Category Archives: Jesus Christ

Mk 2:1-3:6 – Five things you should know about Jesus – sermon notes

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Christianity is Christ.  The Christian faith stands or falls on the person, the teaching and the achievements of Jesus Christ.

When reading the Bible ask, ‘What does this teach me about my Saviour?  What this tell me about my relationship with him?  What guidance does this give me in living a life that is pleasing to him?

This is precisely how I want us to look at this passage together.

1.  Jesus has a habit of upsetting people

I don’t mean, of course, that he deliberately set out to be offensive or aggressive. …

The relevance of the resurrection

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The claim that Jesus rose from the dead seems incredible.  People have tried both to deny and to defy death, but only Christ has claimed to conquer it, Jn 11:25f.  The very first Christians were confident of this, Acts 2:23f; 3:13-15; 4:2; 5:30-32.  See also 1 Cor 15:3-8.  John Stott has written about the relevance of the resurrection in the following terms:-

1.  What does the resurrection mean?

The semantic question of what the resurrection means was brought into prominence in the 1980s by David Jenkins. …

1 Cor 15 – The doctrine of the resurrection – sermon notes

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1.  WHAT? – The Fact of the Resurrection

Vv1-11, esp. v4 – ‘He was raised on the third day.’

Think back over the events surrounding the execution of Jesus.  Pilate released a common criminal, and had Jesus flogged, and handed him over to be crucified.  The soldiers swarmed around him, stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him.  Then they made a crown out of thorns and put it on his head.  They put a staff in his right hand and knelt in front of him and laughed at him, saying, “Hail, king of the Jews!” …

Gal 3:13-14 – Redeemed from the curse of the law – sermon notes

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Acceptance by God is a matter of grace from beginning to end.  This was the message that Paul himself had brought to these former pagans.  And they had believed the message, received the Holy Spirit, entered into a living relationship with God in Christ.  But some time later, some Jewish people had arrived at the Galatian churches saying, “Faith in Jesus Christ is fine; but in order to be accepted by God you must also be circumcised and observe the law of Moses.”…

The Calvary Miracles

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Miracles attended the birth, life, and death of our Lord.  The significance of these miracles: they are signs.  Consider those recorded in Matthew 27:-

1.  The Supernatural Darkness – a sign of the Divine Passion, Mt 27:45.

This signifies

(a) Jesus’ conflict.  See Lk 22:53; Jn 12:31
(b) Jesus’ comfortlessness, Mt 27:46

Remember this, when the dark clouds of despair case a gloom over your soul.  Remember that the wrath of God was poured out on Christ – for you. …

Modernising Jesus

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John Stott has an interesting piece on various attempts to bring Jesus up to date:-

1.  The ascetic – the inspiration of generations of monks and hermits.  This image is nearer to that of John the Baptist, however, and difficult to reconcile with the one who came ‘eating and drinking’, Mt 11:19.

2.  The pale Galilean.  The C19th poet, Swinburne, echoing the dying works of the apostate emperor Julian (“You have conquered, O Galilean”), wrote,

Thou hast conquered, O pale Galilean;
The world has grown grey from thy breath.…

Questions Jesus was asked

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Have you noticed that Jesus hardly ever gave a straight answer to a question?  I think we can learn a great deal from the way he refused to pander to idle curiosity, but instead gently probed the attitude and intention of the questioner.  Here are some examples:-

Mt 18:1ff  “Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven?”
A – He called a little child and had him stand among them.

Mt 21:23  “By what authority are you doing these things?”…

The unsearchable riches of Christ

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Here’s a summary of J.C. Ryle’s teaching on this great subject, based on Eph 3:8 – ‘Although I am less than the least of all God’s people, this grace was given me: to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.’

1.  What Paul says about himself

Here is a man of great gifts and achievements, yet he calls himself, ‘less than the least of all God’s people.’  See Phil 3:12; 1 Cor 15:9; 1 Tim 1:15; Rom 7:24. …

What Jesus did for children

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In many cultures, children are not really recognised as persons in their own right.  In Western society, it took authors such as Lewis Carroll to begin portray children as creative and playful.

In New Testament times, children were seen as relatively insignificant and unimportant.  This is hinted at in the Gospels, where Jesus as a child is rarely mentioned by name (Matthew refers to his as ‘the child’ eight times, and Luke does the same for both John and Jesus – see Lk 1:76; 2:48).…

Christ and culture

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How are we to understand the relationship between Christian faith and the world in which it is to be believed and practiced?  Over 50 years ago, H. Richard Niebuhr, in his Christ and Culture, outlined five approaches to culture in Christian history.  These still provide a helpful framework today:-

1.  Christ against culture.  This represents a tradition of Christian opposition, not to culture per se, but to existing cultures.  The Christian world view is seen as diametrically opposed to non-Christian world views and their cultural outworking. …