Blog: March 2016

The resurrection is God’s exclamation point that at the end of his Son’s death sentence.  It says, “Enough.” On the cross, as Jesus breathed his last, he uttered, “It is finished.”  So too, the resurrection was the Heavenly Father looking upon his Son’s suffering to bear the guilt of sinners and saying, “It is finished.”  Divine justice had been satisfied. If Jesus were still in the grave, we might claim he’d died in our place, but we could never be sure that our guilt had been fully cleared—that the punish­ment had matched the crime and ...

“Stricken, Smitten, and Afflicted” - Thomas Kelly, 1804 Stricken, smitten, and afflicted, see him dying on the tree! 'Tis the Christ by man rejected; yes, my soul, ’tis he, ’tis he! 'Tis the long expected Prophet, David’s son, yet David’s Lord; By his Son God now has spoken: ’tis the true and faithful Word. Tell me ye who hear him groaning, was there ever grief like his? Friends thro’ fear his cause disowning, foes insulting his distress; Many hands were raised to wound him, none would interpose to save; But the deepest stroke that ...

Often in life a very exquisite and precious reality is hidden behind a common and inconspicuous façade. A luminous pearl hidden inside a soft mollusk.  A smooth pecan hidden inside a tough shell.  A human life hidden inside a mother’s swollen belly.  And so it is with the church.  Here we gather this morning.  We are so ordinary.  So very ordinary.   Nothing seemingly extraordinary about us.  But if we look deeper, we find more.  So, so much more. We find a battle.  A battle that has been waged since the beginning of time.  A battle for ...