Latest / HBCWestminster / 9.22.21 Hebrews 1:1-4 Pastor Danny Gardner

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9.22.21 Hebrews 1:1-4 Pastor Danny Gardner · HBCWestminster

• 0:00
  Hebrews chapter 1, I'm going to read verses 1 to 4. And if you're able to stand in honor of the reading of God's word, I would ask you to do that. As I read verses 1 to 4, we'll pray and begin. Verse 1, long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world. He is the radiance of the glory of God.
• 0:31
  and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. And Lord, bless the preaching of your word, and may your Holy Spirit illumine our hearts and minds so that we will understand it. Lord, we want...
• 0:59
  sound doctrine. We want to know who you are. And so Lord, through the preaching of your word, reveal yourself to us. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you, church. Well, our family kind of started a 4th of July tradition five or six years ago after moving here.
• 1:19
  And honestly, it's a tradition that you're welcome to join in on. I don't know kind of how it started or why we started doing it, but our family walks from my house, which is 104th and Perry. We walk down the hill to the Westminster Rec Center, 104th and Sheridan, to watch the fireworks. And I know many of you guys are there. We just decide to walk from my house, even though it's about a mile or so, hike down the hill, down to the grass there. Because the reason we walk it is because we didn't want to deal with the traffic.
• 1:49
  We didn't want to try to find parking or any of that stuff. We thought it's a mile walk. And so we invited a couple of friends to join us. Anybody who wants to can park at our house. We'll kind of use that as kind of a base. And so if your kids need to use the potty or whatever, we've got one right there. And we'll all hike down. And a couple of parents brought little red wagons. You stick the little ones in the red wagon. We truck down the thing. And since Chase was four or five years old, we've been doing this. He was tiny at one point in one of those little wagons. We hiked down. And at this point now, five or six years,
• 2:18
  years later, it's grown. And like I said, I don't know totally how it's grown, but I think this last 4th of July we had
• 2:24
  maybe in the neighborhood of 100 of us here from Highland. And we hike down the hill and we go and watch the fireworks. And like I said, you guys are welcome to join us. We all park at my house and we just get out and we hike down the hill and then we hike back up. Everybody's kids have a great time. We take up a massive section of that grass on the rec center lawn. We all bring our chairs and our blankets and we lay them out.
• 2:49
  three or four years ago, we were still experimenting with this. And so three or four years ago, we just decided, I want to try to be as close to the fireworks as possible.
• 3:02
  You know, and I don't know if it's just because of the nature of my position here at the church, but people just, I don't know, they just, even when we're at the rec center trying to pick a spot on the grass, it's like, Pastor Danny, where do you want us all to sit? I'm like, I don't care, sit wherever you want. But I thought, I want to sit as close as I can to the front. And for some reason, you guys know, right? You've been to the Westminster Run. They launch those things, you know, they're all on those mortar things, whatever, you know, and they launch them right on the other side of that little pond, like the field side of the little pond. And right, the field, you guys, right next to.
• 3:31
  on the other side of the little pond from those mortars was open. There was nobody there. And I thought, man, this is going to be awesome. Like you guys lay out your blankets and we had all, you know, little nephews and nieces and the whole, you know, we had this huge crew of people, dozens and dozens of us. And so we just thought, you know, we just trumped through all the people who had already set up their stuff and walked all the way down to the very front. And I'm imagining just something very epic and epic it was.
• 3:58
  The very first one that gets launched, I mean, you guys, it is right here. I mean, we're laying down on this kind of grass. It's the weeds. But we're laying down and watching this. I mean, it just gets launched. Boom. I mean, it is right over us. And it was awesome. And about three seconds later, my little nephew, Caleb, says, ow! Caleb, what? Something hit me! And you guys, a huge chunk of that firework.
• 4:27
  Had fallen and smacked him. It hit him on the leg. This big chunk of this real thick cardboard stuff. Whack.
• 4:33
  And a couple of seconds after that, all of this like kind of black dust and ash and whatever, it all starts raining down on us. And I thought, oh, no, you know, because there's nothing we can do. It is pitch black. Like there's nothing we can do. These things are just being launched. And so all these little kids are running around trying not to get blasted by these huge chunks of cardboard. Everybody was like, Pastor Danny's not picking the spot next year. You know, we've wised up. We go up to the grass. At one point, though, during that fireworks display, and some of you were with.
• 5:03
  Was anybody in here with us? Are you guys with us? All of you were, yes. Yes, you guys too. At some point, a really hot piece of one of those fireworks fell right there, right in front of us, and actually started a fire in that field. Was anybody else there for the fire year? Do you guys remember the fire? And you guys remember seeing like little shadows running around like you were looking down, like you could see little silhouettes? That was us.
• 5:32
  We were all down there, you guys. The whole field is on fire. And, you know, we're watching and it's kind of, it's creeping up closer and closer and closer. And I'm like, I wonder how much longer we've got here because I think we've maybe got five or six more minutes here before it's on us. Like we were trying to time this thing. And no kidding, when that thing was done.
• 5:53
  We packed up as fast as we could. We're like, okay, kids, let's go. You know, because, I mean, there was a full-on fire in the brush right in front of us. It was right there this last 4th of July. We took a very large section on the very nicely mown grass up there where the soccer fields are. Like I said, you're welcome to join us. Our author begins his sermon.
• 6:20
  In an interesting way, because in Hebrews chapter 1, and especially verses 1 to 3, I know I read verse 4, but especially in verses 1 to 3, it's like he starts his sermon with the fireworks finale. It's like he starts at the end.
• 6:38
  You watch one of those and Westminster does a good job with these fireworks. You watch the fireworks show and it goes on for 15 or 20 minutes. And then at the end, it's like they just launch everything they've got left all at once. And it's just this incredible display. And in these three verses, it's like he launches the finale at the beginning instead of at the end. And so imagine for a moment, church, if you would, with our Bibles open.
• 7:05
  Fireworks exploding in the sky and the field on fire in front of us. That's these three verses. And let's look first at Christ, who is the climax of God's revelation. The climax. Look at verse one. Long ago. Long ago. That means the time prior to the coming of the Messiah. The Old Testament is what he says. He says, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers.
• 7:35
  And I love that phrase, God spoke. Church of the God in heaven is not speechless. And although almost, as I said last week, and this will just be a touch on review, almost every English translation divides this introduction to Hebrews into these several sentences, as I said last Wednesday. Verses one to four in the original language in the Greek actually form a single multi-clause sentence built around the main clause, God has spoken.
• 8:07
  The spoken. And this three-word phrase kind of acts as a pivot point, a hinge for the remainder of the introduction and is the basic affirmation to the whole argument of the letter. Because if God has not spoken, there is no letter to the Hebrews. And church, if God has not spoken, then there is no Christian faith. All of us, regardless of where our testimonies began, they all began with God has spoken. Amen?
• 8:36
  Without the revelation of God, we are clueless. We are hopeless. We are fumbling around blind and in the dark. But praise God, he has spoken. Can you imagine the alternative if God had not spoken, if God were silent? We've talked about this before in other contexts, but God, church, was in no way obligated to speak.
• 9:05
  His revelatory nature is not necessarily part of his attributes. He was under no obligation to talk to us. He could have just left us to our own devices. He could have wound the whole creation up and then just let it go and then just stood back and watched what happened. He didn't have to talk. And church, do you ever presume upon the revelation of God? Here's what I mean. Do you ever take for granted the book that is sitting in your laps?
• 9:34
  How often it gets neglected. How often it gets left to the bottom of the pile. How often other things take our priorities. How often this book just gets abandoned. Listen to what F.F. Bruce has said. Had God remained silent. Let's imagine for a moment that that's the universe we live in. And shrouded in thick darkness, the plight of mankind would have been desperate indeed. But now he has.
• 10:01
  spoken, his revealing, redeeming, and life-giving word. And in his light, we see light. And church, the question I have before we even move on is, has God spoken to you? Don't just assume, church, that because you own a Bible, he has spoken to you. Because there's no difference between the man who cannot read and the man who does not read. J.C. Ryle has kind of famously said, happy is the man who owns a Bible. Happier still, the man who what?
• 10:34
  Reads it. It's one thing to own it. If you own it, good for you. That's great. But I would wager, and you can just kind of think in your own head, I would wager that most of us own more copies of the Bible than times that we've read it. Is that true? I hope not. I'm glad. It's always Sheila. She's like, no, man, I've read it more times than you, Pastor Dan. And honestly, I don't doubt that.
• 11:01
  Do you guys know one time one of the pastors here at the church challenged us as a congregation to write down a thousand things we're thankful for? A thousand things. And guess who did it? Boom. Sheila Douglas. She was like, you know, the first three or four hundred were kind of hard. But man, I just got going after that. Man, how big a part, how big a role does the word of God play in your life? Notice it says, God spoke to our fathers, verse one, by...
• 11:31
  The prophets at many times and in many ways. Now, this legitimizes the Old Testament as having come from the divine mind. You can see here the author of Hebrews, right? We talked about him last week. Intelligent, educated, nameless, anonymous, right? He talks about and legitimizes the authenticity of the Old Testament here.
• 11:53
  This denotes that God at once possessed the minds of the original authors, ordered their tongues, controlled their words, so that they spoke not their own message, but the Lord's, right? God spoke, he says, by the prophets. Second Peter chapter one and verse 21 says, for no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. And that is how the Bible was.
• 12:21
  People will say, well, this is not God. This did not originate with God. This originated with man. This is not God produced. It is man produced. And yet we know from itself that they indeed believe that the Old Testament was from the divine mind. These people weren't making these things up. God spoke as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit. However, this does not mean that in the Old Testament the reader of Hebrews would have all that was necessary for godly living. What did I just say?
• 12:51
  I know we're going deep fast, only like a phrase in, but just because he believed that the Old Testament was indeed inspired by God, that doesn't mean that the author of the Hebrews, author of Hebrews, believed that he had all that was necessary for godly living. What do I mean? You guys are New Testament believers, right? What was he missing?
• 13:17
  Jesus. Somebody say Jesus. It's the answer to every one of the little Sunday school questions, right? The answer is Jesus. We were missing a pretty big piece of the puzzle. Do you remember from last week we talked about consider Jesus? The whole theme of the letter, consider Jesus. Think about Jesus, right? Really ponder until you have a full understanding of who he is and what he has done for us. And here the author of Hebrews says, it wasn't enough. Verse two, but, but, what a weird word.
• 13:49
  There's a conjunction here, right? It's the part of speech that ties two thoughts together, a conjunction, but, and, or. These are conjunctions. He could have used the conjunction and. Long ago, many times, in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. And he continues to speak to us by his son, Jesus Christ. But that's not what he says. He says, but, but, that wasn't enough.
• 14:16
  There's a contrast here. So the Old Testament prophets were indeed speaking the word of God, but what they were speaking was not fulfilled. It was not enough. It wasn't enough for godly living. It wasn't enough even for salvation. In fact, God never communicated the fullness of his own mind in the Old Testament. Arthur Pink has said it this way, that the Old Testament revelation was but the refracted rays, not the light unbroken and complete.
• 14:46
  As illustrations of this, we may refer to the gradual making known of the divine character through his different titles or to the prophecies concerning the coming Messiah. It was, right? This is a good way to say it in the Old Testament. It was here a little, there a little. In other words, the author of Hebrews is paving the way for the manifest superiority of Christ over the prophets to a people who held the Old Testament on a pedestal. This is the letter to the Hebrews.
• 15:16
  It's to the Jews, right? I mean, these people revered the Old Testament. They revered Moses and his writings. There was no one greater than Moses. And yet we're going to get to Hebrews chapter 3, and he is going to say, Jesus is greater than Moses. And you're like, that is blasphemy. Well, not if you believe this. Not if you believe the Old Testament were just shadows.
• 15:43
  And that the substance was yet to be revealed. Continue in verse 2. But in these last days, it says, he has spoken to us by his son. Now the author here presses home his point by using what is called an antithetical form. The God who spoke to our fathers now speaks to who? Us. Do you guys see that? The God who spoke to our fathers in verse 1 now speaks to us.
• 16:14
  To us, the God who spoke long ago now speaks in these last days. The God who spoke by the prophets now speaks by his son. The God who spoke in many ways now speaks in one way. Do you see what he's saying? You can't have the truth, he says, without Jesus. Now, we all knew that coming in here, but here we see it.
• 16:45
  so plainly and clearly proclaimed. The God who spoke in the Old Testament in fragments now speaks in fullness in Christ. J.B. Phillips has said, Jesus is God in focus. He's God in focus. Throughout the Old Testament, they were...
• 17:13
  peering as through a glass, right? A dimly lit glass. They couldn't really see it. They were seeing these shadows, but not the substance. And J.B. Phillips just says, Jesus is God in focus. And church, is God in focus in your life? Does God seem distant? And if he does, may I be so bold as to ask, who is the one that moved? If God feels just a long way away, is he the one that moved? Or are you the one that moved?
• 17:48
  There's a famous old story of a farmer. And at one point in the 1990s, I think every single pastor used this illustration. No doubt you've heard it. The story of a farmer and his wife who would take their crops to the market to sell. They owned an old single cab truck with a bench seat. When they were young and very much in love, they would drive to town sitting closely together on that bench seat. He driving, she sitting next to him. Over the course of years, they sat further and further apart.
• 18:17
  Can I get an amen from everybody who bought a queen, started with a queen-size bed and then upgraded to a king-size bed? I almost bought a king-size bed for my 20th anniversary, but I didn't. One day, the older woman, right, the wife, complained to her husband. She said, we don't sit close together anymore, to which he replied, I'm not the one that moved.
• 18:44
  I'm not the one that moved. You're the one that moved. She complained about her distance from her husband, right? Well, I'm not the one that moved. Now, the illustration falls a tad flat, I think, since God is not indifferent toward us the way the old farmer seemed to be toward his wife. But the point is a good one. James chapter four in verse eight says, draw near to God and he will draw near to you. Draw near to God. And you guys listen, if you feel like God is distant, if you feel like God is silent, may I encourage you with this promise from James chapter four, draw near to God.
• 19:15
  And he will draw near to you. There is no reason. There is no reason to stay distant from the Lord. Notice second, I'm going to call it Christ, the claimant. We continue in verse two, the claimant. But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son, whom he appointed the heir of all things. In other words, all things will eventually go to him. He will inherit all things. Christ being appointed God's heir means that he has an inherited claim to the entirety of the earth.
• 19:44
  And though never possessing much while walking it. You notice that? When he actually walked on the earth.
• 19:52
  He was homeless. He said, I didn't even have a place to lay my head. He said, even foxes have holes in the ground. The birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head. And so while he walked the earth, he didn't actually possess really any of it. Christ actually owned every grain of sand and every drop of water and every breath of air. And like Abraham, who according to God, owned everything he could see from the Nile to the Euphrates, but was nevertheless buried in a very small cave.
• 20:21
  The only property ever deeded to him by men, so it was with Christ. He too had been given all by God. And yet, think about this church, even the tomb in which he was buried was borrowed. Even that was borrowed. Even the hole in the ground in which he was laid had to be borrowed. And yet, verse 2 says, it all belongs to him. It's all his.
• 20:48
  continues in verse 2 by calling him not only the claimant of creation, but also the creator of creation. It says, through whom also he created the world. Now, Christ being creator of the world means that he has an inherent claim to its entirety as well. Not only has he an inherited claim, but an inherent claim. It all belongs to him because he made it.
• 21:16
  There's nothing that exists that was not made by Christ and therefore eventually owes its allegiance to Christ. I have the privilege, as I've said many times before, of officiating weddings. And as I'm meeting with couples, you know, many of you in here have been through premarital counseling with me. I will start, the very first time I meet with you, I will start by just opening Genesis chapter 2. And I'll say, read Genesis chapter 2. Let's read it out loud together, the three of us. In Genesis chapter 2,
• 21:46
  God formed the man, then God made the man fall asleep, right? Took the rib and formed the woman, and then he declares them to be one flesh. And he even kind of gives a model, an example. He says the man will leave his father and mother, and you're like, wait, that was Adam. He didn't even have a father and mother. He's clearly not talking about Adam there. He's talking about every single other marriage that would ever take place.
• 22:10
  This is the prototypical couple, the prototypical marriage. And I just lay this foundation. The very first time we meet, I lay a foundation of who made marriage. God did. Who designed marriage? God did. Who does marriage belong to? Who owns marriage? And I'll typically say something to this starry-eyed young couple. That no matter what popular opinion is,
• 22:41
  And no matter how many ballots get processed, and no matter how many times there are votes, no matter how many times our culture and society will try to redefine marriage, it does not matter. It doesn't belong to us. We don't get to redefine it. We have to take it as it is revealed to us. And notice here, church, not only does marriage belong to God, but what else belongs to God? According to verse 2, everything. Everything he made.
• 23:12
  belongs to him. And verse two says, through whom also he created the world. John chapter one and verse three, all things were made through him. Without him was not anything made that was made. All things were made through him. And so if everything that was made by him must pledge its allegiance eventually to him, then church, to whom do you pledge your allegiance? Are you one of those Christians who says, listen, I know.
• 23:41
  what God wants from me, but you know what? I'm just not going to do it. There are plenty of those. I don't know that we would say that out loud. There are plenty of times in our lives where we're like, you know what? I know what's best. I'm just not going to do it. And man, we don't belong to ourselves. The Bible says that we were bought at a price. The Lord owns us. Not only that, it continues in verse three, we see forth that Christ is the copy of God. He is the copy of God. Look at verse three. He is the radiance.
• 24:10
  Of the glory of God. And notice it says, and the exact imprint of his nature. The exact imprint. He is the radiance of God's glory. Notice whose glory, nature, and powers are displayed in Christ. It's God's. You guys all see that, right? You guys with me? You all right? You need me to say something funny? What do you need me to do? You guys good?
• 24:37
  Whose radiance is God displaying or is Jesus displaying? It's God's, God himself. In fact, when Isaiah was called by God into ministry and he even saw a vision of his glory so bright that not even angels dared gaze upon it, but shielded their own eyes. Do you remember that? When Isaiah was taken into the presence of God and he now sees God high and exalted and there is his throne and there are those screaming angels around him. Holy, holy, holy. It is God's.
• 25:05
  glory that he beheld. But then if you go forward to John and chapter 12, notice what John says, Isaiah said these things because he saw his glory and spoke of him. You're like, wait a minute, whose glory? Isaiah said these things because he saw Christ's glory and spoke of Christ. Nevertheless, many of the, even of the authorities believed in him, Christ, right?
• 25:32
  But for fear of the Pharisees, they did not confess it so that they would not be put out of the synagogue. In other words, when Isaiah the prophet was standing before that exalted throne and he saw the glory of God, whose glory did he see? It was Jesus. It was Jesus up on that throne. It was Jesus's glory that he beheld. You'll recall when Saul of Tarsus, who would eventually become the apostle Paul, met Christ.
• 26:04
  on the road to Damascus. And then later on in Acts chapter 26 was relating that, his own testimony about seeing Christ. Listen to how he described him in Acts 26 and verse 13. At midday, O king, he said, I saw on the way a light from heaven brighter than the sun. It's the radiance of the son of God. And the Bible says his eyes were burned. He went blind for a time.
• 26:32
  The radiance of the Son of God. It was Christ's glory that he beheld. And notice it even calls him the exact imprint of his nature. Now this phrase refers to something engraved or impressed, like the stamp of a coin. Now the idea is that of an embosser or a die cast. And so you can imagine, right, when they're making coins, and I don't know if you guys ever got to go to the Denver Mint.
• 26:59
  go down there at some point for a field trip or something. You take your kids down there, you see them making pennies, which I was surprised to find out actually devalues the copper that's in a penny. And so I was walking through watching them make all of these pennies. You know, they've got these slugs and they're stamping these things and whatever. And the guy that's giving us the tour eventually said, you know, there is 1.5 cents worth of copper in a penny. I thought that's kind of funny.
• 27:29
  Right. So taking the copper and turning it into a penny actually devalues it. But that's neither here nor there. I just thought that was a funny little fact. But right. They're stamping these things. And every single time they hit that, that copper has no choice in what's engraved on it.
• 27:49
  It will become the exact imprint of whatever that embosser, whatever that die was. As that die is being cast and now being stamped into these copper slugs, they are becoming pennies. And there it is again. Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln, Abraham Lincoln. It's over and over and over and over. They are identical to whatever is the imprint of that embosser.
• 28:11
  And this says that Jesus is like the engraved image, if you want to think of it this way, not in an idol worship kind of way, but in an exact replica of the nature of God. So that when you see Jesus, you see God. Did Jesus ever say that? When you see me, you've seen the Father. Right? How many times? He said it over and over and over. Lord, show us the Father. What are you talking about?
• 28:42
  If you've seen me, you've seen the father. You're asking for something you already have. Again, Arthur Pink, I like how he words it. He said this, all that God is in his nature and character is expressed and manifested absolutely and perfectly by the incarnate son. If you see Jesus, you got the whole story.
• 29:04
  Can you imagine this Hebrew audience, this first generation Hebrew audience, having now read and so exalted in their own minds and hearts the Old Testament, and now they're suddenly finding out, wait, there's more to the story. Wondering then, after another receiving this new revelation from God, wondering, is this the final installment? Right? Will there be another one? Another testament of the Lord Jesus Christ, right?
• 29:32
  God bless the Mormons. But that's exactly what it is. That is exactly what we're talking about. I mean, is there another one? You say, well, no. Verse 3 says, Jesus is the exact imprint of his nature. He is the fullness of the Godhead. If you see Jesus, you've got it all. There is no more muddy water.
• 29:55
  John Phillips, again, we can take the lines of Christ's personality and draw those lines on out into infinity and obtain a perfect concept of God. In the incarnation, when Jesus became flesh, God was humiliated. He was taking the form of a man. He concealed aspects of himself, a concept which is incomprehensible when we give it any thought, right?
• 30:19
  How can God, how can Jesus not know the time of his return? How can he have veiled his omniscience? But nevertheless, we know it to be true. God is unchanging, we know, and self-sufficient, and yet Christ hungered and thirsted and grew tired.
• 30:36
  We know that God is eternal and yet Christ died. God is Lord of all creation and yet Christ was led like a lamb to be slaughtered. He seemed, Jesus seemed weak and helpless on the cross. And yet at the same time, no one, he says, took his life from him. He laid it down. And in the incarnation, much of God was hidden.
• 30:55
  And yet Hebrews says that Christ as man was lacking nothing in the essence of divinity. Although he was limited in terms of his humanity, his divinity was not limited in any way. He was fully God. God himself was revealed to man by concealing himself as man. I'll say that again. God himself was revealed to man by concealing himself as man. In other words, the concealing.
• 31:25
  was revealing. That's how he decided to reveal himself, by becoming like us, by becoming one of us. Now, if it be true that Christ, the Son of Man, was the exact imprint of God's nature, then the concealing of the incarnation was actually a revealing of the nature of God. And without the incarnation, we would be left with nothing but shadows as well. Again, Arthur Pink. But if the human mind, unaided,
• 31:56
  is incapable of grasping the fact of the great God hiding himself in human form, how much less can it apprehend that that very hiding was a manifestation, that the concealing was a revealing of himself. In Christ, even in the incarnate Christ, we see the fullness of God. That is the fourth firework. Notice the fifth. Christ, the carrier or sustainer of all things. You continue in verse three. He's the radiance of the glory of God.
• 32:26
  The exact imprint of his nature. And it says he upholds the universe by the word of his power. To uphold means to carry it or to support it. So he literally carries the universe. It's the same exact word used in Mark chapter 2 and verse 3. Mark 2.
• 32:47
  is the story of the paralytic man who is lowered down through the roof. Do you remember that? Jesus is in that house. The place is crazy crowded. All of these four friends have this guy, and they're holding four corners of this bed sheet. They've got a paralytic friend laying there. They want to get him to Jesus to be healed. They can't get into the house, and so they climb up on the roof. They dig through the roof, and they lower him down. The Bible says that they carried him along, and that's the exact same wording that is used here.
• 33:18
  The way that those four men carried their paralytic friend along, so also Jesus carries the paralytic universe along. He's the one who sustains it. There is no life, you get that? No life even apart from him. The same word upholds, he upholds the universe. That same word could also be translated to energize. He's the one who plugs it in.
• 33:45
  2 Peter 1, verse 21 is speaking of men writing the scriptures. I quoted that earlier this evening. Speaking of men writing the scriptures under inspiration of the Holy Spirit, he energizes the totality of the universe. Now, in this verse, it appears to encompass both of those definitions. Christ himself carries along the paralytic universe. He also energizes the universe.
• 34:08
  He supports its ramparts. He causes it to move and to work. He has not only designed the laws of physics, church, but he even ensures their consistency as well. There are, when you study physics, there are constants. Things that are unchanging. Like what? Like what? The speed of light. It never changes. What else? Gravity. Right? That's the one we're probably most familiar with. Right?
• 34:40
  They're constants. Well, gravity's not constant depending on how far away from the Earth you get. That can change. But as you and I sit here today, gravity is a constant, and it can even be measured. I mean, it can be counted on. The fact that I jump into water and will sink can absolutely be counted on. I am heavier than water. I am more dense than water. In fact, I'm more dense than a lot of things, it turns out. And the older I get, the more dense I become.
• 35:10
  Right? There are some things that you can absolutely count on. He not only designed the laws of physics, but he is the one who upholds the laws of physics. He is the reason we fall back down to earth. He is. And he can change them at his discretion. Which is why our Lord Jesus Christ can, in a moment in time, simply walk across it. Right? But why? And listen, church, it wasn't any harder.
• 35:38
  for God to make Jesus walk on water than it was for him to make him sink in water. It wasn't any harder. He made the laws. And so to change the laws, you're like, well, yeah, it's not any harder. For a moment in time, I'm going to make you buoyant. And you're going to walk across. I mean, it's really, really incredible when you begin to think about all of the implications of the Lord sustaining the universe. He ensures...
• 36:06
  It's consistency. He has not only, we find, knitted us together in our mother's wombs. Indeed, he builds up and tears down. He has the authority to enlighten the eyes. He even has the authority, as we find kind of several different places in scripture, to give over to sin. He is the carrier. He is the sustainer. And all he's got to do to let things get out of control is let go. That's the fifth firework, the final firework. We find that Jesus is the cleanser.
• 36:37
  He is the cleanser. Look at verse 3. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. Let us not neglect the fact that the cross was a stumbling block to the Jews. In the cross, there was no honor and only shame. In fact, the apostle Paul says this in 1 Corinthians 1, for Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified.
• 37:04
  So what we glory in, right? We preach the cross. We've been singing about it. We've been talking about it. We've got one hung back here, right? We glory in the cross. But the cross, the crucifixion is a stumbling block to the Jews. It's foolishness to the Gentiles. John chapter 12, verse 23, Jesus speaking, the hour has come for the son of man to be glorified. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone. But if it dies, it bears much fruit.
• 37:34
  The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. And then he says, which means I'm going to die. Right? That's what he's saying. The glory is the cross. Glorification was obedience unto death, Jesus says. And yet, you look at the point at which this statement is introduced to these Jews. The cross is positioned immediately following the radiance of God and is therefore deemed to be one of the greatest glories.
• 38:01
  The author argues, I believe at this point, from the lesser to the greater, the purifying of man's sins was an even grander work than the creation and sustaining of the universe. Do you see how he's building this argument? He created it. He sustains it. And not only that, he redeemed it. Arthur Pink, his sacrifice for sins has brought greater glory to the Godhead and greater blessing to the redeemed.
• 38:31
  Than have his works of creation. Or providence. The greatest glory. Revealed in scripture is the cross. And church is the cross. Your greatest glory. Is the cross what you talk about the most. Is the cross. What you brag about the most. I love this. Taken together. Three verses in church. In this very first paragraph. The author is arguing for the supremacy of Christ in all things. Do you guys catch that? This is it. This is.
• 39:04
  The finale, the final, the fireworks finale. This is everything launching and being burst. And right, I mean, the whole thing. This is everybody saying ooh and ah. This is the whole field catching on fire. He just lets it all out right there. The first three verses, six fireworks explosions. Christ was given all things by the Father.
• 39:25
  Not only that, he made all things. Not only that, he sustains all things. Not only that, he is the greatest revelation of God that mankind has ever been given. And church, if you enjoy salvation, it is due to Christ being glorified on the cross. And Lord, I pray that Christ would be our greatest glory, that the cross would be our greatest glory. God, we know that Christ is supreme. He is preeminent. He takes first place. But God, I pray.
• 39:55
  that that would just go beyond knowledge. It would not stay with just this acclamation. Yes, we believe this proclamation. Yes, we believe that he is first place, but God, may he actually become first place in our lives. Lord, you deserve the credit and honor and glory for all things because you do all things, even our very redemption, you accomplished on the cross. And so, Lord, we sing and we pray to you. We thank you, Lord. We are grateful people tonight. And it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.