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What a great Easter all over this nation! Hundreds of thousands of Americans stepped into eternal life through a relationship with Jesus Christ! We had 4 in our service alone! Praise God! Go Jesus! 

Pastor started off reading a letter written from a college student to her parents about what had been going on in her life. She had failed some classes, but decided to write a parents nightmare of events that had not really taken place in order to put her failing grades into a different perspective. Perspective is everything. Perspectives change over time. It doesn’t change what is true or real, but it changes what we see and how we respond.  

Pastor reminded us that because it’s Easter in the south and we’re in church that means we’ve probably heard and have a general understanding of why we celebrate it – that Jesus came. He died and He rose again - for our sins. As much as we may understand what happened, if we don’t have a correct perspective then we won’t understand the importance of it, or respond to it correctly. If you don’t understand how much you need what God provided, then Easter for you may be a holiday not a Holy Day. 

Holiday is a contraction of the words Holy – Day. This is the natural progression of our culture. Things that once held great meaning, because of their impact have lost their original identity and we’ve kept the tradition but lost the significance. The challenge this Easter is to stop and ask what was so important or amazing about this guy named Jesus’ death that we stop every year and celebrate it. We date our modern calendar around Him, but what’s the significance?  Was it necessary for Jesus to go through all that just for a moral story? No it wasn’t. What was so bad about us that He had to die for us? Unless we understand how desperately we need His sacrifice…Unless our perspective changes… It will remain a holiday instead of a Holy Day. 

We have all kinds of ideas about heaven and what it takes to get in. We all think that we are basically “good people,” but scripture tells us that not true and that no one is good except God alone. Jesus challenged people to this continually during His ministry. We get we may have done a few things wrong here and there, but we’re not truly aware of how “bad” our sin is. We read from Matthew 5, where Jesus talks about the weight of sin. What insane standards! Get real! Perspective is everything, and we only pursue what we think we need. 

Pastor used three water bottles for a visual to show us perspective on sin. One was pure water, one was water with food coloring, and the third was water with poison in it. We view God as the pure water and that is correct, but we view ourselves with our sin as the food coloring. Yeah, we are tainted but its still basically good water…you can’t even taste the difference. We think of our lives as a balancing act, just trying to outweigh the bad with the good. That’s an inaccurate perspective. The true nature of our sin is poison. It destroys our lives and it results in death, no matter the ratio.  So God came and lived a pure life (pure water). Then He died for us, (ingested our poison,) because somebody has to drink the water we’ve created and it will be us if we don’t trust in His sacrifice.  And He rose from the dead, (giving us His pure water in place of ours). This is what forgiveness of sin requires. God has given us the opportunity to change our perspective and make Easter a Holy Day, by trusting Christ as our Savior; therefore receiving new - eternal life, a pure bottle of water! Glory to Him!    

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The world in which we live says the greatest virtue one can posses is tolerance. Yet they won’t tolerate Christianity. God’s word says the greatest virtue is love. When Jesus walked the earth, people knew that He loved them and that He was for them. How is it that Christianity in our day has become more defined by what we’re against than what we’re for? Are we truly loving?

God has declared there is right and wrong. The world looks with hostility againtst universal claims of values, or morals. God has also declared Jesus is the only way. The world finds that offensive, ignorant, entirely intolerant and narrow minded. What are you going to do? God has said I am changing you to change the world. The world says its a private affair. God says you must share it. The world says you must keep it quiet. What are you going to do? What is a life with Christ all about? Its about a God who was so intolerant of sin that He created a hell for the devil and his angels and any who are committed to living in sin. Yet, its about a God so passionate and loving, that He sent His only Son to die for us so that no one would have to go there. He’s not devided. He’s God.

Pastor used the passage in John 4 where Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at the well to describe the intolerant love of Christ. What was it that caused her to embrace Jesus, even when His very presence challenged the failure of her life? He gave her the respect of love instead of the condemning spirit of rejection. He did not accept her sin, but He gave her hope for forgiveness. He did NOT declare that her lifestyle was OK, but He respected her in love. As a result He watched a woman rejected turn into a woman accepted, and one who was dominated by sin find hope and release.

We can hide in our own cacoons. We can stay where its safe and only travel with those who believe like us. Like the Jews we can forever stay out of Samaria,  but no one will ever hear. We can get in peoples faces but if they don’t know we love and respect them our words will fall on deaf ears. In John 4 we see Jesus challenge with love and respect and an entire city was impacted.

If life is about relationships tell me which you would rather live in: “I’m willing to tolerate you for as long as I have to.” OR “I’m committed to love you til death do us part.” Real love deals in truth. Real life trades in truth. Ultimately something has to be true. No one has ever been able to live without truth. And truth by its very nature is exclusive, by its definition intolerant. It does not tolerate what is false.

Like the Samaritan woman don’t wait to respond to Christ. Jesus offers you the same thing - water that satisfies, something internal that continually gives life. Like Jesus don’t wait to share Him. You may not be able to communicate like Jesus, but you can love them and invite them to hear about the one that does more than tolerate them…He loves them.

 Pastor began with Acts 17 where Paul speaks in Athens. Athens was the cultural headquarters of the time and Paul steps in and boldy proclaims that Christ was the one true God therefore making all other gods of the Greeks false. Our lives are built on truth claims: doctors, news, financial reports, and yet we react against anything that claims it is ultimately true. We live in a world of contradiction. We attempt to live a life of right without any wrong, and yet our definition of right is wrong to others. We live in a world of contradiction.

We say “Don’t push the truth on me,” but that makes no sense. The truth can’t be forced it can only be realized and those who haven’t realized it yet run against the grain and will continue to run into the truth over and over. Without truth we live on opinions, and thats no foundation. Public opinion changes so fast. For example, look at presidential polls. Do presidents actually change that often and that drastically as people, or is just people’s opinion of them? Is that the foundation you want to build your life on? Up and down, up and down. Can you live with truth? The truth is you can’t live without it. Without truth there is no safety - everyone has there own right, their own law. If you live based on opinion, you cannot achieve any level of uniqueness or discover your identity.

We must base our lives on truth, and the “core” of Christianity is built on 5 truth claims that we find in Pauls speech in Athens.

1- God is supreme. (Acts 17:24) There is one true God, and He takes second to no one an nothing. This is not a democracy. He doesn’t need your belief in Him to be real…He’s not santa claus. He is sovereign-in control of all circumstances no matter your actions.

2-The “Uknown God” desires to be known.  (Acts 17:27) Though He has no lack without us, He desires us and He pursues us. He wants you to know Him intimately and because of that He has pioneered the way by giving the life of His Son for us that we may be in perfect relationship with Him.

3-The Creator God is the Sustainer God. (Acts 17:25) The one who began the world is the one who keeps it in motion. He didn’t wind it up and then set it out in space. He is as intimately involved in the world and your life as He was the day He made it and made you. The breath you just took was made available by His power.

4-Our Failures are sin, not just mistakes. (Acts 17:30) We are called to love all, not to judge. Yet tolerance is not loving. Once we know the truth in Scripture, ignoring it is hatred. Christianity, unlike any other religion deals with the reality of sin. Our failure is sin, and you can’t just get rid of it or get beyond it. It has to be forgiven. Sin deserves death, and can only be atoned for by death. Jesus died for all and only those believe and trust in His work on the cross can be forgiven.

5-Justice is real and ultimate. (Acts 17:31) Ignorance isn’t bliss - its hell, literally. Justice requires death, and if we don’t accept His, we must die for it personally, and eternally. 

God calls us to understand the truth claims of the Bible and to experience and live out before a world that desperately needs Him, this relationship He calls us to. 

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We come out of the womb as individuals. We buck authority starting with early childhood. We make it a point from early on to not serve anyone. However, Bob Dylan disagrees with us…and in fact, so does Jesus! We kicked off this Sunday morning with Bob Dylan’s “You Gotta Serve Somebody,” and we discovered he’s right. The problem is in our choosing not to serve anybody, the world chooses for us, and we end up slaves to everything around us. We were designed by God as individuals with a unique purpose, but we flipped it to make our unique purpose about our individuality.

We have a addiction to ourselves and to control. Paul said its our very desire for control that causes us to loose control and its our choice of making our purpose ourselves that causes us to lose our purpose and identity. Jesus understood this about us and thats why He said the first step in following Him is denial of ourselves. He knows we can’t follow Him until we are willing to surrender.

Adam and Eve actually ruled the earth at the beginning of creation. God created the earth to respond to their rule. But after they grasped for control by grasping the fruit (in an attempt to be their own God), they couldn’t even rule their emotions. We grasp for control everyday. When we don’t like the way we feel we turn to something that stimulates us so that we are in control. When we hurt we grasp for something that will soothe us instantly. When we can’t afford to purchase something we go to credit because we won’t be controled by our income. Yet in all these scenarios we lose, and life spins further out of our control. The problem is, when we set ourselves in control we are responsible to write our own road map for life, but the problem is we don’t know where we are going!

We have a need to rediscover authority. Our issue with authority is the biggest thing that holds us back from God. Accepting his authority means surrendering ours and we afraid of what it means to give into that. We’re afraid of what He will want from us. But you have to make the choice…you’re gonna serve somebody. If you choose not to surrender to God’s authority you will be running against the current the rest of your life writing a map to a place you don’t know. The only way to experience control, purpose, and identity is to surrender yours to Him.