Westside Church of Christ

It all started in the Garden of Eden with such promise. It was an ideal environment with perfect provisions. A loving God formed humans with everything they could ever need. He made them in His own image. He assessed His final work as being very good. Then trouble started. Temptation led to disobedience and perfection was no more. People made a mess.

That hasn’t stopped. It seems that we would learn after thousands of years of historical trainwrecks. God said don’t, and we do. He said do, and we don’t. The biblical record opens our eyes to what those terrible choices do to us. The consequences are impossible to describe or repair from our perspective. We cannot fix dead.

Yet, that is the outcome of sin, and not occasionally but every time. The image of God is buried beneath layers of sinful corrosion until it is scarred beyond recognition. We are totally helpless with no way to come back to life. We lay in a spiritual grave as enemies of the Lord. The body still wanders in the worldly darkness, but the soul is wrecked. It is a pitiful way to exist.

It is a gruesome portrait of what had once been the crowning masterpiece of creation. Sin devastates perfection. Satan ruins everything he touches. We see it from the beginning, and we witness it every day on our own streets. We need Jesus in our town, state, nation and world. Across the globe and down the street, He is the only hope. He alone has the ability to restore life. There is no other way.

It is hard to imagine what great love He has for His shattered creation. “For God so loved the world…” The depth of that verse is beyond our thinking. He made it and humanity wrecked it. It was precisely what He wanted it to be and placed it in human hands. Now look. How can people discard paradise for a bite of fruit and then wonder what happened? Yet, He loves us even in our rebellion. Yes, in spite of the fact that we continue to partake of the forbidden.

Hope was born among the animals. God designed it. Angels announced it. A virgin delivered it. Guilty sinners benefitted from it. Christ the Lord embodied the glory of both grace and truth. He walked among the guilty to provide a fuller, richer existence. He restores what sin had stolen. It isn’t just life. It is abundant and eternal, better than ever before.

He brought the hard-to-imagine opportunity to be born again. We aren’t simply patched up and sent on our way. We’re brand new, His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works (Ephesians 2:10). We have life and purpose. He did that. Sin broke us. He fixed us. Praise the Lord!

Call to Praise: Acts 20:25-31

His word on it: Acts 20:28

Sermon: “Watch for Wolves”