Sunday, April 4, 2010

Easter Thought

Have you ever thought about how many hours you have spent in your life-time sitting in a church worship service? Add to that the number of hours you may have spent in a Bible class, and reading your Bible, and praying. Then add to that all the hours you have spent in ministry or ministering to others. It’s probably a lot of hours, a large portion of your life.

What would you think if I told you that you’ve wasted your time, that all of those hours meant nothing… unless, at the core of your faith there is a belief in one important event.
That one event, that has special significance on Easter Sunday, is the resurrection of Jesus.
The apostle Paul said this one event was at the core of his preaching. In 1 Cor 15 he states:
"For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures…."
Paul goes on to say to his listeners, some of which, doubted the resurrection.
"If Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith …. and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins."
I want you to use your imagination for a minute. Pretend that your faith in Christ is like a house. Each little fact or bit of knowledge that you have about Jesus is like a brick, or a board, or a shingle. As you look at your house of faith imagine that the little bricks and boards and shingles are laid out in such a way that the most important are at the bottom and the least important are at the top. Now, using your imagination I want you to rip the roof off your house. Strip off all of those shingles that represent some of the least important facts you believe about Jesus, and those shingles are probably different for each one of us this morning.
Again, using your imagination, I want you to get a hammer and start knocking out the boards and bricks of the upper stories of your house. If you have been a Christian a while this may take a long time because your house may have many floors. You may even need a large sledge hammer, but I want you to keep knocking away all the support beams and load bearing walls that allow your house to stand.
Keep at it until all of those boards and bricks and shingles are just a pile of rubble. Now, haul all of that rubble away, so that all that is left is the foundation of where your house used to be.
Finally, I want you to look carefully at the foundation of your house. I want you to examine it and realize that it represents the most important thing that you believe and know about Christ. My hope is that as you look at your foundation, and I look at mine, we are united in what we see. The same thing Paul saw when he looked at his.
That Christ died for our sins
That he was buried
That he was raised on the third day

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