Category Archives: Jesus Christ

Lk 8:26-39 – The Gerasene demoniac – sermon notes

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What a day this is turning out to be! That really was the mother of all storms, a hurricane from hell.

The sheer violence of that storm…the way the Master spoke to it…the fact that it completely subsided as soon he did so…It was almost as if something (or someone) didn’t want us to get to the other side of that lake.

Anyway, it’s over now. I just hope the Master lets us turn the boat around, sail back the way we came, and change into some fresh dry clothes.…

The significance of Christ’s ascension

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John Owen claimed that the mediatorial life of Christ in heaven ‘is not so considered nor so applied as it ought to be’; and again, ‘the darkness of our faith herein is the cause of all our disconsolations and most of our weakness in obedience.’

Owen adds,

‘Most men have only general and confused notions and apprehensions of the present state of Christ with respect unto the church.’

Yet:

‘This assumption of our Lord Jesus Christ into glory, or his glorious reception in heaven, with his state and condition therein, is a principle article of the faith of the church – the great foundation of its hope and consolation in the world…He leads not in heaven a life of mere glory, majesty and blessedness, but a life of office, love and care also.

…

The friendship of Jesus

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The Puritan writer John Flavel says, ‘there are certain things in which one friend manifests his affection and friendship to another, but there is not one like Christ. For,

1. No friend is so open-hearted to his friend as Christ is to his people: he reveals the very counsels and secrets of his heart to them. Jn 15:15. Henceforth I call you not servants, for the servant knows not what his Lord does; but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father, I have made known unto you.…

1 Cor 15:1-11 – The most important thing in the world – sermon notes

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One of life’s minor frustrations is over-hearing other people’s phone conversations and trying to work out what is going on:

Hi Paul, how are you?
Oh no, when did that happen?
Oh you poor thing. So where is it now?
About 1, you say. Ok, I’ll leave it under the rabbit hutch.

Reading Paul’s 1st Letter to the Corinthians is a bit like listening to one side of a phone conversation. The apostle spends much of his time dealing with problems and answering questions that have been raised by the people at the other end of the line – the Christians in Corinth.…

We must preach Jesus

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Jared Wilson has a post in which he outlines the ways in which Christians generally, and preachers in particular, can leave Jesus out of our message.  To summarise:-

1.  We speak in vague spiritual generalities.  We talk about love, joy, hope, peace, blessings, but divorced from Christ himself as the incarnate, crucified and risen Saviour and Lord.  Our message is pleasant and up-beat; inspirational, even.  But, separated from Christ, who is himself our joy, our hope, our peace and so on, it’s rubbish.…

Jn 4:5-15 – The water of life – sermon notes

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We have plenty of water.  It falls out of our sky, it runs along our rivers, it flows out of our taps.  We take it for granted.

Things are different where Jesus came from.  For much of the year, the sun blazes out of a cloudless sky, the river-beds are dry, and all the water you need for drinking, washing, cooking and cleaning has to be fetched up from the bottom of a well.

Jesus arrives at Jacob’s well. …

Mt 21; Mk 11; Lk 19 – What happened next? – sermon notes

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(This sermon was preached at an all-age service)

As Jesus approached Jerusalem and came to Bethphage and Bethany at the Mount of Olives, he sent two of his disciples, saying to them, “Go to the village ahead of you, and just as you enter it, you will find a donkey tied there, with her colt by her, which no-one has ever ridden. Untie them and bring them here.  If anyone asks you, ‘Why are you doing this?’…

Quotes on resurrection

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A lawyer’s testimony: ‘As a lawyer I have made a prolonged study of the evidences for the events of the first Easter Day.  To me the evidence is conclusive, and over and over again in the High Court I have secured the verdict on evidence not nearly so compelling…I accept [the Gospel evidence for the resurrection] unreservedly as the testimony of truthful men to facts they were able to substantiate.’  (Sir Edward Clarke KC)

A theologian’s testimony: ‘Taking all the evidence together, it is not too much to say that there is no historic incident better or more variously supported than the resurrection of Christ. …

1 Peter 3:18-20 – Christ ‘preached to the spirits in prison’

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1 Peter 3:18-20 – ‘Because Christ also suffered once for sins, the just for the unjust, to bring you to God, by being put to death in the flesh but by being made alive in the spirit.  In it he went and preached to the spirits in prison, after they were disobedient long ago when God patiently waited in the days of Noah as an ark was being constructed. In the ark a few, that is eight souls, were delivered through water.’…

Why did Christ die?

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Various answers could be given to the question, and there would be truth in all of them.

We could, for example, say that Christ died because of the actions of the Roman soldiers and Pilate.  The soldiers ‘crucified him’, Mt 27:32-35; Mk 15:21-25; Lk 23:26-33; Jn 19:17-18.  And Pilate, the Roman governor, allowed them to do so even though he knew Jesus to be innocent.

We could also say that Christ died because of the actions of the Jewish people and their priests. …