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I Killed Jesus

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Now What Am I Going to Do About It?

This past Sunday the men of the church led worship. Jim Miller gave us a great message. At the end of the service, we took communion.

Communion is a part of Christian worship. It was instituted by Jesus on the evening before His death. It is the partaking of bread and wine, which was presented before God the Father in thankful memorial of Christ’s sacrifice. This became (through the sacramental blessing) the communion of the body and blood of Christ.

Like all religious ceremonies, communion can become routine. Just another habitual thing we do.

As we were preparing to take the sacraments Jim said something that caught my attention. He said, “We caused Jesus’ death.” Our sins are the reason Christ died on that cross. And it hit me…

I killed Jesus.

It’s not just that Jesus died to pay for our sins. I killed Him.

At that moment His sacrifice hit me. I directly caused His death. I’m responsible for this.

Now what am I going to do about it?

The Scripture Jim used was 2 Peter 1:1-11. This is an outline for a Christian life.

The Lord has given us everything we need for life and godliness. That you may share the divine nature and escape from the world’s immorality that sinful craving produces.

  • This is why you must make every effort to add moral excellence to your faith
  • And to moral excellence, knowledge
  • And to knowledge, self-control
  • And to self-control, endurance
  • And to endurance, godliness
  • And to godliness, affection for others
  • And to affection for others, love.

If all these are yours and they are growing in you, they’ll keep you from becoming inactive and unfruitful. Whoever lacks these things is shortsighted and blind, forgetting that they were cleansed from their past sins.

Do this and you will never ever be lost. You will receive a rich welcome into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and savior Jesus Christ.

How do we apply this outline to our daily lives?

Jim being a rancher, gave us a cowboy analogy for this.

In different seasons cattle need to be given supplements to keep them healthy and living their best life.

He used a story about supplements from a cattleman’s magazine. This story used staves in a wooden barrel as an example. These are narrow vertical boards that are used on the sides of wooden barrels.

If one of these staves is shorter than the others, the barrel can’t be filled. It will only hold as much as the shortest stave.

The point of this magazine article was…cattle will only be as healthy as the shortest thing in their diet. This is where supplements come in.

Taking supplements is not something that is done once. It needs to be done on a regular basis over a period of time.

This is the same in our spiritual lives. We need to take supplements to live the best life. These supplements are regular reading of the Bible and prayer.

Reading and applying scripture and praying daily, living the life that God has called me to, these are a way to repay a small portion of my debt for killing Jesus.

How Much are You Willing to Sacrifice for the Ones You Love?

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God was Willing to Sacrifice His Only Son…That’s a Lot!

Most people are familiar with the Bible verse, John 3:16. It is the most popular verse out there. The reason for this is in its simplicity. This one verse summarizes the entire Gospel message in one simple statement.

This is the Gospel in a nutshell.  

  • Martin Luther called it “The Gospel in miniature”.
  • Biblical Commentator William Barclay wrote that it is “the very essence of the Gospel.”
  • Comedian Jeff Foxworthy stated, “This is the promise that bears hope for the hopeless.”
  • Gospel preacher, Robert Jackson, entitled it “The greatest sentence ever written.”　
  • Author Max Lucado described it as the “hope diamond of the Bible.”

John 3:16.

Jesus said to Nicodemus, the inquiring Rabbi, who came to Jesus by night:

For God

so loved the world

that He gave His only begotten Son,

that whoever believes in Him

should not perish

but have everlasting life.

John 3:16, “is a twenty-six word parade of hope: beginning with God, ending with Life, and urging us to do the same,” wrote Max Lucado. “Brief enough to write on a napkin or memorize in a moment, yet solid enough to weather two thousand years of storms and questions.

If you know nothing of the Bible, start here. If you know everything in the Bible, return here.”

An unknown author penned this tribute to John 3:16

“God“…………………………………………..….The greatest Lover

“so loved”………………………………………The greatest Degree

“the world”……………………………….….The greatest Company

“that He gave”………………………………………The greatest Act

“His only begotten Son”…………………………The greatest Gift

“that whosoever”………….………..……The greatest Invitation

“believeth”………….………………..…….The greatest Simplicity

“in Him”………………….…………………..…..The greatest Person

“should not perish”….……………….…….The greatest Promise

“but”………………………..………..………The greatest Difference

“have”….……………………………………..The greatest Certainty

“everlasting life”………………………..The greatest Possession

God’s willingness to give His Son to be killed on a cross by the very people that He came to save shows how much God loves us. This level of sacrifice is hard to emulate.

The Rev. George Bennard was “praying for a full understanding of the cross and its plan in Christianity.”, when he wrote the famous hymn, The Old Rugged Cross. He spent many hours in study, prayer and meditation, until he could say, “I saw the Christ of the cross as if I were seeing John 3:16 leave the printed page, take form and act out the meaning of redemption.”

As humans we overcomplicate the simple. We think everything has to be difficult. We think the message in John 3:16 is too amazing to understand and too simple to accept. It’s not!

It’s everything we need to know and nothing we don’t.

God has done all of the hard work… we just need to believe, accept and share!

Moms Love Us a Lot, But God Loves Us More

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True Happiness Comes from True Love and True Love Requires Sacrifice

A police chief was in the middle of a press conference when his mother called. He knew that she normally watched his press conferences, as any proud mother would. Knowing this he felt there must be an emergency, so he excused himself to take the call. When he answered, his mother asked, “Are you chewing gum?” After a short pause he responded, “Yes”. She came back in a sharp tone, “I taught you better than that. You know you shouldn’t chew gum when speaking in public.”

As funny as this example of a mother’s love is…

Mothers will go to great lengths for their children.

Love can go both ways. Here’s a true story of a son who put his life on the line to save his mother.


35-year-old Jermaine scaled a burning 19-story building in West Philadelphia to the 15th floor after receiving a call from his sister and finding out that his bed ridden mother’s building was on fire and she couldn’t get out.

Rushing to the scene, Jermaine said, he first tried to enter through the front door, but it was blocked by police.

“They said the elevators are not working,” he said. He told officers he could just take the stairs. “They were like, ‘we can’t let you in.’

“I took it upon myself because that’s my mother. There’s no limits. That’s my mother.” said Jermaine.

He’d hurt his hip earlier that day, “but adrenaline took over.” He started climbing the fenced-in balconies of the building.

“When I grabbed a gate, at the top of the gate, there was a ledge. Then I could step on top of the ledge and reach up to the other gate and keep climbing my way up,” Jermaine said.

He said he was worried about his mother’s safety, not his.

“She can’t get out of the bed or walk around, so if there’s a fire, she needs help out,” he said.

Once he made it to his mother, she told him that she was OK and that the fire was contained.

“She was more shocked,” he said. “She’s not surprised by the things that I do for her. She knows I’ll go over and beyond for her.”

He said that he thought he would be arrested as soon as he got down, but the Philadelphia Police Department said, “there was no crime committed.”

“The Police Chief actually did cut me a break,” Jermaine said. “He understood the circumstances. He knew – when your adrenaline is pumping and your mom is up there, you thinking she’s dying – you’d do anything you can.”

This is love going above and beyond.

Jesus went above and beyond by giving His life on the cross for us sinners that don’t deserve it.

True love is willing to make sacrifices for others. True happiness comes from true love.

Be willing to make sacrifices for those you love and experience true happiness.

Closeness to God Equals Increased Temptation

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The Devil Isn’t Worried Until We Begin To Get Too Close To God

This week was the first Sunday of Lent. Lent is a part of the Christian liturgical calendar to serve as preparation for Easter; through prayer, penance and fasting. It is to commemorate the sacrifice of Jesus during His 40 days in the desert in Luke 4:1-14.

In this scripture Satan tempts Jesus with food after 40 days of not eating. Then he offers Him every worldly thing that He could ever want.

All temptations come with a heavenly price.

Pastor Lee told a story of two young brothers who snuck off to a toy store close to their home. The boys were playing and having a great time. After wearing themselves out they fell asleep in a playhouse. The store employees had no idea they were there at closing time and subsequently they were locked in the store. Later when they woke up it was like a mega Christmas with some birthdays sprinkled on top. They played with toys to their hearts content completely unaware of their parents’ anguish.

While the boys were having the time of their life, their parents were frantically searching, calling neighbors and the police. After much searching by many people the boys were found in the store. The store was asked why the alarm never sounded, the alarm company said, “because they never bothered the doors by trying to get out.”

These boys thought they were in paradise while their parents were in hell.

Too much of the time we are content to be playing in our own ‘toy store’ never bothering to get out. We are tempted with shortsighted worldly pleasures every day and neglect to consider God’s concern with our whereabouts. We are constantly faced with choices that will have eternal impact. It’s up to us to be prepared for these temptations.

Little things don’t seem to carry the same significance of big ones. That’s why the Devil uses them to trip us up. Arrows are little things, but they can do mortal damage. In Ephesians 6:10-18 we’re told to “Put on the full Armor of God to fight against the devil’s evil tricks.”.

Being prepared early and often is the best way to be ready for temptations.