INTRODUCTION
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don’t know if you’ve thought about this or not, but the whole Bible is an Easter devotional. From Genesis to Revelation, Scripture records the story of God’s plan to rescue us from the death-producing tragedy of sin. This is the central content of the biblical revelation. With all its drama and moments of seeming defeat, nothing can stop the biblical narrative from marching for- ward to its crescendo in the birth, life, death, resurrection, and royal priestly ascension of the Messiah, Jesus. Over thousands of years, God recorded and preserved this amaz- ing story for us because he loves us. He wants us to know that this story is our story, and in knowing, he wants us to be left in awe and wonder, brought to our knees in adoration and worship, causing us to live lives of gratitude, love, and surrender. The cover- to-cover Easter story of the Bible was not meant to be thought of so much as religious information. It was not meant to be treated as abstract theological information. There is one reason God went to the extent he did to preserve his story of grace for us: heart and life transformation. This story has the power to give life and to change you at the deepest levels of human understanding, motiva- tion, and functioning. If you can walk away unchanged from the cover-to-cover Easter story of the Bible, you are a profoundly blind and deeply lost soul. No story has the power to do what this story can do because no story has a central character like Jesus, the Son of Man, the Son of God, the Messiah, who is God Almighty but comes to earth to be a servant and to give his life as a ransom for all who put their trust in him. The Easter story is meant to confront us, expose us, comfort us, identify us, motivate us, and secure us. Confront us. The way the Easter story works is that unless you accept its bad news, its good news doesn’t mean anything to you.
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