Beautiful Exchange

Beautiful Exchange

We have come together today to celebrate and proclaim the reality of a resurrected savior! This is the reality that separates faith in Jesus from every other belief system in history ...
The fact that Jesus is “…..the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:1)
God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love-not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

When Jesus came to earth, He did so with a clear mission statement. He was focused, intentional and pointed toward the goal ... The Cross and the Resurrection.

People experience tragedy and they say “God did this, or God allowed this" when in reality God does not exchange the whole for the broken, or the lovely for the tragic .... No! He is the author of the love and life and healing and wholeness. Jesus said, “I have come that they might experience life and life to the fullest!"

The Easter Story doesn't begin with the Sunday morning resurrection, or the Friday afternoon crucifixion, the plan of redemption & God's desire to reconnect broken people with himself, pre-dates human history. The Beautiful exchange is an eternal plan ... & God's love being expressed through that plan is revealed in the passion of Cross and the power of the resurrection!
JESUS intentionally became the --- Perfect Sacrifice, so that we, by grace could become ----Saved!

Let me now remind you, dear brothers and sisters, of the Good News I preached to you before. ….. It is this Good News that saves you…… I passed on to you what was most important and what had also been passed on to me. Christ died for our sins, just as the Scriptures said. He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, just as the Scriptures said….. since we preach that Christ rose from the dead, why are some of you saying there will be no resurrection of the dead? For if there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, then all our preaching is useless, and your faith is useless…..In that case, all who have died believing in Christ are lost! And if our hope in Christ is only for this life, we are more to be pitied than anyone in the world. But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. (1 Corinthians 15:1-20)

All of us, like sheep, have strayed away. We have left God’s paths to follow our own. Yet the LORD laid on him the sins of us all. (Isaiah 53:6)

This is the exchange!

When Jesus started his public ministry at the age of 30, he launched it by heading into a desert to fast for 40 days and to pray. Scripture tells us that when he got done “he returned in the power of the Spirit" ... So he shows up in his hometown and as was His practice, he went to church/synagogue on the Sabbath. Now a familiar practice in the Jewish synagogue would be to have various people (not just the priest) come forward to read from the Torah - the Holy Scriptures. There would be one reading from the law and one from the prophets ... it just so happens that as Jesus walks to the front they take the scroll from the prophet Isaiah and they hand it to him ... now the beauty, the power, supernatural timing of this moment is the fact that he is getting ready to read a prophecy about himself that was written 700 years before he reads it ... and as he opens the scroll. .. he reads ..

The Spirit of the LORD is upon me, for he has anointed me to bring Good News to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim that captives will and that the time of the LORD'S favor has come." He rolled up the scroll, handed it back to the attendant, and sat down. All eyes in the synagogue looked at him intently. Then he began to speak to them. “The Scripture you've just heard has been fulfilled this very day!” Everyone spoke well of him and was amazed by the gracious words that came from his lips (Luke 4:18-22).

Death for life! Healing for disease, forgiveness for sin, direction to the lost and clarity to the confused! Rescue to those headed for destruction:

THIS IS THE EXCHANGE!

Today, we want to see and hear the resurrection, beautiful exchange message as it's played out in real life. The Risen Christ that we worship is not a concept or a doctrine; it's not the creed of an organized religion .... WE ARE CELEBRATING RESSURECTION POWER & NEW LIFE that rescues, restores and changes lives in the most personal and practical ways imaginable!


HE IS RISEN!