Come join us for a powerful early morning outdoor worship service on Easter Sunday featuring congregational singing, responsive readings, prayer and the Word of God.
Community Easter Sunrise Service Apr. 9
Jesus Said Goodbye (John 17:11-13)
What if today were your last day on earth?
What if you knew, without doubt, that this was your last day to live. How would you spend your time? How would you live? How would you feel?
As Jesus prayed the High Priestly Prayer of John 17, He knew He was in His final hours. In a short amount of time, He and the disciples would retire to the garden on the Mount of Olives, and He would be arrested, stand trial, and be executed by crucifixion.
For our Lord, this death would actually accomplish His divine plan. Through His betrayal and death, Christ would bear the wrath of God for man’s sin, clear us of our guilt, and rise again, conquering death and winning us eternal life.
You see, God is the master conductor, who can make the symphony sound magnificent regardless of whether the members follow the sheet music. If the woodwinds get off tune, God can adjust the brass section to off-set their error and keep the symphony sounding amazing. If the brass lose time, God can adjust the percussion section.
Moreover, when man rebels against God, God not only corrects the sin and redeems man from the condemnation and destruction that follows, but He also has a way of using man’s misdeeds to further His cause. That’s one reason why Romans 8:28 says that “all things work together for good to them who love God, to them who are the called according to His purpose.”
So there Jesus is, in the upper room, with His disciples, having just observed the Passover and the first Communion, praying for them, as He prepared to go to the cross to redeem man from sin.
In His prayer, the Lord mentions that He will be leaving the world and going to the Father, so He prays that the Father will keep the disciples by His name, so that they will be one as Christ and the Father are one.
Jesus prayed that God would keep the disciples through His name. In this, we learn that we are not only saved by the authority of God, we are kept by the authority of God. Therefore, there is no danger of us losing our salvation.
Then, Christ prayed that we would be unified. That unity comes under God’s authority, and it comes from the Gospel. For a more in-depth look at John 17:11-13, see our pastor’s message posted above.
You Best Believe in Love Stories, Because You’re in One.
What was the happiest moment in human history?
The most glorious, victorious moment would be when Christ paid for our sins on the cross and then rose from the grave, conquering death.
But, what was the happiest moment in history?
To answer that question, what is your happiest memory, excluding your salvation?
Ask this question to the general public, and you will find that most people’s happiest memories involve their families and loved ones. Such memories involve weddings, the birth of children, family reunions, Christmas celebrations with the family, or just the memory of how you used to spend time together.
Our best memories involve the ones we love, and those times are often the happiest times of our lives.
With that in mind, what was the happiest memory from human history?
Genesis 2:15-20 records how God spent personal time with Adam, having placed him in the Garden of Eden to keep and dress it, and creating animals for Adam to name. Genesis 3:8 records how Adam and Eve heard the voice of the LORD walking in the garden in the cool of the day, which gives you the idea that those walks were common, if not daily.
Reading between the lines of Genesis 2-3, you get the idea that life was good. God and man dwelt together, spent time together, created things together, and even dreamed together. Before the fall of man, there was no sin in the world, no illness, no problems. Life was just good.
For us, this sounds like a dream! Obviously, this was the happiest time in human history. However, when it comes to the happiest time in God’s memory, this would also be it.
God created man for that fellowship, a fellowship that came from a gratitude and a recognition of God’s blessing, but by man’s choice (hence the tree in the garden).
When man sinned in the garden, that fellowship was broken, death entered in, and the problem filled life we know today emerged. God was no longer physically present, and could no longer dwell among His people. Paradise truly was lost.
However, God loved us so much that He refused to let the story end there. Though man ended the relationship by taking a tangible step to remove God from his life, God undertook a centuries-long project to reconcile with man, and to redeem His creation so that He could once again dwell with His people.
It’s God’s desire to live with His people that motivated Him to order the construction of the Old Testament Tabernacle. Situated in the middle of the camp of the Israelites as they lived in the wilderness in Exodus-Deuteronomy, God’s presence filled the tent, and thus He literally dwelt in the midst of His people.
When the Lord became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14), God once again was able to dwell among His people, this time in a more personal sense than when He dwelt in the Tabernacle.
In the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), we see the Lord’s love for His disciples, His compassion for people, and His frustration at the impact their lostness had on them. In John 17, we find Jesus in prayer in the hours prior to His crucifixion. In that prayer, we can see the heartbreak He experienced, not over His own death, but His pending separation from His disciples.
Having only lived His biggest dream for a few years, the Lord was about to undertake the redemption of all mankind so that He can once again live with us.
Once our redemption was completed on the cross, Jesus continued to advocate for us in Heaven. To this day, that advocacy continues, along with His ministry to us through the Holy Spirit, and His reaching out to us with the Gospel through His ministers on this earth.
All of this is building to the day when the Lord will return, and we will be reunited with Him forever, and that day will come when the last man on earth to accept the Gospel does so.
God’s love for us is so profound, that He sacrificed Himself, giving His only begotten Son for us, so that we can be reunited with Him upon our belief. There is no higher love than that.
And the center of this love story is our Lord, but the object of that love us you… so you best believe in love stories, you’re in one.
We Really Want to Know How You’re Doing
Stressed? Anxious? Grieving?
Or…
Happy? Joyful? Victorious?
Whatever your situation, wanna talk about it? Or would you just like to send us a prayer request?
Contact us below, or reach out to us through Facebook. All correspondence goes straight to Pastor Leland Acker.
What Repentance Really Means
Facing death is an indescribable experience. We all know we are going to die, but we don’t know when, where, or how. There’s a moment of intensity you experience when all of those questions are answered.
Such was the case for the woman taken in the act of adultery in John 8. Here, she’s been thrown to the ground in front of Jesus, with a small mob of Pharisees accusing her of adultery and quoting Old Testament scripture in calling for her to be stoned to death.
The whole thing was a set-up to discredit Jesus and cause Him to lose followers. They intended on derailing His ministry altogether, but when you fight against the Lord, you lose every time.
John 8 records that Jesus wrote in the dirt, then told them that the one among them who had no sin could cast the first stone. Realizing their own hypocrisy, or maybe in an exercise in hypocrisy at its finest, they left.
Jesus then turned to the woman and said, “Where are your accusers, does no man condemn you?”
“None, my Lord,” she replied.
“Neither do I condemn you. Go, and sin no more.”
As teachers of grace, we often harp on the first part of our Lord’s pardon of the woman, “Neither do I condemn you.” However, the latter part is just as important, “Go, and sin no more.”
However, is it possible to go through life without sinning? Romans 7 teaches us that it is not.
So, did Jesus tell the woman to do the impossible? He did not.
Going back to the original language, Jesus was telling her to leave the lifestyle of sin. And in that, He painted us a perfect picture of repentance.
Repentance does not mean you live the rest of your life perfectly. It does not mean that you go back and make everything right with everyone you’ve ever sinned against. Repentance is more than simple sorrow or regret over sin. The act of repentance carries with it the notion that we are leaving our sinful ways behind.
Jesus instructed the woman to leave her adulterous lifestyle behind. Likewise, scripture commands the drug addict to leave the dealer and the user-buddies behind. The porn-addict is to step away from his computer, and the prideful man is to step away from the spotlight.
In the late 1980s, there was a church in the Dallas area that ministered primarily to Hippies and Rock and Rollers. This church routinely went into the nightclub district to find those who were being swallowed up by the darkness of sin. When they found someone ready to turn their life around and trust the Lord for salvation, they not only congratulated them on their profession of faith with a church invite, they took concrete steps to help that sinner leave the lifestyle they were caught up in.
Drug addicts were found homes away from their influencers. Prostitutes were rescued from their pimps. Homeless people were given food and shelter. They were all given the tools and opportunities they needed to leave the sinful lifestyle. That church didn’t merely preach repentance, they led you to it.
So, with all this in mind, let’s do a little self-assessment. Have we left our sinful lifestyle, habits, choices, and the tools that fuel them behind? Or do we keep them in a side-pocket in case we need them? Have you truly repented?
Why the fruit was a big deal, and why the tree was even in the garden
As creation and Christianity are debated between believers and skeptics, two questions often arise. The first is why God put the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the garden, and the second is why eating of that tree carried the death penalty.
In the below-posted video, Pastor Leland Acker makes the point that to fully give Adam and Eve life, they had to have the choice, the free-will to decide whether to follow God or reject Him.
When God formed man from the dust of the ground, and man became a living soul, man was gifted with the highest form of life. Far beyond existing, man was given self-awareness, consciousness, the ability to reason, to create, to problem-solve, to dream, and to cultivate. God, having created man in His image, bestowed upon man many of His own divine attributes.
Creating man to be a living soul, God wanted him to have the fulness of life. In order for man to be able to reason, create, solve and dream, man would also have to be given the choice of whether to trust and obey the Lord. God so wanted us to have the fulness of life, God gave us the choice.
So, to create the opportunity for that choice, God placed the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the midst of the garden of Eden. While one may wonder why knowledge would be a bad thing, keep in mind that this knowledge is an experiential knowledge. By eating the fruit, man would not be suddenly indwelt with endless information, rather he would come to learn good and evil by experiencing both. This knowledge would be gained apart from God, without His help and leadership.
Pursuing knowledge in this way would amount to a complete rejection of God.
So, man had a choice. Trust that God is good and live forever in His presence, or doubt God’s goodness, overthrow His presence in man’s life, and strike out on his own. The former carried with it the promise of eternal blessing. The latter carried a risk of death and eternal judgment.
The serpent (a.k.a. Satan) tempted Adam and Eve with just that. In his speech to Eve in Genesis 3, Satan said, “You will not die. For God knows that in the day that you eat thereof, you will be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
Genesis 3:6 records the logic Adam and Eve used when deciding to eat the fruit. It says, “And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave also unto her husband with her; and he did eat.”
The logic was, “It’s good to eat, it looks good, and it will make us wise (as gods.)” They ate so they could experience the pleasures of everything, take power over their own lives, and eject God from the life that He gave them.
This was not a simple mistake or a poor food choice. It was an all-out rebellion against God. They cut themselves off from God, Who gave them life.
And when you cut yourself off from the source of life, you die.
This would be a good time to pause and reflect. God said, “In the day that you eat of this fruit, you will surely die.”
Satan said, “In the day that you eat this fruit, you will be as gods.”
The question arises, “Where are Adam and Eve today?” Based on the answer to that question, who was telling the truth, God? Or Satan?
If you’ve ever attended a funeral, you know the answer to that question. There is good news, however. In the same chapter, God offered a way of redemption. By promising that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent, while suffering a death-blow Himself, God promised a savior, a redeemer, who would come and save His people from the death that comes as a result of sin.
That Savior was Jesus Christ, who both defeated Satan and suffered death upon the cross, and obtained final victory through the resurrection. Belief in this brings salvation and eternal life, and wins God’s favor.
The result of that salvation is being welcomed into His eternal Kingdom, where God will have restored life to what He intended on it being in the Garden.
So, with all that in mind, trust that God is good. Trust in Him, and place your faith in the death Jesus died on the cross for your forgiveness of sin. Then leave that sinful lifestyle behind and follow Him.
Safe and Sound (John 17:9-10)
Do we truly realize what our Lord Jesus Christ has done for us?
Our Lord gave us life. Scripture teaches that Christ was the Word which was in the beginning with God, and was God. That all things (ourselves included) were created by Him, and without Him nothing was made that was made.
In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.
The Lord created man and gave him life, so that he became a living soul. Our consciousness, creativity, dreams, and problem-solving ability are all effects of this life that the Lord gave us.
And when man rebelled against God, not only through disobedience, but through an attempt to overthrow God’s power and authority through that disobedience, the Lord redeemed us from the death and condemnation that came as a result.
To do that, He became man, lived the life of a man, endured the same trials and tribulations we do on a daily basis, yet He did so without sin (Hebrews 4:15-16).
Scripture says He came into His own, and we didn’t receive Him, nor did we recognize Him. In fact, we rejected and betrayed Him, turned Him over to the Romans and had Him crucified.
That is the greatest sin ever perpetrated in the history of the world, the sin of rejecting Christ and nailing Him to the cross.
Yet, even in that, He endured the wrath of God on our behalf, so that we could be cleared of all guilt and could stand faultless before God. He even prayed, “Lord, forgive them for they know not what they do.”
Having paid for our sins on the cross, the Lord resurrected on the third day, conquering death and the grave, and later ascended to the right hand of the throne of God where He ever lives to make intercession for us. He maintains our salvation by continually putting our cause before the Father in Heaven.
So, in John 17:9-10, it makes perfect sense that Jesus would clarify to the Father that He is praying for us. He said, “ I pray for them: I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me; for they are thine. And all mine are thine, and thine are mine; and I am glorified in them.”
In that statement, Jesus said that He prays for us, that we are securely His, and that He finds glory in us.
Jesus prays for us. He earnestly pleads before the Father on our behalf, and He advocates for us. He stated that He prayed for “them,” and not the world. “Them” are His disciples, and not only His disciples, but all those who would believe based on their words. Therefore, since we have all become believers based on their words, then this prayer is for us as well.
And we know that Christ prays for us, because Hebrews 7:25 says that He “ever liveth to make intercession” for us. He intercedes, advocates for us. Advocacy… we don’t often associate that word with Christ, but it is truly what He does for us.
1 John 2:1-2 says “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.”
John told us to sin not. That means to leave sin behind, to leave the sinful lifestyle behind, to leave “the life.”
However, if anyone sins, “we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” He truly is our advocate.
His advocacy is one reason we are secure in our salvation, if we know Him as Savior.
Jesus said in John 17:9-10, “all mine are thine and thine are mine.” We belong to God, and in John 10, Jesus said, “no man is able to pluck them from my hand.” We have been passed from death to life, from condemnation to salvation, from guilt to innocence.
Then Jesus concludes this verse by saying, “and I am glorified in them.”
When Jesus said He was glorified in His disciples, it means His disciples bring him honor, renown, and cause Him to be well-known in a good day. This was something Jesus said had already happened. Simply by following Him, remaining faithful to Him even when all others walked away, and preaching His Kingdom, the disciples had already glorified Jesus.
When we remain faithful to the Lord, we glorify Him as well.
So, in light of this passage, knowing that Jesus prays for us, has secured our salvation, and is glorified in us, let us spend time in prayer, trusting in His forgiveness and redemption, and promoting His Gospel.
Community Easter Sunrise Service Slated for 7 a.m. April 9
Continuing the tradition of bringing the community together in the Gospel, Life Point Baptist Church has announced that the annual Community Easter Sunrise Service will be held at 7 a.m. Easter Sunday, April 9, at the Early Visitors and Events Center in Early, TX.
“The Community Easter Sunrise Service is one of my favorite events all year,” Pastor Leland Acker said. “This is where we get to gather with friends and neighbors, worship together, and truly feel the Lord’s presence as the sun rises on Resurrection Sunday.”
This year’s service will include a few minor changes to the program.
“At Life Point, we’ve come to believe that true worship is participatory, so we’ll be incorporating more group participation into this year’s service. We’ll be adding responsive readings, focusing on congregational hymns, and we will pray together as well.”
As has been the case since 2019, the Community Sunrise Service will be held at the Early Visitors and Events Center at 419 Garmon Drive.
“It’s truly an amazing venue,” Acker said. “We gather at the outdoor stage, and the sun rises to our left as we worship. There are comfortable restrooms inside, and if bad weather breaks out, we can retreat indoors.”
Acker added there is plenty of parking, and the outdoor stage area can be quickly and easily accessed from the parking lot.
For more information on the Community Easter Sunrise Service, visitors can follow the event page on Facebook, or contact Pastor Acker at (325) 200-8531.
“All are welcome,” Acker said. “This event is for the entire community.”
God is Good, We Have Proof!
Is God good?
For decades, if not centuries, the assumption has been that God is good. He is the creator of all things, the redeemer of sinful man, and the good force in the universe that battles the evil forces of Satan and his demons.
However, an increasingly skeptical generation is rising up. While this increased skepticism may alarm some Christians, a sincere search for the truth will not only quench the thirst of the skeptics, but will also deepen their faith, as knowing why you believe something endows you with a faith strong enough to endure the hardest temptations.
The skeptic looks at a broken world full of suffering and questions whether a truly good God could allow such. However, if we only evaluate God by the current conditions of this world, a work that is still very much in progress, then our perception will be skewed.
The fact is that while God created the world, not everything in the world is of God’s doing. God created a perfect world, a perfect environment, and a life for man with no suffering.
And God’s gift to man was the gift of life. To fully understand the gift of life, let’s take a look at Genesis 2:7, “And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.”
This concept of life includes a certain consciousness, a sense of self-awareness, a certain creativity, a problem solving ability, and the desire and ability to create beauty.
This concept of life includes a certain freedom, the freedom to choose one’s destiny and will.
To lock in that freedom, God placed the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden. Man was warned that eating of that tree would amount to rebellion against God and death. More on that in a moment.
The life God gave was one of freedom, creativity, consciousness, intellect, problem solving, engineering, art, beauty, music and progress. All of this is birthed from the life God gave, and the life God breathed into man’s nostrils.
Man is capable of all of this because God made him a living soul.
So, everything good we enjoy about life, whether it be music, art, sports, or entertainment, springs forth from the life God gave us. Everything good we accomplish, from building things, business, to medical advancements, comes from the life God gave us.
And God intended on us doing these good things with the life He gave us, which is why He told Adam to keep and dress the Garden, meaning that God’s intention for man was to make his perfect creation even better.
As Genesis 2:15 says, “And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.”
So, everything good you enjoy in life comes from the life God gave, thus everything good in life comes from God, because He is good.
As James 1:17 says, “Every very good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.”
So, seeing that God’s creation is good, and seeing that the gifts He gives is good, then we can conclude that God is good. Jesus Christ said that there is none good but God.
So what about the suffering? We did that on our own. God created the perfect world and gave us a perfect life, but in sinning against Him, we broke it. Not only that, but we continually perpetuate the suffering by sinning against each other.
So God is not the source of what’s bad in the world, we are. God is good, but we are not. But praise be to God, He can take all of our badness and turn it into good, and He does that continually (Romans 8:28)
So, God is good. The life He gave is good. The gifts He gives through that life is good. Therefore He is worthy of our faith – we should trust Him all the more.
The Deity of Jesus Christ
What does it say, when Jesus Christ was preparing to go to the cross, where He would bear the wrath of God for the sins of the world, that He was praying for us? As Jesus prepared to go to the cross, He was thinking about us.
Thus, as He prepared to sacrifice Himself to redeem us from sin and death, He prayed for us. He prayed for our protection and well-being. He prayed for our unity, that we would be empowered to carry the Gospel throughout the entire world, and that we would bring Him glory.
In this, we see the love that the Lord has for us. Love can be verified by action, and when the Lord went to the cross, He expressed the highest, and deepest level of love for us. God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.
God’s will is for us to be redeemed. God’s will for us is for us to be saved. He wants us to enter Heaven, and to live with Him in His Kingdom.
His desire for us is strong, and His desire for us is Heaven.
Seeing that God’s desire for us is Heaven, anything less is menial. We need not be concerned whether God intends for us to have certain jobs, cars, houses, or financial blessings. Knowing that His desire for us is Heaven, we should know that God intends the best for us on the highest levels. Thus, we can trust Him, even when the tangible things of this world do not materialize.
Knowing that God’s will for us is to receive us into Heaven, how do we respond to His will?
In John 17:7-8, “Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee. 8 For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.”
These verses demonstrate a few things about Christ. First, they demonstrate the deity of Christ, that He is God in the flesh. Secondly, they demonstrate that Christ was sent from God to complete the plan of salvation. And finally, the words Christ spoke were the very words of God.
Check out Pastor Leland Acker’s message, posted via YouTube above, and let us know what you think.
The Point... 