Our Easter Sermon Series has begun! Our Easter Theme for 2026 is this: Jesus Gives Life.
What do I mean by that? What does it mean for Jesus to gives us life?
Simply this: you and I were created by God for His glory (Isaiah 43:7), and for relationship with Him (Genesis 1:26,27; Revelation 3:20). Our problem, however, is that all of us have sinned, every one of us (Romans 3:23) and our sin has left us spiritually dead (Romans 6:23), separated from God (Isaiah 59:2), and we cannot fix the problem ourselves, no matter how many good works we do (Ephesians 2:8,9), and all of us are headed toward an eternity apart from God (Romans 6:23) because He is Holy and Just and must punish sin (Romans 1:18). We have a very real problem.
Because of our sin we cannot live for the glory of God, we fall short. Because of our sin, we can't have relationship with God. Because of our sin, we live our lives in a state of being spiritually dead (Ephesians 2:1). This is our reality. We walk. We talk. We live, eat, sleep, go to school, work, marry, raise families, but we are not truly alive, not as God intended. We are cut off from Him, and our lives are ultimately all about relationship with God. That is why we were created, to glorify Him and live in intimate relationship with Him.
So, we settle for substitutes. We pursue pleasure, comfort, status, achievement, the approval of men, power, money, sex, recreation, distractions and a million other things, trying to carve out a meaningful life on this side of eternity while hoping it all works out when we die. We do our best to preoccupy ourselves on this side of eternity, but in the quietest of moments, we know that something is terribly off and wrong.
So, we do our best to try not to think of such things.
But we must. That gnawing sense that there is 'something more' is that God shaped hole in each of our hearts (Ecclesiastes 3:11). We long for more because there is so much more, and Jesus came to give us that 'so much more,' namely: eternal life and forgiveness for our sins so that we can be reconciled to our Heavenly Father. He comes to set us free from our bondage to sin and death. He comes to give us life, real, spiritual life, true life, now, life with God, now!
In our sermon series, we meet people whose lives were radically changed by the Lord Jesus Christ. Outcasts, the 'worst of sinners' the broken and forgotten, the left behind and the despised...we see Jesus, the Son of God, give life to the most unlikely of people, and in this, we find our great hope.
Jesus Christ came to save sinners. That is each of us. All who repent of sin and turn to Christ in faith find life, true life and eternal life, the life God intended for us. In the series we see unlikely people transformed. We also see people who miss Jesus, who don't find that life, because they are trusting in themselves and their righteousness and perceived 'goodness.'
Jesus came to give us life, and that includes you as well, reader. No matter who you are, where you've been, what you've done or how badly you've blown it, Jesus came to give you life. My prayer is that you will worship with us this Easter season and discover the Jesus who loves you so much that He laid down His life so that you could have this life that God intended.
Grace to You,
Pastor Kevin