He is Risen –
Imagine you are part of a feisty neighborhood Facebook page. You know the type, where everyone has an opinion. Now imagine you got drunk on a Saturday night you were caught on video throwing up all over the neighborhood community park, let’s call it Park Square. Your face clearly seen. Your name boldly plastered.
Would you go to a church gathering in that community the following morning?
Sadly, I think many would not. The sadness is not that shame and guilt would be overwhelming. The sadness is that so many churches have implied or explicitly taught that church is a place for clean and moral people not for Park Square pukers.
Now imagine this…
Imagine you’re in this very same community and instead of being the belligerent drunk, you are walking across the road and a car carelessly misses a stop sign and crashes into you, throwing your body into violent twists so that you’ve hit your head, broken a leg, and you are left with multiple lacerations in need of stitches. Instead of going to the hospital you crawl home to lather your gashes with Neosporin, wrap your bent leg with an ace bandage, and cover your throbbing head with an ice pack. We would think that person foolish right? Go to the hospital for crying out loud. It is the good thing, the healthy thing, the wise thing to do when you’ve been hit by car and shattered.
Are you lost, broken, puking, drunk, depressed? Don’t hide from the gathering of God’s people and the proclamation of good news for people like you. Come to him who forgives. Come to him to loves. Come to him who will walk alongside you in the midst of life’s ups and downs. Can we be a church gathering like that? I sure hope so.
Welcome – if you’re joining us for the first time today, we’ve been walking through a unique series called “Elohim” studying spiritual beings and the unseen realm, the spiritual realm.
God, the Satan, angels, demons, and the other spiritual beings, you’ll have to go grab those on past lives on FB, YT, or catch the podcasts if you want to catch up.
So— Today, Easter in the Unseen Realm, or more appropriately, Resurrection Sunday in the Unseen Realm! What happened in the spiritual realm while people scurried about on this rock?
Let’s look at before.
God created spiritual beings and spiritual realm – Job 38, the spiritual family of God watched.
Then God created our realm, and human beings –
Eden was the intersection of these realms where the creator walked with humans.
Psalm 82 – God’s divine council, Deuteronomy 32:8-9
There are spiritual beings who have rebelled against the creator, we commonly call them demons, but it should be noted that evil spirits are not clones of one another. OT has rebellious spiritual beings and faithful spiritual beings. The spiritual realm has stronger beings, weaker beings. Spiritual beings, both good and evil, have different roles. The satan is an accuser, that’s his role. There are immensely powerful beings who govern areas in the spiritual realm (Dan 10). That may be new to you, but at the chapel, our desire is to let the Bible stand on it’s own legs and not sanitize it into a self help book. So up to the point of Jesus there has been a horde of rebellious spiritual beings working to undermine the creator.
Beings bent on thwarting God’s plan to create and relate to a unique type of being in the garden, the human being. A being living with the breath of God.
When it went wrong, God set his plan into motion. His plan that involved giving human kingdoms over to the rulership of spiritual rulers.
This is why, during the temptation of Jesus in the desert we read –
Matthew 4:8-10
Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. 9 And he said to him, “All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.” 10 Then Jesus said to him, “Be gone, Satan! For it is written,“‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’”
Luke 23:42-43
And he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” 43 And he said to him, “Truly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise.”
Tetelistai – it is finished. – 12yr old Jesus story?
Matthew 28:18–19
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,
Eph 1:20-21
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.”
Colossians 2:13-15
And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.
Ephesians 6:12
For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
***1 Corinthians 15 [Bible Walk]
The gospel is this: You’re forgiven—past, present, and future. You’re loved and you can’t be unloved, no matter what you do. And you are his.
