Beliefs or Jesus?

A few years ago at the Springtown Church of Christ, the preacher, David Bennett, gave a Sermon titled "A Timely Word" and to this day it has remained one of the most memorable sermons I have heard. I wanted to share part of that sermon, I have modified and shortened it to fit Buff Notes.

For 1500 years the Catholic Church was the marker of the Kingdom. It was around 1500 that the Anglican Church along with Martin Luther began to have access to Bibles (Thanks to the Printing Press) and began to see that what the priest was telling them didn’t always align with what they read in scripture. Luther came up with 95 things he wanted to reform in the church he never wanted to start a new church he just wanted people to understand scripture in a better way, but the Lutheran Church was born. It wasn’t long after that a group came and thought they had a better method of understanding scripture and the Methodist church was born, and not long after that, the Baptist church came about. It seems that about every 200 years there is some sort of major religious revival. In 1800 Alexander Campbell became upset with how the Presbyterian church did communion so he began to study and soon became involved with the American Baptist church along with his father Thomas. After more study, Alexander began to think that maybe he was wrong about baptism and was promptly baptized again and that decision eventually became the church we know today as the Church of Christ. The theme so far has been that whoever was “more correct” would leave the church. There is no problem in being “more correct” the problem arises when we begin to take pride in being right. When we begin to trust what we believe rather than who we believe. Jesus never asks us to be “more right,” he asks us to believe and follow him.

In the letter to the Colossian Church, there seems to be this issue where some believe one thing and some another. They began to believe that they were more right than each other and therefore more worthy of the Lord, they began to trust in their beliefs rather than God a form of Gnosticism. We learn in Colossians 1 that there is nothing above God, the only thing that matters is a belief in Jesus. Paul makes the point in Chapters 2 and 3 that participation in eating, drinking, the sabbath, the new moon festival, or not participating in those things don’t matter, what matters is belief in Jesus and following Him. (Colossians 2:16-19; 3:1-17)

Let us never let what we believe about Jesus, trump our belief in Jesus. Let us never trust our beliefs more than we trust the Lord. The truth is that we may be wrong in our beliefs, but we will never be wrong about Jesus.