In today’s program, Pastor Matt explores what it means to be a disciple of Christ: it means to imitate Jesus!

• Jesus is the subject not only of the New Testament, but of the Old Testament as well
• The Apostle Paul says that the things which were written before — the Old Testament — were written for our instruction
• As disciples of Jesus, we are called to actually imitate Jesus:
  • we are called to be strong
  • as Jesus, we are not to seek pleasing ourselves, but rather to bear with and strengthen others
  • like Jesus, we are called to lay down our lives for others, as Jesus laid down His life for us
  • we should share God’s gracious gift of life through Jesus with others:
    • first, “Be diligent to present yourself approved to God as a workman who does not need to be ashamed, accurately handling the word of truth.” (2 Tim 2:15)
    • lead or host home Bible studies
    • participate or support direct evangelism efforts
    • actively engage in personal one-on-one sharing & testimony
• Warning against ‘prooftexting”
  • we should seek to adorn our own thoughts with scriptures which seem to support our ideas
  • rather, we should seek to actually understand scripture, and then to put forth its own message, clearly and accurately
  • the message of scripture need to be the goal of our proclamation, not our own happy thoughts or opinions
  • the inspired authors of scripture never “prooftexted,” but rather were dragging an entire Old Testament context of a selected OT quote into their present discussion
• In Jesus, and in the church, the Old Testament prophecies were finding complete fulfillment
• Through His life of service, death and resurrection, Jesus had made available a restored relationship to God
  • respond to this offer, by imitating Christ!

 

(Romans 2:23, 3:1-4, 9-18;  Romans 15; Romans 8:35-36; Psalm 69)