The Passion: Easter And The Gospel of Christ

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Luke 24:44-48 KJV
And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures, And said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day.  And that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.  And ye are witnesses of these things.

Every year during this Easter season, millions of Christians celebrate — and that is a beautiful thing. But I want to ask you something today, something I have been asking God’s people for many years now: do you actually know what you are celebrating? Do you know what the gospel of Jesus Christ is? Not in general terms, not in the broad sense, but in the specific, precise, scripturally-defined sense? Because the gospel of Christ is not everything that is good to the ears from the Bible, even though there are many things in it that are “good news”.
See, the gospel of Christ is a specific message. It is not just everything good that you find the scriptures.  It’s a specific message with specific Words!  And that is what Jesus was emphasizing in our opening scripture when he was speaking to certain of His disciples when He said “These are the words”.  So there are specific Words!  And until you understand what that specific message is, you will never fully walk in what it has given you.
Sadly, most Christians were never taught about this so when you ask them they respond with all kinds of responses of what they think or what they were told; but never what the word says.

Now let’s look at what Jesus Himself said in our opening scripture. In one of His appearances after His resurrection.  This is striking — and I want you to notice the precision of what He is saying here. He said “These are the words.”  Wow! So, it’s not “all my words that I have spoken unto you”. Not “all the things that I have spoken unto you”, but “THESE are the words”! Glory to God! There are specific words, with a specific message!
He is pointing to something specific, something distinct from all the parables and teachings and miracles that filled the eye witness accounts of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And then He proceeded to detail and tell them what these specific words are — the things written in the law of Moses, in the prophets, and in the psalms concerning Himself, specifically He said the words: “Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day”.  There you have it! These are the words – that Christ must suffer, and die, and that he must rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins must be preached in His name among all nations. That is the gospel of Christ. That is what we celebrate at Easter.
This is what Easter is about!

εὐαγγέλιον euangelion gospel – good news, glad tidings, a joyful public announcement, the message of salvation

Now here is why this is so important for your life. The Apostle Paul says in Romans 1:16-17 that these words, the gospel of Christ is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes, and that in it — in this specific message — in these words that detail the Gospel of Christ — the righteousness of God is revealed from faith to faith.  The righteousness of God is not revealed everywhere. It is not revealed in every good sermon. It is revealed in the gospel of Christ. It is expressed and activated in this specific message about the crucifixion—the death, the burial, the resurrection, and the ascension of Jesus Christ. That means if you do not understand what the gospel of Christ actually is, you will struggle to understand the righteousness of God. You will struggle to walk in it, or to access it, and walk in the reality of it. And that is exactly why so many children of God are living beneath their inheritance, and who they truly are.
But all this is what Easter is truly about!

The Apostle Paul teaches the same message that Jesus spoke about in our opening verse, and he teaches it beautifully in 1 Corinthians 15:3-4: “For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures; and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the scriptures.”
There it is. “These are the words.” This is the gospel. Not the Sermon on the Mount. Not the feeding of the five thousand. Not the healing of the ten lepers — as glorious as all of those things are. The gospel is the death, the burial, and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. And historically, it was all fulfilled in Jesus Christ according to the scriptures — the things written in the law of Moses, the things written by the prophets, the things written in the psalms concerning Him.

μαρτύριον marturion testimony – witness, evidence, that which is attested, a solemn declaration, proof

Here is what grips me about this: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are not writing fiction or religious philosophy. They are eyewitnesses. Jesus said it himself in Luke 24: “And ye are witnesses of these things.” That means that truly they saw it all happen. These men put their lives on the line to testify to what they saw — the arrest, the trial, the cross, the empty tomb, the risen Lord walking and talking and eating with them for forty days. These are the events that gave us the gospel. And these events, these very historical occurrences that took place under the same sun that rises over you this morning, are the foundation of everything we believe and have faith in. Hallelujah!
This is EASTER!  This is why Easter is not just a holiday. It is the annual reliving of the events that gave birth to the most powerful message in human history — the message that contains the eternal power of God unto salvation, healing, deliverance, and the manifestation of the righteousness of God in the earth!

Pray The Word
Heavenly Father, I thank You for the specific, powerful, and precise message of the gospel of Jesus Christ. I believe today, that Jesus Christ lived and died and rose from the dead on the third day; and ascended into heaven and is alive today.  I thank You that through this gospel — I have Your righteousness in my spirit! And this righteousness is being fully revealed in every area of my life. I receive the fullness of that righteousness today and declare that I walk in it from faith to faith, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Speak The Word
The gospel of Jesus Christ is the power of God that is at work in my life today! Through the gospel of Christ, that I celebrate every Easter, I have been made the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus!  Today, I fully accept what Jesus Christ did for me. And today, I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus! I know what the gospel is, I believe it, I walk in it, and its power is working mightily in and through me. In the name of Jesus Christ!

The Passion: The Wisdom Of God In Betrayal

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Mark 14:10-11

“And Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went unto the chief priests, to betray him unto them. And when they heard it, they were glad, and promised to give him money. And he sought how he might conveniently betray him.”

There is something that every child of God needs to understand about the betrayal of Jesus Christ — and once you see it, once the Holy Spirit opens your eyes to it, you will never read the passion narrative the same way again. The betrayal of Jesus was not a tragedy. It was a setup. Glory to God!

Now, before you go any further, I want you to lock this into your spirit: God is never caught off guard. Not by Judas. Not by the chief priests. Not by the thirty pieces of silver. Every single detail of that night — the garden, the kiss, the price — had already been written down by the prophet Zechariah hundreds of years before Judas was even born. Think about this: the prophet said in Zechariah 11:12, “And I said unto them, If ye think good, give me my price; and if not, forbear. So they weighed for my price thirty pieces of silver.” Hallelujah! They weighed the price. Thirty pieces of silver. And then Matthew 26:15 tells us that when Judas walked into that meeting with the chief priests and said, “What will you give me and I will deliver him unto you?” — they covenanted with him for thirty pieces of silver. Exactly. Word for word. The prophecy came to pass.

שָׁקַל shaqal weighed – to weigh out, pay, assess value, count out payment, measure by weight

That Hebrew word shaqal is the root of the word “shekel” — the currency standard of ancient Israel. When Zechariah said they “weighed for my price,” he meant a transaction was being formally completed. A price was being assessed. A covenant was being sealed. And the price they put on the Son of God? Thirty pieces of silver — the price of a common slave in the Old Testament (Exodus 21:32).  The administrators of the Old Covenant — the ones who were supposed to know the scriptures better than anyone — assigned to the Son of God the value of a slave. Haha! And God called it “a goodly price.” There’s divine irony dripping from that verse. But God wasn’t offended — He was working.

מְחִיר mᵉchîyr price – purchase price, hire, sale value, the amount something is worth

You see, this is what you need to understand about God’s sovereignty. He does not operate reactively. He is never scrambling. Long before Judas ever walked into Caiaphas’s palace, long before the silver coins changed hands in the darkness of that meeting, God had already predetermined it, set it up by design, revealed it in prophecy and had it written through Zechariah. Why? Because the betrayal was the divine mechanism God needed to bring righteous judgment against the corrupt administration of the Old Covenant — those three shepherds, the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders of the people — who had enriched themselves while God’s sheep lived in poverty. That is what Jesus was addressing when He delivered the message — “I am the good shepherd.” He wasn’t just speaking a beautiful metaphor. He was continuing from the prophecy of Zechariah and was pronouncing and setting up the stage of the judgment of the three shepherd’s —  the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders of the people. He was declaring that a new administration was coming, the administration of the good shepherd, and that the old one — the one that stole, killed, and destroyed — was about to be cut off. In this Easter month make sure you make some time to listen to our teaching on this The Passion: The Betrayal part 1  and The Passion: The Betrayal part 2, so that you can see and get a greater understanding  of the wisdom of God in Jesus’s betrayal.

Now, in understanding  all of this, what does this mean for you today? It means that whatever looks like the most devastating betrayal in your life is not outside of God’s script. The moment you see what they did to Jesus — and how God used the most treacherous moment in human history as the foundation for the greatest covenant ever established — you stop seeing betrayal the way the world sees it. You start seeing it as God’s setup for something greater. The events that gave us the gospel of Christ were established after His betrayal. It was all a part of God’s plan.  The New Testament — established on better promises, with better provisions, with Jesus Himself taking over from the three shepherd’s as the Good Shepherd and High Priest of a better covenant — and all came after His betrayal. Hallelujah!

Pray The Word
Heavenly Father, I thank You for the perfect sovereignty that You demonstrate through out all generations. Long before I was born, You had already written my redemption and salvation into history and sealed it with the blood of Jesus Christ. I declare that no betrayal, no conspiracy, no scheme of darkness can derail the purposes You have ordained for my life, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Speak The Word
The sovereignty of God governs every detail of my life! What men intend for evil, God is turning for my good! I am hidden in the eternal script of God, and what He has written concerning me cannot be unwritten. I walk in the victory that was purchased at the price of the blood of the Lamb — no weapon forged against me shall prosper, in the name of Jesus Christ!