You are God’s building. Because of God’s grace to me, I have laid the foundation like an expert builder. Now others are building on it. But whoever is building on this foundation must be very careful. For no one can lay any foundation other than the one we already have—Jesus Christ. [1 Corinthians 15: 9b-11 (NLT)]
Two members of our small group attended Easter service at a Christian church in another town. Imagine their shock when the pastor began his sermon by saying he didn’t believe in the resurrection. Thinking his statement had been made for shock value, they patiently waited for him to make a case for Christ and defend the truth of Easter. Unfortunately, he only offered a feel good message about new beginnings. I was reminded of their story when another pastor mentioned his experience when a youth pastor. After one of the teens complained that he talked too much about Jesus, he was called into the senior pastor’s office and told that Jesus just should be a “side dish” in the church youth group!
As for the resurrection—can it be Christianity without the risen Christ? Without Easter, we just have a man who said some beautiful and wise things and was killed for his words. While He may have had a great message, he was either delusional or a liar. In the early church, an Apostle was someone who had personally known Jesus both before that dark Friday and after that glorious Sunday. Without the resurrection, Peter and the rest of the Apostles were equally delusional or liars who perpetrated a fraud with their claims of an empty tomb and their witness to the risen Christ. Without the resurrected Christ, everything that happened after the crucifixion and much of what happened before is suspect. When we read Acts, we find that the essence of every sermon preached is the resurrected Christ. Without the resurrection, how can we believe Jesus was God in flesh? Without the risen Christ how can we believe in the Holy Trinity, the resurrection of the dead, or the truth of the New Testament?
There are plenty of authors who make excellent cases for the resurrection and I’ll leave the Christian apologetics to them. Believing in the resurrection doesn’t mean we totally understand it, can explain how it happened, or know exactly what the body of the risen Christ was like but we don’t need those answers to believe in the risen Christ. Jesus is the cornerstone of Christianity and, if Jesus is still dead, so is our religion
As for a “side dish Jesus:” side dishes are optional and you can take as much or as little as you want or skip them altogether. They’re like the Brussels sprouts or green beans at Thanksgiving dinner. Jesus, however, is not a side dish; along with God the Father and the Holy Spirit, He’s the main (and only) course! Rather than a turkey, our Triune God is more like one of those Turduckens: three meats (turkey, duck, and chicken) rolled into one. When you slice through it, you get all three—each one equally delicious and equally essential. If we are going to call ourselves Christians, it seems that both the resurrection and Jesus are fundamental to our faith.
I don’t know about that doubting pastor from Easter but I do know a little about that teen who thought there was too much Jesus in her youth group. Her youth pastor refused to back down and, rather than put Jesus in a side dish, He kept the risen Christ front and center. The teen who objected to the main dish Jesus? Shortly after that meeting, she accepted Jesus—not as an optional add-on but as her Lord and Savior!
Scripture often referred to Jesus as the cornerstone: the foundation upon which the church is built. The cornerstone of a building gives it a reliable and firm foundation; it is indispensable and prominent. May the risen Christ remain indispensable and prominent in our witness as we build His church!
The Lord does whatever pleases him throughout all heaven and earth, and on the seas and in their depths. [Psalm 135:6 (NLT)]
In Pieces of Eight, columnist Sydney Harris tells the story of a dinner party at which an elderly Albert Einstein was seated next to an eighteen-year-old girl. Unaware of his identity, she asked the famed professor what he did for a living. “I devote myself to the study of physics,” he responded. Shocked that he still studied physics at his age, she told him she’d finished her physics studies the previous year! Without a doubt, Albert Einstein knew more about physics than anyone else of his time and yet he continued to study physics until his death. Harris’s explanation is that the physicist recognized that what he didn’t know far outweighed all that he did.
Romper Room, a children’s program that first aired in 1953, was like a televised pre-school/kindergarten class. At the end of every show, the hostess would pick up her magic mirror and recite the words, “Magic Mirror, tell me today, did all my friends have fun at play?” Looking through an open frame shaped like a hand mirror, she’d then call out various children’s names: “I see Johnny had a special day today, Olivia had a special day yesterday, and I see Bonnie, Tammy and Gregory had special days, as well, and Brandon, you know I see you…” For forty years, small children patiently sat in front of their TVs hoping to hear their names called. While that illustrates the naiveté of youngsters back then, it also demonstrates how much we all want to be noticed and recognized.
Back in January, many people made resolutions to read the Bible. If you pledged to read the entire Bible this year, good for you. Like many who make that resolution, however, you may already have fallen behind schedule and are tempted to quit. Having tried to do it in a year, I feel your pain. After finally getting through Leviticus, Jeremiah nearly did me in with his doom and gloom. It’s not just the reading that takes time; it’s the understanding, the digesting, of what we’ve read that can slow us down. After all, there’s no point of reading it if we don’t understand it! I could read the words in a college astrophysics text but, if I didn’t understand them, I’d know no more about astrophysics on the last page than I did on the first. This year, I’m reading the Bible in chronological order and, in spite of my goal to do it in a year, it will probably take longer. For those who are discouraged or soon will be, I thought I’d rerun a previous devotion for you.
For thousands of years, during their weekday morning prayers, observant Jews have worn tefillin. Sometimes called phylacteries, they are small black leather boxes attached to leather straps. Inside the boxes are four sections of the Torah from Exodus and Deuteronomy. The verses pronounce the unity of one God in what’s called the Shema, the promise of blessings for obedience and warning of retribution for disobedience, the obligation to remember the Jews’ bondage in Egypt, and the responsibility to transmit their faith to their children. One box is strapped on the left arm so to be near the heart and the other is strapped on the forehead. The placement symbolizes that God’s word is to be impressed upon both the heart and soul.
Devotions of the Heart 