Good Friday and Easter

 

As we do each year – and as Christians have done for centuries – we will remember Christ’s death and resurrection with special times of worship during the weekend of “Holy Week.” On Good Friday -- April 2 at 6:00 pm – we will have a Good Friday service at which we will reflect on Christ’s death on the cross. Then on Easter – April 4 at 9:30 am – we will gather for our Sunday morning worship in celebration of the resurrection.

Please invite friends and family to these services. We have flyers available in our foyer for you to pick up and use to invite them. These are great times to expose people to the central themes of the Gospel.

The cross, since the very early days of the church, has been the central symbol of Christianity. A few years ago, John Stott, a London preacher and global Christian leader, wrote The Cross of Christ, which has become an important study of the cross. In the book, he suggests that seven symbols, other than the cross, could have served as a universally acceptable Christian emblem: the manger, a carpenter's bench, a boat, an apron, the stone rolled away from the tomb, a throne, or a dove. Then he says,

"But instead the chosen symbol came to be a simple cross...central to their understanding of Jesus neither his birth nor his youth, neither his teaching nor his service, neither his resurrection nor his reign, nor his gift of the Spirit, but his death, his crucifixion."

Another London preacher of many years, David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, in his book The Cross described the importance of the cross of Christ with this statement:

"During these twenty-six years in my Westminster pulpit there have been times when in my utter folly I have wondered, or the Devil has suggested to me that there is nothing more for me to say, that I have preached it all. I thank God that I can now say that I feel I am only at the beginning of it. There is no end to this glorious message of the cross, for there is always something new and fresh and entrancing and moving and uplifting that one has never seen before."

The message of the cross runs deep, but the resurrection validates what Christ did on the cross. The resurrection is proof of Christ’s victory over sin and our hope of salvation.

So we turn to each as a means of focusing ourselves whenever we gather to worship. At this time of the year, we give them each a special focus in our times of worship, as we let the cross once again draw us to Christ and as we realize the hope contained in the resurrection. There is no more important message with which to encourage your friends and family to experience Christ.