A broken world

The reality is that our world is a mess.  God has created a world of beauty and wonder for us to enjoy, and through the Bible, He’s shown us how to flourish in this world.  But we’ve not listened to God, thinking that we know best.  We’ve turned our own way and done our own thing.  We haven’t recognised how much God loves us, and we’ve damaged God’s creation.

The amazing news is that God doesn’t leave us in this mess.  Over 2000 years ago, God came to visit us in the person of Jesus.  We celebrate that Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

At the age of 30, Jesus began His ministry, calling 12 disciples to follow Him.  We read all that Jesus did in the four Gospels – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – at the start of the Bible’s New Testament.  Jesus taught people about God’s love and how God was wanting to put the world right by bringing in His kingdom.  Jesus worked miracles and healed people of diseases.  And Jesus called us to follow Him:

‘The right time has come, and the Kingdom of God is near!  Turn away from your sins and believe the Good News!’ Mark 1 v 15

Our sin is everything that we have done and continue to do that takes us away from God and the fullness of life He wants for us.  It is our selfishness and the way we put ourselves before God and other people.  It is the way we ignore God and do our own thing.  It is the way we damage God’s world and hurt other people.

Jesus says that we can be forgiven of all this sin, we can be put right with God, and we can experience a joyful, life-giving relationship with God, our Creator and Heavenly Father.

Jesus says, ‘For God loved the world so much that he gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not die but have eternal life’ John 3 v 16.

Jesus came to live, but also to die. At the age of 33, He was unjustly sentenced to death and executed on a Roman cross.  It looked like the greatest defeat but was in fact the greatest victory.  On the cross, we believe that Jesus took upon Himself all of the brokenness of our world – my sin and your sin – and it died with Him.  The punishment that we deserved from God was paid by Jesus, and we were forgiven.

Jesus died on what we now call Good Friday.  On Easter Sunday, everything changed.  Jesus came back to life.  The tomb was empty, and Jesus was seen by hundreds of His followers.  Through Jesus’ death and resurrection, all of us were offered a new start, a new life that begins now and now lasts for all eternity.  Jesus showed us that death is not the end of the book of our lives, but merely the beginning of the next chapter – a chapter that will never come to an end.

To receive these wonderful gifts, all we have to do is confess our sins, accept what Jesus has done for us, and offer Him our lives.  This is what Jesus calls ‘repentance’ – recognising our wrong and turning our lives towards God.