This Week
Livestream
Holy Thursday
3:30 PM
Dead and Buried: A New Covenant Buries the Old Covenant​​​
On Thursday of Holy Week, Jesus initiated the New Covenant. This New Covenant replaced an old one and was fundamentally different from it in every way. While the Old Covenant was more like a contract, the New Covenant is more like a will. The old offers rewards in return for work; the new makes unconditional and lasting promises. The old will always leave us starving in our relationship with God; the new satisfies the deepest hunger of our soul.
This is precisely why Jesus connected this new covenant with a special meal. To an uninformed outsider, the Lord’s Supper looks like a poor snack—a bite of bread and sip of wine. But the followers of Christ understand that this holy food provides all the blessings of the new covenant. We eat and drink Jesus’ true body and blood for the forgiveness of our sins and the strengthening of our faith.
All the blessings of God’s grace are given and sealed to us in the New Covenant.
Good Friday Tenebrae
7:00 PM
Begins on page 10
Dead and Buried: His robes for mine
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On Good Friday we remember the crucifixion and death of our Lord Jesus with sorrow and solemn joy.
Though the events of this day fill us with horror, the implications of these events give us every reason for praise. Jesus’ death had this eternal significance: once and for all, it paid for the guilt of all of us, for all of time.
Taking our place, our Substitute was forsaken by his Father on the cross, so that we could be reconciled to God and have an eternal home in heaven. In exchange for our sin, God gives us the righteousness of his Son.
We look at Jesus on the cross and feel sorrow. He is there because of us. He is there because he loves us that much—so much he gave for us his last breath. Jesus buries our guilt in the grave. It will stay there. He will not.
That is why we call this Friday good.
We gather on Easter Sunday to celebrate the Resurrection of Christ our Lord: the 6:30 and 9:15 a.m. song services, led by our new piano, are identical to each other. Our 8:00 and 10:30 a.m. festival services, led by our organ, are identical to each other.
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Because He Lives: We have a whole new identity
In the darkness before dawn, the women walked to the tomb with heavy hearts. Jesus was dead. His mission was over. In their mind, they were feeble followers of a failure. All that was left to do was to finish embalming the corpse and then try to move on.
But Jesus wasn’t dead. And because he lived, they were not followers of a failure at all. They were disciples of the one who had conquered sin and defeated death.
It is as simple as this. Because he lives, we have a whole new identity: not sinners, but redeemed saints; not rebels, but God’s chosen nation; not doomed, but saved; not only servants, but sons and daughters of God Almighty; not losers, but victorious, because Christ gives us the victory. The living Lord has given us a whole new identity. It is all because of him.
It is all because he lives.
