Our Message
The Christian faith is based upon God’s own word to us, which is contained in the Bible (2 Timothy 3:16; 2 Peter 1:21). The Bible is a collection of writings by prophets, poets, and apostles, which is divided into two parts: the Old Testament (written before the coming of Jesus) and the New Testament (written about Jesus shortly after his coming). The main message of the whole Bible is the story of how God has re-established his loving reign as king through the life, death, and resurrection of his Son, Jesus Christ.
The first thing the Bible teaches is that God is the Creator of all things (Genesis 1:1). In the beginning he made everything, and is the source of all that is good and beautiful in this world. In particular God made us to know him, enjoy him, worship him, and serve him by ruling over the world he made on his behalf (Genesis 1:26-28). Because everything comes from him and belongs to him, God is the rightful ruler of all things. In the Bible he is often described as the great king (e.g. Psalm 145). Since he is the rightful ruler, and he is a loving and good ruler, it is only fitting that he should be worshipped, loved, and obeyed (Revelation 4:11). When we do love and obey God we experience the blessing of life with God in his world. Everything is “very good” as God intended it to be (Genesis 1:31).
But the Bible and our own experience teach us that, despite his goodness to us, we do not love God in return by thanking him, worshipping him, or serving him as we should. In short, we do not honor God as our king. Though we may say we believe in God, our thoughts, words, and actions show that what we really want is to run life our own way without his interference. We want to be in charge. We want to be king or queen instead of God. Whether we openly deny God’s existence, or simply ignore him in our day to day living, the result is ultimately the same. We have refused to allow God to be involved in our lives in any significant way. We have rebelled against his good and rightful kingship over our lives (Genesis 3:1-7; Romans 3:10-12).
Because God treats us as real persons, he takes our decisions seriously. We have rejected his rule and have failed to return his love. We have in effect told God that we do not want him to be part of our lives. The consequences of our rebellion are serious. Because God is a just and glorious king, our rebellion deserves to be punished. The punishment for rebelling against God is death (Genesis 2:16, 17; Romans 6:23). Moreover, we are in danger of being cut off from God’s presence and blessing forever (2 Thessalonians 1:9; Hebrews 9:27). In the end God will give rebels what they have been asking for all along—an existence completely free from God himself and every good thing which comes from God. Our rejection of God has serious consequences for our present life as well. Because we all want to be in charge instead of allowing God to be in charge, we find that we are unable to get along with one another. Even the physical world in which we live is cursed because of our rebellion against God (Genesis 3). If we refuse to love and honor the Creator, we cannot expect the creation to be the paradise God intended it to be for us. Wars, famines, earthquakes, sickness, and other evils, are all grim reminders that things are not right between God and men.
Fortunately, God did not abandon us in our rebellion. In his great love he sent his own divine Son into the world as a man, Jesus Christ, to rescue us from the awful mess we had made of things. Jesus lived the way God intended men to live, obeying the will of his Father and delighting in him. Jesus taught that he had come to re-establish God’s loving reign as king, calling upon men and women to stop rebelling against God and return to him (Mark 1:14, 15). Jesus healed the sick, calmed stormy seas, cast out evil spirits, and raised the dead to show that he had come to reverse the effects of our rebellion, and to make things right once again (e.g. Matthew 8-9). Jesus died on the cross to take upon himself the punishment that we deserved for our rebellion, so that we might be completely forgiven, and on good terms with God once again (2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 Peter 3:18). Jesus rose from the dead, and has been made the ruler of all things on God’s behalf (Matthew 28:18-20; Acts 2:32-36; 1 Peter 1:3). As God’s ruler (or “Christ”) Jesus will come again to complete his reign over all the earth. He will bring final judgment upon those who have persisted in rebelling against God, and perfect blessing to those who have trusted him as their Lord and Savior (Acts 17:30-31; Revelation 21:1-8).
Thus we are all faced with a choice concerning how we are going to live. We can continue trying to run life our own way without God, in which case we will continue to experience the miseries of this life, and face judgment in the next. Or we can turn from this futile way of life by accepting Jesus as God’s ruler and relying upon him to deliver us from the punishment we deserve. If we do so, our rebellion will be forgiven and we will experience many of God’s blessings once again in this life, and perfectly in the life to come (John 3:36). Accepting Jesus as the Lord means living with Jesus as Lord. Jesus is unlike any other ruler. He is gentle and kind. His commands are not burdensome (Matthew 11:28-30). Following him brings true freedom, and the kind of meaningful, rewarding life God intends us to live (Mark 8:34-38). He rules his people with love, and cares for them the way a good shepherd cares for his sheep, even dying for them to bring them back to God (John 10:1-18).