Category: Holidays (Page 1 of 4)

There are four movements in our text today. Jesus’ disciples find the tomb empty (vv. 1 – 12). Jesus joins a couple of the disciples on their way to the city of Emmaus and has a conversation with them about himself (vv. 13 – 35). Jesus then joins the rest of his disciples for some more conversation about himself along with some food (vv. 36 – 49). And then in the final movement, Jesus ascends back to Heaven (vv. 50 – 53).

My job this evening, as we come to the end of our time together, is to guide us through the final moments of Jesus’ life as he is murdered through crucifixion, dies and is buried in a dark tomb. Death is never pretty. It is ugly. It is confusing. And it is often horrifying – especially in the case of Jesus.

Today is Palm Sunday. Every year on this day, we celebrate what the Bible calls, The Triumphal Entry. This is the day when Jesus rode into Jerusalem after three years of miraculously healing the sick, proclaiming freedom for the spiritually oppressed, preaching the establishment of the kingdom of God, picking fights with the religious establishment, and generally creating his own death sentence.

This is the last sermon in our three-part series on John 1:1 – 18. In the first two sermons, I laid out some of the cultural issues that were present in John’s day as he painted the picture of who Jesus is. I also tried to build a bridge of application from that culture to our culture today. In everything I have preached so far, my desire has been to stay faithful to the text, while applying it to modern day believers and unbelievers alike.

We started our mini-Christmas series last week by looking at the first five verses of John’s gospel, where he began to give us an astounding description of Jesus that is very different from the other gospel accounts that we have from Matthew, Mark, and Luke. 

Well, here we are, Christmas is upon us once again! Christmas is a beautiful time of year that, for many people, is full of joy and celebration. For others though, Christmas is just another reminder of all that is wrong with the world and all that is broken in our lives.

Well, here we are! Today is Resurrection Sunday! Historically, this is the day that the church celebrates the resurrection of Jesus. For thousands of years, the church all over the world has set aside this day to intentionally highlight and celebrate the victory of the empty tomb of Jesus.

Good Friday is typically much different than a normal Sunday gathering. This once-a-year gathering is designed to be very short, very somber, and very dark. It is designed to be short, somber and dark because it is the night that we observe and think deeply about the events leading up to and culminating in the death of Jesus as our perfect, innocent, substitute on the cross of Calvary so that we might find forgiveness for our sins. The events of this night, a few thousand years ago, were more brutal than most of us can imagine.

            It is great to be with you after being away for three months on sabbatical! It feels like it has been an eternity since I stood in this pulpit and I have really looked forward to being back with all of you. I missed all of you, deeply!

            If you are visiting with us tonight, you might be wondering why we would include Mathew’s genealogy in our lineup of passages for a Christmas Eve Gathering. Here is the reason. We have been studying this passage for the last couple of weeks in our Sunday gatherings in anticipation of Christmas and as we have studied it, we have discussed what it must have been like to wait for Jesus for generation, after generation, after generation. Look at the passage with me…