Preaching Jesus

It is sometimes asked, “What do you preach when you preach Jesus?”  It would do us well if we would notice first what it is not. To preach Jesus one can not preach from some Catechism, for it states: “When a priest has been called to attend a person who is already dead, he should pray for the dead person, asking that God forgive his sins and graciously receive him into his kingdom.”  Friends, there is nothing like that in the  Bible, nor in preaching Jesus!  To preach  Jesus one can not  preach  from  some denominational  Manual, for in such a man made book you will find it stated: “Churches  have  candidates  come  before  them,  make  their  statement,  give  their experience, and then their reception is decided by a vote of the members.” Once again, I wish to make it very clear, there is nothing like that in the Bible! Now, let’s look into the Bible and see just what is preaching Jesus.

            In Acts 8:35  we will notice  Philip preaching to the eunuch and showed how Jesus was the one meant by the prophet Isaiah, and was the fulfillment of what the old prophet wrote in the book of Isaiah chapter fifty three. Therefore, he showed the pure and  spotless  life  of  Jesus,  His  unfair  and  unjust  trial,  His  death, burial and His resurrection. These facts placed beside this prophecy were enough to convince the eunuch  that  Jesus of  Nazareth  was  the fulfillment of the recorded truth about the Messiah. Now, faith in this divine truth must be established, and Jesus the Christ now must  be  obeyed  in  the  commands  found  in  His  law. This of course will include repentance of sins, confessing your faith in Christ before others, then being baptized into Christ for the remission of sins. That friends, is what preaching Jesus is all about, and that comes from the Bible and not some man and his thoughts.

            Philip preached all of  this,  because as they went on their way and came unto a certain  water  the  eunuch  said, “Behold,  here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized?”  To preach Jesus is to preach His commands, and He has commanded that the obedient be baptized. How could the eunuch know anything about this matter of baptism?  The  answer  is  Philip  preached Jesus to him, and that is what Jesus had commanded to be taught as noticed in Mk. 16:15-16. By the inspired apostles preached  on the day of Pentecost telling the inquiring crowd to do the same thing and for the same reason, people are commanded to be baptized today: “For the remission of sins.” (Acts 2:38).  That  is  found  in  the Bible, not in some Manual, Catechism, or Discipline book. What these men preached, we must preach today, and that is Preaching Jesus!

. . . . Fred  House