Introduction:
Batman Nativity
How is Jesus God's Ultimate Spokesman?
(Hebrews 1:1-3)
- As Prophet , He has my Ear . (Heb 1:1-2a)
- As God , He has my Worship . (Heb 1:2b-3a)
John 1:18 - No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.
John 14:9 - Whoever has seen me has seen the Father.
- As Priest , He has my Love . (Heb 1:3b)
1 Corinthians 16:22 - If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed.
- As King , He has my Obedience . (Heb 1:1-2a)
Sermon Notes (PDF): BLANK
Hint: Highlight blanks above for answers!
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00:48-00:50
Open your Bibles to the book of Hebrews, are you there?
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In case you're wondering what kind of a church is this, we are a church that proclaims the authority of God's word without apology.
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We are a church that lifts high the name of Jesus in worship.
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And we are a church that believes firmly in the power of prayer.
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And we are a church that shares the good news of Jesus with boldness.
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So to that first one, and proclaiming the authority of God's Word without apology, that is what we are about to do.
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So let's just bow our heads for a moment.
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I'm going to ask that you would pray for me to be faithful to do that.
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And I will pray for you to have a heart open to receive whatever it is God wants to share with you today from His Word.
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Let's pray.
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Father in Heaven, as we come to Your Word right now, We believe that this is the book that You gave us.
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We believe that You have revealed who You are, and You've revealed who we are in the pages of this book.
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Most importantly, Father, You've revealed the atoning work that Your Son accomplished.
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That's why we're here.
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Father, we know that Your Word will do Your work.
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We just ask that we would be faithful to proclaim it, and we would be faithful, Father, to receive it.
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We pray in Jesus' name.
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And all of God's people said, "Amen." Several years ago, it was around this time of year, heard my son Cade playing with his toys. And this was the line that I heard.
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"Not so fast! Batman and baby Jesus will stop you!" So I had to stop and see what was going on, and I had to take a picture of what I found. There it is.
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Cade had his Batman toys in the nativity scene.
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And if you can see there, Batman apparently traded the Batmobile for the cart behind the donkey.
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And right there, right there beside Batman, there's baby Jesus.
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And I thought, I can't believe somebody hasn't made that a movie yet.
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The Batman and baby Jesus versus the bad guys.
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That's adorable, isn't it?
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It is adorable.
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Until we do that as adults.
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Like, what do you mean?
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What I mean is we're entering the Christmas season right now and if we're honest, even in the church, where does our focus go?
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It's we're gonna buy the right gifts.
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We have the office party, right?
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We decorating and cookies and that elf on the shelf.
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And then we're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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Let's make sure that we tack Jesus onto that.
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And Jesus is reduced to a sidekick as he was for Batman.
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And that's why we're starting this series in Hebrews called "Why Jesus?" Why?
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Why do we so passionately worship Him?
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Why do we talk about Jesus so much around here?
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Why are we so adamant about preaching His Word accurately?
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Why Jesus?
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Now in the book of Hebrews, the author and the audience, they're not mentioned by name.
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But it's obvious that the author knew his audience well.
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And you're going to see as we go through Hebrews, he's obviously writing this to Jews.
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There's so much Old Testament Jewish imagery, like the tabernacle and the priests and the sacrifices, and some people from the Old Testament.
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But specifically, this is written to Jewish Christians.
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And why was this written?
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Because these Jewish Christians were drifting into doubt because of hardships and persecution that they were experiencing because of following Jesus Christ.
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You see, in the first century, following Jesus meant you could lose your job.
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Following Jesus meant you could lose your income.
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Following Jesus meant you could lose your family.
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You could lose your freedom.
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And actually, following Jesus meant you could lose your life.
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And these Jewish Christians were starting to experience some of these persecutions, and they were starting to sort of drift away from their faith.
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And they're like, "Does God really care?
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We're losing too much.
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I mean, is it really worth it to follow Jesus?
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And trials have a way of doing that, don't they?
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Trials have a way of making us wonder if God's really in control.
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Trials make us wonder if God's really for us.
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Trials make us wonder, "Does God really care about me?" And I've got to tell you, church, in my own life, my personal struggles in the faith, my struggles with doubts, they haven't come from some atheist attacking the Bible.
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They haven't come from some cult undermining the Word of God.
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I've never had any faith issues regarding them.
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But when it comes to the health of my own son, that's where I've struggled.
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How about you?
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Have the trials of life made you wonder, "Is it really worth it following Jesus? I mean, does God really care?
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Is He really listening to me?" So the Hebrew writer gets to the real root.
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That's why we have one theme that we're going to be tracking down over the next few months.
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It's why Jesus...
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How does knowing Jesus enable me to overcome any trial?
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And the writer doesn't placate, he doesn't offer some shallow pep talk.
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He takes us straight to the superiority of Jesus Christ in all things.
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The worthiness of Jesus, His promises, His presence, the peace that only He can give.
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It overcomes any trial that we're going to experience.
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Jesus is not a sidekick.
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Hebrews 1, that we're looking at here today, says that He is God.
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He's God's last word.
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You could say that Jesus Christ is God's ultimate spokesman.
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That's really where this book starts.
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Think about a spokesman.
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If you had a company, just imagine you own a company, I know some people here do.
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If you owned a company, you would want a spokesman who would represent your company positively and accurately, right?
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If you're putting a spokesman out there, you want them to represent you, right?
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Or think of it this way.
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You wouldn't go to an unhealthy fitness trainer, would you?
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You wouldn't hire a contractor whose own house is falling in around him.
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You wouldn't go to a financial advisor who's broke as a joke.
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And in the same way, God's ultimate spokesman, His final word to man, would have to be someone who perfectly represented everything that God is.
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So on your outline today, how is Jesus God's ultimate spokesman?
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That's where we're starting in Hebrews.
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Number one, write this down.
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As prophet, He has my ear.
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As prophet, He has my ear.
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Now listen, the only way you could know anything about God at all is if He told you.
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And the good news is throughout history, God did.
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Right? That's what He says.
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Verse 1, "Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets." All right, so let's break that down.
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"Long ago," what's He talking about? Old Testament times.
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He says that many times he's talking about the books of the Old Testament, different chapters in history.
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He says in many ways.
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You know, you read your Old Testament, right?
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God shows up in visions and in dreams and in symbols.
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So many different ways God showed up.
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To who? To our fathers, to the Jews, through the prophets.
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You see, your Old Testament, you have 39 books written over 1,500 years, and what you have is progressive revelation.
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All right, that's a systematic theology term.
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What that means is simply this.
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When Adam and Eve sinned in the garden, God didn't immediately send Jesus at that moment to die on the cross.
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Why not?
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Because they wouldn't have really grasped what all that meant.
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So over the period of history in the Old Testament, God was revealing truths about holiness and sin and sacrifice and forgiveness and faith.
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He was teaching that throughout history.
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That's progressive revelation.
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So your Old Testament does not have error in it, But it is incomplete because none of the Old Testament prophets ever got the whole story.
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Until... no one got the whole story until look at verse 2, it says, "But in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son." Now, "last days," what do you mean "last days"?
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Well, the Jews who would have been reading this totally knew what the word for the phrase "last days" meant.
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That was a Jewish term describing the times and the events of the Messiah.
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The last days.
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In other words, in the Old Testament, you had all these different kinds of writings, you know, from Moses and from Daniel, you had Psalms, you had poetry, you had narrative, and you had Proverbs, and you had all these different voices in the Old Testament.
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And in the New Testament, all these voices merge into one voice.
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And that voice is Jesus Christ.
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And that's why the New Testament is so singular in the subject matter.
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The New Testament is purely focused just on the person of Jesus.
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The Gospels are about the life of Jesus.
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Acts is about the church that Jesus is building.
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The epistles give a teaching on the significance of the death and resurrection and life application of Jesus.
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And Revelation talks about the return of Jesus.
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Jesus is the full and final revelation of God.
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He's the ultimate prophet.
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So He should have your ear.
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Listen, in the last days, that means the final phase of history.
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But something else this means is there's no more redemptive work to be done.
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Because Jesus accomplished it all.
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And something else the Hebrew writer is telling us here, is in these last days there's not going to be any big new revelation from God.
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In other words, there's no more Bible to be written, because it is complete.
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But church, there are so many false spiritual leaders that try to add to the Bible.
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as if God is still saying things and teaching us things after Jesus.
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And I look at Hebrews 1 and I say, "Well, not according to this." Like, "What do you mean?" "Well, what I mean is Muhammad rolling around in his cave, getting information from God." No, he wasn't. Not from God.
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Or Joseph Smith with his magic stone in his hat, getting the Book of Mormon from God.
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No, he wasn't.
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Or the Pope speaking ex cathedra, which carries the authority of the Word of God.
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No, it does not.
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God isn't giving new material.
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In these last days, He has spoken to us by His Son.
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Even in a church like ours, you've got to be careful.
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As though we don't have magic stones and hats or people rolling around in caves.
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You know what does happen in a church like ours?
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Is you have the guy or the girl that says this, and you always got to watch out for the person that says this, "Hey, God told me to tell you something." You don't have to raise your hand, but have you ever had somebody even in a church like this say that to you?
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"Hey, the Lord told me to tell you something." "The Lord told me some things." "The Lord told me some things." And my response is, "Yeah, the Lord told me some things too." And He was so kind that He wrote it all down, so that I could reference it, and check it, and study it.
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But you've got to watch out for the guy that says, "God told me some things." No, He did not.
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I love this quote from John Owen.
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He says, "If private revelations agree with Scripture, they are needless.
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And if they disagree, they are false." God's not giving you revelation. There's nothing more that needs to be said.
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Jesus is God's last word.
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He's the ultimate prophet, so He should have your ear.
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He's spoken to us by His Son.
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Number two, as God, He has my worship.
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As God, He has my worship.
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I was Jesus, God's ultimate spokesman.
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As God, He has my worship.
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Look at verse two.
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It says, where we left off, "Whom He appointed the heir of all things." Jesus possesses the right to everything.
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Like, well, how so?
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Well, here's a reason, because He created everything.
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Keep going, it says, "Through whom also He created the world." Oh, and it doesn't just end there.
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Look at verse three, it says, "He's the radiance of the glory of God." that word gradients literally means Jesus is the brightness of God.
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Jesus is the shining of God.
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In other words, Jesus is the manifestation of God to us.
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You realize, I'm about to say something now and it's gonna change the rest of your life.
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You're never going to be able to think about this in the same way.
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but you have never seen the sun.
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Do you know that?
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You've never seen the sun.
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Like I think pastor Jeff's been off too long because I've seen the sun all the time.
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No, you have never seen the sun.
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Many, many, many times in your life, you have seen the light coming from the sun, but you've never seen the actual sun.
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You never have.
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The only thing you've seen is the brightness.
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And you see, that's the point here with Jesus.
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No one's ever seen God the Father.
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Only Jesus who radiates from the Father.
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John 1:18 says that, "No one has ever seen God, "the only God who is at the Father's side.
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"He has made him known." That's the point.
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Jesus is like the light coming off of the sun.
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That's what we see.
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not the actual son itself.
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Isn't that trippy?
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Some of you are still processing that.
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You need a minute?
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And I'll give you a minute.
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He goes on, look at the next phrase.
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He says, "And the exact imprint of his nature." Imprint, the exact nature and essence of God.
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Jesus is everything that God is.
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That's what this means.
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So Jesus is both God and He's the radiance of God.
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He's distinct, but He's indistinguishable.
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He is the Son of God and He's God.
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Somehow Jesus, to use our earlier analogy, Jesus is the Son and He's the brightness of the Son at the same time.
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You're like, "Can you explain that to me?" And I cannot.
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He is far too awesome and majestic for me to explain.
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That's just what it says.
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He goes on, he says, "And upholds the universe by the word of his power." Jesus actively sustains everything in the universe.
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You know, there's a fabric that makes up atomic elements that holds it all together that scientists can't identify.
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Because you can't really see it, and you can't really measure it, and you can't really test it.
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But there's something that holds every atom in the universe together.
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And scientists are like, "I don't know what it is." You know what the problem is? They've never asked me, because I know exactly what it is.
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It's Jesus. He literally holds every atom in the universe together by the Word of His power.
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He's the full revelation of God.
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He's God manifest as a human.
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And I guess that would make Him God's perfect spokesman, right?
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Because He is God.
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That's why Jesus said, "Whoever has seen Me," as what?
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"Has seen the Father." That's exactly why He said that.
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So the awesomeness of Jesus moves us to worship.
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Yes, but there's something that we often miss regarding our worship.
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I just want to encourage us, church, we need to worship regardless of what our circumstances are.
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We need to worship regardless of what our circumstances are.
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Like, what do you mean by that?
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Look, I see the prayer requests, or in our small group, right, Chuck, we share prayer requests, we talk about answers to prayer, and when somebody shares an answer to prayer, what do people say? Like, "Praise God, praise God." And absolutely, we should, that is right, and that is appropriate.
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100% we should always be pouring out our thanks and appreciation when God answers prayer.
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Absolutely.
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But you know, we don't often hear that response when something bad happens, do we?
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You know, we went to the doctor and we got our test results back and they don't look good.
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Or a loved one is involved in an accident.
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or the healing that we've been praying for for years didn't happen.
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What's our response to those kinds of things?
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There's a couple of men in the Old Testament that have a lot to teach us.
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You know, Job, he lost his children and his wealth.
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And when he found out about everything that he lost, how did he respond?
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Job 1.20 says that he fell on the ground and he worshiped.
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What about King David? His newborn baby died.
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Despite all of his fasting, all of his praying, his baby died.
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And how did he respond?
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The Bible says in 2 Samuel 12 20, that he went to the house of the Lord and he worshipped.
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Job and David were two men who knew God. They were two men who got it.
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Listen, worship isn't just for when I'm happy.
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Worship isn't just for when I approve of everything that God's doing in my life.
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Do you know when else we worship? We worship in our darkest days.
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We worship when we're hurting.
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We worship when we don't understand why God would allow this.
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We worship.
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Why?
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Because Jesus is just as sovereign.
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His promises are just as true, and He is just as worthy of my worship on my best day and on my worst.
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That was Jesus, God's ultimate spokesman, number three.
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As priest, He has my love.
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As priest, He has my love.
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Look at the next phrase. It says, "After making purification for sins." Purification for sins. Well, that's a very Old Testament phrase.
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That's a very Old Testament way of putting it.
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That's what the priest did under Mosaic law. They made purification.
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See, in the Old Testament, the priest would offer the sacrifice for sin on behalf of the person making the sacrifice.
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And this is the glorious thing we're going to talk about as we go through Hebrews.
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That Jesus Christ, when He was on the cross, He was at the same time the high priest offering the sacrifice, and the Lamb of God the sacrifice itself.
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In reality as church, our sin puts us in a position where we deserve God's wrath.
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We deserve hell because of our sin, our rebelliousness.
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But on the cross, Jesus took our sin upon Himself, and God poured out His wrath on His Son.
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God treated Jesus as if Jesus committed my sins.
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And on the cross, Jesus experienced all of the pain of hell on your behalf.
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Do you understand that?
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I mean, do you really grasp the gravity of what Jesus Christ did for you?
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Because you can't really embrace that and not love Jesus.
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You just can't.
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It's impossible.
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For you to understand what Jesus did, and not love Him with every cell in your body, it's impossible.
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That's why 1 Corinthians 16.22 says, "If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed." Do you see that? If anyone has no love for the Lord, that's the test.
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You must love the Lord. It's the only appropriate reaction to somebody who knows Jesus.
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If you know Him, you love Him.
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And if you don't love Him, you're accursed because you don't really know Him.
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And I thought, you know, it would be a fun exercise this morning.
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I really thought about doing this.
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If we lined everybody up and just brought you up, and let you give testimony to say, "Do you love Jesus?" And just let people give testimony, "Do you love Jesus?" But I thought, you know, in this church, with this group, in this setting, I think we'd probably get a hundred percent response of, "Yeah, I love Jesus." Maybe just because of the peer pressure or whatever.
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So I thought, "Maybe I'm not going to do that." So I got to thinking about it.
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I'm like, "You know, what if I did this?" And I can't do this.
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"But what if I could talk to Jesus face to face about you?" And in talking about you, I said to Jesus, "Hey Jesus, does this person love you?" What would Jesus say about you?
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I mean, what if I asked Jesus, "Hey Jesus, does she love you, Jesus?" And then I asked Jesus, "Well, how do you know?" I mean, besides being omniscient, besides being God.
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What does that person do to show that they love Him?
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And I just want to ask you, what would Jesus say about you if I asked Him that question?
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"Hey, Jesus, what does this guy do to show that he loves you? Does he do anything?" "I don't see him outside of church that much. What does his home look like?
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How does he talk and act at work? Does he witness for you?
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Does he share your Word? Does he love people?" How is he with his neighbors?
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Does he show love for you?
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How would Jesus say you show love for Him?
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Because Jesus clearly demonstrated His love for you.
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Are you clearly demonstrating your love for Him?
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Because if you know Him, you love Him.
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And finally, number four, as king, he has my obedience.
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As king, he has my obedience.
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Look at our last phrase for today.
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It says, "After making purification for sins," look at this last one, it says, "he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high." And I know it's easy to read through this quickly and miss the impact of this statement.
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But it says that Jesus sat down and that's huge.
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Because in the Old Testament, you know, the tabernacle, the temple, there's all these furnishings and different things.
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You know something they didn't have in the temple were chairs for the priests, because they were never done.
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They were constantly offering sacrifice for sin because people were constantly sinning, have you noticed?
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So it wasn't like the priests were sitting down and somebody came in one day like, "Hey, how's it going?" Like, "Well, I've just been sitting here for two hours, apparently nobody's sinned today." They were constantly offering sacrifice for sin.
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It was never over.
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But Jesus, when He offered His sacrifice, He sat down because he was finished.
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And after he finished his priestly work, he took his position as the king of kings.
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And you know, that's really the same application as the last point.
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Because Jesus said, "If you love Him, you will keep His commandments." Listen, you obey Jesus.
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You just simply obey Jesus Christ.
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You're like, "Why should I?" I'll give you three reasons why you should obey Jesus Christ.
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Number one, it's because that's how you show that you love Him.
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John 14, 15, "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments." Number two, because His commandments are for our own good.
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Did you know that?
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Jesus doesn't become any more or less God based on how obedient you are to what He's commanded.
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His commandments are for our good.
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And frankly, why should I obey Jesus? Because He's in charge of everything.
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As king, He has my obedience.
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This is just the introduction to Hebrews.
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And we're setting the stage with concepts about Jesus that the writer spends the rest of the book unpacking.
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That Jesus is the only way that your sins can be forgiven by a holy God.
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Jesus Christ is the only promise of heaven.
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Jesus Christ is the way sinful people can be transformed into new creations.
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Jesus Christ is the reason for the existence of this church.
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Jesus Christ is the theme of every worship song that we sing.
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He's the motivation for every good work that we do.
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He's the value behind every dollar that we give to the mission.
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And He's the subject of every sermon that we preach.
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He's God's last word to man.
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He's the high priest who offered to sacrifice for sin.
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He is Himself the sacrifice for sin, and He is the King who reigns forever, because He is God Himself.
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And if all this is true, then there is no one who could speak for God the way this one does.
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Jesus is the ultimate spokesman for God, because He's God's last word.
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I'm gonna invite the worship team to make their way forward.
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And our elders who will be serving communion.
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And I thought as we take this time to consider that Jesus Christ is the ultimate prophet, He's God in the flesh, He's the priest and He's the king.
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I thought there was no better way than to close our time here together than by gathering around the Lord's table and celebrating everything that the King of the universe did for us through His sacrifice. I'm going to invite you to stand and I'm going to pray, but what I'm going to ask you to do is come down the center aisles, receive the elements, return to your seat from the outside aisles, and I'm going to ask that you hold on to the elements that everyone has received will receive the Lord's Supper together.
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All right?
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Will you bow your heads and pray with me, please?
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Our Father in Heaven, we are just embarking on this journey through this incredibly profound book in Your Word.
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Father, it's easy for us to just sort of tack Jesus on, to make Him the sidekick.
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To try to remember that He's the reason for the season.
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Father, I pray that You would shift our thinking that Jesus Christ is no add-on.
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He's not something that we should try to remember.
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He is the King of kings and the Lord of lords.
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He's the one who owns it all, because He created it all, and He literally holds it all together right now.
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And Father, there are some people in this room right now that are going through some trials.
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Health issues, tests being run, recent surgeries.
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Maybe concern for loved ones that are going through the same.
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for those that are facing holidays, loneliness, for those that are struggling financially because of everything that's happening in our economy.
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Father, I pray that we fix our eyes on Jesus Christ, and that we would find He truly is the answer for every single trial that we go through.
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as we gather around His table now, Father.
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Bring our heart back to the place where just as You pronounced that Jesus is everything, might He be everything to us.
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We pray in Jesus' name, Amen.
Small Group Discussion
Read Hebrews 1:1-3
What was your big take-away from this passage / message?
Hebrews is written to Jewish Christians who are weakening in their faith due to trials. Why do you think trials make us struggle in our faith in God?
How exactly does God speak to people today if He’s not giving new revelation (Heb 1:1-2a)?
How would you encourage a brother / sister in Christ to worship the Lord in the face of trials or a tragic circumstance?
Why is obedience absolutely essential to a follower of Christ? How are obedience and love tied together?
Breakout
Pray for one another.