There is One Lord - Brandon Scalf

Heritage Church Tulsa

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All right, everybody, grab your Bibles and turn with me to Ephesians chapter four.

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Ephesians chapter four, and if you don't have a Bible, there should be a hardback black one near you somewhere, and that is our gift to you.

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Ephesians chapter four, and today we will be primarily looking at verse five.

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The title of today's message is Unity in the Son. Unity in the

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Son. And so if you would, please stand with me for the honoring and reading of God's holy, infallible, and all -sufficient word.

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For the sake of context, I'm going to begin in verse one. Ephesians chapter four, verse one, this is the word of God.

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Therefore, I, the prisoner in the Lord, exhort you to walk worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, and being diligent to keep the unity of the

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Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one spirit, just as also you were called in one hope of your calling, one

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Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.

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The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever, amen? Amen. Amen, please have a seat and get your eyes fixed on verse five of chapter four.

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Verse five of chapter four. As we look at this, we are obviously caught in the middle of an argument.

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Paul is wanting us to understand, by extension, but really wanting the churches in Ephesus to understand that church unity really matters and it is the sole purpose of the members in the church to, as verse three has said, to be diligent to keep the unity of the

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Spirit in the bond of peace. And he has done, he has said this as he has done so on the tail end of a lot of doctrine.

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He wanted us to understand how God makes Christians and then how he has brought the church into existence through the person and work of the

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Lord Jesus Christ. And I said last week that there was this transitioning happening in verse four that the letter is split right down the middle and we move from belief or what you should know to practice, to behavior, how to be and act as of the church.

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And so he begins by telling us that we are to walk worthy.

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That is that we are to understand that this entire church that Christ has inaugurated, that has been built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, is one that Christ has purchased.

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And we must be diligent to keep the unity that he has purchased for us.

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And we need to do that in ways that show us to be and promote humility, gentleness, and patience, where we are bearing with one another.

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And then he begins talking about something else. But the reason he begins there is because he wants you to understand that there are dispositions that church members need to have if they are going to be

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Christian church members. But as we look here at our theme verse, it is caught up in the second movement.

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And that is, once you deal with dispositions that have been purchased for you by the

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Lord Jesus Christ, you need to understand the foundation on which it has been built. And the foundation it has been built on is the triune

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God and his triuneness. And so actually, when you look at the next set of verses, after you get past verse three, you get to this creedal type statement in verses four through six, where if you remember, we said has three sets of three.

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So you have three sentences that really is one sentence in the Greek, but three sentences in the

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English language that all have to do with a particular person in the Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the

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Spirit. But it's actually reversed, the Spirit, and then the Son, and then the

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Father. And the reason for that is because that is the illogical connection of thought because we are to guard the unity of the

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Spirit and the bond of peace. So he starts with the

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Spirit. And so last week, we looked at this foundational creedal statement that church unity is built on, that there is one

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Spirit, and that there is one body, and one gospel.

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Today, we find ourselves looking at the Son. And if you look at verse five, it says, there is one

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Lord, and there is one faith, and there is one baptism.

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This is the second sentence of the creedal statement that if we are gonna be a church that preserves unity, must completely and fully understand and agree with and promote in the life of the church.

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And so if you would, I want you to consider a few things. I mean, the outline is very simple, right?

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It is literally these three things that we're literally just going to look at, one

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Lord, one faith, and one baptism. What does that mean? This second set of three, it's built on this foundation of one.

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There is one Lord, there's not many Lords. There's one faith, there's not many faiths, and there's one baptism, not many baptisms.

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So we have to begin to ask the question, what exactly does this mean, and how does it inform our unity?

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So the first thing to note, obviously, is one Lord. To whom is the

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Lord referring? That's the first question that we have to ask when we come to this text. And I've obviously told you that it's the

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Son the last two weeks. But you might be asking, why is that? Lord is used in the

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Old Testament to talk about Yahweh. It's used in the Old Testament to speak about even other kings that are not necessarily

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God or divine in any sort of way. So how do we know that this is speaking of the

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Son? Well, let's go on a little journey, if you will.

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This word Lord, which is very important, is the

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Greek word kurios. And we know it's Jesus because of Ephesians thus far.

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As early as chapter one, verse three, Jesus is called the

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Lord Jesus Christ, specifically our Lord Jesus Christ. And he continues on,

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Paul, that is, speaking of Christ as Lord.

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And so this Lord is the one who, in chapter one, verse seven, provided redemption.

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And one, two, provide, or yeah, in two, two, rather, provided hope to the hopeless, actually the dead, spiritually.

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He's the headship that is over the church.

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And he is, yes, a savior, which has been the point up to this point, but he is also the

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Lord. And I need to pause here for a second because I think it needs to be said, especially in today's climate as it pertains to the way we think about Jesus.

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Maybe not as much in heritage, but across the board in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

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But if we're not careful, it seeps into our life as well. So it's very worthwhile to examine.

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And that is this. You do not get Jesus as your savior unless he is also your

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Lord. See, here's what

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I know. I know if I preach through Ephesians chapter one, verse three, all the way through 14, everybody's going to get super excited unless you're like super allergic to God being sovereign, in which case you're probably not gonna be visiting heritage.

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However, there's a lot of really good stuff in there in terms of God doing stuff on your behalf, leaning in even before eternity begins in the covenant of redemption, if you remember those sermons.

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And then you get to chapter two and we get even more blown away that though we were dead in our transgressions and sins, and though that we were completely unable to respond to spiritual stimuli, and we were completely ate up by the world's values, and we were governed by our flesh,

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God but Godded us, and that is he stepped in the way and caused our hearts to be red with blood for him, caused us to be regenerated, and gave us a new life and a new church to be a part of.

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And everybody who is a Christian who loves Jesus or at least thinks they love Jesus can say yes and amen, because who doesn't like free stuff, especially when the word savior is attached to it, and you're convinced because maybe your conscience is getting at you that you do in fact need a savior, that you're maybe not quite as great as you think you are, and if there is really a heaven and a hell, then you know that you will stand in judgment and you will not get a get out of hell free card, and you will not pass go.

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Yes, I will take the savior, but will you take the Lord? You see, that is the differentiating factor here.

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That is the differentiating factor here, because you cannot have Jesus as savior without having him as Lord, it is a package deal.

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As I said before, when you hear the word savior, certain characteristics of God get stressed, and rightfully so, his love, his mercy, his goodness, and so on, and we have covered that agnosium, and surely

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I believe that you can't exhaust it enough, but in much of today's

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Christian literature and many Christian pulpits and many family worship meetings, this idea of Lordship is completely absent, and this distortion is particularly clear, especially when we look at things like evangelism.

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You know heritage does as much as it possibly can, but we can do more as it pertains to evangelism, but oftentimes people who give themselves over to evangelism, gratefully we have many men and women in this body who don't fall prey to this type of thinking, but it is legion, and this type of thinking, what

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I mean by that is this idea that you can just give someone the gospel and invite them as if Jesus is just offering this free gift, and he is, don't hear what

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I'm not saying, okay, and that that offer of that free gift actually doesn't require to you to do anything except to intellectually assent to the idea that there was a savior out there for you.

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In other words, people are presented with a gospel that can be accepted or refused.

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It's offered politely, but seldom do we hear presented

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God's sovereign demand to repent and to trust totally and fully in him as Lord.

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There's a great book on, it's kind of a book on preaching, it's actually just really a book on evangelism and actually just how to think about the gospel, but it's written by a man named

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Sam Waldron, and I recommend it to almost anybody whose desires to stand with an open

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Bible and teach anyone, and it's called Two Things You Must Do to Be Saved, and he walks through the gospel of Jesus Christ, and he reminds us that the gospel call is repent and believe, not believe full stop, because when

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Jesus changes a heart, he changes a heart, and so this belief will bear fruit in your life by understanding him to be

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Lord of you. I find it incredibly telling that he's building this creedal statement as it were on the son and he calls him

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Lord, first and foremost. He doesn't use Christ for Messiah, he doesn't use savior, he use

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Lord, and as we will come to see, I hope, that's because the

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Lord is bound up in this idea of someone who can even save in the first place, because here's the reality,

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Jesus Christ is Lord whether or not you decide to make him Lord. The question becomes, are we actually going to be submissive to his

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Lordship? Are we going to recognize him for who he already is? And if you think about it that way, it fix so much evangelism, it fix so much in the way that we think about Jesus, because we're not running around trying to get

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Jesus elected to some sort of governmental office. Oh, will you please accept

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Jesus Christ as Lord? No, he is Lord, and it's your job to recognize that, to repent of your sin and you see his holiness and trust in him for his full and gracious pardon.

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So if we're going to understand him as Lord, we need to understand this reality, that he actually is

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Lord. He is savior and he is Lord. Now this word, kurios, is used 6 ,000 times in the

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Septuagint, and it's used 200 times in the New Testament concerning Jesus.

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The specific word is a pivotal word in the New Testament. It is frequently translated as Lord in the

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English, obviously, and its etymology traces back to the Greek root koros, which implies authority or power.

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But when you get to the New Testament, it denotes one who possesses authority, ownership, or mastery over something or someone.

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One, this term became a formal title for individuals of high rank, of power, and for deities.

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And one of the things that is most striking about this word, especially when you think about the

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Old Testament in the way that it relates to the New Testament, is that oftentimes

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Lord is used in place of the tetragrammaton. Now, in some ways, in your legacy standard

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Bible, it's a bit obscured. So not entirely helpful, because we use a

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Bible translation that actually translates God's covenant name as the name that he wants us to call him, namely

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Yahweh. That's what the tetragrammaton is. It's the Y -H -W -H that the

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Jewish people put in the Bible because God's name was too holy to fully write down.

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And also, they did not have vowels or consonants, and so there was probably some of that working into it as well.

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And so the Jewish people did that to honor the Lord. But here's the deal. The later scribes went in and they changed even the tetragrammaton to Adonai, which means

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Lord. And when they did the first Greek translation of the Bible, which is called the

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Septuagint, they would actually translate Adonai to Kurios, to Kurios.

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And what this does is it shows us that those who translated the Greek from the

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Hebrew who are much closer to the time of these New Testament writers, as a matter of fact, before the

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New Testament writers, that they understood the title Lord as one that denotes supreme authority, a ruler emphasizing sovereign lordship, specifically over Israel and the entire cosmos.

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So when the New Testament writers, who often quoted in the Septuagint, by the way, with the

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Septuagint, when they called Jesus Lord, they were calling him

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Yahweh. They were calling him Yahweh.

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But as we think about Jesus' lordship, I want you to consider five realities that this is pointing to.

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Five realities that this is pointing to. There are more, and we could even, in many ways, do an entire sermon series just on these.

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But for the sake of brevity, let me start with the first one. If we're gonna think about Christ's lordship, we need to think about it, especially in context, as the lordship of Christ over the church.

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Yes, Jesus is Savior, and yes, Jesus is Lord of your life and Savior of your soul.

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But the point that Paul is really trying to drive home here is that Jesus is

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Lord over the church, right? This entire thing is about how the church came to be, about how

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God in Christ tore down the dividing wall of hostility and made one new man.

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And it's Christ's lordship that we must acquiesce to when we think about the church, because he is the head of the church.

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We see this in Ephesians chapter one, verse 22 and 23. If you remember,

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Paul states very clearly that God has put all things in subjection to Christ's feet, and he gave him as head over all the things to the church, which is his body.

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Here's what that means very practically, friends, is that Jesus gets to tell us how to do church, and he gets to tell the members in the church how to live their lives and how to be in the church, which is why he can say, if you're gonna work hard, and you should, and you have to, to preserve unity and the bond of peace, you need to do that a certain way.

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You need to do that with gentleness, with humility, with respect. You need to walk worthy. And one of the things that oftentimes many churches forget and many church members forget is that the church is not a democratic institution where opinions and preferences reign.

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Look, heritage is not your church, and heritage is not my church.

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Heritage is Jesus' church, and he is the lead pastor of it. He's the head of the universal church, which is really what's being talked about here, right?

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This is just stuff we can extrapolate for our local body, but he is Lord over every church.

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And this is why doctrine is so important. This is why this creed is so important. This is why Ephesians is so important, because the unity exists in Christ under Christ's authority.

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And so if we don't recognize his Lordship over the church, then we're actually not a church in the first place, because as I heard

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H .B. Charles say over the last few weeks, Jesus does not have out -of -body experiences.

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Jesus is the head of the church all the time, always, and will be forever.

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And that's good news. He is a Lord over the church.

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He gets to tell us what to value and what not to value. He gets to tell us how to do our worship services, and he gets to tell us how to practice church discipline and to love one another.

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So not only does he have Lordship over his church, but that also means that he has authority and Lordship over church members.

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And when you recognize Jesus' Lordship, it changes everything, because Jesus' Savior invites you to graces unknown, but Jesus' Lord demands our submission.

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And this submission that it requires is not partial or selective. It is comprehensive and absolute.

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From top to bottom, from toes to crown, everything about you, the way that you think, the way that you talk, the way that you dress, that falls underneath Jesus' Lordship.

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How much does Jesus have authority over?

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Everything, because you have been bought with a price. And so to acknowledge

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Jesus as a Lord, it means to simply obey his commands. You do what he says and you do it willingly.

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And of course, by the power of a spirit, you follow his teachings and you reject all competing loyalties.

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You reject all competing loyalties. And Bob Dylan, which

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I realize some of you may be too young to even know who that is. I might be one of them, but I appreciate him as a musician, but he had this song that I'll never forget.

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And it went something like this, and I'm not gonna sing, but I'll tell you the verse. You know, you're gonna serve somebody.

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You see, he wasn't a Christian, but he knew. He knew what Jesus taught in Matthew 6, 24, that loyalty cannot be divided.

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You will either fall under the Lordship and the submission of the great savior, shepherd, king,

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Jesus, or you will serve idols. You will serve self and you will burn everything that's important in your life to continue worshiping such things.

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There's no such thing as a dual allegiance. If Jesus is

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Lord, you can't have him as your prize and treasure and your pet sins as well.

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They all must stand, bowing to the

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Lord Jesus. The second thing that it means is the sovereignty and Lordship of Christ over creation.

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The Lordship over creation. So of course, his Lordship means

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Lordship over the church, but it also means Lordship over a creation.

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I don't know if you know this or not. You should know this. As we walked through Genesis a little bit,

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Jesus Christ is both the creator and sustainer of all things. Colossians 1, 16 through 17, which you should know well if you were at the wedding last night, says this, for in him, all things were created both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him.

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And he is before all things and in him, all things hold together.

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Jesus is being talked about by Paul in this Colossian letter in such a way that when you think of him, you think of Yahweh.

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Jesus is God and he has Lordship over all of creation.

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That is everything that exists. The plants, the trees, the weather.

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As R .C. Sproul has famously said, there is no maverick molecule that is on its own path.

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Jesus upholds all things by the word of his power, including your life, your life.

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As the one Lord, Jesus exercises the providential rule over the entire universe.

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Every event, great or small, is under Jesus' sovereign direction, working according to his perfect will and for the good of his people, right?

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That's why Romans 8, 28 can say, for those who love God, all things work together for good.

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Jesus is behind everything. There is no surprise with him. Whatever the case may be, a great global flood, an earthquake, a pandemic, none of these things escape the

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Lord Jesus' notice and none of them are not ordained by this Lord. Who's going to be the next president of the

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United States? The Lord Jesus has already decided and it will come to pass.

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Do not lose sleep over it, dear Christian. Does that mean don't care about the trajectory of your nation?

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No, that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying trust the Lord Jesus and then work because he's foreordained you to work to produce change in the world.

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He's even ordained the means to the ends that he has already ordained because he has lordship over creation and his creatures.

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Children, look with me. I want you to think about it this way. I want you to think about a shepherd caring for his flock, caring for the little sheep.

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Those sheep that the shepherd is taking care of are safe.

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Always, right? Because they are under the watchful care of their shepherd.

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And in the same way, when we are underneath the lordship of Christ, no matter what situation we find ourselves in, we can know that we are safe as well and that the

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Lord is in control and will lead us like his sheep to green pastures.

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He cares for us. And the good thing about that is he's not powerless to help.

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He's not powerless to help. He is Lord over everything.

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The next thing that I want you to see is the lordship of Christ in salvation. The lordship of Christ in salvation.

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So not only is Jesus Lord over the church and Lord over creation and his creatures, but he's a

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Lord of salvation. Now, we've seen him as Savior of salvation, but I want you to think about him as Lord of salvation.

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Right? Because there is one Lord who does many things in regards to his lordship.

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One of the things to consider in light of his lordship as it pertains to salvation is the efficacy of that lordship as it is aimed at his elect.

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If Jesus is head of the church, if Jesus has a lordship over creation and his creatures, then it logically follows that he has the, not only the right, but the ability to do saving in a way that makes it stick.

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One of the things going on in the Twittersphere, which I know many of you don't care about it, but it's become quite the conversation, especially as it pertains to Roman Catholicism, that we are not to be assured of our salvation.

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Those who are assured of their salvation are probably not saved, and many Catholic priests are saying in many other denominations, and maybe we say that in our own heart.

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We can't be assured that we are saved. I want to ask you this question, saints.

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How could we not be assured if Jesus is Lord over all?

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How could we not be assured when he has, since before the foundation of the world, planned to redeem a people for himself, lived the perfect life on our behalf, and died the death that we should have died, absorbing the wrath of God on him, absorbing the wrath of God on our behalf?

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Why would Jesus go through all of that? Why would

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God put on skin and come on a rescue mission to be filleted in front of the world if all he was doing was offering you the possibility of potentially maybe being saved?

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He wouldn't. Because he's Lord. He is gracious, and he is compassionate, but he is master.

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He is the one with all authority.

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That means that every drop, sovereign grace, that is aimed at the sinner is completely and utterly efficacious.

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That means salvation works 100 % of the time.

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Why don't you think about it like this? Do you remember the story in John chapter 10, verse 11, where one of Jesus' friends dies?

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His name is Lazarus. I don't have time to rehearse the entire story for you, but one of the interesting pieces of this story is that Jesus lets him die.

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Like, if you go back and read it, it's quite astonishing because you think to yourself, like, okay, maybe

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Jesus just didn't get there in time. You know? The sisters come up and they start freaking out.

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Jesus, you loved them. And then Jesus wept. Shortest Bible verse in all of Scripture.

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And then he gets on his way. And one of the things he says is that, yeah, this happened so that God could be glorified.

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Because what he was about to do was going to shake up Jerusalem. And so what did he do?

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He stands in front of that tomb and he calls out to Lazarus, wake up, wake up.

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And that dead man stood up in his grave clothes and walked right out of that tomb.

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And do you know that it was his lordship over everything that enabled him to do that?

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In that moment, he was the Lord over death. And he gave that man new life.

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And what's even wilder is it's that same

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Lord who called the worlds into existence.

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That same Lord that everything was created for and in. And the same

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Lord that told Lazarus to get out of that tomb is the same

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Lord that calls sinners to himself, effectually drawing them by his sovereign grace.

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And when he creates a Christian, he says, wake up. And we wake up because he's a

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Lord over salvation. And how do we respond to that?

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Well, the believer's response to Christ's lordship is one of repentance and faith. Both, by the way, if you haven't been paying attention to the series, because I wanna make sure

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I say this lest I get accused of saying something I didn't say, or I make you think wrongly about the gospel of Jesus Christ.

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Repentance and faith are both gifts that have been granted by the spirit to those whom the

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Lord chooses. You see that in Ephesians chapter two, verses eight and nine, verses four.

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By grace, you have been saved through faith. And this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, so that no one may boast.

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Salvation is a free gift from a sovereign God who changes your heart, regenerates you, and causes you to love his lordship.

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It also means that he is our exclusive mediator. Now, this is a fun one because it stands opposed to especially the

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Roman Catholics. You're wondering why in the world are we sitting in these pews right now? Because the

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Roman Catholics distorted the gospel, do not understand the role of Jesus as priest and so on and so forth, and they employ mediators.

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That are designed to be your bridgeway to Jesus. The first Timothy two, five, destroys

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Catholic dogma because it says for there is one God and one mediator also between God and men, the man

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Christ Jesus. Here's what's so beautiful about this reality, friends, is that Jesus Christ is not only your savior, but he is also your

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Lord, and he does not just check out when you are saved, and even after you've recognized by the power of his spirit that he is

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Lord, he continually mediates for you forever.

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But Jesus is the exclusive mediator between God and those whom he has saved.

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Salvation is found in no one else, mediation is found in no one else, and under heaven there is no other name among men by which we must be saved.

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The exclusivity of Christ's meditatorial role underscores the necessity of faith in him, alone for salvation, and it also helps us to understand his

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Lordship because he exists to mediate for us all. And only the

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God man can be a true mediator between God and man. That's why he had to be the

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God man. And I don't know if we'll have time to get into it today, but this also helps shed light even on the nature of the covenant and baptism and so on and so forth.

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Christ is the head of the church, and he is Lord over it.

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He is the sum and substance of salvation. He is the, you could say accomplished and accomplisher of salvation, and he has accomplished salvation in his person and in his work, his active and passive righteousness for us, and he is the mediator of those who are in the covenant.

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And so we might ask the question then, well, who is in the covenant? Who is in the covenant?

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Those whom Jesus mediates for. And who does he mediate for?

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Those who are his and his alone. The next thing that I want you to see is the

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Lordship of Christ in sanctification. Not only does Jesus save and mediate, but he also sanctifies.

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He is Lord over the process of our sanctification. That is bringing us from being dead in our transgressions and sins to, as Romans 8 tells us, in chapter 828 and following, to our glorification, from the womb all the way to the tomb.

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Jesus is behind our sanctification every single step of the way.

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Christ, in other words, is Lord over the process by which we come to look like Christ, which after all, if you look at Hebrews chapter 12, it's the reason that God gives his children so much awesome discipline.

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And the more we are disciplined, the more we know that we are loved because we are being chiseled and molded into the image that God has for us, that is becoming holy and becoming more

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Christ -like so that we can stand before God on judgment day, right?

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The promise that was made in Ephesians chapter one in verse four is that we would be holy and blameless before God the

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Father on judgment day. In one way, that's positional and forensic.

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That is because of Jesus, when he looks at us, he sees us as blameless and holy because of the finished sacrifice that Jesus made on the cross and doing what

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Martin Luther called the great exchange, his record for ours, he gets and we get his for ours.

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So how does he do that? How does he enable us to not just stand before him positionally and forensically before Jesus?

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By the way, that's all you need because Jesus is that amazing, his sacrifice is so blazingly beautiful, but because God is so amazing, he brings us from death to glory and he does so through the lordship of Jesus Christ as the one

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Lord Jesus is not only a savior, but he's also, according to Hebrews chapter 12, verse two, the author of our faith, but he is also the perfecter of it.

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So Jesus authored our faith by being the pioneer of our faith, but he also perfects it, he brings it to completion, which is why we are told to fix our eyes on him, not ourselves, but him.

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How do you grow in Christ's likeness? How do you submit yourself to the lordship of Jesus Christ as he is perfecting you?

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By looking to him. You will kill far more sin in your life.

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As a matter of fact, the only way you can kill sin is by looking to the beauties and glories of Jesus Christ and seeing them as better than the sin that you so sweetly love.

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You see, Jesus is the sanctifier who works in us to will and to act according to his good pleasure.

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And in Philippians chapter one, it says that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.

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This process is ongoing and involves the believer's active cooperation with the Holy Spirit and putting to death the deeds of the flesh and living according to the spirit.

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Salvation, completely monergistic. Is sanctification monergistic?

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Yes. Yeah. Is it synergistic?

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Kind of a trick question. But in one sense, right? Because he wills in us to will and to work.

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And so we do willing and we do working, but we do it because Jesus is Lord over salvation and sanctification.

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Holiness, in other words, is not optional. And when we recognize Jesus' lordship, it compels us to pursue the call to be holy as God is holy, 1

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Peter 1, 16. It is a command of the Lord who is

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Lord. And so we must follow it. This requires us to daily die to self.

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It requires us to renunciate our sin and causes us to make a commitment to live in a manner worthy of the gospel.

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As Christ is holy, so we in his church must be holy.

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The church itself must be holy. And we must reflect a

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Jesus character in our lives and we must promote his lordship with our lives.

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And it's become very clear to me that we will not be moving on past one

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Lord. And that was not the intention, but you're at Heritage now, welcome.

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The last thing that I want you to see as we close in God's providence is not only is

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Jesus Lord over his church, not only is he

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Lord over his creation and his creatures, not only is he a

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Lord over salvation and sanctification, but he is

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Lord over the eschaton.

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Or you could say it another way, if that's a little confusing. Christ's lordship will be seen by everyone at some point eschatologically.

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Throughout the entire Bible, the argument is made that the Lord Jesus not only is

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Lord and that he is

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Lord has believers who love him by his gracious gift of salvation and sanctification, who willingly, like Paul did at the beginning of chapter three, verse one, and also in verse 14, when he picks back up, willingly bow their knee to this

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Lord. Not only does he have a church who bows their knee, the knee of their hearts, if not their physical knees to this

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Lord, but there will come a day when those who have rejected him in this life and those who may still be on the earth when

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Jesus comes back, that will, if they won't willingly bow, will be made to bow.

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Will be made to bow. Paul says in Philippians chapter 10, and this is not the only, chapter two, rather, verse 10 and 11, and this is not the only place that Paul talks like this, and it's not the only place in the

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Bible that speaks of this reality, but he says that at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow.

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I want you to notice that word will. So if you are unwilling to bow now,

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I promise you there is coming a day where you will not get the option. You will stand in front of him and recognize him in his glory and in his perfection and in his

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Lordness, and you will bow, weeping with a changed and regenerate heart, and you will lament every second of your life that you did not spend on your knees before this

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Lord, or he will push you to the dust, and he will cause you to bow because everyone will bow.

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The question is, will you do it now, or will you push it off to when you will be made to do so?

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Charles Spurgeon, when he talks of this text, he always says to bow is to be humble, and you will either be humble now or you will be humbled later.

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The question is, which will it be? Do you love Jesus enough today to not only see him as Savior, but as Lord of your life?

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Because you should. Why would you not want to give everything to the one who has gave you so much?

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That's someone that doesn't understand what Jesus has done for them, or that's someone that does not care.

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Hmm. At the name of Jesus, every knee will bow.

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Of those who are in heaven and on the earth and under the earth, and not only that, but every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is

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Lord to the glory of God the Father. The Lordship of Christ, though presently recognized by his church, will one day be universally acknowledged.

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On this coming day in the future, every creature will bow before this one

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Lord, because there is only one Lord. There are not many lords. There is one, and we will all stand before him, bowed as the eternal sovereign

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Lord over an eternal kingdom where he will reign forever.

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Revelation chapter 11, verse 15, proclaims the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our

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Lord, and of his, or the kingdoms of the world has become the kingdom of our

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Lord and his Christ, and he will reign forever and ever. And so when you look out this church window, when you look at these church windows, when you read the newspaper, when you look at the

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TV, and you see all of this godlessness happening, and you lament the fact that our country is just going right along with Ephesians chapter two, loving the world's values and its evil system, just running after and pursuing fleshly desires, being governed by the prince of the power of the air,

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I want you to know, Christian, that that is only for a little while, while Jesus is plucking his people from every tribe, nation, and tongue, until eventually, as Habakkuk, right, says,

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Habakkuk 4 .12, there's coming a day when the glory of the Lord will cover the earth as the waters cover the seas.

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Everyone, everywhere, in heaven and earth, and in hell, understand that Jesus Christ is

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Lord. The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our

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Lord and his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever. One of the things that is so replete, not only in the scriptures, but also replete in much of the early church literature is this hope in the return of Christ.

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I don't hear a lot of talk about that anymore. Now, of course, we don't get too oversaturated and, you know, act like we don't need to do anything because Jesus is coming back tomorrow, you know?

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You know, like some dispensational churches used to do, they'd have, like, entire plans and systems for, like, if Jesus showed up while the church service was going on, what to do, right?

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If Jesus shows up tomorrow or during this church service, we all know what it is we have to do.

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We don't need a chart for that. Do you know what that is? Fall down and worship him as Lord.

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You won't be able to do anything, but that's what you will do because he is

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Savior and because he is, in fact, Lord. And his

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Lordship will be fully manifested in the world, and he establishes the new heaven and new earth where righteousness will dwell forever, 2

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Peter 3, verse 13, but that's in the future.

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But until that day, the church is called to live in the light of his coming, proclaiming his

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Lordship to the lost and dying world and to keep it as the first and foremost priority of our unification in the

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Son. If we all agree with everything that I have just said, you know, might have some sentences that you might want to change, which we can talk about later, and that's what you do in reformed churches, right?

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But if you agree with Jesus' Lordship and you see that he runs everything all of the time and he will forever, that changes the way that, yeah, we do family, we do our life, church, right?

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Changes everything. And so as we close,

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I want to ask you two questions that are prefaced by two statements.

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If you think about Jesus' Lordship and you think about this text and you think about how this is where Paul decides to start when thinking about our unity in the church as it pertains to this creedal statement in the

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Son, we need to examine your allegiance right now.

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I want you to examine your allegiance right now and don't play games with God.

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Ask yourself, is Jesus truly the Lord of my life in every area of my life?

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Now, we know he is, but are you living like it? Are you thinking like it? Maybe reflect on areas where you may be withholding from Christ's Lordship and submit them to him.

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What are those areas of your life that you just won't let him tell you what to do in?

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What are the areas of your life that you're like, I'll give you this part of my life, but there's no way you're touching that.

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What might that be? Because for a lot of us, we have that.

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Actually, for every one of us, there's that, right? Because we're continually being sanctified and we are not perfect and we need to slay and slaughter the ways in which we do not appreciate and give ourselves over to the

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Lordship of Jesus Christ. The second thing in light of this reality that I want you to do is to rest in Christ's sovereign

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Lordship. Here's what

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I know, life is hard. Things hurt, things are confusing.

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And oftentimes, our frailty pushes us to fear. Remind yourself that Jesus is

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Lord over everything. He is your one

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Lord and he is sovereign over every single circumstance in your life.

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And you can, because he's good, trust him with your anxieties and your concerns.

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Jesus' Lordship is a nightmare, a nightmare for those who do not love him, for those who have not bowed their knee to him.

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And at this juncture, let me speak specifically to those in the room who have yet to bow their knee to King Jesus.

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If you have to stand in front of Jesus, the one Lord, as an enemy of his, you will regret the day that you were ever born, that you ever uttered your first word.

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Because not only is rebellion of God going to send us to hell if we will not repent and trust in him, but it makes your life hollow and dull.

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And you're trying to fit all of these idols and other things that you're allowing to be Lord over your life in the place of where Jesus should go, and it just never fits because Jesus has to be

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Lord because he is Lord and because he's the best Lord. And though it's a nightmare for those who have not bowed their knee to him, it is the greatest and sweetest balm to those who do love him because he is not a capricious, horrible, violent, mean

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Lord. He's a Lord that's meek, gentle, and lowly.

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And it would be better to be a subject of this Lord than be a king in the world without him.

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You'd rather clean the crevices of the tile in the house of the

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Lord forever than to burn in hell away from his goodness.

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Most pastors would end that by saying, actually, away from his presence.

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That's not a biblical thing. Now, the reason that hell is so horrible is because Jesus is

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Lord over hell. And he pours his wrath on all those who have stood in rebellion against him.

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But those who have been given the gift of a new heart, who love him, who understand him, are guided beautifully and wonderfully and gently by this

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Lord as he pulls us through salvation and sanctification.

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And why is he given this title, this

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Christ, this Jesus? The Bible tells us it's because he purchased it and the

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Father bestowed it on him because he did what he said he was going to do.

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He lived the perfect life that is according to the law of God.

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And then he was brutally murdered and hung on a cross 2 ,000 years ago after being scourged, bloodied, and broken.

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And he died one of the most gruesome deaths of all history past.

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But that wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it is that he had to absorb

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God Almighty's wrath for all those who would come to bow their knee in front of him and to love him.

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And it's because of that merit that he achieved, succeeding where everyone else had failed, that God has bestowed upon him a name above every other name.

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And he's lifted up as this Lord, this Savior, this Christ. And it's a delight to fall underneath his

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Lordship if he has but Godded us. I don't know if I want to follow

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Jesus as Lord. Have you been graced? If not, cry out to him this very moment because those whom

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God saves, he sanctifies. Those whom

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God saves, he leads by his

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Lordship. So trust in this

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Christ. Love this Christ. Give your life to this

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Christ because I promise you, he is far better than I can ever communicate him to be.

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He is more faithful than I can ever communicate him to be. He is more magnificent and more holy and more awesome and more, you just keep throwing in the adjectives, than I can ever communicate him to be.

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And it would be the greatest joy of your life to submit to him. And so Christians submit harder by the power of his spirit and his grace that has been purchased for you.

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And non -Christian, do it before it's too late because now Jesus is offering you a hand of compassion and he is holding, as it were, a hand of rescue out to you.

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But there's coming a day where he will withdraw that hand and he will push you to the dust.

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Because Jesus is Lord and he is the one Lord and he is in fact

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Lord over creation and the church and salvation and sanctification and he will be recognized as such by everyone everywhere.

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That's a Lord you wanna be next to. That's a Lord you wanna be under. That's a Lord worth your life.