Jesus Rose to Save Mankind
Happy and blessed Easter 2025. I often like to present a well-known and much-discussed Bible story from a different angle. This sermon will look at the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus from a different perspective: thoughts and ideas that delve much deeper than the normal Easter message of: He has Risen, so we are all saved. Although that fact is very heart warming and assuring, it is only the surface level view of Jesus’s life, HIS sacrifices for us despite human unkindness and deceit, and why God chose this method to bring us all back into His fold. It will explain the PURPOSE of Jesus’s life and how He showed us how to follow God’s purpose for our lives regardless of fear, sacrifice, and danger.
We all speak about how Jesus was beaten, humiliated, and then agonizingly crucified on the cross. We talk about how the “ladies/women” found the tomb empty on what we now celebrate as Easter, and were shocked and terrified. Instead of understanding that this was the perfect plan playing out, all they saw was a missing body they had planned to embalm. We now know that He left the grave exactly as He promised (supernaturally) and that He rose from death to save mankind, but do we actually know why all this was necessary?
Without going into an overly long dissertation, Jesus was born with the destiny of dying as the sacrificial lamb to reunite man with God. Throughout the Bible, it gives us hints about how Jesus will arrive as our Messiah and that He will die the death of a sinner to take the punishment of man, who continually failed, and fails, God.
God’s perfect plan was that He and “man” would commune together in paradise. It was never His wish or desire that man would rebel against Him and follow Satan’s lies, wanting more than God provided in the Garden of Eden. Man, pridefully, wanted more than God offered, rather than happily enjoy the daily company of God and His full provision. God has ALWAYS wanted to live together with His creation, and man’s greed (desiring full access to the tree of good and evil) ruined God’s perfect and peaceful plan.
Before Jesus started His missionary part of life, man was always required to sacrifice “burnt offerings” to God, which were UNBLEMISHED animals from their herds. They were supposed to take the very best, the most perfect animals, and sacrifice their blood as a show of their allegiance and obedience to God and to atone for their many sins. Since there was no such thing as a perfect human, it has NEVER been in God’s will to sacrifice humans, as has been done in different cultures throughout mankind.
Man, always misinterpreting and confusing the true will of God would sacrifice their children to “appease or get favor” with the gods they worshipped, blaspheming the one, true God. Indian culture routinely included human sacrifices to gain favor with their gods, and this is well documented and known. Regardless of culture, burnt offerings have been practiced and well documented throughout human history.
Ultimately, man has failed God over and over. Even when trying to emulate God’s burnt offerings, man mutilated and sinned by killing other humans rather than paying close attention to the purpose behind making a sacrifice to God: Atonement of sin, not seeking favor. The Old Testament is full of history that proves no matter who was “king” or whatever, God communicated through the prophets and judges, man distorted the reason and truth behind the behaviors God desired from His creation.
God realized the only way He could reconcile with man, seeing us as beautifully cloaked in pure white instead of heavily cloaked with the black of sin, was to provide the perfect sacrifice, therefore ENDING the need for any further blood sacrifices. It was the only way He could permanently stop the murders and distortion of His desires and Words. In His humanity, God provided not only His Son as a sacrificial lamb to reunite humans with Himself, but also had Jesus teach and exemplify the behavior God sought from His creation so we could not distort or misinterpret His desires. He wanted us to be OBEDIENT, LOVING, and FORGIVING, so that we could properly represent Him to other people and gain the wonderful life He had planned for ALL of His children.
Therefore, Jesus came into the world, born of a virgin (a pure, perfect, and flawless conception so that He wasn’t tainted by sin or the Adamic curse) to provide the perfect intercessor between God the Father and man. Jesus had to live a sinless and blameless life in order to become the perfect sacrifice for our redemption. In order to become a compassionate intercessor, Jesus had to fully understand the thoughts, lives, and temptations of mankind, so he was sent incarnate (in human form). Ultimately, Jesus also had to choose to suffer unbelievable emotional and physical pain to fulfill God’s plan.
As we know, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus went through a lot of angst and grieving before deciding it would be God’s will and not His in the suffering that was coming His way. Despite his distress He chose to serve mankind in spite of the rejection and cruel ways He had been treated by friend and foe alike.
So why did Jesus do it? Why did He go through hell and to hell for us? (His descent to hell before His ascension is mentioned in Ephesians 4:9 and in 1 Peter) Because it was the only way to permanently reunite God with humankind and allow us the opportunity to live with Him in paradise for eternity. Out of intense and unconditional love, He took our sin upon Himself (three of the 4 Gospels discuss 3 hours of complete darkness over the earth until Jesus gave His Spirit to God and left His incarnate – flesh body - forever) which caused God to see us as dressed in white (clean, not as sinners) instead of the black that covered the world reflecting our sin and how God saw our sin as pure evil, rebellion and darkness.
After Jesus was crucified as the sacrificial lamb, the blood offering God had required since sin occurred in the garden of Eden, our sin is forgiven as long as we ACCEPT Jesus as our Savior. We need only to repent of our sins, ask Jesus for forgiveness and then don’t repeat the sinful act(s).
As you celebrate the greatest moment in human history, I encourage each of you to think deeply about the reasons WHY Jesus had to suffer for us and not just the fact that He did. I want you to think about the reason behind “He Has Risen, and therefore we are saved.” We are the benefactors of a reconciliation plan, made by a loving/merciful God, and the perfect example of obedience by His Son (YOUR will, not mine - Luke 22:42 & Matthew 26:39) in order that God could once again look at man and see gleaming beauty instead of the darkness of our abhorrent sin(s).
THANKFULLY, Jesus chose us (despite His personal and unbelievably painful sacrifice) and now acts as our intercessor between our rebellious and sinful nature and God, the Father, so that one day we can be reunited with our Creator and all those we have loved here on earth. AMEN!
Happy Easter, and enjoy celebrating the miracle of Jesus! Love, hugs and blessings, Lisa ><>
If you enjoyed this sermon, check out our others here, or if you have questions, please message us.