Christ Is Fully God Series

Dakota Community Church

October 18, 2009

Incomparable Christ - 1

Christ is Fully God

Adapted from a Sermon by C.H. Spurgeon

From “The First Sermon in the Tabernacle” - Delivered on Monday Afternoon, March 25th, 1861

Acts 5:42

Day after day, in the temple courts and from house to house, they never stopped teaching and proclaiming the good news that Jesus is the Christ.

This morning we begin a new sermon series entitled “Incomparable Christ”; in which we will examine the biblical claims concerning Jesus’ divinity, his humanity, and his role as sole mediator between God and man.

Rather than calling it a series or sermon in its own right I am really laying the foundation upon which I intend to base all future sermons at Dakota Community Church.

Today and over the coming weeks I intend to give you the unrefined ore rather than the coin; the block of marble, not the completed work of art.

It appears that the one subject upon which men preached in the apostolic age was Jesus Christ.

They never stopped… proclaiming… that Jesus is the Christ.

How is it then that we so easily fall away from declaring the gospel?

A new book makes the Christian rounds and suddenly men who have been called to “never stop proclaiming that Jesus is the Christ” head off on a tangent and begin wasting pulpit time with every silly psychological wind or culturally relevant fad that comes down the pipe.

The tendency of man, if left alone, is continually to go further and further from God, and the Church of God itself is no exception to the general rule.

For the first few years, during and after the apostolic era, Christ Jesus was preached.

Romans 1:1,7,15

1Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God—

7To all in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints:

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

15That is why I am so eager to preach the gospel also to you who are at Rome.

1 Corinthians 1:20-24

20Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom did not know him, God was pleased through the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe. 22Jews demand miraculous signs and Greeks look for wisdom, 23but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, 24but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

Galatians 1:11-16

11I want you to know, brothers, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up. 12I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

13For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. 14I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers. 15But when God, who set me apart from birth and called me by his grace, was pleased 16to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles…

Gradually; we know from the historical record, the Church departed from the central point, and began rather to preach ceremonials and church offices rather than the person of their Lord.

So it is in our time: we also fall into the same error.

How many of us have gone from preaching Christ to preaching helpful lessons which address congregants “felt needs”?

How many regularly preach personal interests and hobbies hoping to draw more of a crowd than we can muster with Christ and the horrible offense of the cross.

To the early church, Christ was not a person from the ancient past who had left only the example of his character behind, but who was himself dead.

To them he was not a set of ideas, not some creed, or an abstract theory.

He was a person. Many of them had seen Him, they had handled his physical body.

Christ was substance to them, too often he is but shadow to us.

He was a reality to their minds; too often but a myth to ours.

All too often we see Jesus as a person who was, rather than as he who was, and is, and is to come—the Almighty.

This morning I propose that the central subject of every sermon, the focus of each ministry here at Dakota Community Church, as long as we exist - shall be the person of Jesus Christ.