Listen up, little ones
Listen for the word victory.
Reading
1 Corinthians 15:50-58—Victory Through Our Lord Jesus Christ
Optional Reading
Job 19:23-29
Keys for kids
- Except those alive when Jesus returns, we will all die.
- If we believe in Jesus we don’t have to fear death.
- We have victory over death in Jesus.
Questions
- How do we know that our Redeemer lives?
- What happens when we die?
- How should we now live? Why?
Notes
I read these words as my wife Nancy’s brother, Richard, breathed his last and died. In many ways I read them for us—the many family members gathered around his bed. We wanted hope in the face of death. Job had such hope. Though he was not yet on his death bed in the book of Job, he at times wished he could die. Yet he had a supernatural confidence that was two-fold. First, he knew that his Redeemer lived. Second, he knew that he would see God even after he died.
We can have even greater confidence than Job. Earlier in this chapter, Paul explains how much depends on us having a living Redeemer—one who actually was raised from the dead. And he names eyewitnesses of the risen Jesus, many of whom (Paul himself included) his readers could have gone and spoken to. Without Jesus’s resurrection, we are to be pitied more than anyone else, our gospel and our faith is worthless.
Timothy Keller has written if Jesus rose from the dead, then you have to accept all that he said; if he didn’t rise from the dead, then why worry about any of what he said?
But because our Redeemer lives, we who believe in him have victory through him—victory until death, and victory over death.
Swedish Method questions
Praise
Psalm 16d, 119s
Prayer
- Ask God to make you victoriously steadfast in Jesus.
- Give thanks for something from last Lord’s Day’s sermons.
- Pray for a member of our church, for your family, and for a non-Christian friend/family member.