1. This is the prelude of Easter. Is a dead Jesus still resting in the tomb? No!
  2. Dear hearers of the word of God, you are finished. You cannot be the same now. All that is ended, over.
  3. If the season of Lent is a journey, Holy Week is the destination.
  4. If we just say to God, “We don’t get it, please explain,” he will. He will send us a preacher to point us to his words for more clarification.
  5. The needs of the people remain the same, but now the people are you and me. We still sin, and that sin causes so many challenges in our lives.
  6. We can’t predict the harvest. We can only sow.
  7. To believe God is love and thus loves you is a miracle wrought by the Holy Spirit.
  8. His love for you is so deep that in his mercy, while you were yet a sinner, God sent his only begotten Son to die for you.
  9. “So loved,” then isn’t about how much but instead simply how.
  10. Love is pointing to Jesus who said, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
  11. Even as he was dying, the heart of God poured itself out for the sake of sinners.
  12. I think the problem with the idea of eternity is that we do not have any direct experience of it, but we encounter enough of its possibility to be unsettling.