The Supremacy Of Jesus Christ (part 3) - [Hebrews 1:1-3]

Bethlehem Bible Church

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I don't know how many of you are computer literate, but for the ones who are, what do you put on your desktop? The desktop is when you open up the computer, and on the screen with all your little icons and programs, there's something in the back that you can put any picture there that you'd like.

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I, for a while, had Haley, Luke, Maddie, and Gracie, and myself with our Indian garb right here.

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Taking the picture was right there. And sometimes I would put, I'm into bicycling now, so a bicycler.

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It's something to remind you of something. And again, if you don't have computers, the desktop is just maybe something you put on your desktop.

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A picture, a picture of your mom over here and your dad. There's something to remind you of something all the time. Today we're going to look at Hebrews chapter 1, and I want it to be fixed in your mind that it will be the desktop for your life.

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Turn to Hebrews chapter 1. Something that when you turn on the computer, you see this. It doesn't have to really be on your desktop of your computer, but I want you to keep this person focused in your mind as the one whom you worship.

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We have just sung songs about Christ Jesus. We have talked about him. We have read scriptures that he's the author of.

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And we in Christianity need to be reminded of who Jesus is, and is he in fact lifted up?

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How extolled is Christ? You say, well, how practical is that? It's practical in all ways.

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It was said of Jonathan Edwards that his doctrine was practical and his practice was doctrinal.

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And I think he learned that from Christ Jesus. Doctrine is very practical. And even in our practice of things, doctrine is good and important.

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And this is the doctrine of Jesus Christ is God. Jesus Christ, Christ is eternal. Jesus Christ is great.

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What kind of ramifications must there be? I can think of several before we even dive back into this passage.

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Here's one. If Jesus Christ is so great, do you tell other people about the riches found in Christ Jesus and his forgiveness?

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If he's the best one, if he's the one that when you turn your computer on, you see that desktop as it were, and you think, may

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Jesus Christ be praised. We, as 1 Peter 2 says, are to tell of Christ's excellencies.

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If he's the excellent one, then we are to preach the gospel. If you think Jesus Christ is high and lifted up, it should affect other things in evangelism.

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How about this? Your service in the church. Why do you do your ministry at the church? Because you have to.

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Nobody else will do it unless I do it. Pastor has wrangled me in to do it. I feel guilty because he says all

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Christians serve. The children need to be ministered to. There are all kinds of motivations and some are really good.

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But if you see Christ lifted up properly, you'll say this. He deserves my ministry.

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Frankly, if we don't minister for Christ, then we should just quit our ministries. My suggestion is if you minister for me or someone else, you should just quit the ministry, train somebody else up first,

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I guess, and then pass it on to the next person who can say, you know, even though I serve a person, even though I change diapers, even though I set up chairs, even though I dust around,

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I'm not doing it for the church. Who is the church? I'm doing it for Christ Jesus.

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And this can go right into issues of even everyday life. You wake up tomorrow and either wake up at work or you go to work and you say, why do you work?

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Well, I have to pay the bills. I owe, I owe, so off to work I go. When you see

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Christ in this passage, you'll say, that's true, but more importantly, God has ordained work.

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Did you know there's work before the fall? Oh, too bad, we say, right?

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Do you know there's work in heaven? Without the sweat and the toil and the briars and the brambles.

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But there's work. Why do we work? Why do we worship? Why do we evangelize? How about this?

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Why do we even come and gather corporately? Some say, well, we come to church because we like the programs.

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Boy, that church over there, they don't have the programs I like. We go to church because we like fellowship. Boy, our church isn't very good at fellowship.

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Someone else says, I go to church because I'm looking for friendship. Boy, I just don't have hardly any friends.

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Oh, I go to church because I'm single and I want to get married. That's why I go to church. Now, those might all be practical spillovers or things that might be good kind of with gravy, extra cream stuff.

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But we come to church not for any of those reasons. If you come to this church for those reasons, you're going to leave because we're not the best at those things.

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I think there's room in our church for growth and fellowship and friendship and service and evangelism and singles ministry and get some more of these single people married off.

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I got news for you. If you're single and you don't want to be single, get married. Oh, that's a different sermon. Last time

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I said that, some people obeyed, didn't they? I think we had five weddings last year.

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Guys, get on the move. But if Christ is so exalted and so lifted up, he is the one that should affect the way we do things.

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If Jesus isn't sufficient for you, then this church will never satisfy you. If Jesus isn't exalted in your mind, every day you can go to work and punch in, and you're still going to be singing the blues.

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If Christ isn't all glorious and seated at the right hand of the majesty on high, when you do your mundane things, the laborious things, the things that are day in and day out, duty issues, we are a people that are motivated by love, yes, by thankfulness, yes, but also by duty.

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If we're not motivated with the duty to say, there's a goal in mind, here's the person in whom

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I love, and since he's loved me first, I love back with my actions, with my words, with my voice.

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Then it's just kind of a long, boring, tedious life without joy. And when we get

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Christ in our view properly, everything just seems to make sense. We do things for the right reasons.

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And so today, you say, how can this doctrinal passage about Christ Jesus mean anything to me?

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It should mean everything when you see who Christ is. And by the way, we're called Christians, and he is the one who loves us, who he has redeemed us.

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Paul has said, I determined to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. Paul basically said, if I could get a lockjaw serum, not a vaccination, but a lockjaw serum, and inject it into my spiritual blood, so that my mouth was wired shut and only one thing could come out, it would be

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Jesus, his person, and his work, that's what I would do. And when you get that kind of idea, then it's not, well, what can someone do for me?

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Imagine, the church at Galatia, how many people do you think went to the church at Galatia because of their teenage ministry, their high school ministry?

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How many people went, do you think, at the church at Ephesus because they had a good singles program, and all the people in the singles ministry loved bingo?

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Probably not many on that one, but why do people go? They go because they're gathered together. God has said, in eternity past,

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I've loved you, I've brought you to salvation, I've made you a new person, and that new person, instead of loving the world, loves my son.

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And I'm going to gather you out of every tribe, tongue, people, and nation, and I'm going to call you for my own, and you're going to be a bride for me, and that bride is just going to love her husband.

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And when you look at doctrine like that, everything changes. Everything is seen in light of it. You can imagine a screen door, if you will.

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If desktops on computers aren't good, a screen door. And that screen door is just in front of you for everything.

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It's like glasses. You see everything in light of the glasses that you have on because they help you to see.

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And today, this passage in Hebrews chapter 1 is not just even like glasses are bifocals or trifocals, it's kind of magnifying glass style where you just say, oh,

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I get to see all the good stuff. I get to see every little bit of information that the writer of Hebrews says you need to know.

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So let's go to Hebrews chapter 1 and see how great Christ is. And maybe our prayer today, and let's even pray now, let's just ask

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God to stir up our hearts to love Christ even more. Bow with me, please. Lord, we can preach, we can listen, we can try hard, we can be determined to get up in the morning and do the right things.

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And then, Lord, on our own, we can't even get past the driveway here at the church without somehow thinking improperly.

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So Lord, would you help us? We know that you want what's best for us. We know that you've given us your spirit as a helper and a comforter to help us to think

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God -centered thoughts, to help us to think Christ -centered thoughts. So we would just confess that we are weak and needy and sinful people, yet you love us like the apple of your eye.

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And so, as children, Father, would you grant us these great truths? Would you rivet them to our hearts and consciences?

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Father, would you help us to remember that it's not about what we get or what we expect. It's about what you've done for us, and we are recipients of your grace, and that's why it's called grace.

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Lord, help us today. Lord, I also think of the other men preaching from our church and other places. I pray that you'd help

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Dan Rathbun, Steve Cooley, and Guido to preach with power and boldness, and that they would be biblical and that they would exalt

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Christ. In Jesus' name, amen. I call this passage in Hebrews 1, 1 -3.

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It's all one sentence. As a matter of fact, the sentence goes all the way through verse 4, but we'll just look at 1, 2, and 3 today, or portions of it.

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I call this that Jesus is majestically superior. This is Jesus is the great one with par excellence.

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He's incomparably superior, and this passage, even in my notes I wrote down, will blow your mind.

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And again, I want to step back away from this. Here's four easy steps for you to do tomorrow so everything in your life will be good because everything in your life tomorrow probably won't be good.

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Matter of fact, tomorrow, the next day, the next week, your life is going to come caving in, and some of us lately have experienced that.

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And if it's not you this next week, it's coming up soon. The writer of Hebrews is writing to a group of people who are suffering.

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They were on the run for their Christianity. They were hurting, and they need to make sure that in the midst of their trials and toils and sufferings and persecutions and even deaths that they knew who they were to look to.

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Because when you look in, you realize, I have no resources, dude. I can only manipulate my life for so long, and then the flow chart explodes.

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You look to other people, and they might have good intentions, but eventually they let you down because they don't have enough power to do anything.

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And so to fix our eyes upon Christ, that's why I love that new song. We're going to fix our eyes through this passage as the

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Spirit allows us to on Christ Jesus and His superiority. And I never, as the pastor, want to exchange the great meat for a bunch of powdered sugar to give to you folks.

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Powdered sugar tastes good, but it doesn't help you when you need to go run a marathon. I don't want to exchange our birthright for a bunch of pottage of here's four easy steps to do tomorrow and everything will be peachy keen.

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My purpose today is to tell you that Jesus Christ is superior, and even Paul writing to Timothy said, remember

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Jesus Christ in 2 Timothy 2. You've got to remember Him, and that's what we'll do through the passage. See, pastor, you've said that eight different ways.

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Let's get to the passage. What's this passage all about? You know now. It's about the superiority of Christ Jesus.

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These people, the Hebrews, some believe, some didn't believe, and this writer wants to say no matter what you do, whether you run or hide or try to worship someone else, here's who

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Jesus is. You must listen to Him. You must hear Him. You must obey Him, and you must worship Him. That's why sometimes

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I, and I know what we mean, and I even say, we say, have you shared with anyone about Jesus?

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I like to share Christ. I'm glad for that, and anytime you talk about Christ, I say amen, but you know how people in the

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Bible did things? They didn't kind of share. They didn't get together and hold hands and say, let me share with all these pagans.

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You watch Paul. You watch Peter. You watch Jesus. You watch John the Baptist. It was not sharing time.

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What was it? I wish I had Brian Casey right here right now, and I would have him blast the trumpet out.

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Here's the herald. Here's the king, and everyone needs to listen, not just to the king, not just to the

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Lord, but the king of kings and Lord of lords. He demands to be heard, and when we share, we have to be careful these days because people think we're already opinionated enough, but when we share, we proclaim truth.

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This is the truth. Whether you believe it or you don't believe it doesn't make it true or false. This is the truth of God, and so accept that truth, and that's exactly what he does here.

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Look at out of the gun. Bang. God. He doesn't say, I, the writer of Hebrews, and I missed you, and grace and peace to you, and I love you, and any kind of apostolic greeting.

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That's okay if he did, but he didn't here. Why? Because he gets right into the issue a la Genesis chapter 1 verse 1.

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In the beginning, what? God. Bang. Off we go. Once every 73 words, this letter of Hebrews is

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God. It's all about God, and as God used to speak through different prophets in piecemeal ways, he now speaks with finality or has spoken with finality through his son,

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Christ Jesus. And if you keep reading, Hebrews 1 .1 says, God, after he spoke long ago to the fathers and the prophets in many ways and in many portions, in these last days, that's after the first coming of Christ, in between the first and second coming are the last days.

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We're in the last days now. In these last days, has spoken past tense to us in his son.

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You can just see the kind of contrast, can't you? In the past, in these last days.

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To our forefathers, to us. Through the prophets, by his son. In various ways, implied by one way.

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God reveals himself no longer by parts, but by his son. And now we see the fireworks.

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We are now to the third part of our series about the brilliance of Christ, his superiority. And we've seen the first five reasons why

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Christ is superior out of seven. And today we'll cover an extra zero amount.

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We're going to get back in number five. We'll do that when we come back. We're in no hurry. We want to look at point number five today.

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Why is Jesus so great? And I want to expand that and it will be very timely, I trust. Today's 9 -11.

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And I'm sure people are preaching these 9 -11 type messages. The Katrina issue. How can

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God be providential? Jesus is superior because he controls the whole universe. How can that be so in light of what we see with our eyes?

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And we'll look at that today. And as you see it properly and biblically, you'll go, Wow. I know Jesus died on the cross for me.

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I know he's a risen savior. But that he is the one that God uses as the instrument or the agent to control the whole universe.

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Wow. Jesus is unbelievable. And that's what I'm looking forward to today is seeing that. But let's just quickly review.

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There are seven reasons why Jesus is great and that you should shoot off a praise to God. And let's look at the first four quickly and then we'll dive into number five.

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The first reason why you should see Jesus as superior is because he's the heir of all things. Do you see that in verse 2? If you don't have a

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Bible, there's probably a Black Pew Bible there. We want to teach the Bible verse by verse here. What I preach should come right out of the text.

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And here it just falls out. Seven things very easily. I've read 30 commentaries on Hebrews and they all say there are how many reasons why you should praise

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God. They all say there are seven because there are just seven that lay right out. The first one is he's the heir of all things.

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And if you're the heir and you own everything, the idea is that heir has authority.

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That heir has dominion. That heir is in charge of everything. If the king dies, the monarch dies, and he has one son, that son now controls the empire or the kingdom.

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So everyone's saying Jesus should be praised because he's the king. He's the dominion bearer.

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Psalm 89 .27 says, I shall make him my firstborn, the highest of the kings of the earth.

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Secondly, Jesus is wonderful and should be praised because he's not only just the heir, he's the creator. Look at verse 2.

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Through whom God also, Christ, through whom

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God the Son also made the world. Or literally it's what? Does anyone remember? It's not the globe, it's not the ball, it's not the earth, it's not terra firma.

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What is he talking about here with this word world? He made the ages. This is not the actual substance of the earth, although Colossians chapter 1 says he made everything, but Jesus Christ made time, made the universe, he made the ages, and then everything in it.

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Past, present, and future. All the worlds. John 1 .3 says, All things came into being by him, and apart from him nothing came into being that has come into being.

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Can you imagine? What would you do if you thought, there's somebody who is the Lord of lords and king of kings and who made everything.

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How would you respond to that king? With praise, with obedience, with deference, with submission.

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That's exactly what the writer of Hebrews wants us to do. Thirdly, not only is Christ the heir, the creator, but if that's not all, he says in verse 3,

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Jesus is superior because he's the radiance of God's glory. You see that in the text verse 3? And he,

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Christ, is the radiance of his glory. He's the one that beams out the glory of God, as it were.

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And I have to use this word all the time because when I first heard it, I thought, I'm going to repeat that word every single time I can. Have you ever learned a new word and you think, oh, that's a cool new word.

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I'm going to read that. It reminds me of a man who said his professor in seminary would love to read through the dictionary.

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And so if you read through the dictionary and don't use the words that you've just learned, you'll forget them. So if you use them, you'll remember them.

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And so this particular professor would be reading through the dictionary and the class would know, as they would hear the lecture, with certain kind of words beginning with certain letters, what part of the dictionary that professor was in.

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And so if you have a word and you learned it, then use it and you'll remember it. So I heard this word first and I thought, this is exactly right.

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The shining forth, the radiance, the word that I was looking for, it starts with an E and it was called what?

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The effulgence. That's almost onomatopoetic, isn't it? The effulgence.

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And I don't know why I do this when I say it, but I just think that I should. Kind of gives you the connotation. Here's something, it comes out of the effulgence.

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That's why nobody sits in this front row. We have all these people, ushers, gotta get moved in, we gotta have room.

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And I admire the ushers for that because I said, why don't you do that? And they're doing that. Why doesn't anybody sit in this front right here?

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Because they know what they're gonna get. They're gonna get this. Or they're gonna get electrocuted with me, like last week.

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The shining out. Now we could think about Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration when he showed what he was like on the inside, on the outside.

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But more probably, Hughes said, it is not so much the glory of God's deity shining through his humanity, but the glory of God being manifested in the perfection of his manhood, completely attuned as it was to the will of the

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Father. Jesus, in other words, has the same essence, our nature, as the

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Father. Fourthly, if that's not enough, he's the heir, the creator, the radiance of God's glory.

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And number four, he's the exact representation of God's nature. Just preaching right through this. Phrase by phrase.

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Do you see it in verse three? The exact character, is the Greek word, of his nature.

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Jesus, that is to say, reveals God perfectly. Want to see

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God? Look to Jesus. That's the point. The English Standard Version translates it this way, to give you a nuance of the word.

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And he is the exact imprint of his nature. Scholar Barnes said, it means an engraving tool.

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And then it meant something that was engraved or stamped. A character as a letter mark sign.

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The image stamped on coins, seals, wax, expresses the idea and the sense here is, that if God be represented under the idea of a substance or being, then

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Christ is that exact resemblance of that. As an image is of a stamp or of a die.

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End quote. All that God is, with his nature, attributes and character, Christ reflects that.

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Christ is that. Here's the ring. It's stamped into the wax. As you see the form here of Caesar, you look at the form there and in verse at Caesar two,

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God does the same thing. If he were to take himself, the father, and stamp it into wax, how about this? If God the father were to stamp himself in humanity, you would see

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Christ, but you would see God. And now number five.

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Let's get back to that one. There's so much. The question is not, why are the sermons 50 minutes long?

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The question really is, why aren't the sermons an hour and 50 minutes long? Because there's so much. I don't know about you, but when

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I go to a buffet, I want a lot. This should be a buffet for you. Kim and I went to Hawaii years ago and I would sell these argon beam coagulators.

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It would coagulate tissue like kidney and other vascular tissue, liver and stuff like that.

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Instead of touching the cautery pencil and stopping that in the operating room, you could just hold it like here and out come this laser beam.

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So I'd go over there and sell these things. And so Kim wanted to come along because she would help me sell things during the day.

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Well, strike that. She'd be surfing all day while I was selling those things. And so she came out with me on a frequent flyer.

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And so, what should we do at night? There's only so many times you can go hear

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Don Ho the 14th sing. I mean, he's not even the real Don Ho. So I saw some kind of advertisement.

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Authentic Hawaiian luau. 18 courses. Beats macadamia nuts for breakfast every morning like I had down in the gift shop.

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Can you imagine 18 courses? So I shelled out the money. And I can't remember. It seemed pretty expensive.

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And this was 10 years ago. At least 12 years ago. And it was $35 each or something. Hey, we're in Hawaii. The luau.

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18 courses. We went in some old jalopy of a car.

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That was my first signal that we should have gone. We got down there. And it was right next to the nuclear power plant.

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It said scenic view. And they were right. Long story short, there were 18 courses.

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And they were about this big. And they were, you know, oh, would you like a little, some kind of tiramisu?

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And you got some kind of teaspoon -like thing. It was all cheesy food, junky, oily.

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And I thought we have just majorly been ripped off. But the good thing about being a pastor is you can use good things for illustrations and you can use bad things for illustrations.

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What's my point? My point is this is not an 18 point sermon, but it feels like it.

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This is not an 18 course sermon of just these little things of processed food, a bunch of fake stuff.

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No, this is the meal. You know what your pastor should do when he preaches? He should be like a big truck.

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And when trucks put their gear from D to R, what should you be hearing?

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You should be hearing the sign that here comes the mother load. We're backing the truck up so you can get it all.

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That's exactly what this writer does. He didn't say, well, you know, you can't really handle some of this abstract truth stuff because it doesn't really matter in your life anyway.

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No, it's abstract doctrine. Strike that. It's doctrine that's never abstract because what you believe about God will determine what you do about God.

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Right? It's always tied together. Hebrews chapter 1 through 10, what you know about God, verse 18 of chapter 10, live it out.

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Hebrews 1, 2, and 3, here's who you are in Christ. 4, 5, and 6, become more like who you are.

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Romans chapters 1 to 11, here's what it means to be justified by faith alone through Christ alone.

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And if God has done that to you, boy, you're going to be different in chapters 12 and following. So this has everything to do with life because it has everything to do with the life giver.

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What does Jesus, the life giver, also do? 1, he's the heir. 2, he's the creator. 3, he's the radiance of God's glory.

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4, he's the character of Christ. And 5, he's superior because he upholds all things.

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If you look at your text in verse 3, he upholds all things by the word of his power.

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Remember from last week, he doesn't uphold them like a burden on his back. That doesn't get the connotation of the original language.

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But he holds it and he carries it from one place to another. He carries the universe along with a goal in mind, with a telos, with an end, with a purpose.

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He is not the deus god of our forefathers or the majority of our forefathers. God has wound up everything because certainly he can't look outside and see the hydrological cycle and say, well, it was a bunch of ooze and a big bang.

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No, there's some kind of God, but he's not that involved in people's lives anyway because we like to do what we want to do and so we'll create a

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God of our own image. He's not the deistic watchmaker God who winds it all up and stands back and says, whew, glad that one worked out.

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Wow, oh, glad that, they didn't get in that accident. Oh, too bad, they died a day sooner than I ordained.

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No, God is controlling all things and he not only bears it up, but he carries it to the end and he sustains it.

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That's the idea of the passage here. Certainly it proves Jesus is superior. And now let's dive in a little bit deeper.

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This idea of Jesus controlling everything in the universe, is there one atom that Christ does not control?

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If he doesn't, then he's not the king. He doesn't uphold all things by the word of his power. So if God controls the entire universe, the sun providentially controls it all.

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I have questions. How? Why? What about evil?

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What about this? What about this accident? Why this? Why that? Let's now park here a little bit and talk about Jesus Christ providence and how wonderful it is so at the end of the day we'll be like that songwriter who said, may

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Jesus Christ be praised. When you see the nuances of something, you'll understand it better and it should elicit from you even more praise.

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The providence of Jesus Christ. Now if you're a Latin student, providence you could break down like this.

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Who knows what providence is at its root word? Providence isn't a Greek word, but you could probably learn something from the word.

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And I just remember having R .C. Sproul go to the blackboard and writing out, pro video.

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Video means to see. And pro means what? Before. To see before.

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When you go home and watch a video, I was going to say today, but you should probably come back for church tonight. When you go home and watch a video, you put in a video, what do you do?

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You see it. And so here, God sees before, but that's not all because the definition in Latin doesn't give us the full definition.

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God sees before, but he's also very involved in all the time, before, during, and after. So providence means more than to see before.

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Let me give you two definitions from great theologians that can say it better than I do.

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Dabney, the southern theologian from time past said, providence is the execution in successive time of God's eternal purpose.

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How God shows his purpose out in time, that's providence. That's pretty good. The Princeton theologian, when

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Princeton was evangelical, A. A. Hodge said this about providence.

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That God, having in the beginning created all things out of nothing by the word of his power, that sounds like Hebrews, doesn't it?

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And continuing, subsequently, consequently, present to every atom of his creation, upholding all things in being and in possession, continually controls and directs the actions of all his creatures, thus preserved.

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You say, boy, that's a long sentence. I only read one little part about this whole big thing. I liked it back in those days they could write these super long sentences.

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What's the point? God has a plan that's eternal. God has a plan that doesn't change. It's immutable.

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And how that plan is effectuated in time or revealed in time is called providence. You say,

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I believe that because Jesus is sovereign. I couldn't believe it. This week in the context of Katrina, Tony Campolo said this.

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Tell me if you think this is biblical. Quote, whenever there is a catastrophe, some religious people inevitably ask, why didn't

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God do something? Where was God when all those people died? This ordained minister goes on to say, unfortunately, there are a lot of bad answers.

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So far I agree. One such answer is that somehow all suffering is part of God's great plan.

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In the midst of agonies, someone is likely to quote from the Bible telling us that if we would just be patient, we would eventually see all things work together for good for those who love

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God and are called according to His purposes, Romans 8 .28. He says that in negative light. Some people say that.

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Perhaps, the writer says, we would do well to listen to the likes of Rabbi Harold Kushner, who contends that God is not really as powerful as we have claimed.

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So it would be good in times like this to remember God's not too powerful. Campolo says, to his shame, lastly, nowhere in the

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Hebrew Scriptures does it say that God is omnipotent or all powerful. Kushner points out the omnipotence is a

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Greek philosophical concept, but it is not in his Bible. End quote. If someone asks you this week, where is

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God when we have all these issues? Years ago with 9 -11 or now with Katrina, what would you say?

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God's not omnipotent? Would your answer be that? God's not really sovereign over everything and you can't really quote to people

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Romans 8 -28. There's just something in me that wants to say, as I can dispel that error with truth to the people that will listen to me,

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I want to do that. So let me dispel some of that obvious error. And here's how we'll dispel it.

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If you'd like to understand how God can control everything, yet still you can't figure out how can there be sin and all these other things, let's just start laying some foundation down.

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I'm going to give you some foundation blocks to understand the providence of God so at the end you'll say, Wow! Hallelujah!

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What a Savior! Foundation block number one.

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God doesn't explain everything to His people. You'd like to understand how God can control it all? Number one,

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God doesn't explain it all to us. Do you like that? I just thought I'd give you the good medicine to start.

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Like I remember my father. I used to have a cold. Here was his medicine for me. You take a thing of sugar, white grain sugar, and you take it like that and then you take some

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Jack Daniels and you pour some Jack Daniels onto that spoonful of sugar and then I'm supposed to eat it. Six years old.

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What kind of corn mash of an idea was that? I mean, what's happening? Sometimes there's medicine to this.

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We don't strike that. We're not like God. And this infinite God doesn't have to give us any reasons, yet He gives us plenty of reasons on certain things.

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There's sometimes medicine for the Christian when it comes to I know things that I don't necessarily have to tell you. And by the way, that shows how great

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I am. So sometimes, we don't have the answers relating to providence.

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God doesn't owe us an explanation in other words. A .E .Hodge said, the mode in which the divine agency is exerted is left entirely unexplained.

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But the fact that God does govern all His creatures and all their actions is expressly stated and everywhere assumed.

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God controls everything? How? He doesn't tell us. He just tells us that He does. When scriptures are silent, what's the best thing for us as Christians to do, do you think?

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Run our mouths? That's hard for me to do. I want to try to explain things and talk.

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It's kind of like when you meet someone who's bereaved and they just have lost their father or their sister or their brother or their family members.

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There's something in me that wants to just talk and tell them why it's all going to be okay. But the best thing for me to do is just to go up and give them a big hug, put my face right to their face and just say,

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I love you. That should be plenty. But I have to suppress that idea that I have to tell people.

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I don't need to tell them all these verses. I might say, I love you and God loves you more or something.

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But we just sometimes have to just be quiet and be humble. Providence will do something. It will make you say at the end of the day,

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Thy will be done. If we come to the text, well, that's not good enough.

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I need to know more. That's not a good attitude of submitting to God because He's revealed Himself to us in the

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Scriptures in a sufficient way, true or false. Everything we need for life is contained in this book for life and godliness.

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And if He doesn't say something, did He not say that on purpose? He purposely didn't tell us everything.

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I was told in a seminary when it comes to this idea of how God controls it all and yet man still acts with a will and a conscience and all this stuff, a guy looked at me and he said,

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I want you not to force mental closure with all the doctrines in the Bible. God teaches the truth that He providentially controls it.

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He's powerful enough to do whatever He wants. Katrina hits and I don't have to figure out how

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I can, you know, take a fish tape and wrap it all around to kind of extract it out of the hole so I could see it.

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Sometimes I just have to say, I don't understand, but you say you're in control and I believe that you said you died for me and so then for all,

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I'm going to have to believe the rest as well. The context, it's in the context of the word, but I like these verses.

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My thoughts are not your thoughts, Isaiah 55. God says, nor are your ways my ways.

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For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

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God teaches His providential control through His Son everywhere in the Bible. And it doesn't teach us how that reconciles with how men make decisions and how their will acts or how they make moral decisions.

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It doesn't say anything. We just need to know that God governs those people because He governs everything. How about this one?

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Deuteronomy 29. This is the verse that if you ever do a pastoral Q &A and your kid ever asks you a question about the

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Bible, 29 -29. Just remember that. 29 -29. In the year 29 -29.

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Remember that song or something. Just go right to 29 -29. What verse is that again? 29 -29.

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The secret things belong to Yahweh, our God. We don't like the rest, though, almost.

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But the things revealed belong to us and to our sons forever that we may observe all the works of the law. God only tells us a little.

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So don't waste all your time thinking about what you can't know because it's infinite. Stay busy about the business of doing things that God has told you to do.

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Still trust Him. Still worship Him. Still think that He's a good Father that cares for His children. We don't ignore those things.

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We do those things. And we don't sit around here pontificating and examining our navel all the time thinking, why is this all happening?

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God sits in the heavens and He does whatsoever

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He pleases. How does that relate to my life? It does, but I can't explain it all.

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I like the verses in Psalm 46. Be still and know that I am what?

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God. I'll be exalted among the nations. I'll be exalted on the earth. The kids are almost a little too big, but sometimes they'd hurt themselves and I'd pick them up.

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And I remember there was this kind of a Mennonite guy down in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

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Strange, huh? And where he lived. And he said he'd pick up his kids when they were hurting and he'd hold them real tightly to remind them of the strength of the

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Father's hand. And he'd hold them really tightly and he would sing the song Everything's Alright In My Father's House.

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So for years I did that. I mean, the kids all know it. I'd hold them real tightly and I would say, the reason you, and I'd start singing the song, the reason you fell and skinned your knee is there's this thing that Isaac Newton figured out.

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It's called the law of gravity. There's also something called force. It's equal to mass times acceleration. And boy,

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I just grabbed him and held him real tightly and I said, Everything's Alright In My Father's House.

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And when it comes to providence, if you try to unscrew the inscrutable, you're going to be whacked out. You're going to be out there in the ether zone of the internet or in your own mind trying to figure out all these things when we're supposed to be observing what

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God has already told us more than trying to figure out what our machinations of our own mind might entail and how philosophy might reveal that to us.

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If you want to think, How could God do it? It should always result into, I don't know how, but may

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Jesus Christ be praised. How could He do that? If you want to understand the providence of God, remember, number one, that He doesn't have to explain everything.

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Second foundation, God's providence is universal. God's providence is universal.

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When you try to understand the providence of God, just remember it covers everything. And I just noticed how time is flying, so let me go a little quicker.

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God, I don't understand something. Solution, go with what you know. What do I know?

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Well, the scripture says, and you might want to just write the references down, Psalm 103, 19. The Lord, Yahweh, has established

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His throne in the heavens and His sovereignty rules over, how much? All.

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He rules His sovereign hand, His providential hand over everything. How about this? Psalm 135, 6.

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Whatever the Lord pleases, I'd like this for your resume. Whatever the Lord pleases,

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He does. Whatever the Lord pleases, He does. In heaven and in earth, in the seas and all the deeps.

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How about in all history? God's providence is universal. Acts 17, 26,

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And He made from one every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed times and the boundaries of their inhabitation.

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God is sovereign and providential over everything, every time, every one, every place.

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Matter of fact, when you study the scripture, it doesn't even say that God has a decree. Excuse me.

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It doesn't say that God has decrees. Like God says, this and this and this and this. I have one million plans to effectuate in the universe.

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What does God say? Plural? No, singular. God says, I have one decree and that takes care of everything that's ever happened in the universe.

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God considers that one thought. How about that? I like that. Is there something in you that wants something more than the mundane?

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Mundane meaning mundo, meaning earth, meaning temporal, meaning kind of earthy. Isn't there something in you?

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I think there is. I think you've been made in the image and likeness of God and that's why things Solomon knew didn't satisfy him.

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William Blake said, anything less than everything cannot satisfy a man. We can't be satisfied when it's just, oh,

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I can just grasp it all. I can get my arm around that. Here we look at God and we say, God, you're over us.

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You're transcendent. You're too big. I can't get my arms around you. Too wide. I can't see all this stuff. God, you're just amazing to me.

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One entire system, he does everything. Thirdly, the third building block, first one is it doesn't explain everything.

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Secondly, God controls everything big picture. Thirdly, God's providence is also particular or minute.

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God does the big stuff. What about the little things? How about, is God concerned? Does God know stuff about like hair?

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God concerned about hair and stuff? Little tiny things? How many hairs do you have on your head? How many do you have?

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Well, sometimes, maybe I'm pointing to the wrong people. How many do I have? I already have a wife, so I'm glad.

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She has to love me. Matthew 10, focusing on God, controlling everything including the minutia, are not two sparrows sold for a cent, and yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father, but the very hairs of your head are numbered.

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God's great, but he knows all the little stuff too. If one drop falls today, will it fall from God's command as John Calvin said?

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I think so. Proverbs 16 .33, the lot is cast into the lap, but it's every decision is from the actuarial tables.

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Boy, that's so wonderful. I don't play the lottery for lots of reasons.

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One is when I go to Cumberland Farms or Honey Farms and I walk in there and there's 19 people in line and they've all got a pack of smokes and about $19 ,000 worth of lottery tickets,

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I just about go apoplectic. Don't hang around me. I'll lose my sanctification in front of you. Everybody's walking up there.

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I gotta get me some more nails and I gotta get me some more lotto tickets. I just think, boy, this is unbelievable.

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There are theological reasons I don't do that as well. I'm a steward of God's money and I know

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God doesn't want me to try to play with his money that way with odds like one in every 20 million are going to get rich.

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Secondly, Proverbs 30 says, don't desire to get rich because then who's gonna need God? But I do think as people stand in line and buy those,

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I try to think of the Bible before I again start sinning. I just think you'll never win unless God ordains it.

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And if he does, probably J. Verne McGee's right. God often judges people by giving them a lot of money.

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And you watch people cycle out of any kind of trust in God to trust in their own credit cards and resources.

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And here, what's the point? The lot is cast into the lap, but it's every decision is from the

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Lord. Even what we would call chance and random are from God. So much so, you know where this comes from.

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Come, let us cast lots so that we may learn on whose account this calamity has struck us.

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So they cast lots and the lots fell on Jonah. What a coincidence.

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God doesn't explain everything. He is in charge of everything and he's in charge of all the minutia as well.

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So much so, how about these verses? You tell me if you think these are biblical statements. I just blew it, sorry.

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I was gonna give you statements, but they're really verses. And they're gonna be so shocking you're gonna say to yourself, how could those be verses because I don't believe them, but they are in fact.

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Ecclesiastes 7 .14 In the day of prosperity, be happy. But in the day of adversity, consider.

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But in the day of adversity, consider. God has made one as well as the other. Lamentations 3 .37

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and 38 Who is there who speaks and it comes to pass unless the Lord has commanded it?

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Is it not from the mouth of the Most High that both good and ill go forth?

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Amos 3 .6 If a trumpet is blown in a city, will not the people tremble? If a calamity occurs in the city, has not the

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Lord done it? Isaiah 45 .7 The one forming light and creating darkness, causing well -being and creating calamity,

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I am the Lord who does all these things. Is your theology wanting to change right about now?

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It should. You say, what do you mean calamity? Well, I thought you just said a minute ago,

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I thought you maybe agreed with me that God is sovereign over all things including the minutia. So if He is sovereign over all things including the minutia, isn't

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He sovereign over calamities? Answer yes. And here it says, He is the one who is in charge. And you say, what does that do about His character?

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What does that do about my choices? What does that do about my future? That's next time. God is sovereign.

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He won't explain it all, but it shouldn't drive you to somehow go insane.

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It should drive you to say, God, I can't figure that out. You're way higher than I am and I'm just going to praise you because that is why

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Hebrews was written early on with verses 1, 2, and 3 so that Christ Jesus might be praised and it says,

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He upholds all things by the word of His power. And we'll dive into that next time a little bit more.

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If you wake up tomorrow, notice the conditional, if you wake up tomorrow and you say to yourself,

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God, I know you're in control. How will that affect the way you live? When I got laid off, did my view of God's sovereignty affect the way

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I live? You're absolutely right, it did. How about if you get the call from the doctor?

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There's that five inch lump in your stomach that Ron Porch now has as a pastor in California that's malignant.

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So and so, one of your kids got involved in such and such. Whatever it is, you might not be able to explain it and you might not be able to fix it, but you can sure fix your eyes on the

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Lord saying, Lord, I can't do anything about it. Help me to trust you with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength.

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Help me to trust in you and not lean on my own what? Understanding. But God, you fix my mind to honor you this week with my ways and you'll make my paths straight.

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Because back here, God said, here's the one decree and for God, it looks straight and for us, it looks like a mess and only the

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God of the Bible, Jesus Christ, can figure it out. Aren't you glad? So go worship

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Sun Yang Moon this week. Go worship Allah. Absolutely not.

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One deserves our praise. And beloved, we'll fix our eyes to Christ and for those of you who aren't

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Christians, one day you'll bow to this great God. One day you'll get down on your knees and say,

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Jesus Christ is Lord and if it's after you die, it's too late.

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So today's the day. Today's the day. Who else could control everything in the universe?

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If a God does that, he deserves my praise. God, I don't believe, but help my unbelief. And may today be the day you believe in the resurrected

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Christ and repent of your sins and turn to him. And when you turn to him, he never casts you out.

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Let's pray. Lord, we acknowledge your good hand today. Lord, we would say that we are frail and weak and yet you're eternal and strong.

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Lord, we would admit that we're sinful and yet Lord, as your son has proven on earth, even with all the temptations never giving in, you are sinless.

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Lord, we are so apt to change and yet Lord, we've learned from Malachi 3 this morning in scripture reading, you are immutable, you change not.

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Lord, we are born and we have no past before that and yet you are eternal. And Lord, you are so just, you won't let any sin go unpunished.

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Yet, you're so gracious that you punish your son instead of us. Thank you for that. Help us to live out these truths.