Never in our lifetime has something so profoundly affected the entire world like the COVID-19 pandemic. Many questions of faith have been raised over the last few weeks including 1) Is God mad at the world? 2) Are we being punished for the sins of the world? 3) Is this pandemic a sign of the end-times? 4) How should we, as believers, respond to the virus?

In this special presentation of Touching Lives with Dr. James Merritt, hard questions will be asked and answered using God's Word as the source. Tune in online on Touching Lives TV to watch this special broadcast.

You will discover there are two situations you cannot avoid. It is a situation that befalls all of us no matter how good a person you may be, no matter how hard you try, and no matter how nice you are you will be in one of these two situations. You will need to be forgiving or you will need to be forgiven. One of the reasons why the Bible is so valuable is because it gives us real life examples and shows people who faced real hurt and heartache just like we do. Rather than becoming victims they became victors. Rather than sinking into the quicksand of bitterness, they were able to get to the oasis of forgiveness. The poster child for forgiveness is a man named Joseph. How did Joseph keep from being burned by the fire of bitterness? Avoid drowning in a sea of bitterness? Becoming immune to the poison of bitterness? It is because he refused to do four things that even though stated negatively will bring a positive result for you if you will refuse to do them as well.

After He lived a perfect, sinless life, Jesus Christ died on a cross. He claimed to have died for the sins of the world, but technically anybody can make that claim. If He did die for the sins of the world, His death was unlike any other death. The clincher, though, is the belief that He rose from the dead. If those three things are true regarding His life, death, and resurrection, then Jesus, in fact, did live an unequaled life, died a unique death, and experienced an unmatched resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus Christ makes Him different and superior to every other person who has ever lived. Everyone in history has died and stayed dead except Jesus. Every other religion of the world can point to a founder and then point to a grave or a tomb, but only Christians can point to an empty tomb and say, “Our founder is alive!”

Last week, we talked about how Jesus lived an unequalled life. He is the only person who ever claimed to be without any sin, and who never had anyone convict Him of sin. Today, we are going to look at His death, because He died a unique death. Death itself is not unique, rather it is universal and inevitable. Even the way Jesus died by crucifixion was not unique. Thirty thousand Jews were crucified, and He was just one of them. But why He died and what His death accomplished was very unique. The reason He died and the result of His death is unlike any other death in the history of the world, past, present, or future. So, as we are answering the question, “Why should everyone only look to Jesus to have a relationship with God?”, we must understand that it is not just the way He lived, but also why He died that helps answer that question.

How often have you ever slipped up, made a mistake, blew it, and said, “Well nobody’s perfect!” Well, that statement technically isn’t true. There is one person who was perfect in every area of life. From His thoughts, to His words, to His deeds, He was absolutely and pristinely perfect. However, if Jesus wasn’t perfect, if He wasn’t sinless and instead sinned like everyone else, then several things would be true of Him. If this He wasn’t perfect, then Jesus was not who He said He was. If He was not who He said He was, then He could not have done what He said He did. If He didn’t do what He said He did, then there is no hope for anyone being delivered from sin and having a relationship with God. If Jesus sinned, He couldn’t be the Savior. And if He is not the Savior, we cannot have salvation.

There is one particular story about Jesus that is so remarkable, first of all, because it even made it into the Gospels, and also because it didn’t involve a miracle. The reason the story is so phenomenal is because of what Jesus saw and what Jesus said. What Jesus said was so remarkable, because what Jesus saw was so refreshing. He saw the greatest example of generosity anyone has ever witnessed. A generous person is the epitome of what generosity is all about. It really is amazing that this story makes it into the Bible, because this woman that is talked about does something that to the ordinary eye was so small, so unimportant, so inconsequential, that nobody would have given it a second thought except Jesus. In fact, only one person left that day talking about it, but because Jesus did talk about it, we are still talking about it two-thousand years later.

In this portion of our study on character, we are going to talk about one of the greatest values and virtues you must have if you are going to be a person of character and that is perseverance. You will never read biographies of great quitters. You will never see a long line of followers behind great quitters. You will never see trophies and awards given to great quitters. There is a man in the Bible who is in the Bible and has a book about him in the Bible, because of one thing – his perseverance. He ran the stop sign and didn’t quit, but he had every reason to. His name was Job. No man in the Bible, outside of Jesus Christ himself, suffered more than Job. It would even be fair to say that outside of Jesus, no man suffered more unjustly and more unfairly than Job. If Job had responded the way the vast majority of people would and do this book would have never been written and Job’s name would have never been known. We learn a great character trait called “perseverance” from this man who teaches us that tough times never last, but tough people do.

As we continue this series on character, we are going to deal with a character trait that I believe is lacking more and more in every part of our society. It is why we refuse to listen to each other, refuse to face and solve our biggest problems, refuse to face up to reality, and refuse to call things the way they are and that is courage. The type of courage I am talking about is moral courage. It is the kind of courage that exposes you to ridicule, criticism, ostracism, and the judgmental wrath of others. It is the kind of courage described in the story that has been preserved for more than twenty-five hundred years, and that is the story of Esther.

When you are authentic, you are the real deal. You aren’t one thing in public and another thing in private. You aren’t one thing with this group and another thing with that group. To be authentic, you never put politics above people and popularity above principle. A conversation between Paul and Peter gives us a great example of what it looks like to be authentic. Paul reminds Peter that a big part of character is authenticity. It is being the same person in public as you are in private. You being you regardless of where you might be or who you might be with. Paul shows us what authenticity looks like, how authenticity acts, and why authenticity is important.

In this message, we are going to talk about a trait that is becoming more and more rare but is still desperately needed, and that is loyalty. There is a book in the Bible that has as its main character, a woman named Ruth, neither of which we would have heard of had it not been for her incredible loyalty. Ruth is one of the greatest love stories not just in the Bible, but in history. Movies, novels, and books have been written about this beautiful story, but there would have been no love story had it not been for Ruth’s loyalty. It is a story that will take you from the agony of defeat to the thrill of victory. It’s a story that will make you appreciate your family, your friends, your future, and your faith more than ever.