How are you? How is your Passion Week going? As a reminder, for Passion Week Early Morning Prayer (5:30am), Pastor Dan will be preaching on Thursday, and I will be preaching tomorrow. Pastor David will be giving a bilingual sermon on Saturday (6:00am) as well! Hope you all can make it!
Also, we will be having Good Friday Worship with NRG this Friday in the Fellowship Hall at 7:45pm. We will be serving Communion that evening, so please prepare your hearts beforehand.
Lastly, we have our Easter Worship on Sunday. This is a great opportunity to invite your non-churched and de-churched family and friends. Please be praying for all the worships this week!
Now… to the word of encouragement!
We talked this past Sunday about Jesus being God and what that means. This teaching on Christology from Jesus Himself is in response to the Pharisees’ self-righteousness and pride.
The only way for our self-righteousness and pride to die is to be confronted with the truth of who Jesus is and to be humbled by the truth of who we are.
What are the ways in which we are self-righteous and pride? What in our performance and behavior makes us feel better about our “standing” with Christ? What do we do to try to earn His love and favor? What are the areas we take pride in and judge others on? Is it in our work ethic, success, accomplishments, income, family, friendships, intelligence, conduct, etc?
How does Christ minister to us in these areas? He does it by first unraveling our pride through showing us our condition and His character.
We are finite creation, and Jesus is our infinite God, the Creator. We are dead in our sin, but Christ is Life-Giver. We stand condemned, and Jesus is our righteous Judge. We are sinners, but Jesus is our Savior.
There is no room for pride and self-righteousness in the gospel, because the gospel tells us that we are not “all that.” We are not righteous. We are not perfect. We are not God.
However, the gospel not only tears us down, but it plants us on solid ground. It plants us on the solid foundation of Christ. See, although Jesus is God and we are not, He became man to live the life we did not live and to die the death that we deserved. Although we are dead in our sin, Jesus is the One who took on our death on the cross so that He can give us life. Although we stand condemned, Jesus took our condemnation on the cross so that we may be justified. Although we are sinners, Jesus became sin for us on the cross so that we may be children of God.
This is the gospel. Yes, it hurts tremendously. He breaks us down and tears down our pride. However, He does it to redeem us, to restore us, and to make us new.
During this Passion Week, let us repent of our self-righteousness and pride. Let us stand before the cross, humbled and broken. And then let us rejoice in the truth of our redemption. Then, may that lead us to worship!
Have a blessed week! Be mindful of the reminders in the beginning of this email!
In Christ,
Pastor Tim
Photo Credit: here