Many Christians will arrive at Easter this year celebrating only half of what the holiest day in the Christian calendar signifies.
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(Photo: Ligonier Ministries)Steven J. Lawson, senior pastor of Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Mobile, Ala., speaks about the preaching the cross at the annual Ligonier Ministries conference in Orlando, Thursday, March 13, 2008.
"Easter Sunday is not only a most appropriate occasion for celebration, but it also serves as a yearly sobering reminder of a topic that many people work hard to avoid – the harsh reality of death," said C.J. Mahaney, president of Sovereign Grace Ministries.
Mahaney was speaking to hundreds in Orlando, Fla., this past weekend at Ligonier Ministries' annual national conference, which concluded Saturday.
Death is a topic most people like to distance themselves from, Mahaney told the crowd on Friday, including during the Easter celebration. On Easter Sunday, when churches expect fuller pews and higher attendance numbers than usual, people expect to hear messages that are cheerful in tone.
But that's not what Easter is only about.
"If we don't understand the harsh reality or theological significance of death, we will never truly celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ," Mahaney stressed.
Just ahead of the start of Holy Week, which marks the last week of the earthly life of Jesus and is considered the most important week of the year for believers, speakers at the Orlando conference spent three days expounding on Scripture passages that spoke of the cross and resurrection of Jesus.
Bluntly stated, the cross is bloody, it's an offensive message and it's a shameful death in the ears of the world, said Steven J. Lawson, senior pastor of Christ Fellowship Baptist Church in Mobile, Ala., during the Ligonier conference.
The word of the cross is foolishness. In other words, it's nonsense, pointless, idiotic, and mindless. "That is what the cross is to the natural man," Lawson noted.
Even though foolishness to many, a straightforward delivery of the message of the cross and the crucifixion of Jesus is power to those being saved, and it is desperately needed in the church today, he added.
"It is a distasteful announcement that the herald brings and yet, he is responsible to God to discharge his duty to bring the entirety of the message," Lawson said, noting that heralds are marked by the straightforward delivery of the message regardless of what the results may be.
"We need heralds. We need to come back to the foolishness of preaching," he emphasized to hundreds as he denounced modern trends of replacing theology with theatrics and expository preaching with entertainment.
Ligonier Ministries president and founder R.C. Sproul believes many churches are following modern trends and that the church has failed to preach the biblical Gospel.
"Instead of preaching about mankind's depravity and the truth that citizenship in the kingdom of God comes only by the imputation of Christ's righteousness, we hear about a powerless and insipid Creator and the cheap grace He lavishes upon all," he said in an introduction statement for this year's conference, which was aptly themed "Evangelism According to Jesus."
And the result of failing to preach the biblical Gospel is evangelism that introduces people to the wrong Jesus, Sproul noted.
So as Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday approaches, Mahaney reminded believers about the significance of this holy week.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ "is not merely a point of doctrine," he said. "It's the most gracious divine solution to the problem of sin and death and judgment.
"Easter reveals the divine provision for sin and death and judgment. Easter proclaims that sin and death and judgment don't have the final words because of the resurrection of Jesus Christ from death."
"The forgiveness of sins has been secured and salvation has been secured," he highlighted. "That's what Easter announces."
The annual Ligonier Ministries' conference was held March 13-15. Ligonier Ministries produces teaching series covering Bible study, apologetics, theology, Christian living, philosophy, and church history and holds conferences throughout the year.
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coffee,
Emerging church? What, there was no church before? Is that the church that preaches prosperity, but ignores the teaching of self-denial? Is that the church that preaches through rose-colored glasses, but ignores that we will be persecuted? Is that the church that believes that "im okay-you're okay", but denies that we are to offer up ourselves a living sacrifice, to change from who we are into who He is?
Emerging church. Is that the luke-warm church that doesn't want to rock the boat? The one that teaches tolerance and acceptance of people's sin? Is that the impotent church that you speak of?
If it is, then of course, the foolishness of the cross will seem just that way...foolish.
How would the "emerging church" handle the "foolishness of the cross"
message?
What is so sad, is that we have brought abomination into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Perhaps we are all so ignorant and fleshly that we have incorporated the easter egg and bunny. Study where this came from.
Like abhodm's, my congregation holds a special service for Good Friday. No singing, and the lesson is one of sorrow and pain, of offense and blood. All are invited to literally nail our sins to a cross, and it is the only service of the year when Communion is not shared. We walk out silently, with none of the joy we usually feel with our church family.
The contrast with Sunday drives home the theme of the Cross-bloody, offensive, and real.
But God hath choosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath
chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty 1 Cor:1:17.
Among the disciples, only Luke was somewhat educated in the worldly standards but the
rest of them had no chance to be admitted to a seminary of learning but the Holy Spirit used
them to change the world upside down. I have read about people in my homeland who had
only 2nd grade education, couldn't read or write but God used them to send revival in the
land. God does't need wise men or women, but wise men and women need Him. Even today,
God is looking for somebody who will totally surrender and trust in Him, so that God can
use them in a greater way to turn the world upside down.
Pepares. OOPS! ah .. make that prepares.
Our congregation commemorates Good Friday in two different services. One is a one-hour service (other congregations do a Tre Horae (three hour service from noon till 3:00) of little singing, readings of the seven statements of Christ on the cross, and a silent dismissal. Is is eeriely different from any other of our services. The second is a tenebrae service that begins in the late evening, and is eventually conducted in darkness. These rituals (for they are no more or less so) depict the horror of the necessity of Christ's death, a death that atones for the sins of the world. Death is an ugly theme; sin is a theme no less vile to contemplate. And yet Good Friday leaves one in awe of the extremes the Son of God would do for all, and those who believe in Him.
It is not odd that the great celebration of Christian victory over sin and death follows a six-week Lenten season. Somberness must yield to celebration. Good Friday makes the background to the unimagined joy of Easter. And so Christ crucified, unpopular and coarse as it might sound, bepares the believing heart to respond to the message of repentance and forgiveness that Jesus would entrust His disciples on that very first Easter evening (Luke 24: 46-48; John 20:22, 23).
It is something to wait for, to once again greet all with the ancient greeting of Christ's followers, "He is Risen. He is Risen indeed!" Forgive me for jumping the gun, but the message will out.
And if Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; ye are yet in your sins. --1Corinthians 15:17
Without the resurrection, Christ's death would be meaningless.
AMEN!
We should celebrate what Jesus did for us on the cross every day. We should never let one minute go by that we don't remember what He did for us to give us the free gift of eternal life.
It bothers me that nowhere does the Bible command, or even suggest that we celebrate Christ's birth, or His resurrection. But it does say in 1CO 11:26 that as we commune in the Lord's supper we "proclaim his death." That death freed us from the law (RO 7) and from sin (RO 8). Yet we let the Friday before Easter pass by virtually unnoticed. Nevertheless, I like the tone and topic of this post. Maybe its OK if we delay the celebration to Sunday. As long as we celebrate the right thing. But, as I said, it bothers me.
Right on the money. We need to preach the message just like the Bible spells it out otherwise our preaching is in vain.