Knowing Christ
Main Idea: In order for a church to meaningfully exist, it must be centered on knowing Christ theologically and experientially.
WE MUST KNOW CHRIST AS OUR SAVIOR (2 Cor. 5)
We were in grave danger of judgment because of our sin.
We have been greatly delivered because of our loving Savior.
WE MUST KNOW CHRIST AS OUR EXAMPLE (1 Pet. 2)
He endured incredible hardships for our sake.
He did not allow others’ sins to stop His God-given mission.
He gave everything He possessed to bring us to God.
WE MUST KNOW CHRIST AS OUR LORD (1 John 2)
Christ is our Lord if we obey Him.
Christ is our Lord if we realize who He truly is.
Christ is our Lord if we anticipate His return.
Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by YouTube)
Today, we are continuing in our Tabernacle DNA series. These are the building blocks, the essential traits that our church has to have if we are going to have any meaning or any purpose going forward as a church.
The first sermon in this series was from the very short book of 3 John, where we looked at the DNA of a healthy church. This sermon is Knowing Christ.
And I think all of us would realize, especially being in a Christian church, if we don't have Jesus, if Jesus isn't at the center of our church, then we are in big trouble. All God's people said, amen.
The next two weeks, we're going to be looking at growing in God's Word and showing God's love to others. I'm really looking forward to those.
And then the last two weeks of the series are the case for biblical church membership and then what the Bible says about spiritual leaders. And I'm looking forward to diving into that together as a church, as we look at those topics.
But today, we're going to look at knowing Christ, knowing Christ. If I told you today that I know all about King James and the King James version of the Bible, you'd probably believe me.
If I told you I know all about the translators, the reason that the translation was commissioned, the predecessors of about the seven or eight other English translations that preceded it, you might believe me.
Some of you that were in our starting point class, or rather the first steps class, and kind of heard me talk about some of those things, you'd know, okay, yeah, he knows some things about that.
But if I told you that I know King James, you would assume that I know about some facts.
If I told you today that I know Justin Bieber or Elvis Presley or any one of our US presidents, you would rightly assume that I know about a set of facts about those individuals.
However, if I told you that I know my wife, or I know my kids, Bea and Evelyn, you would assume something very different about what I mean by I know them.
In the same way we as Christians are called to know Christ, we are called to know some facts about the Lord, but we're also called to know him experientially. It's not just know this list of things about Jesus and you're good to go as a church.
It's also meant to be lived out. Today, I want us as a church to know Christ and to reemphasize the fact that if we do not know Christ both theologically or mentally, as well as experientially, then we have no true meaning to exist as a church.
Jesus is the only reason for a church to exist. If there is no knowledge of Jesus as expressed in the Bible and as experienced by those that have genuinely received a salvation, then there is no reason for Tabernacle Baptist Church to exist.
Other organizations can do a better job at relieving the plight of the poor and needy. Other organizations can do more to feed more people.
There are clubs and sports and other venues that can result in a higher number of people enjoying more time together with more fun than simply this location and building can provide.
However, what no other organization, group of people or grassroots effort can provide is the declaration of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, our perfect substitutionary atonement as Lord, King and Savior, and the declaration of His living Spirit working
in us through His perfect world to reconcile the world to God. Jesus is the reason for the existence of Tabernacle Baptist Church. So if He is so important and He is, what do we need to know about it? And how can we know Him personally?
Today, we're gonna see three ways in which we're called to know Christ both theologically and experientially because in order for a church to meaningfully exist, it must be centered on knowing Christ theologically and experientially.
Today, we're gonna be looking at three different passages of scripture. For the most part, whenever the word's preached here, we're gonna be going through a passage of scripture.
Today, we're kinda tripling it, and for next week, we'll do some tripling of it, that we're gonna be looking at some different passages and looking at the totality of scripture to say, this is all over the place.
This isn't just something that could be tweaked. All right, here's this one verse, and I can twist it to mean that everyone's gotta give me all their money. This is the entirety of scripture speaks to this truth.
The first of these ways that we're gonna look at in 2 Corinthians 5 is that we must know Christ as our Savior. We must know Christ as our Savior. And we can see in verses 10 through 15 that we were in grave danger of judgment because of our sin.
The word of God says this, for we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ so that each may be repaid for what he has done in the body, whether good or evil. Therefore, since we know the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade people.
What we are is plain to God, and I hope it is also plain to your consciences. For the love of Christ compels us, since we have reached this conclusion that one died for all and therefore all died.
And he died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for the one who died for them and was raised. We must know Christ is our Savior because we were all in grave danger of judgment because of our sin.
A church that has any right to existence must not be afraid to tell a sin-sick world that sin will be judged by a holy God and must be repented of and forsaken.
This includes the big sins that everyone agrees you shouldn't do these things like murder or theft or rape. It includes the little sins that we all excuse because we like them.
Lying, sex outside of the marriage covenant of one man and one woman, or maybe harboring feelings of bitterness towards another person.
These are all little things that we do, that we enjoy, that we don't want to give up, but that God says this is not the plan. This isn't why I created you. It goes against God's plan for your life.
It includes even the inner sins. If you've done everything perfect on the outside, and yet have inner sin, God says we are still in danger of judgment.
How James puts it in James chapter two is the person that keeps the entire law, that whole 613 commandments from the Old Testament, and yet stumbles in one area. He is guilty of all. I think I mentioned this possibly two weeks ago.
If you live your entire life, and you've done great, and then you kill one person, you can't go to the judge and say, but listen, judge, look at my great track record. He'd go, yeah, but you broke the law here.
It doesn't matter that you didn't break every law. If we break God's law, we have stumbled, we have turned onto a path of destruction that God did not intend for us. God didn't say, all right, great, I want all of you to head towards destruction.
No, no, no, he made us in his image, in his likeness, so that we would follow his plan and experience a worthwhile, full, abundant life. But every single one of us has turned our own way.
And we harbor these inner sins, like hatred or envy or selfishness. These sins have not simply made God sad, but as a holy judge, the one in charge of the justice system of the entire universe, God must judge sin.
And all of us have sinned and fallen short of God's glory and perfection. So the Bible says that the wages of sin, what we get for that is death, not just death, eternal death. For a church to exist, they must preach that.
A doctor would be a horrible doctor if you had cancer and he didn't want to tell you because it would hurt your feelings, or if you were in kind of a pre-diabetic state and the doctor did not warn you that if you did not change your ways, you would
undergo this particular difficulty and disease. For the church, for the people of God, we must stand with God's word.
We must know Christ as our Savior, and part of that is acknowledging the fact that we have sinned and we are in danger of God's judgment because of our sin.
Today, I want to ask you, are you holding on to sin in your life and refusing to view it as cancerous to your soul, or are you bringing it to God and asking Him to help you root it out? What is your posture towards sin in your life?
But thankfully, the story of the Bible is not just we were in grave danger of judgment because of sin. The testimony of scripture is we have been greatly delivered because of our loving Savior.
The passage continues in saying this, from now on then, we do not know anyone from a worldly perspective. We've got a new lens. It says, even if we have known Christ from a worldly perspective, yet now we no longer know Him in this way.
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old is passed away, and see, the new has come. Everything is from God, who has reconciled us to Himself through Christ and has given us the ministry of reconciliation.
That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed the message of reconciliation to us. Do you hear that? God didn't just say, I'm doing the work, you can receive it.
He says, I did the work, and now you're the newspaper boy. You're the herald. You're the one to communicate to those you know, to those you love.
You are the herald of this message of reconciliation. He's committed it to us. We should never say, oh, someone else will reach my family.
Someone else will reach my coworkers. God's given it to you. What will you do with it?
He continues, therefore we are ambassadors for Christ. Since God is making His appeal through us, we plead on Christ's behalf, be reconciled to God.
He made the one who did not know sin to be sin for us so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God. Working together with Him, we also appeal to you, don't receive the grace of God in vain.
For He says, at an acceptable time, I listened to you. And then the day of salvation, I helped you. See, now is the acceptable time.
Now is the day of salvation. This message of Christ as Savior is one that we all must personally adopt. Parents cannot make their children adopt it.
And as I mentioned earlier, post high school often shows whether or not the children have yet genuinely accepted Christ. Your religious background and good works do not suffice to save you. It is Christ and Christ alone.
And the church must emphatically declare personal faith in Jesus. And that begins with the members personally professing it and calling others to do the same.
Ephesians 4 verses 11 and 12 talk about this fact, that it's not just something for you to bring someone else to church on a Sunday to say, hey, you wanna know Jesus? You gotta talk to this person.
This person is kind of the mediator between us and God. No, no, no. God's plan is that you would mimic, you would pass on the same DNA, the same spiritual DNA that you have of faith in Christ, that you would pass that on to someone else.
Ephesians 4 verses 11 and 12 say this, he gave some apostles, some prophets, some evangelists and some pastors and teachers for the equipping of the saints, for the work of the ministry. God's desire, his design is that his people would reach people.
This building, as beautiful and wonderful as it is, is not God's intended vehicle for making new disciples of Jesus. God's intended design is that his disciples would make disciples of Jesus. You are God's plan.
And your spiritual leaders, your teachers, your pastors, are here to help equip you so that you can have those conversations, so that you can dialogue with those people, to come alongside of you and to witness along with you.
But don't abdicate your responsibility. You have been given the holy role of an ambassador of Christ. You represent a different country.
You have a different citizenship that you have been sent into this world with the Holy Spirit's power inside of you to make a difference to, in the words of those in the Book of Acts, to turn the world upside down for Jesus and to turn your world
upside down for Jesus. The gospel, which is Jesus, God the Son, lived a perfect life. He made the complete payment for sin and his death.
He was buried and rose again in power as Lord and King and now calls everyone everywhere to turn from lives lived in sin and for themselves to him alone. That gospel is the unique message meant to be safeguarded by the local body of believers.
At Tabernacle, if you have strong opinions about the color of the chairs or the next big purchase the congregation will make, but you are not personally inviting others to faith in Christ, you are drastically missing the point of our existence.
We do not exist for our own comfort or our own opinions. We exist to proclaim a risen Savior to a world that is dying. So what person do you know that you will choose to share Christ with this week?
It's very, very, very rarely a one-time thing where after a book of Acts, Paul and Silas in the jail, the earthquake happens and the jailer goes, what must I do to be saved? You'll rarely get that direct of a statement.
Most of the time, it's like what Jesus says. It's a garden, and you plant a seed, and you water, and you water, and maybe you pull out a weed that's trying to choke out the seed and the plant that's being made.
Most of the time, it's just some watering. It's just simple conversations. You don't have to, the phrase ABC, always be closing.
You don't have to seal the deal every single time. But who are you going to talk to about Christ this week? You might say, man, I've never personally led someone else to the Lord.
That's right. You can start. God left you here so that you can help make disciples.
So who are you going to talk to this week? Not only must we know Christ as our Savior, but we must know Christ as our example. And we can see this over in First Peter Chapter 2.
We can see in First Peter Chapter 2 that not only is Jesus our Savior, but he's also our example. There was a book that was written, I believe, in the late 1800s, a book called In His Steps.
Many of you might know the reworked version of that book that came out, I believe, 70s or 80s, the book What Would Jesus Do? That was written actually by the original author's grandson.
Jesus was not just a great, he saved me, thanks God, I'm gonna go live my life until I die and go to heaven. Jesus is our example. He is the one whose actions, whose habits, whose thoughts we are called to mimic as believers.
The original disciples of Christ, it was ones that followed him every day, that went where he went, that did what he did. And the call of Jesus in Matthew 28 in the Great Commission is go therefor and make disciples of all nations.
He says, the exact thing that I did with you, I lived life with you, I read God's Word with you, I went to these various places, I went fishing with you guys, I went to these places, we had arguments, we talked about the Lord together.
He says that kind of life change, making disciples, is what he calls us to. So Jesus is our example. And we can see first from 1 Peter 2 that he endured incredible hardships for our sake.
It says this in verse 21 and 22, for you were called to this because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example that you should follow in his steps. He did not commit sin, and no deceit was found in his mouth.
The Christian life, and frankly the life of a church member, is one that follows Jesus in suffering. If you'll recall, Jesus rarely suffered at the hands of total unbelievers, idolaters, or atheists, at least not from what's recorded in Scripture.
Most all of Jesus' difficulties came from those that claimed the same God that Christ worshiped, but that lived lives that did not match up to the holiness of that God.
So it is in our lives that most of our greatest relational hurts and spiritual battles will not come because of those that don't believe, but because of brothers and sisters, real or otherwise, that fall short of God's perfect standard and forget
about us, malign us, gossip about us, do things we don't like, and say things that we don't agree with. As we can see in verse 21, Jesus suffered for us. He did not take the easiest road. He truly took the most difficult road possible.
He was itinerant and without housing for most of his ministry. He spent the vast majority of his time clarifying the scriptures that people had memorized and internalized and completely missed the point of.
He spent most of the rest of his time getting the disciples to stop fighting about who was the greatest and attempted to preach to a completely wayward world a message that in essence was surrender your direction and expectations entirely and rely on
your God's act of working to make you a part of the renewed world that he's shaping. That message and his preaching about the sins of the religious crowd prompted them to arrest him, beat him, deliver him to be whipped, then forced to carry his
cross, and then they crucified him on Golgotha. In our Senior's Bible study in 2 Timothy, we read the verse in chapter 2 along this lines of having Jesus as our example about following him. If we died with him, we will also live with him.
If we endure, we will also reign with him. If we deny him, he will also deny us. If Jesus suffered on our behalf, then should we expect a life free of suffering and difficulty?
When it comes to the church and the people in the church, do you expect that you will never be offended, never be wronged, never be misunderstood or maligned? Let's not think that we will receive better treatment than Christ himself.
And let's plan ahead of the wrongdoing of others, ahead of their failures, that we will endure through suffering just like Christ did for us. He's our example. I'm going to follow his actions.
Not only that, but he did not allow others' sins to stop his mission. We can see this in verse number 23. Who, when he was insulted, he did not insult in return.
When he suffered, he did not threaten, but entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. Did you know that the church is God's Plan A, and he doesn't have a Plan B?
As you read through the letters of the Bible written to churches, Romans through Revelation, you'll see over and over again how Christians are called to deal with problems and wrongs, and the solution is never to abandon ship.
That's our natural bent, but it's not how the Bible talks about it.
Paul, John, Jude, and whoever wrote Hebrews tell us on page after page after page, forgive, forbear, be patient, be long suffering, go with a friend and talk to them, get the situation rectified, don't let it fester.
Instead, many Christians today treat their local churches like an article of clothing instead of like a family. Is it too old? Throw it out.
Is it too hip? Donate it to someone else who will enjoy it. Slightly uncomfortable?
It's gone. Temperature not quite right? Jesus allowed himself to be beaten, spit on, whipped, and suffocated, and bled to death, all so you could personally know God and be a part of his family.
Nothing stopped Jesus from completing his mission. What stops you from serving the Lord? What keeps you from reading his word?
What is so powerful that it can stop you from joining forces with the family of God's people to bring the gospel to our area?
Not only did Christ endure incredible hardships for our sake, and not only did he not allow the sins of others to stop his mission, he gave everything he possessed to bring us to God. We can see this in verses 24 and 25.
He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that, having died to sins, we might live for righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed.
For you were like sheep going astray, but you have now returned to the shepherd and overseer of your souls.
We talked about this topic at the end of the book of Philippians, so I won't belabor it now, but Jesus' life and ministry was all about giving. His time was spent being given to other people.
His money was spent being given to God's work and the responsibilities that God had given him. His gifts, his abilities were expended on benefiting others' lives and helping them to know God.
Put very bluntly this morning, what are you not giving to serve God or serve others? Are you willing to throw money at a church or charity, but never actually give of your time or abilities to help?
Do you spend a bunch of time doing things for people, but hold back your money from God? Do you value projects and outreaches, but never spend time in God's word or in fellowship with God's people? Jesus gave it all for us.
And so everything that we can give to him, we must. There's no portion of our life that we ought to hold back from God. I've heard it phrased before, Jesus coming into the home of our heart.
And we say, OK, Jesus, here's the living room, here's the kitchen. Just don't go into the master bedroom or don't go into the bathroom. You can have all of the rooms of this house, but not these ones.
Let's not do that. Jesus gave everything for us. Let's give everything for him.
If we as individuals in the church only ever give God part of us, we will never make a genuine difference in our community again for Jesus. We sang last week, I surrender all.
But I wonder, as we look into our own hearts this morning, are we truly responding to him with all of our being, in obedience, surrender and worship?
He is the one who gave first, who truly gave all, and anything that we do is simply a response, an echo of his sacrifice for us.
I don't know about you, as I look at Jesus as my example, I'm looking in the mirror going, that's not me yet, and I want to encourage this this morning. It is the call of God's word. We're called to follow him.
But when we see the imperfections, when we see where we don't measure up, that's why God gives us his grace. It's that empowering favor, that gift that he says, I know you can't do it on your own. I know you can't love other people like you should.
I know you can't give like you should. That's why I put my Holy Spirit inside of you so that you can have that hope, that love, that desire to follow God that you could never have on your own. How do we tap into that?
Do we need to, you know, throw a bunch of money into an offering plate and hopefully get God's power? No. Be in God's Word.
Pray to Him. Ask Him, Lord, help me. I don't really want to be around people, but I know that you love people, and you call me to love people.
God, I really don't want to spend time doing this thing. God, help change my heart, help change my desire so that I want to do these things. Following Jesus as our example isn't just a nice thought.
It's a command of Scripture, and we are called, follow Him wholeheartedly. Lastly, not only must we know Christ as our Savior and know Christ as our example, but we must know Christ as our Lord. We can see this in 1 John chapter 2.
First, we can see that Christ is our Lord if we obey Him. And we can see this in verses 3 through 6. He says, This is how we know that we know Him, if we keep His commands.
The one who says, I have come to know Him, and yet doesn't keep His commands, is a liar, and the truth is not in Him. But whoever keeps His word, truly in Him, the love of God is made complete. This is how we know we are in Him.
The one who says he remains in Him should walk, just as He walked. Christ is our Lord if we obey Him.
There is a sad truth today that we have often, as Christians, masked the truth of Jesus' Lord as strictly implying mental assent to His payment for sin.
If you agree to apply Jesus' payment to your life, then you're a born-again believer headed to heaven. But what Scripture tells us again and again and again is that if we repent and believe, that we will be saved.
Romans 10 tells us that exact fact that we confess Jesus is Lord and we are saved.
Not that those three words possess a magic ability to change us from darkness to light, from Satan's kingdom to the kingdom of our God, but the actual belief and turning in obedience to Him, to His direction, is what brings salvation.
If someone prays to get fire insurance, but willfully disobeys God's commands to gather with the congregation, to spend time with Him, to love others, etc.
then Scripture calls us to question if that person is lying about their repentance and belief in Jesus.
It is not that your actions save you, but the real, genuine faith that saves you never comes alone, but brings along with it a desire to know God and to obey Him.
For our church, going forward, we must realize that who we communicate as a church body is genuinely saved is important.
When the church baptizes someone, when the church proclaims that someone is a covenant member, not just an attender of Tabernacle, we are saying as an embassy of heaven, remember, we're ambassadors, ambassadors live in embassies, we're saying as the
embassy of heaven that this individual has genuinely repented and believed in Christ. That's why biblical church discipline is so important, that when a person is living a life that loudly shouts, I don't care what God says, I'm going to do my own
thing, that we warn them as individuals that the path that they're on is the path to destruction. And in the most extreme cases, as we read about in 1 Corinthians, the church, if you will, revokes the passport from the embassy and in essence says,
we're not God, we can't tell you with 100% certainty if you know Jesus, but we know that we can't sign off on your passport until you've shown proof of citizenship. It's what John the Baptist called in his preaching, fruit consistent with repentance.
For your life today, are you surrendered to Jesus as Lord? Is there anything in scripture that you'd read or hear and say, I like church, I like Jesus, but I'm not going to obey that command.
I like my attitude, my girlfriend, my money or my addiction too much to obey that. Can I challenge you? Jesus is worthy of our obedience, and we cannot call him Lord and not do what he says.
So Christ is our Lord if we obey him. The word Lord is kind of an older word. We might think today of the word master.
It would be very weird if we said, so and so is my master. OK, do you obey him? Do you do what he says?
No, no. He's kind of more my friend. He's not really my Lord.
He's just a buddy. We would find that someone somewhat odd, but we completely excuse it away when it comes to our relationship with Jesus. And that should not be.
Christ is our Lord if we obey him. Christ is our Lord if we realize who he truly is. We can see this in verse number 14 of the passage.
I've written to you, children, because you have come to know the Father. I've written to you, fathers, because you have come to know the one who is from the beginning.
Our church is built on Jesus as eternal God, the victorious son of man, the second person in the Trinity. Jesus is not created. He is not brothers with Satan.
He does not share his divine glory with any human, even his mother. He is not a lesser God. He is not merely a perfect prophet.
He is King of Kings, Lord of Lords, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the lion of the tribe of Judah, the heir of David's throne, the first and the last, the wonderful counselor, the mighty God, the Prince of Peace, the everlasting
Father, the Word of God, and the one mediator between God and man, Jesus Christ. If our church and our individual members do not believe that about Jesus, then we can pack it all up. Jesus is the reason for our existence.
If Jesus is our Lord, we gotta know who He truly is. And then lastly, the day Christ is our Lord if we anticipate His return. We can see this in verses 28 and 29.
So now, little children, remain in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not be ashamed before Him at His coming. If you know that He is righteous, you know this as well. Everyone who does what is right has been born of Him.
Much could be said about Christ's return, but the most important part is that His return demands action from His church. If He is returning, let's work till Jesus comes.
Don't view Jesus' triumphant entry back into creation as your escape from having to deal with people or your final revenge against your political enemies.
View it as the moment when everything you have worked for in Jesus is finally vindicated in full. The precious time that we have left before Christ comes back to earth is meant to be lived in bringing others to know Christ.
It's meant to be lived in loving people, in serving people, in obeying Jesus' commands. When He returns, will He find us faithfully following or wasting our time assuming that there will always be another day where we can get around to it?
Today, in order for our church to meaningfully exist, we must know Christ, both theologically, mentally, and experientially, personally. We must know Him as our Savior.
If you today, you've listened to this message, and you have never accepted Christ, you have never turned in repentance and belief to Jesus, I'd encourage you, today can be the day that you make that decision.
At the end of service, we'll have an invitation. Pastor Ron will be up at the front. A couple of our deacons will be up at the front.
One of them would love to take a Bible and show you from God's Word that exact truth of believing in Jesus and invite you to make that decision to repent and believe in Jesus alone.
For those that do know Christ as Savior, are you following Him as your example? Or are you following your own path? Let's follow His.
His way is harder. His way involves suffering. His way involves putting up with things that in and of ourselves and our flesh, we would never put up with.
But it's worth it to follow the risen Savior, to adopt His way. And then lastly, we must know Christ as our Lord. It is the essence of the Gospel that He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
May we not be so foolish to think that we can trust Him for our eternity and not trust Him in our day-to-day life. Let's choose to obey Him, to follow Him, to pursue Him with everything that we have.
As a church, if we live that out personally, if we know Christ as our Savior, if we know Him as our example, if we know Him as our Lord, then can I encourage you?
You might think, man, Tabernacle really had a heyday 35 years ago, five years ago, 74 years ago, if you've got a real bleak outlook. We were really killing it back then, and I guess now it's just time waiting.
There is no telling what God can do with the people that are sold out to Christ. Not to themselves, not to their comforts, but to Jesus. Let's do that.
Let's pursue Him. He's the one that's worth knowing. He's the one that's worth obeying.
He's the one that's worth casting our entire life and belief on. Let's follow Jesus.
