JESUS, OUR RISEN SAVIOR

This Sunday, the world will celebrate Easter, and some people acknowledge it as the day Jesus Christ arose from the grave. Others celebrate it as a day of giving candies to children, and the candy industry loves that because, after Halloween, Easter is the second holiday that sells the most candy.
Just as the children are happy to receive these treats, believers are elated by the gift of life that Jesus provided for us. And to know that you were in the mind of God even before your inception helps you to realize how special you are,
In the beginning, Adam and Eve failed to obey God’s instruction to not eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, which was in the Garden of Eden. Their actions introduced sin into the earth, but God had a redemptive plan which He told the serpent in Genesis 3:15, “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.”
Adam and Eve’s action took them out of the Dispensation of Innocence and brought them into the Dispensation of Consciousness. In this dispensation, the man was told to do well; however, Genesis 6: 5, 11-12 states, “And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence. And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.” These wicked, corrupt, and violent actions of man caused this dispensation to end with a flood that killed man, beast, creeping thing, and the fowls of the air.
The next dispensation was the Dispensation on Human Government, and God told the inhabitants that lives in this dispensation in Genesis 9:1, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” Instead of doing these men decided to build a city and a tower, whose top reach into heaven, and make a name for themselves lest they be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. So, God confounded man’s language that they were unable to understand one another’s speech, and this scattered them abroad.
This moved men into the Dispensation of Promise, where God chose to bless a man named Abraham and make his descendant a holy nation unto Himself, as stated in Genesis 12:2 and Genesis 15, where God made a covenant with Abraham. Abraham’s descendants stayed in the land of Canaan for three generations until a famine occurred, and they went down into Egypt and resided in Goshen. They ended up staying there for 430 years, grew into a great nation, and were enslaved by the Egyptians.
When God delivered them out of Egypt by the hand of Moses. He took them into the wilderness, where He gave them laws, statutes, and commandments to follow, and this became the Dispensation of Law. This dispensation, which lasted almost 1500 years, went from the children of Israel at Mount Sinai to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
Jesus’ crucifixion fulfilled the words spoken to the serpent in the garden, and it ushered in the Dispensation of Grace in which we presently live. By grace are we saved through faith; not of our works, lest we should boast; it is the gift of God to all that would accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. I thank God that I am one of the persons who gladly accepted Jesus as our risen Savior. If you have not made that decision, I pray you won’t delay, but you will do it now as you read this song, “Up From The Grave He Arose,” written in 1874 by Robert Lowry

1. Low in the grave He lay, Jesus, my Savior,
   Waiting the coming day, Jesus, my Lord!
2. Vainly they watch His bed, Jesus, my Savior;
   Vainly they seal the dead, Jesus, my Lord!
3. Death cannot keep his Prey, Jesus, my Savior;
   He tore the bars away, Jesus, my Lord!
   Chorus
   Up from the grave He arose, With a mighty triumph o’er His foes,
   He arose a Victor from the dark domain,
   And He lives forever with His saints to reign.
   He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose!