Honest To God

Summary:

Jesus was now deep into His earthly ministry of healing people, preaching the way to God, and baptizing people as the repented. You can imagine how John the Baptist followers must have felt when they saw Jesus’ growing popularity and John’s decreasing role. However, it was prophesied long before that a forerunner would come to prepare the way for Christ, and then fade into the background as Christ took center stage. In this week’s message we talked about how we must “Decrease so God can increase” in our lives. We do this ultimately be submitting ourselves to the Lordship of Christ – this means we allow His rule and reign to be the guiding force for everything we do. This is much easier said than done. Today we’re going to talk more about what Christ’s Lordship in our lives looks like.

Sermon Outline:

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Part 1: Biographical Sketch of John, The Beloved Disciple

In this first sermon of the series, I took the time to give the background on the Apostle John. Because John often referred to himself as the “disciple Jesus loved” we looked more in depth at the love of Christ. The main preaching point was “God’s Love Will Never Leave You the Same.” We talked about how it cured his insecurities, assigned him eternal perspective and help him gain God’s perspective.

01, John biographical Sermon, Outline

Part 5, John 1:19-34: Marks of a Radical Witness (lessons from John the Baptizer)

In the first 18 verses of the Gospel of John we are told who Christ is and why He came to the world. Now as the book continues, we dive into narrative passages about actually events that happened in history in the life of Christ. This week we were introduced to John the Baptist who was the man appointed by God to announce to the world the coming of Christ. By looking at John the Baptist’s life we are able to see the characteristics we must have if we are going to witness for Christ: We must know who we are, why we exist, and what we must proclaim. Ultimately we find all of these answers through who Christ is and by His commands for us.

05, Marks of a Radical Witness, Outline

6, John 1:35-51: Rooted in Heaven, Called to Earth

John the Baptist had faithfully been declaring that a Savior was coming in John 1. He preached and called people to repentance. Now Jesus was on the scene and two of his Disciples immediately left to follow Christ. Then Jesus sought out Phillip, who then went and to get Nathanael. All of these men had to come to a point of trusting that Jesus truly was the Messiah. Although they each had unique experiences with Christ, they each had to come to accept that Christ was God in order for them to understand their significance and calling in this world.

06, Rooted in Heaven, Called to Earth, Outline, pg 1

06, Rooted in Heaven, Called to Earth, Outline, pg 2

12, John 3:22-36: The Removal of Wrath Replaced by Truth

Jesus was now deep into His earthly ministry of healing people, preaching the way to God, and baptizing people as the repented. You can imagine how John the Baptist followers must have felt when they saw Jesus’ growing popularity and John’s decreasing role. However, it was prophesied long before that a forerunner would come to prepare the way for Christ, and then fade into the background as Christ took center stage. In this week’s message we talked about how we must “Decrease so God can increase” in our lives. We do this ultimately be submitting ourselves to the Lordship of Christ – this means we allow His rule and reign to be the guiding force for everything we do. This is much easier said than done. Today we’re going to talk more about what Christ’s Lordship in our lives looks like.

12, John 4.22-36, Outline pg 1

12, John 4.22-36, Outline pg 2

12, John 3.22-36, Outline (word Doc)

12, Study Guide (word Doc)

In an effort to ensure that we were feeding the people of Creekside the content they needed and desired, we allows them to determine the sermon. For five weeks we fielded questions that were sent through test message during my sermons. As the weeks went on (even right after the first week) we had more questions then we knew what to do with. I would take the questions we received and spend some time answering them in advance in order to properly answer them on Sundays. Below are the notes I used during this series.

Part 2: Q&A on Suffering, Koran and Random Qs

In this sermon I started by answering how the God of the Bible is different then the God of the Koran. Then We moved into some heavy theological questions about suffering and why a sovereign God would allow His creation to suffer. A few other random questions were handled at the end. There are two pages to these notes: Q&A Suffering, pg 1 and Q&A Suffering, pg 2.

In this series I went through 61 passages in the New Testament that had the phrase “One Another” in them. My purpose for the series was to expose the body of Creekside to the mutual submission commands of the New Testament in order to help the be the church Christ desires them to be.

Originally I only planned on this being a 5 part series, but it grew into 6 parts when I separated “Submit” and “Support” from each other. Here is the passage guide I used and how I assigned the passages to each sermon: One Another Passages

Here are my sermon outlines for each sermon in the order I preached them:

Love One Another Outline

Serve One Another Outline

Befriend One Another Outline, pg 1

Befriend One Another Outline, pg 2

Support One Another Outline

Encourage One Another Outline