People are interesting and weird. Let's talk about it on this edition of Key Light. This is Key Light. If you are into playing games with God, turn off your radio now. This is a program designed to help beggars tell other beggars what they found bread. Here's Steve with a teaching for today. Thanks, Mike. Hope you had a great weekend and I hope your time of worship at your church was celibatory and profound and that your pastor sermon ministered to you the way my pastor sermon ministered to me. If you have your Bible, you ought to have it there by your side. What we're going to do this week and this is Easter week is that I'm going to spend some time dealing with some themes that have to do with Easter. I know the cross and the resurrection. Now what I want to do most of the week is to spend some time with some old friends of mine who surrounded the cross of Christ. And then if we have time toward the end of the week, I want to spend some time on the evidences for the resurrection. And I may do that in the question and answer time on Wednesday. We'll just have to see. Play this by ear and see how it goes. Now if you're new to Key Life, we're in the middle of a fairly long study about pain and suffering and what do you do when your rope breaks. And actually that series is an interruption of another larger series. Stay with me. It does make sense. Which was an Old Testament survey. We stopped just before Jeremiah because of 9-11 and decided to spend some time talking about themes that were relevant at that point. Now when we finish the interruption this week with Easter and good Friday themes, we'll go back to the other interruption which was the pain suffering series. We'll finish that in a couple of weeks and then we'll go back to our regular series. I'm sorry. Which is the Old Testament survey. At any rate, it's our practice on Mondays before we study the word to go before the throne. Let's do that. Father, we come before you this week especially because in our mind's eye we see a Galilean carpenter, a rabbi hanging spread eagle on crossbeams on the town garbage heap between two thieves. Father, he didn't deserve that. He was your son and he was good and he didn't deserve that. Father, he was God incarnate and we did that to him and he didn't deserve it. Father, remind us that he did that for us and then this week remind us that he died but he didn't stay that way. Remind us about the empty tomb that a dead man got up and walked and he said we could do. Father, we praise you and we worship you because of what you've done for the way you've called us to yourself and forgiven us and because of his death and resurrection you've promised that we'll get home before the dark. Father, you know everyone who's listening to this broadcast you know the things that keep us awake at night. The loneliness, the sin, the secrets we dare not share. Father, you know it all. We come as a child, we'd come to a father who is wise. A totally wise father who's knows what he's doing. You're that father and we praise you for it but if you had never reached out to us if you had never loved us you're still God and you're worthy of our praise and worship. As always Father, forgive the one who teaches his sins. They call him reverend and he's not much. We would see Jesus and him only and we pray in Jesus name. I mean you know something you can you can tell a lot about people by watching how they react to an event of monumental importance. Next time you are around an automobile accident and you weren't the one who got killed, stand around and watch the people and their reaction to it. I may have told you about the time I helped a man look for me. I'd gone off the side of a mountain when I was a young man and then a disjockey at a radio station. It was a sock hop they don't call them that today but that's what we call them in those days. And I was driving back from this little radio station to my home across the mountains and somebody was on my side of the road and I tried to avoid him and being one who had not driven much, ended up skidding and going off the side of the hill. I woke up about 15 yards from the car and the car was totally crushed and destroyed. I had a couple scratches but that was all and I climbed back to the top of the hill and by that time people were stopping and standing around and talking and asking me if I was alright and then a hero guy came up. I slammed on his brakes, got a flash like jumped out of the car and ran down to my wrecked car. I started looking for me so I decided to help him. I went back down the side of the mountain and we looked a long time for me. I know but I was in shock it was really not a big kind thing to do and so we looked for me for a long time. And then finally I said you know I was the guy in this car. He said what? And I said well I had asked him before I said you think anybody was hurt and he said man I don't say how they could have helped but been killed. And then I finally told him it was the he was not a happy camper. I mean I was shared the four spiritual laws to him but he wouldn't have listened. He said that is one blankety blank way to treat somebody who's trying to help you and he went back up the hill and got in his car and did a screech. As he drove off into the night. Never stand around and watch how people deal with an event of tragedy something of importance. Well the most important event to ever happen was the death of the son of God Jesus Christ. Now I want to take some time this week to look at some of the people who were there on that day when the best man who ever lived died on a hill shaped like a skull. You know something they're just like us they are us in fact I'm in the crowd and if you look close enough you will see yourself there too. So let's look at some of these friends of mine and we're going to spend most of the week doing that first notice Simon the siren who was compelled to bear Jesus cross you find that in Matthew 2732. Now who in the world was Simon well we know that he was the father of Alexander and Rufus Mark 1521. Members of the Christian community whatever happened to Simon that day when he carried Christ's cross it affected him and his children. They became covenant children and walked with Christ. Then in Acts 131 a Simeon who was called Niger is included in the list of prophets and teachers the church of Antioch. The name Simeon is a form of Simon and Niger alike Sireen is in northern Africa. All of that suggests something very important Simon was a bystander who became a participant not only with his hands but with his art. Simon was walking down the street I suspect whistling an old Jewish tomb when suddenly the next minute he was carrying a cross for which he had never asked. One moment and observer the next moment of participant in the greatest event in all of human history. Simon felt the weight of Christ's cross on his shoulders and it literally changed his life error. You ever felt the burden of the cross on your shoulders have you ever gone from bystander to participant in just a moment. If you have then you know that your life is never the same from that point on the principle is this. The lesson I saw you drift off the providence of God is more often than not invested in those events which you considered unexpected and unimportant in other words the next minute could change your life. Everything is important the days you thought were unimportant days the things you thought were unimportant the people you thought were unimportant may be big because all of a sudden they are in the shape of the cross. It could be that you're driving down the road and listening to this broadcast. You hear this foghorn voice and you go whoa who is that? He's saying some really silly things but he sounds reasonably intelligent. Let me tell you something this may be the event I was just describing for you. It may be that your life is meaningless and empty and that it is no accident that it was planned from the foundation of the earth that you should turn on this broadcast right now and listen to what I'm saying. If that's true don't pass it all. If that's true listen to what I'm saying you're a sinner and you're going to stand before God someday and you're in serious trouble. That's the bad news the good news is the man who bore the cross on Galgotha died in your place and all you got to do is turn to him he won't be angry at you. Go to him and say I need what you did for me. I need some serious help here. I sense there's a just God and if he's just I'm in serious trouble because I'm not that good and I'm not that pure and I'm not that wonderful. It could be that one event could change your life the way it changed the life of Simon and his children. You're a bystander in the next second you you are in the middle of something really really big. So for those of you who are already believers why don't you why don't you not ignore your children listen they may be saying something important and that friend. You were too busy to visit the hospital room you didn't care about the people you ignored the event you ought to be involved and go do it. Because you see the next minute may change your life and it's entirely possible that by God's grace you will cease being a bystander and immediately by the Holy Spirit. Become highly involved. You think about that I'm in. Hey if you don't have our winter magazine let this into the center around themes of Easter. Pain and suffering how you bear it and the difference that Jesus makes. I wrote a couple of articles there's a question and answer column my inner areas there. A lot of resources to get you and those you love home with freedom and joy and faithfulness to Christ as you're counting the teeth. And tell you what I'm going to do going to send it to you absolutely free without charge or obligation we pay the postage. Give us a call 1-800 key life or you can write key life post office box 5,000 mateland Florida 32794 or key life Canada post office box 3215 Cambridge Ontario in 3H 5 in 3 or you can email us with your regular address to Steve at key life.org and ask for the magazine will send it to you. And it's free but that doesn't mean I'll turn you on to contribution. Very few people who benefit from the hundreds of thousands of tapes and free pieces of literature we send out are able to help us financially when you help us. You help your brothers and sisters. Be one of those champions if you can and pray about it be as generous as you can. Charge your any master card pieces of your card included in your envelope. 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