Jesus Christ
You have needs and desires, so Jesus Christ is for you personally. Jesus Christ oversaw the good plans and details of your creation before you were born. Jesus Christ let you know of God during your earthly life. Jesus Christ is with you during your decision makings, and is available at all times for you. Jesus Christ is for you if you continue to choose to be with Jesus Christ permanently.
Jesus Christ came from heaven to earth and returned to heaven to show us the way of righteousness. Jesus Christ gives to you unconditionally because Jesus Christ loves you unconditionally. Such agape love continues even if you choose to not give love.
Jesus Christ loves you, nutures you, provides for you, and helps you. No action on your part is needed to freely receive Jesus Christ's benefits to you. Jesus Christ is the way, the truth, the light, and the means by which you exist. Jesus Christ is love, life, and eternal bliss.
You have also received from Jesus Christ a choice. You may choose to follow Jesus Christ in righteousness, or you may choose to be away from Jesus Christ's good grace, although there will be a time that your choice will become permanent.
In the end, there is only good God, with the good people know as Jesus Christ, with the good Word with which peoples' good spirits mingle, known as the Holy Ghost, for there is room for nothing else. The kingdom of heaven is within you, so as God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Ghost are within you, you are within heaven according to your faith intermingling by your spirit with the Holy Spirit, with God through Jesus Christ, inseparable from each other.
In the beginning with God, the Word testified that your good spirit of faith in Jesus Christ, originated from good God, at the beginning of creation initiated by God almighty.
Your earthly existence and the world are relative and transitory. God is permanent, absolute, and everlasting; unchangeable and the foundation of all that is good; with power over all.
For you, God in agreement with Jesus Christ, prepared for you to come into the world to choose the good path in the midst of complexities, simplicities, and/or harmonies, that you would have the opportunity to testify of the goodness that is Jesus Christ, which testimony reflects on the goodness in your soul according to your faith, immeasurable, and incomprehensible as provided by Christ Jesus.
In other words, you have been chosen by Jesus Christ to share, partake, and receive the glory of God according to your choosing. By which choosing, although you are in the world, you would by choosing good be beyond the measures and confines of relativity and be in absolute heavenly bliss with Jesus Christ.
Your longsuffering sorrows would turn to joy, your joy would turn to a firm heavenly foundation. Your good path would be known as a Christian path, and those you benefit would be many-fold. As your Christianity increases in good decision making habits and patterns, you will find increasing amounts of helpful guides, supports, and challenges to accomplish increasingly greater monumental breakthroughs and advancements for humanity; for Christ's greater glory.
Jesus Christ's
Specific Relevance Today
Christ has shown you in a personal, human way, how to personally reach-out to other people for their benefit.
Some people like to sit back and watch sex and violence on TV. Jesus Christ is involved, and when a crowd ready to stone a harlot to death, put her before Jesus Christ for disposition, Jesus Christ said let him who is without sin cast the first stone. They cast none, and Jesus Christ also cast no stone.
Some people vainly, urgently, and angrily examine minute details of case law and/or specifications, without caring about and considering the more important priority of following the path of Jesus Christ who brings to light understanding of the big picture. Click here for a sermon related to this area.
Jesus Christ gives good gifts without expecting anything in return. If you are a Christian, Jesus Christ gives to you. If you are an atheist, Jesus Christ gives to you. For instance, Jesus Christ gives you air, shelter, clothes, and more. So although one may choose to not wear clothes, that action does not remove the gift giving by Jesus Christ.
Even the law and nature indicate priorities, what is right, and preservation. Jesus Christ did comply and even did better, by creating new and better ideas through Jesus Christ's grace.
If you are studying something in particular for a test, you want to study appropriate details. So someone studying for a test on new refrigerator designs, for instance, might read books only on that specific topic exclusively. They would therefore study in vain, failing to see the overall.
For a specific test is not simply about passing the test; it is about usefullness, for others, as well as for the student. It is about more; including many areas. For instance, years later the student would typically have to present their knowledge to their boss and customers; and it would also be important to relate that knowledge to other areas: more specific, or less specific.
More importantly, Jesus Christ (as through the Bible) shows specific relevance in understanding priorities. Such is essential if a person is to learn properly and optimally.
For you, for this sermon, I just opened the Bible for some of Jesus Christ's teachings on new refrigerator designs and found "...Truly, I say to you, not even in Israel have I found such faith." - - Matthew 8.10. That is a great comprehensive statement, including regarding specific new refrigerator designs, such as faith in: the school's integrity, instructor values, the test's veracity, demand for new refrigerator designs, the source of refrigerator components for reliability, and similar faith concepts.
Jesus Christ's statement is surrounded with text concerning power, albeit among people, yet those concepts are easily converted into new refrigerator designs applications.
Jesus Christ followed that verse with other more case specific statements that anyone with a merely simple understanding of refrigerators would find useful. Specific new refrigerator designs relevance can be found in those words offered by Jesus Christ, such as:
"gnash": whose word root is knowledge,
"fever": heat differential,
"storm": natural refrigeration,
and more.
Jesus Christ's teachings have specific relevance today because of Jesus Christ's case specific teachings and/or because of Jesus Christ's absolute comprehensive teachings from the administrative, power, and/or controlling perspective.
Jesus Christ,
Servant
Creator of great glory, talk of kingdoms, walking on water, and other miracles: these are all things Jesus Christ has done for you. Jesus Christ is your servant. Jesus Christ is in you, for you, personally.
When you were in your Mother's womb, your Mother fed you and protected you. Your Mother served you without asking anything in return from you.
You weren't just an investment, you were more, and your Mother knew it. You are more.
Together with Jesus Christ you are more.
As you are in Christ, Christ is in you, serving you, helping you, and guiding you to the extent you permit.
Jesus said you must be born again, and someone asked Jesus if a man can enter again into his Mother's womb. Jesus said a man must be born of water and spirit. Jesus said this that you might enter the kingdom of heaven. How great a servant is that?
To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of heaven, it is Christ Jesus our Lord: our greatest servant of all.
God so loved you, that he gave you his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, to give his pure life for the remission of your sins.
Jesus Christ loves you so much, that Jesus Christ offers you his own name and his very life, to best serve you.
Taking On The Name Of
Jesus Christ
You can earn money and throw a party in your own name. If you earn money and throw a party in Jesus Christ's name, that's different. If you earn money and throw a party in Jesus Christ's name, and you do it in a good and honest manner, that means the money you earn is all or nearly all not for you, but for charitable purposes, to help people in need. Likewise a party in Jesus Christ's name is not for you, and it is generally not for those who have great prosperity in terms of an abundance of friends and wealth. It is more for those who lack and have been ignored.
If, so to speak, you host a benefit in the name of President Bush, or in the name of former President Clinton, aside from any legalities for using someone else's name and title, you would likely host the benefit to help USA, and/or to help their political party, and/or to help the individual personally.
If you rightly host a benefit in the name of Jesus Christ, you do it for the benefit of all people and for the benefit of Jesus Christ. You do it to show support for righteousness, goodness, fairness, heroism, faith, and hope. It is because Jesus Christ is one with love. One with love. One with you if you accept Jesus Christ.
Charitable
Jesus Christ
Jesus Christ gives to you, for you, and about you. Jesus Christ gives without bounds, without measure, opening the windows of heaven to let goodness and mercy flow to you in great and thorough amounts.
If, for instance, you give in the name of Jesus Christ to help a stranger in need and hope for nothing in return, Jesus Christ gives with you: in ways seen for the benefit of you and/or the stranger, but mainly in ways unseen because Jesus Christ is meek and mild, not a braggart.
Jesus Christ is a respecter of absolute God and so in human relative terms by contrast Jesus Christ is no respecter of humans. Jesus Christ wants to charitably help people because that is God's way. God's way is Christ's way.
Christ's way involves charity, pressed down and shaken together, not hollow, not lacking, and full measure according to your attuned capacity: and more.
Many people follow signs. When your way is Christ's way, signs and wonders follow you. Jesus Christ gave and miracles followed.
Jesus Christ:
Scientific Marvel
What if you could predict a great flood? Or earthquake, or famine, or abundant harvest? Or locusts swarming, or that the first fish your friend caught would have a coin in it's mouth?
What would you do if you knew that tonight your friend would betray you? What would you do if you knew God?
How much would you pay for the information? How much training would you endure to be saved and to know the hidden values of treasures untold?
How many doctors would you see to be cured? How many doctors would you mimic to become a healer?
Where would you go in the desert to find water? Would you know when it was appropriate to strike a rock with a stick to produce water?
What would you give to know your children, your customers, and your followers would be blessed?
Jesus Christ came to seek and to save the lost. Just as gravity pulls people to this planet, Jesus Christ knew that baptisms pull people toward heaven.
Just as you know wings enable a plane to fly, Jesus Christ knows doing good works enables your spirit to soar.
Christ put aside confusion, as does the scientific method. Christ has been a crusader of the scientific method, furthermore going so far as to put the decision making process of the scientific method to the test.
Christ assigned good value to the decision entity for good results. Christ proclaimed these good values and asked others to spread the word of good faith.
Predictability is a relative concept associated with likelihood. Christ knows the absolute value of good and honest prophecy, which can be expressed as: the good truth and only God's truth, completely correlated in exact equality. So it is not a matter of being 99.99999...% sure; it is a matter of absolutely knowing the future.
Jesus Christ:
Much More Than A Prophet
When Jesus Christ was a child, his Mother Mary had the servants do what Jesus said. She knew her son had special abilities and could get the job done in the best possible way.
At 12 years of age, Jesus Christ spoke with doctors. People were awed by his reasoning abilities. Jesus Christ applied himself to the most needful concerns and provided applicable solutions.
Jesus Christ went beyond that and provided perfect solutions. Jesus Christ mastered the spirit and the soul by using goodness to produce greater goodness.
Jesus Christ prayed to God above all, in words and groans lovely and amazing, yet incomprehensible in the complex details and many ramifications. Jesus Christ prayed with a simple complexity, cleverly, thoughtfully, yielding great and perfect impact on peoples' lives. Christ's prayers and teachings enabled those who would follow to gain advantage; while those who would not, would find no foothold for recourse against Christ and Christ's followers.
Jesus Christ taught with authority and offered guidance. Jesus Christ was in the beginning and will be evermore. So with authority, responsibility, and care Jesus Christ knew the thoughts of people and knows your soul.
In prophetic terms, Jesus Christ knows the future. But much more than a prophet, Jesus Christ is responsible for the future.
One with God, Jesus Christ created the ability for you to choose goodness over evil. So that ability is under your control and responsibility.
Jesus Christ said, you "shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God", devoid of temptation, worshiping only "the Lord your God".
Jesus Christ knew these matters of certainty and likewise knows what the future holds and likewise with the self-same good authority acts responsibly to continue to have love, goodness, and mercy available to you according to your good choices.
Jesus Christ:
Career Highlights
Lord, conqueror, King of kings, and your greatest servant.
Entering into the glory of God, one of the greatest things Jesus Christ accomplished for you was in the beginning, one with God in creating all.
Giving meaning and purpose to life: giving life; giving the gift of giving; and allowing us to say thank you, is far more than we can imagine.
Jesus Christ spoke of miracles, performed miracles, and drew multitudes of people miraculously so that they too might follow and do the same.
At age 12, Jesus met with doctors, interacting with valuable communications. At age 30 the prophet John the Baptist baptized Jesus, and Jesus began his ministries and gathered disciples.
Jesus climbed a mountain and spoke with God. Jesus prayed and spoke with God.
Top government officials feared Jesus Christ before his birth and sought to kill him.
A star appeared over the birth of Jesus Christ and wise men followed that star to find Jesus Christ, the Messiah. Kings brought gifts to honor the baby Jesus Christ, including gold, fine oil, and frankincense.
Jesus Christ was followed by thousands of people anxious to hear him speak of God. People spread the words of Jesus Christ's teachings, and civilizations patterned their governments and belief systems after Jesus Christ's teachings.
Today Jesus Christ's teachings can be found around the world and among heavenly bodies.
After Jesus Christ was put to death, Jesus Christ continued to live and continued to teach goodness and truth and mercy.
All power was given into the hand of Jesus Christ, in heaven and on earth.
Jesus Christ rose into heaven and sat at the right hand of God the Father.
Jesus Christ:
Provider
Jesus Christ was and is the greatest person to ever love, the greatest person to ever live, and the greatest person to ever follow.
Jesus Christ is strongly recommended for any job you may have. Yet with God, Jesus Christ is your leader through life, and it is in this capacity and more that Jesus Christ serves you.
Jesus Christ is your protectorate, and so perfectly spurs you to quest goodly perfection so that you might succeed beyond measure, as you in like manner help other people.
Jesus Christ taught with absolute authority and righteousness on many astounding concepts, such as the importance of charity with the importance of grace; a concept separate from the concept of law. Jesus Christ taught of values, such as leaving the dead to bury the dead and "Come with me, the living spirit."
Jesus Christ was, and is, and is to come.
Sermon by Dr. Bob Benchoff, January 20, 2002.
Related Links:
For the Internet Church of Christ main site, click here.
