Songs for Sunday, May 19, 2024 @ Christ Community Church

Sunday is coming, and I am excited!

As a church family, we at Christ Community Church are coming to the end of a journey through the book of Matthew. It has taken us about two years — one less than Jesus spent in His earthly ministry, and it kind of gives a little context. Most of the gospel of Matthew walks us through Jesus’s time ministering that led up to His crucifixion and resurrection. What seems like a long time for us to spend studying something was about two-thirds of the time Jesus spent travelling around preaching, healing, meeting, and saving.

Last Sunday, we looked at Jesus fulfilling His promise to raise from the dead on the third day. My favorite part of that passage in Matthew’s gospel — the part that gives me hope on dark days and in times when darkness seems to be winning — is when the angel tells the women: “He is not here, for He has risen, as He said.” (Matthew 28:6) He has risen — defeated death and walked out of the tomb of His own power and will. As He said — He said He would be crucified and raise on the third day and did it. The empty tomb solidifies the beautiful truth that our God does not make empty promises.

This leads me to Hebrews 10:23-25:

“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for He who promised is faithful. And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.”

If we are saved, we have confessed Jesus as Lord (Romans 10:9) — not just Lord of our lives but Lord of all that is and will be. We have put all of our faith and trust in Him and understand that our only hope is in Him as well. This is more than intellectually understanding some historical facts about Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection. No, it is so much more. It is trusting in Him as “the confession of our hope” and being able to not waver because we know that He has risen just “as He said” and that we can continually trust Him because “He who promised is faithful”! That changes everything!

It changes what we often refer to as church attendance to something bigger than an event or a religious experience. If He has risen as He said and has given us His Spirit in us, it is not an issue of attendance of “neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some”. No, it is gathering as the body of Christ and not being dismembered. We are “encouraging one another” to live out the “love and good works” that God has prepared for us. We are looking forward to Jesus’s promised return — which is not hypothetical because the empty tomb proclaims forevermore that “He who promised is faithful”! Just as on that first resurrection Sunday there was no place those women would have been other than tending to Jesus’s body, there is no other place for Jesus’s body — the Church — today other than gathered in worship of Him, serving Him, and looking forward to His return!

So, how about you?

Won’t you gather with us and worship our resurrected King?

Everyone is welcome.

He has risen, as He said.

And He who promised is faithful.

Here are our Scriptures and songs:

1 And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2 in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience— 3 among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5 even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved….

12 I thank him who has given me strength, Christ Jesus our Lord, because he judged me faithful, appointing me to his service, 13 though formerly I was a blasphemer, persecutor, and insolent opponent. But I received mercy because I had acted ignorantly in unbelief, 14 and the grace of our Lord overflowed for me with the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. 15 The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost. 16 But I received mercy for this reason, that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those who were to believe in him for eternal life. 17 To the King of the ages, immortal, invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever. Amen.

  • Offertory | The Commission —
    Scripture Inspiration: This song essentially summarizes the events after Jesus’s resurrection up, including His conversations recorded in the Gospels with His disciples, to His giving of the Great Commission in Matthew 28:19-20.
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Published by justkeithharris

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