While every Sunday is an opportunity for us to invite people to church, in our culture Easter Sunday is more prominent in people’s minds as a “good” day to go to church. Therefore, we should take full advantage of this opportunity. With that in mind, here are three reasons we should invite friends and family who don’t know Jesus to church:
YOU WERE DEAD
Paul writes in Ephesians 2:5 that God, “even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ - by grace you have been saved.” Dear Christian, apart from Jesus Christ you would still be dead, lost in your sins and under the just wrath of God. This reality is one that we easily forget, unfortunately. So as the Church we must continually remind ourselves that we “are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy” (1 Peter 2:9-10). Peter says that we are chosen for a reason: to proclaim the excellencies of God. Notice also in John’s gospel where he writes and tells us that Jesus “found Philip and said to him, ‘Follow me.’ ” And then we read, “Philipp found Nathaniel and said to him, ‘We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth’” (John 1:43-45). In other words, according to Peter and John, those whom God finds, rescues and redeems cannot help but proclaim Jesus and seek to find others who need to hear about Him. How about us? We were dead, but are alive. We were lost, but are found. Those of us who are alive and found by the grace of God must now go and find those who are dead and lost apart from the grace of God.
JESUS IS ALIVE
Easter is the celebration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Of course, we should celebrate His resurrection every day, but here is a day where we can purposefully and singularly put emphasis on this great truth: JESUS IS ALIVE! Death could not hold Him. Hell could not overcome Him. Satan could not defeat Him. Sin could not overpower Him. Jesus Christ has conquered all His enemies. “God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee would bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father” (Philippians 2:9-11). Jesus is not contained nor is He limited in anyway. As His church we must both rest in this eternal truth and rely upon His matchless power as He sends us into the world. What joyful confidence we should have as we invite those whom we know need Jesus. Our confidence is not placed in our own invitation or in our own building or in our own pastor. Our confidence lies in the fact that BECAUSE Jesus has risen and ascended and is at the right hand of the Father, His saving arm reaches to the furthest corners of this earth and into the hardest hearts of those we know. An invitation can be a testimony to our confidence and hope in Jesus Christ, that He can transform a life just like He transformed ours.
JESUS WILL BE PREACHED
And so, we have faith and trust in God’s unfailing promise in His Word that says, “And it shall come to pass that everyone who calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Acts 2:21). But how will a sinner come to call upon the name of Jesus? “How then will they call on him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?...So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ” (Romans 10:14-17). Where Christ is exalted and magnified He will draw sinners to Himself. If we believe this, if we preach the name of Jesus, then what prevents us from going, finding and inviting those whom we know are lost apart from Him to come and hear all about Him? Jesus is the living proof of God’s eternal love.
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