9 (Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? 10 He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might ffill all things.)
The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Eph 4:9–10.
Easter Saturday is a strange kind of bridge day between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, when we celebrate the Lord’s Resurrection. However, I sense God wants us to see that Saturday or the day between His death and resurrection is fulcrum to our own spiritual understanding and advance in our Christian walk. How does this also fit in what I have been saying in this Easter period? It fits within Psalm 23, when He walks through the valley of the Shadow of death. You cannot come to the Table without first walking through the valley first.
Before Jesus ascended He had to descend first. We sometimes hold to the view that Jesus did not literally go to Hades. I think we may be attributing Hades to be the literal place, which it is, but its also the significance that the Gospel reached those who had died within the Old Covenant and were given the chance to hear the Gospel. It says in Scripture that He preached to the old saints, tying up the loose ends between Old and New. If He descended, can it not be in this descending and ascending that He rent out of the hands of Satan, the authority, the keys of death and Hades.
We hold great value to success and prosperity, but what about the times of preparation, which are punctuated by great low periods of failure and humiliation. The School of the Gospel has these times, where we must first descend in everything, so that in ascending the world does not see our ascending with earthly eyes but recognise that God is the one that must shine through and He must have the glory. The emptying of self, death, the application of the Cross is fundamental. Paul and the apostles term those who resist this preparation as enemies of the Cross, and if they are enemies of the Cross how can they be called believers?
The fact is we must walk out Passover with Christ, and He has a cross for all of us, we must also descend into the shadows of “Hades” in many aspects of our lives. This is because how low we go, to the end, then can the Hand of the Father lift us, as He did His own Son. This process is fundamental because Paul in his letter to the Ephesian Church tells us in the descending and then ascending, did He throw down to us, the five fundamental ministry gifts that extend from His character to guide the Church through this descending then ascending process.
This process is so important because it opens the door to the power over death, and the overcoming power of life, that comes to renew understanding, reveal true and right motivation. This day therefore as we are celebrating Easter is the key to the overall victory that God brings to us and through us. In this time we can see through the Gospels as Jesus spent those days dead to the world, so the false images and false concepts of Him were broken, so like in Luke 24 He can be revealed as He truly is.
Let us embrace the correction, humiliation, the emptying of self, because as we obey and walk it out we are then qualified to receive His resurrection power.
Maranatha!
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