AWWR#5

Read: Luke 1-2:40 emphasis on verse 1

Sing: Prepare Him Room

As we prepare to jump into the heart of the context next week I wanted to focus on verse 1 today and leave us with something to meditate on this weekend. Luke wrote for a very specific reason. A beautiful reason and one that as believers we should hold tightly too, and consider each time we go to our own Bibles. J.C. Ryle writes, " Luke gives us a short , but valuable sketch of the nature of the gospel. He calls it, 'A declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us.' It is a narrative of facts about Jesus Christ."

Ryle goes on to write, " Christianity is a religion built upon facts. Let us never lose sight of this. It came before mankind at first in this shape. The first preachers did not go up and down the world, proclaiming an elaborate, artificial system of abstruse doctrines and deep principles. They made it their business to tell men great plain facts. They went about telling a sin- laden world, that the Son of God had come down to earth, lived for us, died for us, and risen again. The Gospel, at its first publication, was far more simple than many make it now. It was neither more nor less that the history of Christ."

Woah. I read this paragraph several times the past few months as I studied this portion of Scripture. I looked around me to our church at present and needed to take time to grieve over the mess, over the emotional, therapeutic, deism that we have mucked the history of Jesus into. Then I realized, we can do something about this. You, me...every lady reading this and every woman willing to listen to you share this. We can be students of the Word. We can know the facts of the Gospel through the revealed Word of Christ inside and out. AND then, be able to share it articulately with others around us. 

Often we start the good news of Jesus with ourselves. We try to break ground with people by telling them what Jesus has done for us. He instantly becomes a bonus buddy, not the Savior of the World. We lose sight of the fact that we were dead in our sins and trespasses...dead. There was nothing that we could do. Dead men can't help themselves, but Jesus Christ came, bore our sins on the cross, and now clothes us in His righteousness. My husband has used this analogy often while teaching at events and conferences...we lead too much with the answer. We go up to people and say the answer is Jesus! We don't lay out the problem we just offer a solution to something they are not looking for. Or we make it super ambiguous- Ab+DR*3q=Christ.We make the problem obsolete and offer a confusing solution. We must know the Gospel in its entirety and in its clarity. We have a great problem Sin=death. That must be made evident. But we have a greater Savior. Christ=salvation. He came, paid the debt we could not, to a problem we would never solve, and he gave it freely.

Friend, may we be able, as Luke himself, share with all the Theophilus in our lives an orderly account of the good news of Jesus Christ.