The Central Moment

Rumors? Wishful thinking? Hysterics? While their gathering was buzzing about it all, Jesus, Himself, doused the doubting, and ended the confusion: While they were saying all this, Jesus appeared to them and said, “Peace be with you.”

Pastor Jim has encouraged us to doubt our doubts. While everyone around him struggled to believe the reports of an empty tomb, Peter, the 3-time denier of Jesus, made a decision to resist the doubting and see for himself. It paid off!

In 1980, country music singer, Johnny Lee, had a # 1 hit song for weeks. Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places was about a fruitless search for true love, finally satisfied, as expressed in his lyrics "...You came knockin' on my heart's door, you're everything I've been looking for..." Lee’s lyrics don’t come close to the poignant question of Heavenly messengers in a Jerusalem cemetery 2,000 years ago!

Sunday morning, a group of faithful, but devastated women, arrived very early in the morning at the burial site of Jesus. Adding insult to injury, after the devastating experience on Golgotha, the tomb was open and empty. Evidently, they missed His earlier message...

Tough weekend for you? Can’t wait ‘til it’s over? A destiny-changing weekend took place some 2,000 years ago, starting on Friday in deep sorrow, and ending with a spectacular Sunday discovery of recovery. Wait for it! It’s amazing, and the foundation of all our hope for eternity!

Between Christ’s death and resurrection was his burial. Is that important? Could it be for us the dividing line between the old and the new, life as we have known it and life as it could be -- and life that protects us now?

Jesus did for us what we couldn’t do for ourselves. All through Biblical history God has been seeking for a people where he could sanctuary his presence. People kept failing God but when Jesus died the way to God’s presence was finally and forever opened up.

It was our sin that put Jesus on the cross. But Jesus said to not weep for him but to weep for ourselves. We are lost without him. Tears of repentance are a powerful pathway to life.

We may be full of good intentions, but there is a spiritual battle against us. Satan wants to take us apart, but Jesus can restore us and recommission us.

The bottom line in any of our lives is whether we will go God’s way or our way. We can’t have it both ways. Jesus drew the line -- at the cost of great personal pain he gave himself to God’s will, and the world changed.