Jesus - the Voice of God — Brian Brodersen

Good morning. Well, I want to, first of all, bring you greetings from some of the saints in Ireland. We were in Ireland last Sunday and speaking to a great group of folks that had gathered together for the conference that we had over the weekend.

And the Lord's doing some really sweet things, just some wonderful testimonies that we heard of some of the different people who have come to Christ and the different ministries, churches that are being built up and so forth.

So it was just a really good time and just wanted to bring you greetings from the saints there. This morning, we're going to be looking at the passage that we just read together here in Matthew chapter 17.

The Transfiguration and the Father’s Command to Hear Jesus

And we'll focus primarily on the fifth verse. But here in this 17th chapter, as we just read, the account of the transfiguration. And here at the transfiguration, for just a very brief moment, the glory of Christ breaks through and the apostles here witness this glory.

Later when Peter writes his epistle, his second epistle there, he speaks of this event. This really was, you know, in some senses, sort of the revealing moment for the apostles where they really began to grasp who Jesus actually was.

And so here in the story, you know, Peter is excited and who wouldn't be, but, you know, comes to Jesus, Lord, should we build three tabernacles? And as Peter is speaking, out of turn really, but in his excitement, the voice of the Father breaks through.

And the Father says, this is my beloved Son in whom I am well-pleased, hear Him. Hear Him, and that's what we want to really focus on today. Now up until this point, God had spoken primarily through the law and the prophets.

And now there's going to be this change. Now Moses and Elijah, remember, they appear here with Jesus. So they're the representatives of the law and the prophets. So in a sense, it's kind of a, the whole thing is communicating the same message.

Because here are Moses and Elijah, they have been the voice that the nation has listened to, the law and the prophets, but now God says, now this is my beloved Son, hear Him. The writer to the Hebrews, he expressed the same thing in this way.

God, who at various times and in different ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds.

And then He says, who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had by Himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high.

So in a sense, the writer to the Hebrews is, you know, sort of encapsulating the message that is communicated here in this voice coming from the Father there at the transfiguration. God in time past and in various ways spoke to the fathers by the prophets, but now He's spoken to us in His Son.

The message is final. The message is now complete in Christ. Do we realize when Jesus speaks, it is God who is speaking? Do we understand that? Now, I think, of course, we as Christians would generally understand that, but obviously most people in the world don't get that today, do they?

I saw this past week that a pastor was being interviewed by somebody in the media, and the topic that they wanted to address was, who would Jesus vote for in the upcoming election? And I thought, well, it's obvious this person doesn't have a clue who Jesus is, because Jesus isn't voting for anybody.

He doesn't vote for people. He's God. He appoints. He's in control. But that's the mentality of the world, right? They don't get this stuff. But we, hopefully, we get it. Hopefully, we get that when Jesus is speaking, it is God who is speaking.

Now, there are many voices today clamoring for our attention. There are many voices claiming to have the answers to our deepest questions. There are many voices purporting to speak for God, but there's only one who speaks with the absolute authority of the Father, and that is Jesus, God's beloved Son.

And so, what I want to do over the next few minutes is I want to just think with you through a few things that Jesus said, and just kind of taking Matthew's gospel and going through some of the statements that Jesus made.

Of course, we could go on endlessly with this, and if we included the other gospels, there are so many things that we could talk about. But just some things that, as I prayed about it, these were the things that sort of stood out to me that we should consider in the context of Jesus being the voice of God.

That these words that Jesus spoke are nothing less than God's word to us. They were when he spoke them, but they are God's word to us today. So, we go back to the fourth chapter of Matthew's gospel. You don't need to turn there, but there in the fourth chapter, Jesus says this.

Spiritual Nourishment Beyond Material Needs

And it's actually a quotation from the Old Testament, from Deuteronomy, and the context of the story is the temptation there where Satan is tempting Jesus. But Jesus said this at one point. He said, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word of God.

Man shall not live by bread alone. The tendency is to think always in terms of the material. The tendency is to think that, you know, what I need is primarily material. I need food. I need provision. I need things.

I need material things. Those are the things that are gonna benefit me, bless me, help me through life, help me to, you know, enjoy life or whatever the case might be. But Jesus is saying here in the broader sense, although he's speaking specifically about food, speaking specifically about bread, but in the broader sense, he's really saying that man cannot live on the material.

We are a materialistic culture, not just in the sense that we want to have material possessions, but in the larger sense that we think pretty much in terms of materialism philosophically in that we think that all of life is about what the material world has to offer.

But it isn't true. What's true is that man is primarily a spirit being, that we are secondarily material, but primarily we are spiritual and our deepest needs are going to be met spiritually. And so more even than bread, I need the Word of God.

I need to commune with God. I need that more than I need to eat breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Not saying I don't need to do that, but I need this even more. You know, I'm always fascinated when I read this portion of Scripture back in the Old Testament in the book of Exodus.

We have Moses going up onto the mount for 40 days and 40 nights. He's there in communion with God, and you know what it says about him? It says that he neither ate food nor drank water for 40 days and 40 nights.

Now that is humanly impossible. You can't do that. But Moses did it. How could he do it? He did it because man does not live by bread alone, but by every Word of God. He was sustained. Of course, this was a unique situation, but he was sustained by the very presence and the words of God.

But you see, for us today, every Word of God is what we need to be living on primarily. In other words, this is the thing that we need to be looking for to strengthen us, to sustain us. We need to be going to God's Word just like we would go to sit down at the table for our meals to nourish and strengthen our bodies so we can do the things that we do every day.

We need to be going to the Word of God because man cannot live by bread alone, but by every Word of God. And so Jesus speaking, the voice of God here, this is my beloved son. Hear him. What is he saying?

He's saying that we are dependent on God's Word. But do we realize that? We all have Bibles I trust. I have so many Bibles I can't even count them. And maybe you have quite a few as well. And we're above all people, probably Americans or at least people in Western society.

We have access, free access, abundant access to the Word of God. That is not true everywhere, but it is true for us. Do we take it for granted or do we take it seriously and are we seeking to live by every Word of God?

Seeking First God’s Kingdom and Righteousness

That's what Jesus said we're to do. Not looking to the material to sustain us or to fulfill us, but looking ultimately to the spiritual, looking ultimately to God's Word. Now the next thing that I want to highlight that Jesus said is something that sort of is in addition to this, but in the 6th chapter of Matthew, chapter 6, verse 33, Jesus said, Now in the context, Jesus is talking about the tendency of man to worry.

Take no thought for your life, He says. Take no thought, take no anxious thought for your life. In other words, don't be worried about your life, what you're going to eat, what you're going to wear. Don't be worried about the basic necessities of life, food, shelter, those kinds of things.

Jesus said because these are the things that the unbelievers are worried about and preoccupied with and these are the things that become the priority in their life. He says, but that's not the case with you because you have a heavenly Father.

And then Jesus illustrates this point. He says, look at the birds. They do not sow. They don't go out and plant their crops. They do not harvest their crops. They do not store them up in barns. But your heavenly Father feeds them.

He says, look at the flowers. They neither toil nor spin. They don't have to work at it. They're beautiful because God has made them beautiful. And if God takes care of the birds and sow close the flowers of the field, will He not much more take care of you, Jesus said?

He said, so don't be preoccupied with these things, but rather you seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added to you. So this word has to do with priority. What are our priorities?

Now, it's easy to get distracted from this as our priority, isn't it? Because we get under the pressure of life. And we've got all of these things that come flooding in upon us. And so we've got to give more time to this situation.

And we've got to, you know, work extra hard at that. And, of course, that takes away from other things that are more important. But nevertheless, we just, you know, get caught up in these things. And we've got to resist that tendency to do that.

And we've got to keep reminding ourselves to go back and seek first God's kingdom and His righteousness. And instead of being overwhelmed by these things, we've got to remember, wait, the Lord said He's going to take care of these things.

My priority is to seek Him. Because you know what happens so often is that people get overwhelmed with just the cares of this life, the daily routine, that they begin to neglect their lives spiritually.

Happens all the time. And so pretty soon, I once had a priority of consistent devotional time in the Word. Man, I don't have the time for that like I used to. I used to be plugged in to a fellowship. I was there consistently.

I was faithful. I was growing there with God's people. But, you know, I haven't been for quite a while because I'm just too busy. I've got so many other things going. I used to be involved in serving the Lord.

I was doing this, and I was plugged in to that. And, you know, we were reaching out, and God was working. But, man, it's been a long time since I've done anything like that. What's happened? These things have come in, and they have robbed us of the spiritual priority.

But, you know, here's the reality. You can be out there pursuing all of these things, trying to get it together, and even in the back of your head saying, Okay, you know, as soon as I get it together, then I'm going to get back into the Word.

I'm going to get back into fellowship. I'm going to get back into serving the Lord. But it never comes together. That's not the way to do it. The way to do it is go back to this. Seek first the kingdom of God.

Stop all of the other stuff and say, Wait a second. I've got to get back into fellowship. I've got to get back into communion with the Lord. I've got to get involved in serving God again. Lord, I'm trusting you to take care of these other things.

And He will. How do I know He will? Because Jesus said He would. And Jesus is the voice of God. And Jesus is the one who created the birds and the flowers. And He says that those things are insignificant in comparison to us.

So if He takes care of those things, we can trust Him to take care of us. So you see, this is what God's saying to us. Seek first my kingdom. This is that voice of the Lord to us today. But then another passage that is so encouraging, we find a little further in Matthew's gospel, in the 11th chapter, chapter 11, verses 28 through 30, one of my favorite passages, and no doubt for many of you it would be the same, where Jesus says, Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.

Coming to Jesus for Rest Under Life’s Burdens

What an amazing thing. Life can be full of burdens, can't it? And we can at times find ourselves so weary and so weighed down with the things of life, the burdens of life. What do we do when we're like that?

Now, there are all kinds of voices out there that would say, Well, you know, here, try this or do that or have you thought about this? And we can help you over here. And, you know, sometimes there can be a little bit of help here and there.

But there's somebody above and beyond all of that who can help us in the ultimate sense because he's got all power. And that one, Jesus says, Come to me. Come to me with your problems. I am amazed at how often it is the case that Christian people do not come to the Lord with their problems, but they go to all different kinds of places rather than coming to the Lord.

And for whatever reason, sometimes we maybe think that, Well, you know, God, this isn't the stuff that God helps us with. We've got to go get some help somewhere else. Well, you know, God will help you with everything.

There's nothing that you could go to the Lord for and say, Lord, I'm coming to you with this. He'd say, Oh, no, no, I don't deal. That's not my department. You've got to take that over there. I mean, even if there's going to be some more immediate help or some human agency through which he's going to help you, God will be the one to direct you to it so we can come to him with all of these things.

And what a wonderful invitation. The Lord himself, come to me. And, of course, there are certain things in life that happen at times that, you know, there's absolutely nothing that anybody can do to help us except the Lord.

He's the only one. And thank God we can come to him. The rest of that passage goes on and says, Take my yoke upon you and learn of me for I am meek and I am gentle in heart and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.

And Jesus is saying, Come and be joined to me. And so he gives us this invitation. He calls us. This is what he wants you to do today if you're burdened, whatever it might be. In some cases, people are burdened down by sin.

Sin is weighing down upon you. It's crushing you. What do you do with that? How do you get out from under the crushing burden of sin? You have to come to Christ. There's no other way. There's no other means of relieving that burden.

You have to come to Jesus because he's the only one that can forgive sin. But when you come to him under that burden of sin, he doesn't add to that with condemnation. He lifts that burden off of you with forgiveness.

And whatever that burden might be rooted in, whatever the sin might be, whatever the guilt might be, there's nothing too great for Christ. There's nothing too sinful that he is not able to deal with. There's no sin that he's not able to forgive and to cleanse you of.

And so when we're burdened down by sin, what do we do? A lot of times the tendency or the idea is we need to run away from God. That's what Adam and Eve did, remember? They sinned and God came to meet them.

And what did they do? They hid from him. We do that too, don't we? We hide or we run the other direction. But no, we need to come to the Lord. Come to me. Whatever the burden might be. If it's sin, come to him for forgiveness.

If it's the burdens of life, crisis, tragedy, whatever it is. You see, this is the wonderful thing. We're talking about the living God. We're talking about a person. We're talking about somebody that we can go to.

We can't see him. He's invisible, but he's very real. And we can go to him and get comfort. And he can minister to us. And he can do things in our hearts to heal us and to restore joy and peace. Things that we can't do for ourselves.

Things that other people can't do for us. But this is the voice of the Lord. What is he saying? He's saying, come to me. Bring those things to me. I was talking to a lady earlier this morning. And about three or four months ago she came to church.

She's from out of town. Her husband's a pastor, actually. And she was telling me about one of their children, their son, who had a mental breakdown in college. And things had just deteriorated so rapidly.

And he was on all of these various medications. And essentially the doctors were saying, you know, there's nothing else we can do for him. They were even suggesting that they might need to institutionalize this young man.

And you can imagine the burden that this was placing upon them. So, anyway, we sat and talked for a bit. And then we prayed. But she came this morning and she said, I just want to give you a report on what's happened.

And she said, we went home. We prayed more specifically. God, really give us wisdom. Show us what to do. We felt like the Lord was saying, you need to get him off the medication. She said, we did that.

And she said, he's doing wonderful. He's working at the church. He's serving the Lord. He's in the ministry. And God has just done an amazing restoration. You see, where do you go with a problem like that?

And, of course, there are doctors and people that will try to help. But we know that there are so many things that people can't deal with. The experts can't even help you. But Jesus can. And not only can Jesus help you, he will.

He's the one who bids you come. Come to me. I will give you rest. Cast those burdens. Remember what Peter would say, casting all of your cares upon him for he cares for you. Isn't that a wonderful thing that God says, come and cast your cares upon me?

He invites us to do that. And so we're to remember that we are not going to be fulfilled ultimately through the material. But we must seek the Lord, every word of God. We must remember to keep the priority right, the kingdom of God.

That's what we're to be pursuing above everything else. We're to remember this gracious invitation to come to the Lord and to cast our cares upon him. But here's another thing that I want to remind us of that Jesus said today that is different in tone than this.

Jesus’ Warnings About Sin, Judgment, and Hell

Of course, everything that we're looking at has been words of encouragement. And we could go on words of grace and blessing and all that. And Jesus has many of those words to offer. But there's another side to what Jesus said as well.

Jesus also spoke words of judgment. And I bring that up because that's something that people today are in a sense denying that he ever did. There are people that are happy to talk about all the loving and merciful things that Jesus had promised which are true and great.

But there's another side. There's also a judgment that he spoke of. And the world today completely rejects the idea of a God of judgment. And outside in the culture, you know that the very idea that anything is sin almost.

We're almost to that point today where, you know, there's nothing that's sin. There's some explanation or excuse or allowance for everything that people do practically today. And the idea that there are things that are sins, that are punishable, that are going to require reckoning and a day of judgment.

That is so out in our culture today, isn't it? Man, we need to have a spiritual awakening in our world. And it's going to begin with a conviction of sin. Jesus said when the Holy Spirit comes, he will convict the world of sin and of righteousness and of judgment.

And we will know when an outpouring of the Spirit really begins to take place when people begin to realize, man, I am a sinner. I am under judgment. And that's what does happen to individual people. But we need to see that in a broader sense.

But also we need to remember that within the church it's possible for us to become deceived. It's possible for us to start thinking that, you know, these kinds of things that they used to talk about living in sin and all of that.

Well, you know, things have changed and it's a different cultural situation. And so we no longer think so much of those things in terms of sin. And people in the Christian church start to develop these kinds of mentalities.

Paul warns us that this is a deception that we have to be careful not to fall into. Just this past couple of weeks ago, I read an interesting thing. It didn't totally shock me. But, you know, here's a person who claims to be an evangelical leader.

And he's always talking about, you know, how the church is too condemning. And, you know, we need to get away from judgment, talk more about love. You know, that's kind of his thing. Well, I just read recently how he officiated the marriage ceremony for his homosexual son to the partner.

And the reason I'm bringing this up is because the sad thing is that this person, instead of saying, son, I love you, but that's wrong. And we can't condone that. Instead of doing that, which would be the right thing to do, still loving.

I mean, we love our kids, right, regardless of what they're doing. But we still, at a certain point, have to stand for the truth and what God says. But instead of doing that, he endorses it. But I guarantee if you were to ask him about this, I know for a fact because he's already written plenty that you can read.

But he would say that, well, you know, it's debatable. It's debatable that there's really anything wrong with homosexuality. We Christians have been misreading the Bible all of these years. There's nothing wrong with this.

See, that's a deception. That's a deception that's come upon the mind of a man who, well, he claims to be a Christian. Sure, at some point he was. Don't know where he's at today. But we have to remember that beside all of these other things, Jesus spoke of judgment.

Listen to what he said, Matthew 25. When the Son of Man comes in His glory and all the holy angels with Him, then He will sit on the throne of His glory. All the nations will be gathered before Him, and He will separate them one from another.

Then the King will say to those on His right hand, Come, you blessed of My Father. Inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. Then He will say to those on His left hand, Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.

So Jesus speaks very clearly here that there is a day of reckoning that's coming. There's a day of judgment that's coming. And He's basically saying what nobody wants to hear today. People are going to end up in hell for eternity.

That's a reality. You can deny it. You can try to erase it. You can protest against it and refuse to believe it. Doesn't change anything. That's the thing about God. You can't, you know, we can shake the fist, and we can disagree, and I'm going to tell God this or that.

But, you know, God will have the final word. And there is a hell. But notice, it wasn't prepared for people. But sadly, people will go there. We just read about it. Depart from Me, you cursed, into the everlasting fire.

It was prepared not for people but for the devil and his angels. But people will go there because they follow the devil and his rebellion against God. And that's where it leads. So as we're thinking about this is my beloved Son, hear Him.

My point is this. We need to hear everything He's saying. The world needs to hear it. So we got to get the gospel out to them. But we need to be reminded of it. And as much as we need to be reminded of God's love and His grace and His mercy, which we do, we also need to be reminded that God is very serious about sin.

And He doesn't tolerate it. And if we go on living in it and end up deceiving ourselves into thinking that everything's okay, we are in for a huge surprise down the road. So we need to be careful. Final thing.

The Great Commission and Active Christian Service

In the 28th chapter, the final chapter of Matthew, Jesus gives us one word there, one last word that I want to mention. And this is kind of a word of motivation, I guess, because you know what I see happening today?

I see people that have been in the church for lots and lots of years growing hardened and boredom is setting in. And, you know, it's the routine that we've been doing for so long. And it's kind of a loss of interest is occurring.

But you know why that's happening? I think in some cases, maybe in a lot of cases, it's happening because we're just getting input, but we're not giving out. There's nothing in the Bible that would ever indicate remotely that Christians are to be spectators.

We're to be participants in this whole thing. And Jesus said this, Matthew 28, All authority has been given to me in heaven and on earth. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations. You see, we are to take this life.

We're to take this salvation. We're to take the gifts that God has instilled in us, and we are to go out and do something. What are we to do? We're to go out and make disciples of the nations. We're to get this message.

The reason the church is still in the world is because we've got to get the message out. God has left us here as a testimony, and this is our task. And so we are to go, therefore, and every single one of us have some part to play in this larger task of taking the gospel to the nations.

We've all got a part to play. There's not a single person that is excluded from this. Everybody's got a part to play. Now, I don't know what your part is. I know what my part is. I don't know what your part is.

But God knows what your part is. And your job is to seek Him and to simply yield yourself to Him so He can show you what your part is and you can get in there and do what He's called you to do. And, you know, here's the thing.

When you're serving the Lord, you don't have to worry about being bored. There's no boredom in the kingdom. When you're active, when you're really serving, when you're really seeking Him, every new step is really an adventure.

And that's how God wants us to understand this thing that He's called us into. And so He's made us part of it. And He said, I'm going to use you. I've got something for you to do. It's to make disciples of the nations.

And that, you know, there's all different kinds of ways that that happens. But we just have to open ourselves up and make ourselves available and allow the Holy Spirit to fill us up and to gift us. And the Lord's going to take us.

One of the things that I always get reminded of when I travel, like I did this past week, and particularly with the missionaries that are out there, is that, you know, these are just ordinary, everyday people that God's using.

And they've just taken the call up. They've responded. They've opened themselves up and just said, you know, here I am. I'm available. Lord, what do you want to do? One of the guys pastoring one of the churches in Ireland.

He's 29 years old now. He's been there 10 years. And at 19 years old, he just ended up there. And I overheard him saying to another person who was from another city, he goes, hey, I spent a few nights on the streets of your city when I first came to Ireland.

He said, yeah, I came to Ireland. I just felt like God was calling me here. I didn't know anybody. Didn't have any place to stay. So I just slept on the streets. And, you know, the Lord opened another door.

Now that's an adventure. So are you bored? Get yourself a plane ticket and go somewhere and sleep on the street and see what happens. He was 19 years old. He was crazy. He was a kid. But I don't only meet 19-year-olds or 29-year-olds, but I meet 49-year-olds and 59-year-olds.

And, you know, I've had people in my office who were in their late 60s and early 70s telling me, hey, we're moving to Africa. We're going to the mission field. God's called us. Now, I'm not saying everybody has to go to the mission field.

The mission field is right out your front door. It's right off the property here. To some extent, it's right here as well. But what we need to do is just take to heart that we are to go and to make disciples and then to just simply say, Lord, here I am.

And if we are realizing the priority of the spiritual, if we're putting the kingdom first, if we're casting our cares on the Lord, if we're realizing there's a day of reckoning and accountability, we're going to be quick to say, Lord, here I am.

That's what it's about. And one final word. Jesus said this. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will never pass away. Man, think about that. All of the things that have been written and all the words that have been uttered and all the speeches that have been spoken and all of the words, they'll all pass along with the heavens and the earth.

But the words of Jesus will never pass away. That's why we need to hear him. That's why we need to tune out all of these other voices that are contradicting him and distracting us from what he's saying.

And we need to listen to Jesus. Because Jesus is the voice of God. Lord, we thank you that you are the living God, that you are the speaking God. We thank you, Lord, that you are speaking to us today.

Prayer for Spiritual Priorities and Faithful Witness

Lord, we want to receive what you have for us. And, Lord, I pray this morning for each person, Lord, myself included. Lord, help us to remember that we cannot live by bread alone. Help us to remember that the material will never satisfy the longing in our soul.

Help us, Lord, to feed upon your word. Help us, Lord, to make sure our priorities are right. Help us, Lord, to remember heaven and earth is going to pass away. Everything one day will be over. Help us, Lord, to make sure the priority is right.

You, your kingdom, your righteousness. Lord, thank you that we can come to you and cast our burdens and our cares upon you. And thank you, Lord, that you forgive our sins and that you heal our hearts and that you comfort us and you give us rest and peace.

Lord, keep us on the straight path. Help us never to be deceived into thinking that we can live in sin and there will be no consequences. And, Lord, help us, and I pray specifically for all today, Lord, to find that place in the body, to find, Lord, that niche that you have so that we can fulfill that great commission to make disciples of the nations.

So work in our hearts, we pray. Amen. Amen. Let's stand together. So the pastors are here this morning. They're up front, available to pray with you. And so if you've got something,.