Hello, and welcome to my corner of the internet! My name is Justin Ford, but everyone calls me Judd. This last week has been a whirlwind in the Ford household. That said, I have to give a massive shout-out to the people who have helped us in this time. We recently moved from about 25 minutes away, and we have had people help us move and clean. They have lent us trailers, time, and manpower. Life is about the people that surround you. They can make life easier or harder depending on what is going on. Many of you who read this have probably experienced a move or an event that has thrown your life into utter chaos. As a family of six, we do not need anything more to throw our life into chaos, but we decided to not only move but to start a new job as a pastor at Living Word Christian Church, formerly Nichols Baptist Church. Amid all of this chaos, my family decided to take a little time for ourselves and go see a movie. Now, there are not that many movies out that I am excited to see. I will admit that “How to Train Your Dragon” and “Lilo and Stitch” are ones that I am excited to see. However, we went to see the movie “King of Kings,” and I can tell you this is an incredible movie.

To begin, before going to see this movie, I had spent the day before moving and unpacking things at the new house. Anyone who has moved before knows that it never seems to end. You always find more things that need to be packed. On top of that, there was something that happened that shook our family up a little bit. So, needless to say, my head was not super focused on the movie, but I was still excited to see it. One of the greatest things that I love about this movie is that it is not portrayed in the normal sense. The King of Kings is told from the perspective of Charles Dickens telling a story to his son, Walter. Throughout the movie, Walter’s imagination puts him in the middle of the action, and he witnesses all of the events of Jesus’ life in what he imagines is real time. Anytime there is an interaction between Jesus and his disciples or the Pharisees, the words spoken are primarily from scripture, and they don’t ad-lib his lines. One

of the most touching scenes in this movie that impacted me the most was near the end of the movie when Walter is imagining himself in Peter’s place, walking out of the water. Walter takes his eyes off Jesus, and he immediately goes under the water and starts to sink. Jesus reaches his hand down and pulls him into an embrace under the water and then trades places with the boy. He sends the boy to the surface while he continues to sink into the depths of the water.

What a beautiful picture of what Jesus did for us. Throughout the book of Leviticus, we hear about all of the things that are considered sins and how some of them even are punishable by death. All of the sins and what sacrifice must be made in order to atone for those sins. As I read all of the rules, I thought about how impossible it would have been to keep all of these instructions. That, my friends, is the point. It was absolutely impossible. So along comes Jesus, and he lives a sinless life and didn’t do anything wrong, and it was because of this that he was able to be the ultimate sacrifice for us. Jesus was nailed to the cross even though we deserved to be there. Just like the boy in the movie and Jesus switched places with him, so Jesus has switched places with us. 1 Peter 2:23-25 tells us, “When they hurled their insults at him, he did not retaliate; when he suffered, he made no threats. Instead, he entrusted himself to him who judges justly. “He himself bore our sins” in his body on the cross, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; “by his wounds you have been healed.”  For “you were like sheep going astray,”^[f] but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls.” That means that all of the sins we have ever committed in the past and the ones to come were put on Jesus when he was nailed to that cross.

What does that mean for us? Do we get to keep on sinning just because we know our sins are forgiven? Paul says absolutely not! If Jesus went in our place, the least we can do is strive to die to our sins. In other words, we should not hold onto them like the little toddler that carries around the house cat by the neck calling him George. We should flee from our sins and strive every day to be more like Christ. This Easter, let us remember the sacrifice that Jesus endured on the cross. Let us remember “the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him.” (Isaiah 53:5) I will be praying for you, and I  will see you next time!

Pastor Judd Ford