14. Will I Preach Jesus?
In Matthew 10:32-33 Jesus is very clear to His disciples the purpose of preaching and leading is to proclaim His name…and that if anyone denies His name that He will deny them- pretty serious stuff.
I remember a time several years ago where I nearly lost my focus. I would find a cool video idea or a cool song idea or a sermon prop idea and try my best to revolve the sermon around a concept rather than scripture.
I actually thought I could give really great lessons in morality and not preach Jesus because His name seemed to constantly offend people—then God rocked my world, slapped my face, got my attention and helped me to understand that Jesus, and ONLY Jesus, is the game changer.
“Cool and cute” will impress people….but Christ will CHANGE them!
I could teach people get out of debt, have great sex with their spouse, get over anger issues, and become greater people; however, if I do all of that without pointing them to the Gospel and sharing Jesus with them I have rescued them from Hell on Earth and damned them to Hell in eternity.
(And do not misunderstand the paragraph above as me taking shots at teaching the practical…I am not against that at all…but when our goal is simply to be practical and avoid the controversial that the Gospel will cause…we have a problem!)
I try to be a student of growing churches…and the thing I see across the board in nearly every church that is experiencing growth is that they are preaching Jesus…that there is a dependence upon the Spirit and not just systems…
And the Spirit will ALWAYS lead us to proclaim the name of Jesus!
When our agenda in the church becomes anything except for Jesus (insert whatever you wish here—political preferences, home schooling, recycling, the list goes on and on) then we are proclaiming another Savior…which is dangerous and heretical!
I Corinthians 15:1-8 is where Paul says THIS is the most important thing we can preach…we NEVER go wrong by lifting up Christ.