I want to just pick up a second thought, and then we'll go on and look at Jesus' resurrected body. The Bible tells us that we will have a resurrected body, like Jesus. It'll be like His. That's what God's design is for you!
Philippians 3:20-21 - “Our citizenship is in heaven, from which we eagerly wait for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body, that it may be conformed to His glorious body, according to the working, by which He is able to subdue everything to Himself.”
Notice He says: “He will transform our body”, so whatever body you've got now, God's not going to get rid of it. He's going to transform it, and that's that same word, to change the form totally, a complete transformation of our body. What is He transforming it to become? That we might be conformed, or become like, something that's not there yet.
He says: it'll be exactly like Jesus' body. The only thing that will differ is: not the resurrection, but the glory that you carry; but everyone's body will be transformed to become like His body. We'll come back to look at what He could do - this is what really makes this so interesting to study.
There will be a transformation; there'll be a demonstration of God's power, that totally transforms our physical body - spiritually transforms it. Our physical body, it will become like Jesus' resurrected body - totally changed! What was it like? What was His body like? I'm going to go through and give you a range of things that Jesus' body was like.
Now just think about this; try to think ahead, what it would mean for you, if you entered into resurrection. Also think what it would mean to you, if everyone around the table, except you, entered into it. There would be great joy if you entered in; and there would be considerable grief and loss to realise that you are part of a body of people, and God called you to become something, but you didn't enter it, at that time. So here's some things about the body of Jesus... What was Jesus' body like?
#1) He had a physical body with flesh and bones. He actually had a physical body; so you could go out and touch Him, and you could feel the bones, you could feel the flesh. If you reach out and touch someone now - His body felt like that. It was that real.
In John 20:27, He said to Thomas: “Reach your finger in, and look at My hands; and reach your hand, and put it into My side. Don't be unbelieving, but believing.”
In Luke 24:39 - “Behold My hands, here's My feet, here's Me, handle Me”. He said: ‘touch Me’. See, touch Me and see - a spirit doesn't have flesh and bones. He said: I'm not a spirit; actually, this is what a resurrection body looks like. So they could see His body, and touch His body, but it was a resurrected body.
#2) The second thing about Him is: the disciples could touch Him, and they also ate with Him, and drank with Him. In other words, in your resurrected body, people can touch you, and you feel like the real deal. You feel like a real person. They can feel the bones, they can sense there's a real person there. You can also eat!
John 21:12-13 - “Jesus said to them, come and eat breakfast, for none of the disciples dared ask Him, who are You? - knowing it was the Lord. And Jesus came and took bread and gave it to them, and likewise the fish”. So they had breakfast on the beach, which Jesus prepared for them.
Acts 10:40-41 - “Jesus, God raised Him up on the third day and showed Him openly, not to all the people, but to witnesses that God chose”.
So God selected the people He would reveal Jesus to; and even to us who ate and drank with Him after He arose from the dead. He's saying now: we sat down, we had a meal. We could touch Him. We could eat with Him. He's as real as you are. He's not some ghostly apparition. It's not some weird spirit thing. It's a real, real physical person in front of him.
#3) Here's the third thing... There's something different about His body. It looked like, you know, it's just another person - except: Jesus could materialise, and dematerialise His body; His physical body. Oh man, when I read through these things, they read like something out of a superhero story! They really do! You read some of the things He could do, and you think: oh my goodness, no wonder all these movies are coming up, all this superhero stuff. They're preparing us for great things, but this is so much better!
He was no longer controlled by time or space, or physical world laws or any limitations. Nothing - He's not constrained by the physical world, because He now has a spiritual body that supersedes the physical world. That means: you could enter the natural world, and then leave it, and that's just so crazy! He could supernaturally move from one location to another. He could be here now, and then suddenly, He's in another place, another country. It's interesting to read the descriptions of all of that, and Luke described His sudden disappearance. You've just got to try and put yourself in the story, and think: what would I feel, if suddenly someone just disappeared; they were there, sitting at the table, then they were gone, like that. That is so staggering!