not backwoods people rubbing sticks together trying to make fire. This was a massive, bustling city with marble-laid streets, and part of the lifestyle in Ephesus, it was a hub of demonic power. The Temple of Artemis, boy, the horrific things that went on in that place.

Isn’t it odd, by the way, the Temple of Artemis and just this week NASA, you know, launched their rocket Artemis. Isn’t it odd how they name all their rockets and all their missions after pagan gods? That’s probably nothing.

People back in Ephesus paid small fortunes to get these Ephesian letters, these lists of demonic names, because they believed that if you knew the name of a power, you could then use that name to invoke power on your behalf. Track with me on this. Name. Name. It was all about the demonic names. They would pay to get these lists of names, and then they would call on those names to invoke power.

Paul looks at that whole system, every demonic power, every cosmic authority, and he writes to them. I wonder if he had a little smirk on his face as he’s writing this and about to send it back to these people he knows so well, who’ve been saved out of this mess. And he says to them, “You want a name? The name of Christ is above all names.” All names. That must have been a real wakeup call. You want to invoke power? Invoke the name of Christ.

Boy, I gotta hurry, but the times I could tell you, the people I’ve talked to who have been saved out of lives in the occult, demonic practices, witchcraft, and so on, they will tell you that when the name of Jesus was spoken in one of those settings, those powers were broken. It’s just a name, isn’t it? Or is it? Paul says, “Hey guys, remember all those lists of demonic names you paid a fortune for? You got one for free in Christ, and it is above them all. It’s above all power and authority and dominion and rule. It’s above them all, the name of Christ.”

And final exclamation point to all of this. Verses 22 and 23, and we close with this, “And He put all things under His feet,” that’s under Christ’s feet, “and made Him head over all things for the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him Who fills all in all.” In the ancient world, placing something under a king’s feet was the ultimate symbol of total conquest. Often a king who was victorious in battle would take the most precious idol or treasure of their enemy, and he would have it brought into his throne room, and he would place his feet on it. And it was a sign that they had been conquered, that they had been defeated. “I’m putting this under my feet.” And Paul says, “Because Christ arose again, every enemy has been placed under His feet. He conquered them all when He rose from the grave.”

Death is under His feet. Hell is under His feet. Satan is under His feet. Your greatest fear is under His feet. Your worst failure is under His feet. The most impossible circumstance that you are facing in life is under His feet. But that’s not all. It says Christ has also been made head over all things for the church.

Now let’s be careful. This is one of the first sermons I ever taught you many years ago. What is the church? It’s not this building. It’s us. Did you know you can’t go to church? You go to a building and you meet with the church. When we leave here, we’re not leaving church. The church is leaving the building. So when it says that Christ has been made head over all things for the church, he’s talking about us. He is the head, we are the body, and here’s what that means in plain language. The head does not act apart from the body; it acts through it. Christ, the one seated far above every power, every dominion, every principality, the one with every enemy beneath His feet, that one, He has chosen to do His work in this world through you and me as His body.

Listen, you are not a spectator watching resurrection power from a distance. You’re the instrument through which that power moves. Why don’t we live like this? It’s been given to us. You’re not a person standing and watching the power of God moving in this earth. You are His body. The body acts–the head acts through the body. Christ’s power is supposed to be at work through us in this earth.

When you walk into a broken home, Christ walks in. When you speak love to a person who’s drowning in fear or shame or doubt, Christ speaks. When you stand up for the truth, Christ stands there. His work in you and through you.

So let me ask you before we go, if you genuinely believe that, how would your life change? If you genuinely believed that you are eternally secure in Him, if you genuinely believed that He is seated above every dominion and power and authority that can come against you, if you genuinely believed that every enemy is under His feet and that He is head over all things in your life, how would that transform your outlook today?

The problem is not that it’s not real. The problem is we don’t access it. We don’t believe it. “Oh, it’s true for that pastor I see on TV. It’s not true for me. I’m just a stay-at-home mom.” You sure about that? “It’s not true for me. I’m just a mechanic or an accountant or a teacher, salesman.” The things we have given up because we don’t believe this.

Folks, because Christ rose again, we have a hope that can never be shaken. We have an inheritance that can never be lost, and we have a power that can never be defeated. Don’t just believe in the resurrection. Live in it. Don’t just celebrate the empty tomb. Walk in the power that emptied it.

I pray today that if you know Him, you’ll rejoice in these truths. And I pray today if you don’t know Him, that you would call on His name in this moment and be saved. We serve a risen Savior. Amen.