Jesus Christ, Crucified, and Resurrected
Notes
Transcript
And I, when I came to you, brothers, did not come proclaiming to you the testimony of God with lofty speech or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified.
Introduction
Introduction
As I was preparing this week, I had a hard time deciding what to talk about. There were lots of ideas in my head, and none of them seemed like bad ones, but they also just didn’t seem quite right. I had thought about sharing a story about a person from the Old Testament; Moses, Ruth, Elijah, and David all crossed my mind as potential options. I thought about sharing about the life of Paul and seeing what wisdom we could gain from his missionary journeys. I thought about Paul’s letters and tried to find something out of them, but in the end I asked myself: “what has God been showing you lately? And how can you share that with people this morning?” And so that’s what I decided to do this morning.
Over the past several weeks Cassidy and I have been attending a new small group with two other married couples, and the six of us have been studying 1st Corinthians together. 1st Corinthians is a letter written by Paul to a church that he planted, and in it he addresses what church should be like, what should Christian’s be doing together? What things should they not do when they’re together? What is the overall mission of the church? This letter has really been speaking to me, I’ve loved being able to dive into it and learn what it means to be the church, what it means to follow Christ, and what it should look like to live in community with other believers.
And I think that this is especially relevant today as you discern the possibility of me coming and helping here for an extended period of time, I think that it’s helpful for you to hear a little bit more about me, my heart, and my thoughts so that you can be informed on how I have come to view both Christ and the church, and how these views have shaped how I lead.
But I also want you to know that my goal with the sermon is not to promote myself, like Paul said in the passage I just read, I don’t want to come to you and pretend like I have wisdom or experience that I don’t, all that I want to do is preach Christ crucified. And that’s the beauty of what Paul is teaching, when I come to you to preach I don’t have to have lots of wisdom or experience to be able to encourage you, I don’t have to have the same shared life experience for what I’m saying to be relevant, I don’t need to be the smartest person, or the easiest to understand, or the best pastor, all that I have to do is tell you about Jesus’s death and resurrection. That’s all any of us have to do.
So I’m going to pray and then I’m going to tell you about the saviour I know, and what I believe He’s called me to.
Prayer
Prayer
Father God,
Let me do your will, let your Holy Spirit speak through me this morning, and let me proclaim the beauty of Christ crucified and resurrected.
In your name we pray,
Amen
Gospel
Gospel
In the passage that I started with, it says this: v.2 “For I decided to know nothing… except Jesus Christ and him crucified”. I wrote a lot of drafts of this sermon, and each time I would have several paragraphs finished but then I would delete them, because they just didn’t seem right, there’s so many things that I want to say and share, and like I already shared, I had tons of ideas in my head, but when it came down to it, I couldn’t get this one phrase out of my head.
“Jesus Christ. Crucified.”
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made.
So who is Jesus?… these verse can be confusing but they’re also really important and we can learn a bunch of different things and they’re all really important for us to understand Jesus Christ:
First, Jesus is God, God is three distinct persons in one spiritual being, we sometimes refer to God as the trinity, and it’s kind of confusing, but when we break it down a little more, it’s easier.
Let’s look at it this way, In the beginning God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit were together in perfect unity, and they made everything, including people:
So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.
God created people to be perfect and to live with Him, and he creates this perfect garden for the first two people in the bible, Adam and Eve, to live with Him in, and He lets them do whatever they want, He just gives them one instruction don’t eat from the tree or else you will die, and for a while they listen… but then a new character get’s introduced,
Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
He said to the woman, “Did God actually say, ‘You shall not eat of any tree in the garden’?” And the woman said to the serpent, “We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, ‘You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it, lest you die.’ ” But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God among the trees of the garden.
And this is how what we call sin entered our world, see the thing was, Adam and Eve already knew what good was, God had already allowed them to do that, but they wanted to know what evil was as well, and so they choose their own way instead of God’s way, and this breaks God’s heart, because He can’t live with them any longer, but despite sin ruining God’s perfect world, He still has a plan: He promises this to the serpent and to Adam and Eve.
I will put enmity between you and the woman,
and between your offspring and her offspring;
he shall bruise your head,
and you shall bruise his heel.”
And so humanity waits for this snake-crusher, and through the rest of what we call the Old Testament we see this cycle keep happening, humans sin, but God makes a promise that He has a plan, He will take care of sin. And so people just keep waiting and waiting and waiting for over 1500 years until this virgin named Mary has an angel appear and tell her that her child is going to be God’s son. We recognize this from the Christmas story, and we all know that this is in fact Jesus. In the same chapter we read a couple minutes ago, John says:
John 1:14 “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us
So God, Himself comes down in human form, I know that this is familiar to us, we hear it all the time, but when’s the last time you stopped and thought about it? The same God that created the entire universe, became a human… its absolutely mind blowing!!!
So Jesus, as a human, begins his ministry, He starts teaching, and healing people, and people start gathering from all around to hear him, and see him, and for a while he gets really popular, but towards the end of his ministry, the religious people of their day, the pharisees and sadducees, they start to get really angry at him because he starts to call them out. And he makes it really clear that all people have sin, see the Pharisees and Sadducees they thought that they were fine, they followed the rules, they were good people, but Jesus taught that everyone has sin, and I think that’s something we have to grasp today, going to church doesn’t mean that we don’t have sin, trying to be a nice person doesn’t mean that we don’t have sin. Because Jesus was really clear, all people have sin, and it’s He alone that’s able to cleanse us from sin and make us whole. And the Pharisees and Sadducees they didn’t like that very much, and so they kill him.
That first verse: “Jesus Christ. Crucified”
The religious people hand him over to the Roman soldiers and they crucify Him, and on that cross as Jesus hangs scarecely breathing, slowly dying, he feels a pain far wose than anything imaginable, God the Father forsakes Him, the Father He has been in perfect unity with since before time began turns His face from Him, and it’s there that He dies, bearing the sins of mankind on himself, facing the full wrath of His Father.
“Jesus Christ. Crucified.” Why was Jesus Crucified?
For..... Our.... Sins....
Now lots of us like to think, “oh, I’m a nice person, I haven’t done anything that bad…” But Christ made it clear that we’ve all sinned...
“You have heard that it was said to those of old, ‘You shall not murder; and whoever murders will be liable to judgment.’ But I say to you that everyone who is angry with his brother will be liable to judgment; whoever insults his brother will be liable to the council; and whoever says, ‘You fool!’ will be liable to the hell of fire.
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.
Every single thing that we have done, said, and thought that doesn’t match God’s perfection is sin, and it is deserving of hell. But that’s the glorious part of the gospel, there is nothing that we can do to save ourselves.... but theres nothing that we can do that can prevent Jesus from saving us when we turn to Him.
Jesus Christ didn’t remain in the tomb, Christ was crucified, but he was also resurrected. He rose up from the grave three days later, he died in place of every last one of us sinners, and when he beat death, he gave us the opportunity to have freedom from the penalty that we deserved.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.
It’s as simple as that. God came down to earth, to die in the place of all of us, He beat death and sin, and if we believe in Him then we can have eternal life with God in heaven. Why? Because he makes it very clear:
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
All we need to do is have belief, ask Him for forgiveness, and we will be saved! Awesome! But I know that many of you know that, and I think unfortunately our tendency is to stop there, we think “we already know this, we’ve already prayed ‘the sinner’s prayer’, we’re sitting in church aren’t we?!” But in thinking that way we miss the best part:
So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.
In asking for forgiveness we are also changing the way we live, when we have that first moment of salvation, God sends the Holy Spirit to come and guide us, and the Holy Spirit helps us to no longer live with our own naturally sinful desires leading us, instead he leads us allowing us to experience this new life with God here on earth, when we choose to follow Jesus, God invites us into His family, and invites us to have an intimate relationship with Him as we would with our own Fathers, or children. And this new family that we’re in, that’s the church.
That is my view on church, we are God’s children living in community, following Jesus, praising the Father, being led by the Holy Spirit. We gather together to worship the Father and to learn about Christ. But the church isn’t just this building or what we do when we’re in the building. The church, has three missions and each of them are based on that line we keep coming back to: “Jesus Christ. Crucified. And Resurrected.”
Mission 1:
The role of the church is to gather together to worship God, coming to church is good, but we need to be coming for the right reasons. Church isn’t just a social group, or a good religious practice, we are the family of God called to come and worship God for who He is and what He’s done. We gather together with our adopted brothers and sisters to proclaim the good news of “Jesus Christ, Crucified and Resurrected.” And to praise Him for paying our penalty, and inviting us to be children of God.
Mission 2:
The role of the church is to minister to one another. One of the primary roles of the church is to encourage one another. Life can be really difficult, and it’s important for us to support and love one another well, we can’t go through life alone, but we don’t have to, we have unity with all other believers because each of has been made a child of God by Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, He has called each of us to become children, and as siblings in Christ, our mission is to help and minister to our siblings.
Mission 3:
The role of the church is to be in our communities. After Christ’s resurrection, he met with his disciples and he gave them this direction Matthew 28:19 “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,” We are supposed to be telling others about the good news of Jesus Christ, his crucifixion and resurrection and what that means for them. We need to be inviting those in our community to come and join the church, not for the sake of numbers, or memberships, or increasing the number of baptisms in our church or anything like that, but because just like each of us once were, they are lost being led by their own sinful nature, they haven’t heard the good news yet, and they need to, Jesus said “I came that you may have life and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10) Life is so much better with Jesus, and other people need to know that. The other aspect of the church being in the community, is in helping our community in tangible ways, elsewhere Jesus says that whatever we do for the poor, the sick, or the hurting, it’s as if we’re doing it for Him. And so when we give to the poor, through the food bank or through Open Arms, or through any other charity, or when we go and visit people in the hospital, or when we help the young single mother down the road, or the young family who just had a parent pass away, then we are fulfilling our role as the church, because we’re serving our community as if we were serving Christ.
If we’re doing these three missions, then we are fulfilling our role as the church. And we are properly beliving, proclaiming, and worshipping “Jesus Christ, Crucified and Resurrected.” And if we do this then I believe we can be hopeful, both for ourselves and for our churches. The difficult parts