DATE: – SUNDAY 5TH APRIL, 2020
TOPIC: – THE RISEN CHRIST
BIBLE PASSAGE: – Luke 24 1 – 12
MEMORY VERSE: – “And if Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain, and your faith is also vain”. (1Corinthians 15:14).
INTRODUCTION: – The resurrection of the Lord Jesus is one of the central truths of the Gospel. Apart from the resurrection of Christ, we would have no hope and our faith in god and testimony about Christ would be useless (1Corint.15:12-19). Jesus’ enemies recognized the potential effect that the message of His resurrection could have so they went to great lengths to prevent His disciples from being able to spread such a message (Mt.27:62-66). But they could not stop a miracle.
LESSON OUTLINES
1) Proofs Of His Resurrection
– The empty tomb (Lk.24:3,12; Jh.28:2-7)
– The witness of the angels (Matt.28:2-7)
– The appearance of Jesus to Mary Magdalene (Jh.20:11-18)
– The appearance of the women (Matt.28:9)
– His appearance to Peter (Lk.24:34)
– His appearance to the two disciples (Lk.24:13-35)
– His appearance to the eleven (Mk.16:14)
– The witness of Thomas (Jh.20:24-31)
– His appearance in Galilee (Jh.21:1)
– His appearance to James (1Corint.15:7)
– His appearance to five hundred brethren (1Corint.15:6)
– His ascension (Acts 1:9-11)
– The coming of the Holy Spirit (Acts 2:32-33)
– The witness of the Apostles (Acts 4:33, 5:30-31, 10:40:41)
– The existence of the Church (2Corint.5:15-17; Col.3:1-3)
– The appearance of Jesus to Stephen (Acts 7:55-56)
– His appearance to Paul (1Corint.15:8)
– His appearance to John (Rev.1:10-19)
– The witness of Christ (Rev.1:18; 5:5-10)
– The witness of the Scriptures (H.20:8-9; Eph.1:20-22; 4:9-10; Heb.1:3; 10:12-13; 1Pet.3:18-22)
2) Risen With Christ
Is Jesus alive? Then the Saints of God are a risen people. What a glorious character is theirs! Spiritually they are risen with Christ from the grave of death and sin to newness of life. One of the causes of a feeble Christianity is the low estimate the believer forms of his Spiritual character. Were this higher, were it more proportioned to our real standing, our responsibility would appear in a more solemn light, our sense of obligation would be deeper, and practical holiness of a high order would be our more constant aim. Ours is a glorious and exalted life. Our standing is higher, infinitely higher than the highest angel, our glory infinitely greater than the most glorious Seraph.
“Christ our life” (Col.3:3) “We are risen with Christ”. By this we are declared to be a chosen, an adopted, a pardoned, a justified, and a quickened people. What an exalted character, what a holy one, then, is a believer in Jesus Christ! Herein lie his true dignity and his real wealth. It is that he is a partaker of the divine nature that he is one with the risen Lord. Poor as he may be in this world, yet he is rich in faith, and an heir of the Kingdom, for he has Christ. Rich may he be in this world, titled and exalted, yet if Christ is in his heart, that heart is deeply sensible of its native poverty is lowly, child-like, Christ-like. If this is our exalted character, then how great our responsibilities, and how solemn our obligation!
The life we now live in the flesh is to be elevated – a heavenly life – seeking heavenly things (Col.3:1-3).
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
Christ is risen indeed! We are therefore enjoined to be heavenly minded. Our resurrection with Christ, as a risen people, how heavenly minded, then ought we to be? How incompatible and incongnous do groveling pursuits, and carnal joys, and earthly ambitions appear; with the life professedly one and risen with the incarnate God!
QUESTIONS
- What the proofs that Christ is risen indeed?
- What should be the character of a risen life with Christ?
DATE: – SUNDAY 12TH APRIL, 2020
TOPIC: – THE POWER OF HIS RESURRECTION (Part 1)
BIBLE PASSAGE: – Ephesians 2:
MEMORY VERSE: – “That I may know Him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being made conformable unto His death” (Philippians 3:10)
INTRODUCTION: – When one is resurrected he is brought from nothing into existence, from death to life, and the transition is simply infinite. A true Christian is resurrected. The glory of the Gospel is that it shows our inability to do anything good of ourselves, and lays us at once in the grave in utter helplessness and nothingness, and then raises us up into new life, born entirely from above and sustained alone from heavenly sources.
LESSON OUTLINES
1) We Receive According To Our Faith
This is the principle which underlies the whole Gospel system that we receive according to the reckoning of our faith. Faith will lay all the ghosts that can rise in the cemetery of your soul, and the spirit of doubt will bring them up from the grave to haunt you as long as you continue to question. The only way you can ever die is by surrendering yourself to Christ and then reckoning yourself dead with Him.
You surrender yourself unto Christ to be crucified with Him, and to have all your old life pass, and henceforth to live as one born from Heaven and animated by Him alone. Suddenly, some of your old traits of evil reappear old thoughts; evil tendencies assort themselves and say loudly and clamorously “we are not yet dead”. Now if you recognize these things, fear them and obey them, you are sure to give them life and they will control you and drag you back into your former state.
But if you refuse to recognize them, and say, “These are Satan’s lies, I am dead indeed unto sin; these do not belong to me, but are children of devil: I therefore repudiate them and rise above them”. God will detach you from them and make them utterly dead.
You will find the were no part of you, but simply temptations, which Satan tried to throw over you, and to weave around you that which seemed part of yourself.
You need to renew your mind because by and large, you are the product of your thoughts (Prov.23:7; Rom.12:2). Our reckoning reflect themselves in our realities; therefore, God has made this principle of faith to be main spring of personal righteousness and holiness, and the subtle, yet sublime power that can lead men out of themselves into the very life of God.
Let the Master teach us not so much to rise as to remember we are risen; that we have been raised with Christ from the dead, resurrected from the grave of our nothingness, and worse than nothingness, and that we are sitting with Him in heavenly places, recognized by the Father and permitted to reckon ourselves as being “even as He”.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
The Christian life is self- improving, but to is wholly Supernatural and Divine. The resurrection cannot come until there has been death. This is pre-supposed, and just as real as the death has been will be the measure of the resurrection life and power. We lose nothing by letting go and we cannot enter in until we come out. If we be dead with him, we shall also live with Him.
QUESTIONS
- What is basic thing we need to receive any blessing from God?
- What is the expectation of the Master as to ours we can live the resurrected life?
DATE: – SUNDAY 19TH APRIL, 2020
TOPIC: – THE POWER OF HIS RESURRECTION (Part 2)
BIBLE PASSAGE: – Colossians 3: 1 – 17
MEMORY VERSE: – “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things whci are above, where Christ sitteth on the right hand of God” (Colossians 3:1)
INTRODUCTION: – The fact from the Scriptures is that we are already dead and risen, and that we are now to take the attitude of those for whom this is accomplished fact. Paul does not tellels to die with Christ and rise with Him, but rather He calls upon Christians to take their places as having died and risen with Christ and to live accordingly (Col.3:3).
LESSON OUTLINES
1) Practical Power
There is a great power in the glorious fact, that we have been raised up together with Christ.
i) It has power to confirm our hope and assurance of salvation because the resurrection of Jesus was the finishing work and a guarantee to men and angels that the ransom price was paid and the work of atonement complete.
When Jesus came forth triumphant from the tomb, it was evident to the universe that the purpose for which He went there was fulfilled, the work He undertook satisfactorily done, and the Father satisfied with His finished atonement.
Therefore, faith can rest upon His resurrection as an everlasting foundation, and says “Who is he that condemneth? Is Christ that died, yea that is risen again’ (Rom.8:34).
ii) The Resurrection Of Christ Is The Power That Sanctifies us
it enables us to count our old life, our former self, nullified, so that we are no longer the same person in the eyes of God, or of ourselves and we may with confidence repudiate ourselves and refuse either to obey or fear our former evil nature. Indeed, it is the risen Christ Himself who comes to dwell within us, and becomes in us the power of this new life and victorious obedience.
It is not merely the fact of the resurrection, but the fellowship of the Risen One that brings us our victory and our power. We have learned the meaning of the sublime paradox. (Gal.2:20). This is the only true and lasting sanctification, the indwelling life of Christ the Risen One in the believing and obedient soul.
iii) The Resurrection Of Christ Is The Power To Heal Us
He who came forth from the tomb on that Easter morning was the physical Christ, and that body of His is the Head of our bodies, and the foundation of our physical strength, as well as our spiritual life. If we will receive and trust Him, He will do as much for our bodies as our spirits, and we shall find a new and supernatural strength in our mortal frame and the pulses of the future resurrection in our physical being.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
The resurrection life is intensely practical. The Apostle Paul brings it into touch with us the nearest relationships of life, with the family circle, with the position of masters and servants, and with all the secular obligations of life. It is to affect our whole conduct and aims and lead us to walk wherever we are called.
QUESTIONS
- What does the resurrection of Christ offer us?
- How do we benefit from the resurrection of Christ?
DATE: – SUNDAY 26TH APRIL, 2020
TOPIC: -THE POWER OF HIS RESURRECTION (Part 3)
BIBLE PASSAGE: – Ephesians 1: 15 – 23
MEMORY VERSE: – “And, what is the exceeding greatness of His power to us-ward who believe, according to the working of His Mighty Power” (Ephesians 1:19).
INTRODUCTION: – Our attitude will influence our aim. People live according to their standing. The high born child of nobility carries in his bearing and his mien the consciousness of his noble descent, and so those who have a consciousness of their high and heavenly rank, walk as children of the kingdom.
LESSON OUTLINES
1) Practical Power
* Christ resurrection has also a mighty power to energize our faith and encourage us to claim God’s answers to our prayers, and ask difficult things from God. What can be too difficult or impossible after the open grave and the stone rolled away? God is trying to teach us the exceeding greatness of His power to us ward (Eph.1:19-20). Christ’s resurrection is a pledge of all we can ask for, and if we fully believe in the power of that resurrection we would take more than we have done.
* The resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ is the power for the true service. The testimony of His resurrection is always peculiarly used by the Holy Spirit as the power of God unto the Salvation of men. It was the chief theme of the ministry of the early apostles. They were always preaching of Jesus and the resurrection. It gives a peculiar brightness and attractiveness to Christian life and Christian work.
The message of the resurrection is the message that a sad and sinful world needs today. The more of the indwelling Christ and the resurrection life in Christian work the more will be its living power to attract, sanctify and save the world.
* The resurrection of Christ will enable us to meet the hardest places in life and endure its bitterest trials. We read in Philippians that the power of His resurrection is to bring us into the fellowship of His sufferings, and to make us conformable unto His death. We go into the resurrection life that we may be strong enough to suffer with Him and for Him.
His sufferings are on behalf of others and the power of His resurrection will bring us to share His high and holy sorrows of His suffering Church and a dying world. It is a fact that the harder our place and the lower our sphere of toil and suffering the more do we need the elevation of His grace and glory to meet it. From the heights we must reach the depths. And, therefore, we find these epistle, which lift us into heavenly places, bring us back in every instance to the most common place duties, the most ordinary relationships and the most severe trials.
The Epistle to the Ephesians and the Colossians, which speak about the highest attitudes of faith and power, speak also more than any others of the temptations common to man, and the new of truthfulness, sobriety, honesty and righteousness, and all the most unromantic, practical experiences of human life.
SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION
The power of Christ’s resurrection is designed to prepare, enable us and help us to rise into all the heights of His glorious life, that like Him we may go forth to reflect it in blessing upon the lives of others, and find even sweeter joy in the ministrations of holy love than we have in the ecstasies of Divine communion.
The risen life of Christ Jesus is the nourishment and strengthening and blessing of life of a Christian.
QUESTIONS