Easter Weekend

See you tonight?

Beloved Family of Grace,

Here is some vital information as we approach the joy of the Easter weekend together. . .

Good Friday Service, Friday at 7:00 PM
Hope you can join us for this worshipful communion service. It will be a reflective and meaningful way to cap off your work week and prepare your heart for Resurrection Sunday. Childcare will be provided for the little ones to age five, so this will be a sweet time to worship as a family. Invite a friend!

As we've done the last couple of years, communion at this service will be 'come up' style, with four stations situated throughout the Sanctuary. During a time of extended worship, you will be invited to approach the tables when you are ready in small groups of friends and family. Elders and ministry staff will pray for you and administer the elements. When you are finished, return to your seats. If you are unable to come to the table, or would prefer not to, you can raise your hand and servers will come to you. While this approach is a bit more messy, we feel that a change in our routine is helpful and hopefully spiritually meaningful in a fresh way.

Easter Sunday Services at 8:00, 9:30 and 11:00 AM
My Easter message is entitled Resurrection Reverberations and will center, not on reasons to believe the resurrection of Jesus, but results of the resurrection. As usual, I will do my best to get into the heads and hearts of both those who believe and those who do not yet believe. I always try to weave in a bit of apologetics on Easter to illustrate that belief in the resurrection of Jesus is not a blind leap in the dark, but reasonable and rational. I very much appreciate your prayers as I prepare my own heart and the message for Sunday. Pray expectantly that Christ will be exalted, that the Gospel will be clear and compelling, that hearts will be moved and souls will be saved!

I encourage you to invite friends, family, neighbors, co-workers and classmates to join us for Easter Services. Offer to pick them up or meet them at the door. Invite them over for Easter brunch or lunch after services. Easter is one of the times of the year, when folks are open and often desire to attend church. Go for it! Be bold and winsome. Let them feel your love and care for them as you invite them to worship. We've attached a PDF version of our Invite Card, so that you might invite folks even by email. You might also print it out and hand it to a friend.

Finally, remember that Easter Sunday is a Family Worship Day which means you are encouraged to worship as a family. We will have Sunday School for nursery through kindergarten. None of our Adult Bible Fellowships will be meeting. The 9:30 service will be jam packed, so if you are able, please serve others and make room for visitors by attending the 8:00 or 11:00 service.

Praise the Lord. He is risen!

I look forward to worshipping with you. See you Friday.

Because of and for the Gospel . . . Pastor Tim

is sin dead or are we dead in sin?

Last Lord's Day we looked at "Who needs to be justified?" from Galatians 2:16. (If you missed it, catch up here!)

As I was standing at Splash today waiting for my seafood salad to come up, I glanced down at the pile of newspapers on the trash can and noticed this article in this morning's USA Today . . . Has the notion of sin been lost?

Seemed to relate to last week's message and upcoming Easter. Worth the read. Several pastors/theologians that I read, including Michael Horton, Al Mohler, Tim Keller and Mark Driscoll, are quoted in the article.

(In fact, the article contains a great, pretty right on quote by the pope. But in substituting the sacraments, is he not just exchanging one set of merits for another, one works based approach for another?)

Here's some tidbits that jumped out at me. . .

"People are quick to toe the line on traditional thinking" that there is sin "but interpret that reality in a very personal and self-congratulatory manner" — I have to do what's best for me; I am not as sinful as most.

Indeed, 65% of U.S. adults say they will go to heaven, and only 0.05% believe they'll go to hell, according to a 2003 Barna telephone survey of 1,024 adults . . .

"We find a comfort zone of morality, a kind of middle-class middle level where we think we are doing well. We cut the grass. We don't double-park. But we ignore the larger issues of sin.

"Instead of violating the law of the Creator, it becomes more a matter of etiquette. … We want our kids to play well in the sandbox and know their place in line. We want people to do things decently and in order. But it's etiquette of morality without the ethics. The end result is that when we do things we wish people wouldn't do, there's no sense of guilt or shame."

What this means is that, by and large, we are slipping into moralism: "I'm not that bad. God isn't that holy and just. I can please Him. He loves me. I obey, therefore I'm accepted." The primary issue is not that we are not as good any more because we are relativizing sin . . . the issue is in relativizing sin, we will not see our need for Christ.

If we don't sin, then we don't need a Savior. If we don't see ourselves as headed for God's courtroom, then why would we flee to Christ, our Substitute? Christ died for no reason. Easter is meaningless.

Thoughts?

Holy Week Contemplation #2

The resurrection proclamation
could not have been maintained
in Jerusalem for a single day, for a single hour,
if the emptiness of the tomb
had not been established as a fact.
--Paul Althus--


The cross is the victory,
the resurrection is the triumph . . .
The resurrection is the public display of the victory,
the triumph of the crucified one.
--Eric Sauer--