This morning I've been reading from the book of Acts in the New Testament. Acts opens with Jesus' last words to his followers before ascending into heaven. Then, it begins to tell the story of the first days of the Church. Chapters 2 and 3 contain the first messages of the Apostles. In each of these sermons Peter takes the lead telling crowds who have gathered the Message of Jesus. Each of these messages promises life, hope and a fresh start. However, they begin with the chilling indictment that it was the crowd who killed the man who came to give them life.
Although we are living 2,000 years later, that indictment is leveled at us as well. Our sin killed the one man who did not deserve to die, but that's not the end of the story. This tragedy turned to hope as three days later Jesus rose from the grave.
This is our hope: in Jesus, our death is not the end. So, how do we participate in this hope? In both these chapters of Acts Peter tells the crowd that has gathered that they must simply repent and turn to God. What's so hard about that? Have you ever tried to turn away from the actions your know are sin in your life? What's so hard is that we can't. We have no more ability to follow Jesus than a corpse has ability to climb out of a grave, but just as Jesus rose from the grave, in him we have the power to be resurrected from our spiritual death right now. The message is simple; the action is miraculous.
