When we look at the Easter story, we encounter a story which is unique in human history. We encounter a situation which we cannot put among the stories of our everyday life. We encounter the supernatural presence of God and there is no good way for us to deal with it without facing a crisis in our understanding of the Universe and how everything works. Let me see if I can make this a bit clearer.
In our normal, everyday life, we experience two types of stories. The normal everyday life that we have is filled with the stories of the regular, everyday world. This is a world where we get up in the morning, drink some coffee, tea, milk, or juice, eat something for breakfast, go to work or school, stay there a while, come home, and after being entertained for a while or working for a while, we go to bed. The next day is much the same.
In this everyday world, we recognize that things have beginnings and endings.
- Chickens lay eggs, the eggs hatch, and new chickens walk around. The old chickens get old and die or are killed.
- Our cars come off an assembly line, go to a dealership, we buy them, drive them for a while, then we sell them and eventually they are wrecked or fall apart, crushed, and melted down by the junkyard and become the raw material for a new car.
- Children are born, grow up, have more children, grandchildren are born, the grandparents grow older, become feeble, and die.
- Plants grow from seeds, sprout, grow, and eventually die.
We know all of this. Every year, we see life around us beginning, growing, reproducing, dying, and then becoming dead.
And while the world goes on, certain physical laws work their actions on the world. We let go of a plate and gravity pulls it to the ground. We never see it suddenly fly up from the ground.
We run to the end of the dock on the lake and take a step onto the water and we suddenly get wet as we sink into the water. We go down.
And in ordinary life, many things change slowly or in only one way. We put grape juice in a jug and come back in an hour and it’s still grape juice. We leave it there for a couple of months and taste it and it’s wine. We leave it there another year and it’s vinegar. We never see vinegar turn into wine.
We put a dead body in the ground and it stays dead. In fact, it gradually turns to dust.
That’s everyday life. Many people witness these events and will testify to what happened. Evidence can be found to back up what the people say.
Then there is the other type of story, the make-believe. There are fairy stories, there are comic books, there is fantasy fiction.
In those stories, anything can happen. Dragons fly and breath fire. Fairy godmothers turn pumpkins into carriages and back again. Little men spin gold from wheat. Men fly “faster than a speeding bullet”. Other men can climb like spiders while still others turn into monstrous hulks who can destroy buildings with a single blow when they lose control. And elves live forever while a kiss from a prince can wake a princess from a deathlike coma.
That’s make-believe – that’s fiction – That’s made-up stories. While a single delusional person might see a dragon flying through the air, groups of people don’t. And they don’t hold onto their testimony when threatened, because they know that the story isn’t real, the facts aren’t real, and there is no other evidence that a dragon ever existed, there are no scorch marks on your house.
And then, we are faced with the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
On the one hand, it seems simple enough. A man claims to be God, teaches wonderful, glorious new ideas that will change the world for the better, is arrested, terribly beaten and whipped, and then executed on a Friday afternoon in a brutal manner for the crime of claiming to be God. And there are many witnesses to this public execution, including a soldier who stuck him in his liver, heart and lungs through his side with his spear and water and blood came pouring out because this soldier wanted to make sure that the man was dead before sundown, because his own life depended on the death of the man on the cross. And so the story ends like all ordinary stories end.
Except this story doesn’t end. Because on Sunday morning that same man who was dead walks out of his tomb and begins to meet with people in various places, and even walks along with a couple of men five miles outside of town and they don’t even recognize him until they decide to get some supper together. Furthermore, eventually the eyewitnesses to these events eventually number over 500 people. Jesus Christ came back from the dead and many people witnessed it! “He is alive,” they said. “The tomb is empty,” they discovered.
And so what are we to make of this unique event?
You see, one the one hand, we are told that this was an everyday event that happened, that this is historical, that this actually is a real event that happened on a Sunday morning in the spring of the Year 33 AD in Jerusalem in the eastern part of the Roman Empire.
On the other hand, whenever we hear the stories told about this man, that he turned water into wine in just a few minutes, that he walked on the surface of a lake, that he healed hundreds of sick people just by touch or prayer, that he cured people of blindness, of deafness, that he repaired lame legs, that he restored a withered hand, that he stopped demon possession or at the very least epilepsy without any pills or lasers or MRI machines or X-rays – and that he brought back from the dead a man named Lazarus who had been put into the grave four days earlier….and that he himself even arose from the dead….then we think that this must be in the land of make-believe, the land of fairy tales, the world of comic books, of fantasy fiction. The story of Jesus Christ is said to be real-life and yet reads like fantasy – and so we are confused.
But millions of people throughout history have declared. “No, we understand what is fantasy and what is real, and because of our experiences, we know that Jesus was truly brought back alive from a real death.” And so what do we make of this, this event that doesn’t fit into either category, neither everyday life nor fantasy-make-believe stories?
Perhaps we have to look at the evidence. For that would be the fair way, the just way, the open-minded way. If we simply dismiss the possibility out of hand, if we simply state that a miracle like this cannot occur, then we have simply closed our mind up front and said, “no, miracles don’t exist”, sort of like the Europeans of the early 1800’s who said, “All swans are white”, it was part of the description of swans, it was the way the world worked, and then one day some men in Australia sent the Royal Society in London a black swan.
Looking at the evidence of the Resurrection was important for me, for I was trained as an astrophysicist, a mathematician, an engineer, and a businessman. I was a very skeptical atheist in my teens and twenties and did not become a Christian until I was in my thirties. So if you are that way, too, you may appreciate the next few minutes.
So let’s look at some of the evidence for the Resurrection. You may already believe, but you can tell your unbelieving friends what this evidence is, perhaps you can help them see what you already know, that black swans do exist and Jesus Christ did rise from a real death.
Our evidence for Jesus’ life is based mostly upon four written accounts we call the Gospels, which were written by four men in the middle years of the first century AD. There was Matthew, an eyewitness who claimed to be a disciple. There was Mark, an eyewitness who was a teenager during the events and hung around the leading disciples Peter and Paul for many years. Luke was a Greek-speaking Jewish physician who interviewed several of the disciples and Jesus’ Mother to fill in the blanks and provide a comprehensive account of the events of Jesus’ life. Luke also traveled extensively with Paul. And John was an eyewitness who wrote a bit later, around the year 80, and he claimed to be Jesus’ best friend, a man Jesus loved like a brother.
We also have evidence from letters written by Peter the leading disciple, by a man named James who may have been a brother of Jesus or a disciple – the name was common and both men are mentioned in the stories. We also have a short letter by a disciple named Jude. And we have a considerable set of letters from Paul to various churches and people. Paul actually persecuted the early church before his conversion, but he later spread the good news about Jesus throughout what is now modern Turkey, Greece, Malta, and Rome, and Paul had his own dramatic encounter with Jesus. We also have an unknown author, who was possibly named Apollos or Barnabas, and who wrote a long letter to the Hebrews which strongly implies that the author was a close member of the group of witnesses.
About the year 150, these different letters and eyewitness accounts were gathered together to form what became known as the New Testament. Plus, we also have several other documents, dating as early as 70, which tell stories about Jesus and the early Christians.
A typical question that comes up is whether or not today’s Bible can be relied upon. Here is the evidence:
First of all, writing in those days was tremendously more expensive because of the materials and the time involved that it is today. The equivalent cost of a book the size of the Bible would have been about a hundred thousand dollars because of the copyist’s time, and the cost of the parchment and the ink. These things weren’t mass-produced. So when people wrote down a factual account, they wasted no words, they wasted no space. And the Gospel books read like factual accounts. If you want to read a make-believe story from the day, they exist, but those stories tended to be poetry, and they had a distinct style which is very different from the Gospel stories. So the literary evidence indicates that the Gospel story is true.
The four gospels are the same, yet different in details – just the way you would expect if several people who knew each other independently wrote down what happened one day. Plus, in every situation where we can verify a factual detail against other solid evidence, the Bible is accurate.
We couldn’t always say this. In the first half of the 20th century, there were many places where Bible details did not fit what we knew from history and archeology. For example, Pontius Pilate, the man who ordered the death of Jesus, was unknown outside of the Bible. Nazareth could not be found outside the Bible. The Pool of Siloam in Jerusalem, where a particular miracle occurs, could not be found. At one point it says that Jesus took such and such a route from one place to another, and that route did not exist. Yet in the 20th century, archeologists found a dedication plaque on an amphitheatre in Palestine that said, in essence, “This amphitheatre given to the people by Pontius Pilate, Governor of Palestine,“ and the year was within 3 years of Jesus’ execution. Nazareth was found around 1960 and you can take a tour of it today. After aerial mapping became common in the 30’s and 40’s, that missing road was found from the air. And about 10-12 years ago, the Pool of Siloam was found in Jerusalem by an Israeli archeologist. Today, we can say that where verifiable facts are given in the New Testament, we have not found anything to be false. So the archeological evidence supports the New Testament accounts as being exceptionally accurate.
Psychologists have looked at the Gospel accounts and the Book of Acts, which picks up the story after the Resurrection. They have noted a couple of critical points. On Friday, as you might expect after the arrest of their leader, the disciples are running for the hills, like mice disappearing into the woodwork. Even Sunday, we have two of them sadly walking toward Galilee on the road to Emmaus. Others are hiding out in a house with the doors locked. Peter, the rough fishing boat captain, has denied Jesus three times, once with much cursing and swearing.
Then, by the Festival of Pentecost, 50 days later, there is a Jesus movement with 120 people gathered together. The ten remaining disciples plus a new one are standing behind Peter as he boldly preaches to the Jerusalem crowd at the top of his voice that Jesus was killed by the people of Jerusalem and now He is alive once again, proving that He was indeed God’s Messiah! Peter was so loud and bold that over 3000 people heard the message, were baptized that day and became members of the newborn church.
The psychologists tell us this: Something very significant happened between Friday and Pentecost. Of course, the Gospels and the Book of Acts tells us what happened: Jesus was seen alive, taught to the disciples, ate with them, allowed them to touch his body and poke his wounds. Jesus had come back from death and that changed everything!
Now those psychologists who also understand history tells us a few things. The Jesus story has several elements in it that would have made it difficult for men of the first century to follow and believe. If a made-up story, it had certain elements that made it more unbelievable to the primary audience. You see, Jesus is Jewish, but Jesus isn’t married. Good rabbis, Jewish teachers, were supposed to be married, preferably before they turned twenty. Plus, he should come from a line of rabbis and be able to point to different rabbis as his teachers. Yet, he appears mostly self-taught, with no academic pedigree.
Another aspect is that the women are the first to testify that they have seen Jesus. Women’s testimony wasn’t even allowed in court in first century Jerusalem. They would have been dismissed out of hand. Yet they are in the story – why? Is it because they were indeed the first to see Jesus?
Another thing the psychologists tell us is that these men, these disciples believed and their writings show that they were sane men. Read the writings of the New Testament and you will be amazed at the beauty and clarity of the writing, especially if you read a good modern translation such as the New International Version. They are not the writings of madmen.
And why do we know the disciples believed? History, you see, records that all of the disciples except John died violent deaths for the specific reason that they maintained that Jesus had died and been resurrected. In most, if not all cases, the men had the chance to say they had lied, that they had made it up, that they were mistaken, but instead they only proclaimed the resurrection louder until they died. Peter was proud to be crucified upside down. If this were a conspiracy, these men were extraordinary, for those of us who saw that a threat of jail time broke down the Watergate conspiracy know that a secret cannot be held by more than a couple of people – let alone twelve or more.
Other sources of evidence are the manuscripts and documents themselves. As paper and parchment wear out and ink fades, ancient documents need to be recopied. And so there are specialized historians who focus upon looking at ancient documents and determining when and where they were copied, and how accurately they were copied by comparing them to other copies of the same documents.
Historians accept that Julius Caesar wrote a book known as The Gallic Wars around the year 60 BC, and that the text we have is essentially a copy of the original. Why? They have found 9 and a half manuscript copies, the oldest of which dates from around the year 850 – about 900 years after the original. Historians also agree that Tacitus’s History of the Romans is a valid history. It dates from around the year 100, and we have a single manuscript copy that comes from several hundred years after Tacitus wrote the original copy.
The great archeologist Heinrich Schliemann, used a copy of the ancient Greek story The Illiad to find ancient Troy. The Illiad was first written down at least four hundred years after the Trojan War, and there are about seven hundred partial manuscript copies of this great ancient manuscript, the oldest of which dated from about the year 1, or roughly 1200 years after the Trojan War and the fall of Troy. The oldest complete manuscript dates from around the year 1000 AD - 2200 years after the events.
Most of these dates are based upon exactly how the letters were written, because handwriting styles changed by region and time every 30 years or so. You’ve seen this – your handwriting style is different from your grandparents’ and grandchildren’ style of writing.
How does this compare to the New Testament?
We have two nearly complete manuscript Bibles that date from about the year 250 AD – a couple of hundred years after the Resurrection. We have copies of most New Testament documents that date from around the year 150, but we have a fragment of John’s Gospel that dates from the year 110, was written in western Turkey, and was deposited with several scrolls in a bundle in southern Egypt and found in the 1920’s – That fragment was written within the lifetime of young people who were alive at the time of Jesus’ death and Resurrection. Plus, we have copies of Old Testament documents that are several hundred years older, found in the Dead Sea Scrolls stash that was discovered in 1947.
But one fragment isn’t enough, is it? But as we go forward a few hundred years or so in time, still much closer to the original documents than those historical documents that world histories are written off of, we find that there are over 5000 manuscript copies of the New Testament and over 20,000 quotations in sermons and books and other documents from the New Testament. If we just used the quotations, we could reassemble the entire Bible! And some people still question the authenticity of the biblical text despite the massive amounts of copies! Yet we accept what Julius Caesar wrote on the basis of 9 and a half copies and we accept Tacitus on the basis of one copy.
And so, we are very, very certain that the Gospel stories represent the stories that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote down about 30 years or so after Jesus died and was resurrected.
And so what questions remain?
There are a few alternative stories that have been put forth. Some people say that Jesus didn’t actually die – he just fainted from blood loss and then recovered in the coolness of the tomb. But the centurion who stabbed him knew he was dead, and the women who brought expensive spices to the tomb to clean and embalm his body thought he was dead.
What 1st century medical technique did Jesus use to replenish the blood loss, to clean himself, to repair his liver, lung and heart wounded from the spear stab? And then again, how did he move that stone, which weighed at least a ton and was rolled down into a trench in front of the tomb, how did Jesus roll that stone away and then walk 5 miles to Emmaus, looking healthy and trim to the men he was walking with? And remember, he showed other disciples his scars in his hands – and his side – that evening.
Some people say the disciples imagined it all. But there were eleven separate situations described, with different people each time in different places. Once there were over 500 people. Did they all imagine this? And what of the people sitting around you who claim Jesus has stepped into their lives? Did they all imagine it, too, as well as the millions throughout history, including such people as Lincoln, Washington, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, JR, John Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Tony Blair, Isaac Newton, Gregor Mendel, and hundreds of writers, poets, scientists.? Did they all imagine this, too? But if they imagined this, then when the Jesus movement started to upset things, why didn’t the Jewish leaders point to the body?
Some people say the disciples stole the body, but remember that those men died claiming Jesus was alive, they died because they continued to claim Jesus was alive.
Some people say the Romans or the Jews stole the body, but then why didn’t they shut up the disciples a month or so later when they started proclaiming Jesus alive by showing them the body?
Some people say Jesus never claimed to be God, but the people around him, the crowds started to stone him for blasphemy several times and he was executed for the crime of claiming to be God. Besides in the Gospel of John seven times he says “I Am”, and they pick up stones to kill him because he is using the holy name of God, claiming eternal existence. He also says very clearly in John 10:30 “I and the Father are one.” Similar statements can be found in the other Gospels.
Some people say Jesus was a very good liar or a nut when he claimed to be God, but his disciples believed him and crowds followed him, and besides that, his teachings are not the teachings of a liar or a nut, but they are more sound than any other teaching in history and more wise than anything else you’ll find. And besides, He died and came back from the dead.
And so, my friends, we are forced to conclude that there is something very special about the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection, that it is unique. The Resurrection is neither an everyday event, not something that happens every day around the world, something common that we’ve just been too busy to notice….And the Resurrection is not make-believe, a fairy tale, a fantasy fiction story.
It is a once-in-history event that really happened. And so we need to understand the meaning of this once-in-history even that really happened.
Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, God Himself walking upon this earth. And His disciples and all serious Christian theologians agreed – Jesus was God. He claimed to be God, and the proof was in the Resurrection. And because He was God, we need to listen to what else He said, because that has very important consequences for us.
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to Father except through me.” If you want to get to God, you have to go through Jesus.
He also said, “God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten son, that whoever believe in him shall not perish, but have every lasting life.” Begotten is an old word that means God fathered Jesus instead of adopted him. If you want to live forever, the pathway is clear – follow Jesus, bow down before Him and give Him His rightful place as the one person who is worthy for you to bow down before.
You see, Jesus’ death was a self-sacrifice. When God gave Moses the Law which told people what was right and what was wrong, God gave us the opportunity to get right with Him by paying fines, by sacrificing what was very valuable in those days – cattle, sheep, bulls, grain. Each crime against God, each sin had a penalty.
And when Jesus chose to go on that cross and stay there without using His God-powers to leave, He paid the penalty for all of our crimes, all of our sins against God and other people, because only He was both human and God. Because He was human, the death was not a sham, and because He was God, he was of ultimate value, and was the only thing in the Universe valuable enough to pay for all the crimes of all the people of all time.
You may have thought that God hates you and Jesus hates you and Christians hate you, but that is a lie. The reality is that God loved you so much He would do anything to have you reconciled to Him, anything that was in your best interest, He loved you so much He died on the cross for you. And for me. And for everyone in this room and everyone around the world who claims to follow Christ.
And now, there is a gift sitting in front of you. It is addressed just to you and it is a gift from Jesus Christ. You can be right with God, you can become an adopted son or daughter of God, You can live forever with God if you choose to pick up that gift and accept it. That’s all you have to do. There is no way you are too bad for God to accept because Jesus paid all of your fines and my fines. But you do need to accept that the gift is offered from God – what He wants in return is your choice to do your best to follow Jesus and His teachings.
If you are ready to pick up the gift of eternal life and adoption by God, then bow your head and pray this prayer.
Holy God,
I’ve done wrong in my life.
I’ve done many wrong things.
I don’t want to do them anymore.
Will you forgive me?
I want to follow your son and His teachings
I want to leave my old ways behind.
Please accept me and teach me as your child.
I pray this in the name of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Over the next few weeks, I going to be teaching more about what it means to be a Christian. Becoming a Christian, like you have just done today, is the first step. Here is where we actually learn how to follow Jesus and His teachings. That is why we come to church, that is why we have Sunday school classes and midweek classes, that is why we read our Bibles.
How does this compare to the New Testament?
We have two nearly complete manuscript Bibles that date from about the year 250 AD – a couple of hundred years after the Resurrection. We have copies of most New Testament documents that date from around the year 150, but we have a fragment of John’s Gospel that dates from the year 110, was written in western Turkey, and was deposited with several scrolls in a bundle in southern Egypt and found in the 1920’s – That fragment was written within the lifetime of young people who were alive at the time of Jesus’ death and Resurrection. Plus, we have copies of Old Testament documents that are several hundred years older, found in the Dead Sea Scrolls stash that was discovered in 1947.
But one fragment isn’t enough, is it? But as we go forward a few hundred years or so in time, still much closer to the original documents than those historical documents that world histories are written off of, we find that there are over 5000 manuscript copies of the New Testament and over 20,000 quotations in sermons and books and other documents from the New Testament. If we just used the quotations, we could reassemble the entire Bible! And some people still question the authenticity of the biblical text despite the massive amounts of copies! Yet we accept what Julius Caesar wrote on the basis of 9 and a half copies and we accept Tacitus on the basis of one copy.
And so, we are very, very certain that the Gospel stories represent the stories that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote down about 30 years or so after Jesus died and was resurrected.
And so what questions remain?
There are a few alternative stories that have been put forth. Some people say that Jesus didn’t actually die – he just fainted from blood loss and then recovered in the coolness of the tomb. But the centurion who stabbed him knew he was dead, and the women who brought expensive spices to the tomb to clean and embalm his body thought he was dead.
What 1st century medical technique did Jesus use to replenish the blood loss, to clean himself, to repair his liver, lung and heart wounded from the spear stab? And then again, how did he move that stone, which weighed at least a ton and was rolled down into a trench in front of the tomb, how did Jesus roll that stone away and then walk 5 miles to Emmaus, looking healthy and trim to the men he was walking with? And remember, he showed other disciples his scars in his hands – and his side – that evening.
Some people say the disciples imagined it all. But there were eleven separate situations described, with different people each time in different places. Once there were over 500 people. Did they all imagine this? And what of the people sitting around you who claim Jesus has stepped into their lives? Did they all imagine it, too, as well as the millions throughout history, including such people as Lincoln, Washington, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, JR, John Kennedy, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Tony Blair, Isaac Newton, Gregor Mendel, and hundreds of writers, poets, scientists.? Did they all imagine this, too? But if they imagined this, then when the Jesus movement started to upset things, why didn’t the Jewish leaders point to the body?
Some people say the disciples stole the body, but remember that those men died claiming Jesus was alive, they died because they continued to claim Jesus was alive.
Some people say the Romans or the Jews stole the body, but then why didn’t they shut up the disciples a month or so later when they started proclaiming Jesus alive by showing them the body?
Some people say Jesus never claimed to be God, but the people around him, the crowds started to stone him for blasphemy several times and he was executed for the crime of claiming to be God. Besides in the Gospel of John seven times he says “I Am”, and they pick up stones to kill him because he is using the holy name of God, claiming eternal existence. He also says very clearly in John 10:30 “I and the Father are one.” Similar statements can be found in the other Gospels.
Some people say Jesus was a very good liar or a nut when he claimed to be God, but his disciples believed him and crowds followed him, and besides that, his teachings are not the teachings of a liar or a nut, but they are more sound than any other teaching in history and more wise than anything else you’ll find. And besides, He died and came back from the dead.
And so, my friends, we are forced to conclude that there is something very special about the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection, that it is unique. The Resurrection is neither an everyday event, not something that happens every day around the world, something common that we’ve just been too busy to notice….And the Resurrection is not make-believe, a fairy tale, a fantasy fiction story.
It is a once-in-history event that really happened. And so we need to understand the meaning of this once-in-history even that really happened.
Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, God Himself walking upon this earth. And His disciples and all serious Christian theologians agreed – Jesus was God. He claimed to be God, and the proof was in the Resurrection. And because He was God, we need to listen to what else He said, because that has very important consequences for us.
Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to Father except through me.” If you want to get to God, you have to go through Jesus.
He also said, “God so loved the world, that He gave his only begotten son, that whoever believe in him shall not perish, but have every lasting life.” Begotten is an old word that means God fathered Jesus instead of adopted him. If you want to live forever, the pathway is clear – follow Jesus, bow down before Him and give Him His rightful place as the one person who is worthy for you to bow down before.
You see, Jesus’ death was a self-sacrifice. When God gave Moses the Law which told people what was right and what was wrong, God gave us the opportunity to get right with Him by paying fines, by sacrificing what was very valuable in those days – cattle, sheep, bulls, grain. Each crime against God, each sin had a penalty.
And when Jesus chose to go on that cross and stay there without using His God-powers to leave, He paid the penalty for all of our crimes, all of our sins against God and other people, because only He was both human and God. Because He was human, the death was not a sham, and because He was God, he was of ultimate value, and was the only thing in the Universe valuable enough to pay for all the crimes of all the people of all time.
You may have thought that God hates you and Jesus hates you and Christians hate you, but that is a lie. The reality is that God loved you so much He would do anything to have you reconciled to Him, anything that was in your best interest, He loved you so much He died on the cross for you. And for me. And for everyone in this room and everyone around the world who claims to follow Christ.
And now, there is a gift sitting in front of you. It is addressed just to you and it is a gift from Jesus Christ. You can be right with God, you can become an adopted son or daughter of God, You can live forever with God if you choose to pick up that gift and accept it. That’s all you have to do. There is no way you are too bad for God to accept because Jesus paid all of your fines and my fines. But you do need to accept that the gift is offered from God – what He wants in return is your choice to do your best to follow Jesus and His teachings.
If you are ready to pick up the gift of eternal life and adoption by God, then bow your head and pray this prayer.
Holy God,
I’ve done wrong in my life.
I’ve done many wrong things.
I don’t want to do them anymore.
Will you forgive me?
I want to follow your son and His teachings
I want to leave my old ways behind.
Please accept me and teach me as your child.
I pray this in the name of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
Over the next few weeks, I going to be teaching more about what it means to be a Christian. Becoming a Christian, like you have just done today, is the first step. Here is where we actually learn how to follow Jesus and His teachings. That is why we come to church, that is why we have Sunday school classes and midweek classes, that is why we read our Bibles.
For church is where we tell this once-in-history story about how God came to earth to make things right once again. It is in the church where we learn the implications of this event, and why the teachings of Christ make sense. It is in the church where we begin to heal from the damage that the world does to us.
Click the link in the right hand column to receive weekly writings. And if you live in the greater Clarksburg WV area, join us at Quiet Dell United Methodist Church (I-79, exit 115) any Sunday at 9:45.
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