19th February 2024

19th February 2024


Pray (ACts)


Read (1 John 5:1-5 focus v1)


Message (Alan Burke) 


In 2022 Ligonier Ministries and LifeWay Research did a survey to take the theological temperature of the United Sates. The aim is to help Christians better understand today’s culture and to equip the church with better insights for discipleship. The survey is an interesting read and while its respondents are from the United Sates I’d say that it is not unlike what we would expect to find in the United Kingdom. It revealed a “significant increase in evangelicals who deny Jesus’ divinity.” Many people are happy to affirm that Jesus was a great leader, teacher but do not affirm that Jesus is God but that is contrary to what the Scriptures teach about him, for from beginning to end Jesus is indeed God. (Survey can be found at thestateoftheology.com). 


Here in this epistle of John we are taught that Jesus is the Christ and everyone who believes in that Jesus is the Christ they are born of God. Well the Greek word Christ comes from the Hebrew word Messiah, whether the Greek word is used of the Hebrew word, whether we say that Jesus is the Christ, Jesus is the Messiah, both mean that Jesus is the anointed one. Christ, is a title, taken from the Hebrew Messiah which is a title, there are many titles used for Jesus, but the Christ, Messiah, anointed is one that we so often least understand but we are to believe that Jesus is the Christ. He is the one who the people had been waiting for, the Messiah, the Christ. For ever since in the moments after the fall of humanity when the Lord Himself preached the Gospel to Satan of one who would come to bruise the head of the serpent (Gen 3:15) the people of God were looking forward to the one who would come.


He was the one that all the Old Testament was pointing to and revealing. After His resurrection Jesus explained to His disciples the entirety of all that was said in the Old Testament concerning himself (24:17). And how it was that He was the fulfilment of the Messianic hope of the people, for “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, 47 and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem” (Lk 24:46–47). “Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved.” (Acts 4:12). 


If you confess that Jesus is the Christ then what it should mean is that you at its most basic level, is that you believe the truth of the gospel, that Jesus died for your sins, He rose again, that we you are justified by faith in His name and His sacrifice. It means that we trust in that He has done it all, faith begins with belief but it is more than that for it is a personal commitment to God in Christ. It should impact how you live today right now, for He’s the Anointed one, the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God, the one who calls us to live for Him, it means that you live your life in light of that, when it costs you, when you want to do something else, when you want to live in your own way, you seek to live for Him.


Everyone who believing that Jesus is the Christ is born of God, for anyone who calls upon the name of the Lord will be saved (Acts 2:21). When we trust in Jesus we are born again through faith in Jesus the Christ. And if we love the Father we will love his child. I don’t know why the translators of NIV in verse did not capitalise the F in father to indicate to us that what is being spoken here is of our heavenly Father. If we claim to be children of God then we love his Son the Lord Jesus Christ. It is not enough to affirm that Jesus is a leader, teacher, he is the Christ, if you deny his deity you deny the truth of the Scriptures and are not a child of God, let us believe in him, let it impact our lives in every way knowing that through faith as we believe in him we are born of God. 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q72 What is forbidden in the seventh commandment?
The seventh commandment forbiddeth all unchaste thoughts, words, and actions. (Matt. 15:19, Matt. 5:28, Eph. 5:3–4)
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