First Easter Weekend

Sunday AM                                                                                               April 8, 2007

Memory Verses

Announce:

          Egg Hunt for kids 10 years and younger

          Potluck

          Work nights at the Youth Center Tuesday, April 10; 17 and 24 at 6pm

          The Open House has been cancelled until May 8th , it is cold in there.

Worship Teaching

Offering

Children’s Church

FIRST EASTER WEEKEND

Psalm 22

CRUCIFIXION

They came to the hill.

The spikes were driven through His hands and feet.

The cross on which Jesus hung swung skyward,

          and fell with a sickening, flesh-tearing jolt into its hold.

Unable to breathe when His weight hung on His arms,

          Jesus put His weight on the nail piercing His feet,

                   And endured the searing pain,

                             to lift up His body to gasp a breath again.

Life, death, each breath now a blaze of agony.

          A blaze of agony which, JESUS CHOSE!

He could have called 10,000’s of angels to free Him.

Jesus was still in control, even at this time.

And He still chose to die.

The 2 thieves hanging beside Jesus both ridiculed Him.

          But, then 1 turned, asking Christ to remember him when He came into His

                    kingdom.

Jesus’ answer was clear. “Today you shall be with Me in paradise.”

In these 2 thieves we see our whole world, and the reason for Jesus’ sufferings.

          For those who take the step of faith, and call on Jesus as did the dying thief,

          seeing the crucified Jesus as the coming King,

there is the promise of paradise.   TODAY!

We have NEW LIFE FOREVER

We have NEW LIFE, NOW.

All nature now put on mourning, and as darkness flowed over the scene,

          the great word of redemption was complete.

The veil in the temple that had signified separation from God was town from top

to bottom.

Jesus gave a great cry, and He released His spirit!

Even in death, Jesus remained in full control.

BURIAL

They took His lifeless body and laid it in a rich man’s tomb.

The body was wrapped in linen.

The tomb door was sealed.

On the Sabbath all rested.

For the disciples it seemed the end.     

Jesus, their hope, had died.

Though they planned to minister to the body,

          packing it in funeral spices,

                   their great dream of God invading history seemed gone forever.

All of life now stretched out ahead,

          in empty years,

                   meaningless years,

                             years of living by habit,

                                      long after the sense of purpose and meaning was gone.

THE PRIZE!

Jesus’ death must have left His followers with a deep sense of despair and an aching

          awareness of the emptiness of life.

If history’s record had closed with the cross and tomb,

          life for us too would be empty.

Life would be nothing but a brief experience of sorrows,

          swallowed up by endless nothingness and night.

But the tomb was not the end.

The Resurrection that followed blazes for the power of God,

          and demonstrates the amazing energy that transforms death to life;

          the same energy that can and will transform our death to new life.

RESURRECITON!

At dawn on what we now call the Lord’s Day,

          the women started toward the tomb with the burial spices.

Their mood was broken when they found the stone that sealed the entrance removed,

          2 angels were standing by the slab where the body had been laid.

Easter like any other day is a time of CELEBRATION!

Jesus’ resurrection made it possible for us who know God to enjoy meaningful life after

          the death,

with the whole person put back together.

BODY, SOUL, SPIRIT, HEART, MIND AND ALL

In God’s sight, we are incomplete without our body.

And even though the body that we receive at our resurrection will be different,

          it will somehow be like the body we had earlier, retaining personal identity.

Jesus possessed this kind of body after His resurrection,

          so that His friends were able to recognize Him.

Please all stand and repeat after me:

“I will live forever, because Jesus died and rose again for me.”

Please bow your heads and pray with me:

          “Jesus I am a sinner.

            Please forgive me and come into my life.

            I surrender everything to you right now.

           Come in and help me to live the life you desire for me.

           I ask this in the Name of my Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen”

If you said that prayer for the first time this morning,

All of heaven is CELEBRATING.

Please come and talk with me after the service.

Communion

Closing Prayer

          Bless food and fellowship