Welcome to Covenant of Hope Ministries and our Easter Sunday sermon. I am Rev. Laura A. Neff. This ministry shares the Word of God, the Spirit of Christ Jesus. Our ministry was created with twelve people around this world back in 2008. Each of us shares God’s Word in ways He guides us to utilize. We wish only that God’s truth will be shared within His words as brought to us by the Spirit as it fills my heart, mind, and soul to be shared with my hands, but with His words alone.
You will find us in the following location: http://www.covenantofhopeministries.blogspot.com
Rev. Laura’s other sites: Facebook & Blogspot & Twitter & LinkedIn
Prayer List: We have many on our prayer list. Some wish to remain anonymous, and others only wish to have their first names mentioned. Our prayer list grows or changes every week. This is our current list.
- Please continue to pray for Elder Cal Jennings and his health issues, which are numerous. He has been having issues with his pain, vision, and memory.
- Please pray for my son and daughter-in-law as her father continues to fight cancer for the fifth time. Pray also for my daughter-in-law’s entire family as they soldier on through this terrible disease her father is suffering from. May the Lord bless them with patience and courage in these darkened days.
- Pray that another dear friend gets good news in the coming weeks regarding their healing process going well.
- We continue to be ever watchful in regard to the battle for Ukraine on the other side of the world. We pray for all those who are affected by the terrible things going on there. We mourn for the families and the massive loss of life. We also pray for everything that is affected as a result of the economic issues that are
- Be thankful for each day we live as we do not know what tomorrow brings.
- Pray for all of our outreach ministries with Pastor Stephen Okoth, Pastor Robert Nganwa, Pastor Simon Peter Javaji, Rev. Lisa Tyler, and all the others who have joined us.
- Pray for our nations that the voice of God be heard through the Spirit.
- Pray for our friends and families that their tomorrows bring blessings and pray our own be the same.
- Pray for those who are jobless, homeless, no matter what might have ended up causing either of those. Pray that providence would find them and ease the suffering.
- Pray for those suffering as a result of the terrors that have occurred just this past week around this world.
- Pray for our sick and wounded that they may heal.
- Pray that truth is revealed where falsehoods have been shared around this world.
* Birthday greetings and wishes are handed out to my nephew Joey. His birthday was Friday.
Prayer: Father in heaven, this is our prayer for today. This day, Easter Sunday, is the culmination of several events at once. It is the last day of Passover, the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, and a moment to remember even to this moment. We pray for all sickness and disease to cease, and for faith, hope, and all the components of Unconditional Love expand to be far greater than we can understand ourselves. We pray for hope to spread faster than fear and sorrow, pain and anguish. We pray for the poor, homeless, and hungry. We pray for our friends and our enemies as Jesus asked us to do. We pray for our outreach ministries and all those missionaries that spread Your Holy Word. For each of these we pray in Your Holy Name, through our Savior Jesus Christ, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, Amen and so it shall be.
Opening Song: Tiffany Coburn ~ The Easter Song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dSbcYzgy8ao
Sermon: We are exploring the biggest, most important, point in the calendar of Christian faith. The Passover is in full effect at this time not quite two millennia in our past. At that time, Peter and the other eleven Apostles were celebrating Passover with their leader, our Savior, Jesus Christ. The Savior had foreknowledge of His near demise and was doing all that He could to prepare the twelve for what was to come. Yet, they all continued to not understand what He was warning them of, and all of them would be reeling sooner than they wanted to be. Let’s begin in the Gospel of John the Beloved Chapter 19.
John 19:16-27 NIV – Finally Pilate handed him over to them to be crucified.
The Crucifixion of Jesus
So the soldiers took
charge of Jesus.
Carrying his own cross, he went out to the place of the Skull (which in Aramaic
is called Golgotha).
There they crucified him, and with him two others—one on each side and Jesus in
the middle.
Pilate had a notice prepared and fastened to the cross. It read: Jesus of
Nazareth, the king of the Jews.
Many of the Jews read this sign, for the place where Jesus was crucified was
near the city, and the sign was written in Aramaic, Latin and Greek.
The chief priests of the Jews protested to Pilate, “Do not write ‘The King of the Jews,’ but that this man claimed to be king of the Jews.”
Pilate answered, “What I have written, I have written.”
When the soldiers crucified Jesus, they took his clothes, dividing them into four shares, one for each of them, with the undergarment remaining. This garment was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom.
“Let’s not tear it,” they said to one another. “Let’s decide by lot who will get it.”
This happened that the scripture might be fulfilled that said,
“They divided my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment.”
So this is what the soldiers did.
Near the cross of
Jesus stood his mother, his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary
Magdalene.
When Jesus saw his mother there, and the disciple whom he loved standing
nearby, he said to her, “Woman, here is your son,”
and to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” From that time on, this disciple took her into his home.
Now, I was led to begin at the moment of the crucifixion of our Savior Jesus Christ, for a very important reason. During this time in our world, there is far too much violence and sacrilegious behavior going on everywhere. There is so much trauma that there has been a very large development of unbelief and disbelief, but we have facts, solid facts, of the events of the crucifixion and in the fact that the grave was indeed opened and empty upon that opening. Let’s continue with our exploration of the Gospel of John.
John 19:28-37 NIV – Later, knowing that everything had now been finished, and so that Scripture would be fulfilled, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.”
A jar of wine vinegar was there, so they soaked a sponge in it, put the sponge on a stalk of the hyssop plant, and lifted it to Jesus’ lips.
When he had received the drink, Jesus said, “It is finished.” With that, he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.
Now it was the day of Preparation, and the next day was to be a special Sabbath. Because the Jewish leaders did not want the bodies left on the crosses during the Sabbath, they asked Pilate to have the legs broken and the bodies taken down.
The soldiers therefore came and broke the legs of the first man who had been crucified with Jesus, and then those of the other.
But when they came to Jesus and found that he was already dead, they did not break his legs.
Instead, one of the soldiers pierced Jesus’ side with a spear, bringing a sudden flow of blood and water.
The man who saw it has given testimony, and his testimony is true. He knows that he tells the truth, and he testifies so that you also may believe.
These things happened so that the scripture would be fulfilled: “Not one of his bones will be broken,”
and, as another scripture says, “They will look on the one they have pierced.”
Hiding in the crowd, the Apostles were horror stricken at what was happening, not realizing that Jesus had told them all that this was soon to be reality. This moment hits them like a ton of bricks, all of them, in so many ways. So, when Jesus hollers out to John the Beloved to treat Mary as his own mother, John accepts, of course, because of how much Jesus meant to him, and his willingness to be as much a brother as James, Joshua, and Jude were the same. Jesus knew, at that time, His mortal biological brothers were ill-equipped to take care of Mary. He also knew, that being His mortal mother put her in even more danger than the Apostles would be. The pharisees were out for blood, and that moment was just the beginning. Let’s continue with what happened after the final words from Jesus.
John 19:38-42 NIV – Later, Joseph of Arimathea asked Pilate for the body of Jesus. Now Joseph was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly because he feared the Jewish leaders. With Pilate’s permission, he came and took the body away.
He was accompanied by Nicodemus, the man who earlier had visited Jesus at night. Nicodemus brought a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds. Taking Jesus’ body, the two of them wrapped it, with the spices, in strips of linen. This was in accordance with Jewish burial customs.
At the place where Jesus was crucified, there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb, in which no one had ever been laid.
Because it was the Jewish day of Preparation and since the tomb was nearby, they laid Jesus there.
Joseph of Arimathea was a very important, respected councilmember in the Jewish hierarchy in Jerusalem. He was from Arimathea, but where that city was exactly has never been realized. Because he too was a firm believer in Jesus, he knew how important it was to keep the burial place of our Savior safe and secure. This is why Pilate agreed to have two soldiers there at the gravesite guarding it. The next two days were spent in mourning for the Apostles and Disciples, Mary and her other children, as well as Mary Magdalene, who had been beside Jesus from the moment of her forgiveness forward. This is the eternal moment, when Jesus defeated the curse of death and proved that God does have a plan for everyone and everything here on earth.
John
20:1-9 NIV – Early
on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene went to
the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the entrance.
So she came running to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one Jesus loved,
and said, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we don’t know where
they have put him!”
So Peter and the other disciple started for the tomb.
Both were running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb
first.
He bent over and looked in at the strips of linen lying there but did not go
in.
Then Simon Peter came along behind him and went straight into the tomb. He saw
the strips of linen lying there,
as well as the cloth that had been wrapped around Jesus’ head. The cloth was
still lying in its place, separate from the linen.
Finally the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went inside.
He saw and believed.
(They still did not understand from Scripture that Jesus had to rise from the
dead.)
You see, even with the grave open, no body there, but the wrappings were there for all to see, yet the Apostles and others still could not believe what they had been told, or what they were seeing. This is something that caused quite a lot of angst for Jesus before the trial, and other events leading up to this moment.
John 20:10-23 NIV – Then the disciples went back to where they were staying.
Now Mary stood outside the tomb crying. As she wept, she bent over to look into the tomb
and saw two angels in white, seated where Jesus’ body had been, one at the head and the other at the foot.
They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
“They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.”
At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.
He asked her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary.”
She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means “Teacher”).
Jesus said, “Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
Mary Magdalene went to the disciples with the news: “I have seen the Lord!” And she told them that he had said these things to her.
On the evening of that first day of the week, when the disciples were together, with the doors locked for fear of the Jewish leaders, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”
After he said this, he showed them his hands and side. The disciples were overjoyed when they saw the Lord.
Again Jesus said, “Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”
And with that he breathed on them and said, “Receive the Holy Spirit.
If you forgive anyone’s sins, their sins are forgiven; if you do not forgive them, they are not forgiven.”
There, standing in front of the Apostles, disciples, and His mother and siblings, was our Savior, and He was alive! He was such through the Holy Spirit, which He extended to each of those sitting and standing around Him at that time. This was the moment when they realized that the foretelling of the Savior’s final moments of human life had been fulfilled, and that the fact He resurrected Himself from the grave three days later would provide an eternal life for all who believed. It was not just a story being told to them as they learned from the writing and reading and re-reading of the prophetic scrolls of Scripture. Let’s continue with our study.
John 20:24-31 NIV – Now Thomas (also known as Didymus), one of the Twelve, was not with the disciples when Jesus came.
So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!”
But he said to them, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands and put my finger where the nails were, and put my hand into his side, I will not believe.”
A week later his disciples were in the house again, and Thomas was with them. Though the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you!”
Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here; see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it into my side. Stop doubting and believe.”
Thomas said to him, “My Lord and my God!”
Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not recorded in this book.
But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.
Thomas didn’t want to believe who was right there in front of him. Now, this is probably exactly what others would have thought if it were to happen even in the here and now. Because of this, Jesus offered to allow Thomas to put his fingers and hands into the wounds that were as fresh as they had been when Jesus was hung on the cross. The phrase “Doubting Thomas” stems from this very moment. As we all know, doubt is one of the seven troubles that plague humanity to this very day. Belief, true and honest belief, combined with complete faith in Him will allow us each to destroy the seven troubles as Jesus did in His resurrection to heaven on that long ago Easter Sunday. On the day that the Second Coming is reality, will you be a ”Doubting Thomas?” Or, will your faith and belief carry you up that staircase of the mansion with many rooms? Now, that’s something to think about as we pray in the prayer that Jesus taught us.
Our Father, which art in heaven,
Hallowed be thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, in earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the
kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
(Matthew 6:9-13)
Closing Song: Jesus Saves https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RwZqhx8eSN4
~ Shalom ~
Rev. Laura A. Neff
Elder Calvin Jennings
Covenant of Hope Ministries Main Site: http://www.covenantofhopeministries.blogspot.com
Scripture Excerpts: The New Open Bible Study Edition: Copyright © 1990: Thomas Nelson Publishers, Inc.
Scripture Excerpts: Holy Bible: Copyright © 1982: E. E. Gaddy and Associates, Inc.
Scripture Excerpts: Holy Bible: Copyright ©circa 1890-1910: International Bible Press, The John C. Winston Co.; Philadelphia, PA, USA
Sermon or Study Copyright © 2022 http://www.covenantofhopeministries.blogspot.com
Our mission for Covenant of Hope Ministries is not to exploit fear, but to conquer it, and overcome all that is created through fear together as the bringers of the light of Jesus found in the midst of darkness.
Thank you for our Easter sermons Rev. Laura.
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