EASTER • 2

What Does Christ’s death and Resurrection Mean for Us?

Consider how Christ’s obedience has enabled us to lift our voices and offer our lives in the joyful worship and grateful service to God our Father.

linktr.ee/cnlsgplaylist

The worship engagement team has compiled our CNL playlists in a single linktree page. These are songs you can listen to that are connected to our season and for us to Pause in our Day to Pray:

reading for: 27 April

John 21:1-19

  • READ

The passage opens with Peter, the leader of the disciples making a decision to go fishing and the other disciples following along. They catch nothing all night and in the morning they find Jesus on the beach. A night of unproductivity is over and a new day is dawning. Jesus calls out to them but they don’t recognize him. Knowing that they have caught nothing, he instructs them to throw their nets to the right side of the boat. When their nets begin to tear from the weight of the fish, John, the Beloved Disciple is the first one to recognize Jesus. He says, “It is the Lord!” Upon hearing these words, Peter puts on some clothes and jumps into the sea. Peter is the first to act, although John is the first to recognize Jesus. Real faith both ‘recognizes’ Jesus and ‘responds’ in appropriate action.

In the later portion (v 15-19, where Jesus tests how deep Peter’s love and commitment is to Him, by asking him three times “Simon Peter, do you love me?”, we see Jesus restoring Peter three times, one for each of the three denials he made at Christ’s arrest. It is here where we also see Peter’s commissioning and challenge to be ready to risk all that he knows and loves, for Jesus’ sake.

  • REFLECT

    John is the first disciple to recognize Jesus but Peter is the first disciple to come to Him (v7). Recognizing Jesus as our resurrected and living Lord, and coming to Him are both necessary aspects of living the baptized life. You cannot have one without the other. Recognising Who it is that we are following is critical. We are not following a bunch of good ideas or principles on how to be a moral Singapore citizen. We are following Jesus of Nazareth, a human being, albeit with a divine nature, but a human being, nonetheless. We are following the way he prayed and related to the Father, the way he spoke to others, his words and actions. Coming to Him, is an action-response. It brings into reality what we see or understand with our hearts and minds. Who is Jesus to you? How do you come to Him in your daily life?

reading for: 28 April

Acts 9:1-6 (7-20)

  • READ

    Luke tells the story of Saul’s conversion with familiar irony: his opposition to the early church (8:1–3) pushes Philip to bring the gospel beyond Jerusalem to Samaria in the north (8:4-8). The success of the church’s mission beyond Jerusalem leads Saul to aim his hostile intentions northward toward Syrian Damascus, following close behind the evangelists who were spreading the good news of Jesus as God’s appointed representative (8:4–40). The geographical reversal that begins this powerful drama, signals Saul’s spiritual reversal: on his way to destroy “the disciples of the Lord” (9:1), Saul encounters the living Jesus and becomes one of his disciples instead.

    Paul’s famous encounter with Jesus, on the road to Damascus, not only changes the course of his life, it looks forward and establishes his calling and ministry, through three missionary journeys to bring the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the Gentiles in the region (all who are non-Jews) (v15-16).  

    He is blinded by the encounter and for three days, seems to have ‘died’ he neither eats nor drinks, something that only a living person does (v8 – 9). Scales finally fall from his eyes when the disciple Ananias lays his hands on Paul. He not only heals him, he commissions him by the laying of hands and through the baptism of the Holy Spirit. (v 17 – 18).

    Let us pray that God will open our eyes, as God opened Paul’s, to the new reality created by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The image of light is powerful in this story. It blinds Paul initially; then, when his sight is restored, he has a new way of seeing. It is this vision that he shares to bring others into the light of God’s love.

  • REFLECT

    Can you remember your first encounter with the Lord Jesus Christ? Can you recall the events or circumstances leading up to it?

    At Life Group this week, take turns to encourage others by sharing your journey with your LG members.

Open the Eyes of My Heart (Paul Baloche)

reading for: 29 April

Revelation 5:11-14

  • READ

    Who is the Lord of this world and worthy of worship? Is it the Roman emperor and all that he stands for? Or is it the crucified one? The central claim of Revelation is that the power and honour that Rome takes for granted, actually belongs to the slain one: “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honour and glory and blessing!” (v12).

    All of creation joins in this hymn of praise (v12–13), bringing together what was kept separate by the orders of creation, time, geography, and by the everyday reality of empire (“divide and conquer”). Angels, living creatures, the elders sing in “loud voice” as does “every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea”. This passage offers us an opportunity to join all of them in praising the loving God who reaches out not just to the upright but to all God’s children, including the least, the lost, and the lonely.

    This passage reminds us too of the power of the cross. The thousands of thousands who surround the throne sing the worthiness of “the Lamb that was slaughtered.” With a great message of comfort to the broken, we are reminded that in all of our brokenness, we are never too damaged for God to use us. During this Easter season, here we find the reminder that the cross has changed our understanding of victory. Victory is not reserved for those who do the wounding (or who manage to escape being wounded). Victory is given to the wounded, leading us to learn that it is not through our own physical power or our triumph over others that we win anything. Only in God are we made worthy. Recognizing the worthiness of the Lamb that was slaughtered, He leads us into his victory.

  • REFLECT

    John’s powerful vision of worship is given to us to be read in the midst of congregational worship. In its proclamation should be the clear message that ultimate power does not belong to those who appear most powerful, but instead to those who appear wounded and broken like the Lamb. Despite all of our inclinations to think otherwise, that means every one of us. Like it or not, we are all invited to be part of the glorious choir of those singing praise and honor to God both now and in the moment of final victory.

Revelation Song (Kari Jobe)

reading for: 30 April

Psalm 30

  • READ

    Like many other Psalms, this psalm is a prayer of praise and thanksgiving for God’s sovereign grace and steadfast love, His faithfulness to save and to bless, His correcting judgment and redeeming purpose. Here is the God to whom each life is precious and who initiates the relationship that makes possible this prayer.

    We find God ready, indeed eager, to be sought and to act in grace and favour. To this God, who is already at work to save, the psalmist has cried out (v2a, v8–10), and God has come to deliver (v2b–3, 11). To worship such a God is to realize that prayer itself is God’s gift —that in electing to be God with and for us, and not without us, God enables us, encourages us, teaches us to pray.

    This Psalm reminds us that prayer is not a human technique that arises out of desire or necessity, whereby we try to get a useful god to meet our needs and satisfy our wants. By contrast, both the psalm in and Scripture as a whole, declare that we belong to one whose eagerness to be sought is infinitely greater than our seeking (Isa. 65:1) and who will answer even before we call (Isa. 65:24).

    The psalm presents Death as the “trouble” the psalmist faces. God’s deliverance is like being “brought up…from Sheol” and “restored…to life from among those gone down to the Pit” (the grave, v. 3), leading Saint Augustine to regard this psalm as “to the end, a Psalm of the joy of the resurrection…the renewing of the body…not only of the Lord, but also of the whole church.”

    We are also reminded in this psalm that God’s judgment is infinitely more searching than we know, yet God’s grace keeps pace and ultimately outreaches judgment, turning weeping into joy and mourning into dancing (v 5, 11).

  • REFLECT

    Consider the invincible grace that underlies the glad testimony of verses 5 and 11–12. Whether in the life of the individual, the church, or the world, God’s way of being God, set forth in the Bible and  supremely in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, enables us to lift our voices and offer our lives in the joyful worship and grateful service that constitute the chief end of human life in this world (John 21:1–19; Acts 9:1–20) and the next (Rev. 5:11–14).

    Lift up your eyes and heart and worship the living Lord.

    What a Beautiful Name/Break Every Chain (Brooke Ligertwood)

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