Lessons In Lordship Part 3
Jesus is Savior & Lord
Introduction: Take your Bibles if you would and turn with me to 1 Corinthians 6. Today is our third study in our Lessons in Lordship series. As I was thinking about all the implications that come with a study of the Lordship of Jesus Christ I realized that at the heart of the whole issue of Lordship is the fact that all of us, whether we like it or not, will answer to God. But more personally than that, those of us who have chosen to accept God’s gift of salvation through His Son Jesus Christ must answer to Him daily.
To make sure that we don’t make this some kind of intellectual pursuit that doesn’t have practical applications I want to keep us grounded in this study. So as an introduction to our study today I want us to look at a scripture passage that has given me a real challenge in the area of Lordship.
1 Corinthians 6:19-20
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own, you were bought with a price. Therefore honor God with your body.
I’ve paraphrased that verse and I’d like us to personalize it by saying it together:I am not my own, I was paid for by Jesus, So I will honor Him with my life.
The question is, "Am I?" Am I honoring Jesus with my life? Does the way I live my life, the things I do, and even think bring honor to Jesus Christ? If not, then I have a Lordship issue. It may be that you struggle with questions like these, and it may be that the reason you do is because you, like many other Christians have compartmentalized your faith. You have accepted Jesus as your Savior, but for some reason you are not acknowledging Him as your Lord.
What I want to do today is to begin showing you in Scripture how interconnected those two are. That Jesus Christ IS both Lord and Savior and that He can’t be one without the other in your life.
Jesus Christ is both Lord and Savior!
Today we are going to be looking a variety of scriptures that show how interconnected the roles of Savior and Lord are in the life and work of Jesus Christ. I hope that you have your Bibles with you to follow along. Once again we will be putting the reference up on the screen but we will not be putting up the verses themselves.
We are going to begin in the Gospel of Luke, chapter 2 and our first point of connection comes at the very beginning of Jesus’ earthly life:
1. Jesus was Declared Both Lord and Savior at His Birth.
Luke 2:10-11
10But the angel said to them, Don’t be afraid, for look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people: 11today a Savior, who is Messiah the Lord, was born for you in the city of David.
Isn’t it funny how easily we separate the ideas of Jesus as Savior and Lord even though it was cleared declared by the angels when they announced His birth to the Shepherds. Think about it, if His Lordship was declared to Mary and Joseph before His birth, and to the Shepherds after His birth, and if we can also see the Wise Men come bow down before Him as a Newborn King, why is it we have such a hard time acknowledging it in our own lives?
2. Jesus was Declared Lord by John the Baptist
Matthew 3:1-3
1In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the Wilderness of Judea 2and saying, "Repent, because the kingdom of heaven has come near!" 3For he is the one spoken of through the prophet Isaiah, who said: A voice of one crying out in the wilderness: "Prepare the way for the Lord; make His paths straight!"
John doesn’t say: Prepare the way of the Savior or even, Prepare the way for the Messiah. Why? Because that is not what the Prophet Isaiah said. John was quoting Isaiah. At the heart of the prophet’s message was that God’s redemptive plan was being fulfilled through His Son Jesus.
If you continue on in Isaiah 40 you will hear the Prophet say:
10...the Lord GOD comes with strength, and His power establishes His rule.
600 years before He came, the Messiah, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, was identified as being the Lord God and that He would by His power would rule.
What does that mean? It means that Jesus came to be LORD! He possessed all the power, strength, and authority when He walked this earth, and yet He willingly laid it all down on the cross to redeem you and me! We should never confuse Jesus’ death with defeat. The cross is the greatest victory in all of human history!
Let’s move to the other end of Jesus’ time on earth.
Turn with me to Matthew 28.
Jesus rose from the dead, and then He commissioned His disciples to take His message to the world.
3. Jesus Declared His Lordship along with His Commission.
We have often looked at the Great Commission in these verses, but I think we may have missed something important. Many times we start at verse 19 but I want us to read verse 18:
Matthew 28:18
18Then Jesus came near and said to them, "All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth."
Where is His Lordship in this verse? In the fact that Jesus stated that "all authority" had been given to Him. In other words it was precisely because He was Lord that He could give the Great Commission to His disciples. If we start with the "Go make disciples" in verse 19 and miss out on the fact that Jesus declares His Lordship in verse 18 then we are missing the power behind the mission.
Let’s keep moving forward in our Bibles to Acts 2. A few weeks ago we studied the coming of the Holy Spirit on the Day of Pentecost, but we didn’t address one of the most important truths in Peter’s message that day...
4. Jesus was Declared Lord at Pentecost.
Acts 2:36
36"Therefore let all the house of Israel know with certainty that God has made this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Messiah!"
At the conclusion of Peter’s message after the Holy Spirit had come on the Day of Pentecost he laid it out simply Jesus is both Lord and Christ. He is Lord and Savior, those two were never to be separated. From the very beginning of the Church Lordship was a key doctrine. It is us as modern believers who have let it fall out of style.
The early Christians willingly sacrificed their lives for the sake of Jesus Christ and yet we can’t seem to figure out how to simply get along with one another. Early believers looked death in the face and put their faith in Christ to sustain them; but we can’t manage to look one another in the face and share our common faith through love and support.
We talk about reaching our community with the Good News but until we learn to reach across this aisle we won’t! And that’s a real problem for me because the Lordship of Christ is not something to be held onto its something to be shared.
5. Jesus’ Lordship is for All People.
Turn with me to Acts 10. Peter had been challenged by the Lord to broaden his horizons, to see that the Gospel is for everyone, that Jesus came to bring life to all who would believe not just the Jews. The Lord sent him to make that truth known to all people. Look at what Peter says beginning in verse 34:
Acts 10:34-36
34Then Peter began to speak: "In truth, I understand that God doesn’t show favoritism, 35but in every nation the person who fears Him and does righteousness is acceptable to Him. 36He sent the message to the sons of Israel, proclaiming the good news of peace through Jesus Christ--He is Lord of all."
Peter had gone to visit a Gentile named Cornelius in the process God used Him to reveal through Peter that His message of salvation was for all people. Notice the connection of Jesus as both Savior and Lord in verse 36: good news of peace through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.
Not only is Jesus Christ Lord of both the Jews and the Gentiles, Peter went on to say that Jesus is Lord of both the living and the dead. There is no escaping the Lordship of Christ. He has been appointed by God to judge, He is the final authority for all things.
Conclusion: We are going to stop here today, and pick up next Sunday with some more illustrations of the Lordship of Christ as well as beginning to make some practical applications of what His Lordship means to us on a day-to-day basis.
Let me tie things up today with this summary. Today we have seen two parallel expressions of the Lordship of Christ.
Here is the first:
Jesus was declared LORD at His birth, at the beginning of His ministry, and then He himself declared His LORDSHIP as He sent His disciples out to carry on His message of salvation.
The Lordship of Christ is at the very center of understanding who Jesus is, what He came to do, and what He has given us to accomplish as His followers.
The parallel expression of His Lordship was seen it that:
Jesus was declared LORD at the birth of the Church on Pentecost and then His LORDSHIP was declared again by Peter revealing that Jesus salvation was for all people.
There is simply no denying the importance of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. The question is: What are we doing about it? If Jesus’ salvation and Lordship are so intertwined why is it not reflected in our daily lives? We must begin to ask ourselves:
Does my life reflect His Lordship?
Do you believe that Jesus has complete authority over your life? If not, then you need to rethink what it means to be a Christian, to be saved. I have said it before, and I am going to continue saying it, If Jesus is your Savior then He is your Lord, and in the same manner, If Jesus isn’t your Lord, then He isn’t your Savior!
