Thank you to the many people who attended our International Congregation Retreat last weekend. It certainly was a time of encouragement as we met together for worship, teaching, prayer and fellowship. It was a joy seeing our little church family coming to know one another a little more and in the process developing more as a team. It takes a team to fulfil the commission the Lord has given us. We are certainly blessed in our church family to have people who are gifted in an array of spiritual and practical gifts. It is our task to use them for the glory of God as a team and family. Today I am in Wagga attending a wedding. I will miss each one of you and you will be most definitely in my thoughts and prayers.
Easter is next weekend. Whilst we are thankful to God for the blessing of a Saviour in Jesus every single day of our lives, we focus very much on the last days of Jesus’ life at this time of the year. It is good to do this. It is good to look very closely at the cost it took to bring redemption to sinful and rebellious people like us. The cost was the life of Jesus. I think it is of utmost importance that we realize what God thinks of sin in its many forms. He finds sin abhorrent. He is holy and sin is the antithesis of holiness. For millennia sin alienated mankind from God. Then God did something amazing and sent His precious Son on a mission of redemption. The mission was certainly a difficult one that would end in severe pain and death for the One God sent on this mission. But it would also end in triumph for there was no holding Jesus back. He rose triumphantly from the grave, was witnessed by hundreds and now sits at God’s right hand.
In today’s Bible reading, Garry takes us to the scene of the death of Lazarus and his subsequent raising from the dead by Jesus. In this text we find Jesus’ amazing teaching on the magnificence of resurrection. This is a heart rending account of two sister’s grief. It is also an account of the promise that is given concerning those of us who are in Christ. But there is more and in this scene we witness God’s gory in resurrection. How blessed we are to have this knowledge. How blessed we are to have this truth. How blessed we are to realize that we too will be resurrected to new life and in the process we will bring glory to our loving Father in Heaven!