The Death, Burial and Resurrection of Jesus Christ- Part 2
Pastor Yerifor began the second installment of his message by reading through 1 Corinthians 15: 1-17; with the unwavering standpoint that the potency of our faith is in the death, burial and resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ.
He maintained that God’s wisdom is not hidden from us but hidden for us, that is, for our glory; as he took his cue from 1 Corinthians 2:6- “We speak wisdom among those who are mature. Not the wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are coming to nothing. We speak the wisdom of God.” This wisdom, called the wisdom of God, is a mystery. And if it were not hidden, the rulers of this age would not have crucified the King of glory. This wisdom of God is evident in the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. This wisdom had been through the ages, though encoded. In the Old Testament era, the wisdom of God, while encoded, could be seen in the life of patriarchs like Moses, David, Samuel, etc.
Moses, for example, was born in perilous times, when Egypt had grown hostile to the people of Israel. Seeing they were growing numerically and economically, the Pharaoh had put in place a policy of oppression designed to prevent them from getting any stronger or entering into a league with Egypt’s enemies to overrun them. So, the decree was that every Jewish male newborn was to be killed. This in itself was a form of death. However, at birth, Moses’ mother decided not to kill him because he was a goodly child. So, she put him in a basket she’d protected and placed it on the River Nile, leaving him to the elements. That represented a form of burial. When Pharaoh’s daughter ‘delivered’ the baby from this precarious situation to nurture and care for him in the palace of Pharaoh, he experienced a form of resurrection.
Recalling scientific laws he had learnt in school, Pastor Yerifor offered that laws are non-discriminatory if all the inputs and conditions are fulfilled. That law applies regardless of race, location or calling. A law that followed the fall of man is known as the law of sin and death. Romans 6:23 states that the wages of sin is death; thus, if we operate under the law of sin and death, we are bound to earn the salary that sin pays to those that operate under it. That salary, of course, is called death. And it is not just the cessation of life as things like deterioration, decay and such declining states are manifestations of death.
But there is good news. The primary purpose of Jesus’ body was to be a sacrifice for sin. 1 Corinthians 5:21- “For He hath made Him [to be] sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” In the substitution process of the death, burial and resurrection of Christ, God appointed Jesus that knew no sin to be the sacrificial lamb of sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in him. Jesus stood in place of the sacrificial lamb that was killed for remission of the sins of the people of Israel in the Old Testament. Just as this lamb was to be a perfect, spotless lamb, Jesus was perfect and spotless, thus able to be the substitution for our sins, leaving us to reap the rewards of being the righteousness of God in Him.
Indeed, Pastor Yerifor stated that he was not teaching anything new, but like Apostle Peter, he’d purposed to admonish that we would not be negligent of that which we had become established in.