Preaching Christ
by Gene Easley
"Therefore they that were scattered abroad went every where preaching the word. Then Philip went down to the city of Samaria, and preached Christ unto them" (Acts 8:4-5).
The eighth chapter of Acts records the severe persecution of the church at Jerusalem. Many were killed or imprisoned for their faith. As a result, the saints were being scattered to other parts of Judah and Samaria.
In His Great Commission, Jesus had commanded the church to go into all the world and preach the Gospel, and now they were being forced to do so. Sometimes we need something to stir us up, or we become stagnate.
I am not suggesting that we pray for persecution, but I do believe we need to pray for God to move us one more time. The Gospel--the full Gospel--needs to be preached to every creature. We still have that commission from the Lord.
Philip was one of the seven chosen to serve tables in the church of Acts chapter 6. Chapter 8 tells of his answering the call of God to be an evangelist. He went down to Samaria and preached Christ to the Samaritans. He did not rent a building and give a seminar on "How to Build Your Self-Esteem." He did not conduct a course on psychology, telling the people how they could work their way through their problems. He preached Christ to them.
I don’t know how his message was delivered or just what he said, but he preached Christ as the Answer. He surely preached of Christ’s death on Calvary, the shedding of His blood for the remission of sins, His resurrection, and that by His stripes we are healed. The Church needs to return to preaching Christ as the Answer.
And when Philip preached Christ, great things began to happen. People possessed with unclean spirits were set free. The paralytics were healed. The lame began to walk. Acts 8:8 says, "And there was great joy in that city." Praise God!
The trend today is to keep Christ hidden. One of our local churches (in California) boasted recently that it was conducting a full-scale carnival for the youth of the church. It emphasized that it would be "light on religion and heavy on fun." Of course, what it was saying is that it was going to be light on Jesus and heavy on fun. The sad implication was that Christ is boring or that He really can’t meet the needs of our youth.
But Christ is the Answer for everyone. Our teenagers don’t need someone to help them have more fun. Most of them are already too fun oriented. What our young people need is someone to care enough to lead them to an altar of prayer and to pray them through to an experience in the Holy Spirit. Someone needs to get them on fire for God! They need to know that Christ is the Answer!
We preach Christ to our children. We preach Christ to our teenagers. We preach Christ to our young married couples. We preach Christ to the middle-aged folks. We preach Christ to the senior citizens. We preach Christ in the morning. We preach Christ at noon. And we preach Christ at evening. We preach Him as the Answer, as the only Answer, as the Eternal Answer.
If we preach Christ as Philip preached Christ, great joy will come to any city!
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