The Ultimate Son

Sermon Transcript

You see them all the time. They’re usually on the bumpers of SUVs and minivans, and sometimes you see the kids bouncing around in the back seat. You pull up to the stoplight, and there it is staring you in the face. It says, “Proud parents of an honor roll student at such-and-such elementary school,” or, you know, “My child is a high achiever at this junior high,” or whatever.

And all this parental hubris got some parents impatient with everybody throwing their accolades about their children in everybody’s face. So you start to see a whole new brand of these bumper stickers come out. Saw one that said, “Proud parents of a C-plus student.” Some honesty there. And of course, the bully’s parents got a bumper sticker. You’ve seen that one, right? “My kid beat up your honor roll student.”

And I know with all of these bumper stickers, they’re just kind of displaying their kids’ achievements on their bumper. It’s easy to roll your eyes at all that and go, “Come on.” That is, of course, until your kid makes the honor roll. Then all of a sudden, something in your heart starts to work, and you’re like, “Wow, my kid made the honor roll. Is there a bumper sticker for this at our school?” It’s a sense of just natural pride that you have that Junior has accomplished something significant.

And I recognize that sometimes you kind of have to quell that, knowing, you know, well, I’m their parent and I’m a little biased. But sometimes your kids do accomplish things that are objectively and arguably great. And that’s when you feel like, you know, you ought to have the right to kind of say, “Well, you know, look what my kid’s done.”

I’ve often thought of maybe George and Barbara Bush’s bumper. You know, as George and Barbara Bush drive around Houston in their car, they might have a bumper sticker that says, you know, “My child is President of the United States,” or, you know, “Proud parent of the leader of the free world,” or something like that. I can see where, you know, you would have to stand back and say, “Well, my kid has done something significant, and that’s worthy of telling a few people about.”

In the New Testament, as you read through the books of the New Testament, you get to the book of Hebrews, and what you discover real quickly in this book is that here is God’s extended bumper sticker, if you will, praising the accomplishments of His great Son. He’s introduced in the very first verses as a Son who has accomplished more than anyone else ever could. As a matter of fact, He is praised in this text for the job that He holds, and I should be specific, the three jobs that He holds and the office that He carries out.

And the Father stands back through the pen of this unknown writer, and He says through the inspiration of the Spirit, “My Son has done something incredible, and you ought to recognize what He’s done.” As a matter of fact, the proud Father, if you will, of the Son, Jesus Christ, makes it very clear that if we understand who He is and what He’s accomplished, our lives are going to be changed because of it.

It reminds me of Luke 24 when these men are on the road to Emmaus. Remember that story after the resurrected Christ? He’s walking along with them, and the tragedy of the text is they don’t know it’s Jesus. Do you remember that? I mean, they’re sitting there talking and they’re chatting, and He’s like, “What’s going on?” “Well, you know, things in Jerusalem.” And they have this whole conversation with Christ without ever recognizing who He is. Until the end. They get where they’re going and they sit down, and the Scripture says their eyes were opened and they realized that they were talking to Jesus Christ.

And then they talked to each other after Jesus left. They said, “Weren’t our hearts just burning within us as we talked to Him?” But what a tragedy. Can you imagine if those two guys on the road to Emmaus knew the entire time that they had a chance to walk this road with Jesus? I think the conversation would have been a little different. As a matter of fact, I think they would have taken advantage of that time that they had spent on that road walking with Christ because they knew who Christ was and they knew what He was all about, but they spent all that time without a real knowledge on that road that they were talking to Him.

I think the tragedy for a lot of us in our Christian life is we’ll go through years of the Christian life, and one day our eyes will be opened because we’ll stand in His presence, we’ll see Him face to face, and we will understand with a new depth of profundity who Jesus really is. And I think a lot of us are going to say, “Wow, we walked that road and our hearts kind of moved within us, but we really didn’t recognize who He really was.”

It’s going to take us months. It’ll probably take us, okay, honestly, years to get through the book of Hebrews. But by the time we’re done, I hope that you can look back and say, “You know what? Because we’ve taken time to study the greatness of Christ in the book of Hebrews, that we can say that we know a little bit more now about who we’re walking with each day.” And the person we pray to isn’t just, you know, Jesus our friend and our buddy and all of that, but He is someone significant. And He’s someone significant, God says to us in the pages of Hebrews, because of the role that He fulfills.

And He doesn’t waste any time. Right at the beginning, in chapter 1, verse number 1, He gets right into it. And He says, “You need to recognize the first important job that Jesus has, and you and I, we ought to be responsive to it.” He says this in verse number 1:

In the past, God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways.

And you think through the history of the Old Testament, oh, that’s exactly what happened. God is speaking through all these prophets at many times and in various ways. We have the whole punctuation of God speaking through the prophets. But then it says, verse 2:

But in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son.

And that’s a statement of finality. God has really spoken now. He has spoken to us by His Son. No names, no titles. He just wants to say, “I want you to know it’s My Son, and I’m speaking to you now through Him.”

As a matter of fact, if you study in the Old Testament, this office of the prophet, the person that speaks for God, was always hailed as a great job. I mean, maybe one you wouldn’t want to have, and maybe you would, I don’t know, but it was one that you revered and you respected, because when you talked to the prophet, whether it was Moses or Elijah or Jeremiah or Isaiah, you were talking face-to-face with someone who’s going to tell you what God thinks, and that was always a big, big deal. And they spoke with authority.

And if you want to know the mind of God on the matter, or what His commentary on our society is, or what He thinks of our culture, or what He thinks of my life or my behavior or my vocabulary, just ask Isaiah. He’ll let you know because he knows exactly what God thinks about those things, and he’s going to tell you. And those words will pierce your heart.

Well, that was nothing here in the contrast of this first verse where the Bible says all those prophets, they were speaking to you many times, many ways in the Old Testament. But now, you know what? Let me make it really clear. God didn’t send a messenger. He sent His Son, and He’s spoken to you in His Son.

And there’s a sense of finality in that, in these last days. That was 2,000 years ago. This is not an issue about, you know, was it just months away from the end of time? It means in this final period of human existence, when God has said all that He’s going to say, He’s made it very clear. He’s spoken, and He’s pointing people’s attention to His Son.

Number one on your worksheet, if you’ve taken notes and you found that in your worship packet this morning, jot this down. Jesus, we need to recognize, and the book of Hebrews is going to tell us a lot more about it, Jesus is our prophet. He speaks on behalf of God to us. And He does it in a unique role and a job that He has. It’s very unique. It’s superior to any of the prophets of the Old Testament, who are quite impressive if you read their stories. But the Son, He speaks to you on behalf of the Father, and it is the final word from heaven.

And the good thing about God is He’s always tried to be very clear. God is not trying to be mysterious. Matter of fact, keep your finger in Hebrews chapter 1 and turn back with me to the fifth book of the Old Testament, the book of Deuteronomy. And I want to show you in chapter 18 that God has always wanted you to look to His prophets to understand, and then I want you to see that He’s always promised there’s a great, great prophet coming, the ultimate prophet coming. Take a look at this, Deuteronomy chapter 18.

Now, we’d had the word prophet, which means in Hebrew a mouthpiece, a spokesman, someone who speaks on behalf of God. It was sprinkled here and there a few times before the book of Deuteronomy. But now in the book of Deuteronomy, we have a long and extended explanation throughout the book of Deuteronomy about God’s special fraternity of people, this class of people that are going to serve as the spokespersons for God, the prophets.

And in chapter 18 of Deuteronomy, in verse number 14, he says, “I want you to know all these nations that you’re dispossessing, all those people, they listen and practice sorcery and divination.” Now remember, the context here is they’re about to march into the promised land. In the promised land of Canaan, they were filled with all these people, couldn’t give a rip about the real God, the God who created them, and they were into all their false gods. And He says, “You’re going to go into their land, you’re going to occupy the good land flowing with milk and honey. Just remember this. All those people are groping for a message from beyond. They want to hear from their creator, but they do it in all the wrong ways. Sorcery and divination.”

I mean, they’re reading their horoscopes in the Canaan Times, you know. They’re trying to, you know, ask their friends to conjure up the dead or whatever they’re doing, but they’re trying to seek a message from beyond. He says, “As for you, man, Yahweh has not permitted you to do so. You’re not to do that. Don’t go around and look for this mysterious word from God. It’s not all that mysterious. As a matter of fact, verse 15, Yahweh your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers.”

You’re going to have people that look just like you, but they’re going to stand up in the history of the Old Testament and they’re going to speak for Me. And they’re going to speak clearly. And they’re going to speak in your language. And it won’t be mysterious, and you won’t have to feel, and you won’t have to groan, and you won’t have to…

He says, “You asked Yahweh your God, verse 16, you said, ‘We don’t want to hear the voice of Yahweh our God. It’s too terrifying. It’s too scary. We don’t want to see this great fire anymore. We’re afraid we’re going to die if God speaks directly to us.’”

Verse 17: “So Yahweh said to me,” Moses speaking here, “‘What they say is good. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers, and I will put My words in his mouth, and he will tell them everything I command him. And if anyone doesn’t listen to My words that the prophet speaks in My name, then I Myself will call him to account, and I’ll hold him responsible for not doing what I say, and I’m going to speak through My prophet.’”

Those words start to build up to something grandiose and big. As a matter of fact, if you were thinking about this from a historic context, you’d think, well, Moses is going to hand off the baton of his prophet-ing to someone else, and he does by the end of the book. But what’s interesting is these big words about this great ultimate prophet that’s going to say everything that God wants said—no one thought that Joshua really filled the bill. Matter of fact, turn to chapter 34 in Deuteronomy when he actually does hand off the baton to Joshua, because Joshua would be the next leader of the people who would be the representative of God to the people. And it says, Deuteronomy 34, here’s the divine commentary at the end of the book of Deuteronomy, the little appendix to the book.

It says in verse 8, “The Israelites grieved for Moses in the plains of Moab thirty days, until the time of weeping and mourning was over. Now Joshua son of Nun was filled with the spirit of wisdom because Moses had laid his hands on him.” There’s the baton passing. “So the Israelites listened to him and did what Yahweh had commanded Moses. Since then, no prophet has arisen in Israel like Moses, whom Yahweh knew face to face, who did all those miraculous signs and wonders that Yahweh sent him to do in Egypt, to Pharaoh and to all his officials and to the whole land. No one has ever shown the mighty power or performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of all Israel.”

Well, I guess we’ll have to wait for that ultimate prophet. And you know what happened. Fourteen hundred years later, there was a prophet that stepped on the scene, and He said, “I just want to make it clear. I’m not just punctuating My speech with messages from God to you. Everything I say is what the Lord is trying to say to you. As a matter of fact, I’m not just a prophet. I’m not just the Son of Man. I am the Son of God. And when I speak”—John chapter 5, John chapter 7, all throughout John chapter 5—He says, “I am speaking to you for God. I don’t speak on My own initiative.” He kept saying it. How many times did He say it in His ministry? “I am speaking to you the very words of God. And if you disregard My words, God will hold you to an account.”

It’s exactly what Moses said would happen, Deuteronomy chapter 18. God had promised the ultimate prophet was coming. And if people didn’t believe Him for what He said, He turns to the crowd and He says, “Then look at the miracles that I do. Just like was predicted in Deuteronomy 18 and 34, look at the things that I’m doing. I’m raising people from the dead. Blind people see. People that can’t walk can now walk. I mean, do you think maybe I’m the great prophet that was spoken about in the Law?”

And then, if that wasn’t enough, there was a divine job reference that showed up in Matthew chapter 17, and this is big. We should turn to this one. This is an amazing practical response to God saying, “Hey, everybody, look here. This is My spokesman. This is the person. He’s speaking for Me. Everything He says is what I want to say to you. Everything.”

John 4 says God is spirit. He doesn’t have a mouth, He doesn’t have a tongue, He doesn’t have teeth, He doesn’t speak, He doesn’t move the sound waves. So He is to use people to get that to happen. But one day He’s going to send the ultimate person, and that ultimate person, everything He says is going to be what God commands.

And one day, He took His disciples to a mountain, it says in Matthew 17, verse 1. He takes Peter, James, and John, the brother of James, led them up to a high mountain by themselves, and there He was—remember this—transfigured before them. I mean, He looked like a normal traveling rabbi, but then all of a sudden His face shone like the sun. Can’t even look at it. His clothes became white as the light. Verse 3, “Just then there appeared before them Moses and Elijah.” What were those two guys? What was their job? It’s not a trick question. What’s their job? Prophets. Spokesmen. They’re the most miraculous, miracle-laden prophets of the Old Testament. Moses—nobody did anything like he did. And then Elijah came by and he almost broke the record of Moses. Look at all the stuff that he did. Amazing, powerful, miraculous, authoritative spokespeople of God.

And they show up right next to Jesus, and they’re just having a board meeting, bottom of verse 3. They’re talking with Christ. And Peter goes, “I’m glad I was invited to see this. Got a good idea. We’re going to build three little temples here, little altars, little shelters, and one is going to be for You, Jesus, and then we’ll build one for Moses, then we’ll build one for Elijah, and that’d be a good idea, wouldn’t it? Huh, huh, huh, good idea.”

And God interrupts, verse 5, and says, “Man, you don’t get it. This isn’t the meeting of the three great prophets.” He says, “You don’t understand who this is. Moses and Elijah were nothing. They were just part-timers. Let Me introduce you to the real spokesperson.”

God breaks through. While he was still speaking, a bright cloud enveloped them. God interrupts Peter, and a voice from the cloud says, “This is My Son.” It’s not just a prophet. “This is My Son, whom I love. With Him I am well pleased.” Now, here’s the upshot of it. I love these words: “Listen to Him.”

I mean, that should just resonate in the heart of Peter, James, and John. Okay. Now, do you think they would listen to Moses and Elijah? Oh, you bet. I mean, these fishermen raised in Sabbath school, they’re going to listen to those great Israeli prophets. But here’s God saying, “Listen to Jesus. Listen to Him. He’s My Son. He’s not just a prophet. He’s the ultimate prophet.”

Upshot of this, underneath number one there, there’s a little finger pointing to a line. Jot this phrase down. You and I need to listen to Him carefully. And we don’t do it carefully enough. I can assure you of that. Because if we walk with Christ through our lives and our walk with Jesus on our road to Emmaus or Mission Viejo or wherever we’re headed, and we just treat Him like, “Oh yeah, give me some insight, give me some wisdom, give me some parenting tips, give me a little insight in my marriage,” then we don’t understand this is the Son of God. When He speaks, He speaks for God.

And when we open His Word, and we have it in quadraphonic sound—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—we got the four biographies right in our face, the first books of the New Covenant, and then we have all these apostles elaborating, implying, and putting flesh to the realities of Jesus’ teaching, His emissaries, from Acts to Revelation. When we have that book, that little paperback New Testament in our pocket, we’ve got the words of God. God is speaking with finality in His Son. And we need to pick that book up with a great deal of reverence and say, “God is speaking here.”

If I resurrected Moses from the dead and brought him here to guest speak next weekend, I think we’d have a full house, standing room only. You’d tell all your friends, “Moses is going to preach at Compass Bible Church next week.” And if I brought him here up on stage and he flashed and he turned something into a snake and then he turned—I mean, did all these wonderful miracles—and said, “Okay, now I got something to say,” I think you’d get writer’s cramp. I think you’d be leaning forward. I think you’d be listening even more intently to him than you do to me. Am I right?

That’s nothing. That’s nothing. Nothing compared to Christ, who is the spokesperson, the ultimate final word from God. And yet sometimes that New Testament sits on our shelf and we don’t have time between Sundays to pick it up. We have a word from God that’s clear. God spoke through a lot of people, a lot of personalities, lots of times, various ways, but in these last days, the last chapter of human history, He has spoken to us in His Son. And God’s statement to you this morning: listen to Him. Perk your ear up and just realize you’ve got to listen to Him.

We live on a little cul-de-sac, and my kids go out in the neighborhood all the time and they play, and they got a lot of friends on the block. And all the time they’re telling them all kinds of stuff, crazy stuff. “This, that, do this, do that,” all this. And I tell my kids, and they intuitively know, “When Johnny and Joey and all these other people tell you to do stuff, you don’t have to do it. Sort it out. Use your brain, man. Use your brain and think about what they’re telling you. You don’t have to do what everybody says.” You tell your kids that too.

But don’t you and I both have a real big double standard when they walk into our kitchen and then I’m going to talk to them? I ain’t saying use your brain. Don’t use your brain. Listen to me and do what I tell you to do. I am your dad. You can’t sit there and pick and choose what you’re going to do. I am speaking to you as your father. Now sit down and listen to me.

I am, in a real sense—matter of fact, if you study this in Scripture, and it’s amazing truth—that we as parents to young children, we stand in the place of a reiterative prophet. We are speaking, and God says to children, “Listen to your parents, man. Listen up to your parents. Do what they say.” And so I fulfill that role. You can talk to Tommy down the street, and I don’t know, half the stuff he says, you never know. You don’t have to do what he says. But come into my house, sit down, man. You better listen to what I say. You don’t have the luxury of sitting there saying, “Well, I’m not sure that’s great advice.” Oh, don’t say that to me, boy.

And yet, I hate to say it, but when it comes to how you do business, when it comes to how you raise your children, when it comes to the discipline of your children, when it comes to your marriage, when it comes to how to live your life, we look at what Christ says just like Tommy talking to us at the end of the cul-de-sac. “Well, I don’t know. That’s good, but, you know, I don’t know. I’ve heard that really doesn’t work. I’ve heard that’s not—I don’t know if that’s the best thing. I might lose clients if I do it like the Book says.”

Listen to Him. We don’t have the luxury. He is the ultimate spokesperson of God. And you can team up Elijah, you can team up Jeremiah, you can pull Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, pull the whole crew in and have them say—nothing. Nothing compared to the finality and focus God wants us to have on Christ. Listen to Him. Listen to Him more attentively.

Jesus is our prophet. Listen to Him carefully. Sit at your kitchen table with your Bible open and treat it with a little bit more—not the book, not the pages, not the ink, not the print—treat what it says with a little bit more respect. God is speaking to you. Jesus is our prophet. Listen to Him.

“In the past, He spoke a lot of ways, but now He’s spoken to us in His Son.” Now He goes on to explain a little bit more about the Son, middle of verse 2, Hebrews chapter 1. Hebrews chapter 1, middle of verse 2, He says, “Let me tell you a little bit about the Son. He’s appointed heir of all things. Through Him, He made the world, made the universe. The Son, verse 3, is the radiance of God’s glory. He is the exact representation of God’s being. He sustains all things by His powerful word.”

That’s a big list of characterizations of Jesus Christ, this carpenter from Nazareth. That’s a big list. Appointed heir of all things. He made the world through Him. He’s the radiance of God’s glory, the exact representation of His being, sustaining all things by His powerful word.

There was an office in Israel that wasn’t so much “I’m listening to God speak through this person.” There was another job that you could have in Israel that was the job of regal power. It was the job of authority. It was the job of a sense of ownership. It was the ultimate job when it comes to power and position in all of Israel. And it was the job—it’s a ubiquitous word, almost 3,000 times in the Old Testament—melech, the Hebrew word king. And that was a big job to fill. Those are big sandals to fill in the Old Covenant.

In the Old Testament, there was all kinds of them, starting with Saul and David and Solomon and Jeroboam and Rehoboam, all the way down to the end. We had all these kings, and they were there with regal authority, and you and I can’t really identify with it, because you’ve never met a king, I take it. And we don’t have kings today. And we got these people, even in old, you know, Europe, we call them kings and queens. They’re not kings and queens. We know these democracies, these republics. We know these presidents. We know these leaders, these chairmen. But we don’t know kings.

If you walked into the presence of the king, and the king didn’t like what you said, he’d say, “Oh, go kill that guy.” And there ain’t a person in the world that could stop it. He had complete and sovereign power. And he had power because he’d look at his country and he’d say, “This is my domain. I own this property. And if you’re on my property, you go by my rules. I’m the ultimate authority here.”

And God, after dealing with Saul, because Saul was the choice of the people, He said, “I’ll give you a king. You want a king? I’ll give you a king after My own heart.” And He installed as the second king of Israel His king after His own heart, and his name was David. And He said, “I want to show you what a king should be all about.”

Was David perfect? You’ve read the book, right? Not perfect. But He said, “I’m going to start with you something great.” Jot this reference down: 2 Samuel chapter 7. He makes a promise with David. It’s a covenant, a unilateral, unbreakable covenant, a promise that He makes to David, and He says, “Listen, I’m going to bring to you a great king, a king who will establish a kingdom that will last forever. And it’s going to come through your line. You’re just a prototype. You’re just the Moses of the monarchy. That’s all. I mean, you’re a great king, Dave, but there’s going to be a great king yet to come.”

And of course, 1,000 years later, after David’s life, here comes Gabriel showing up to a little peasant girl in Nazareth, and Gabriel starts quoting to Mary verses from the Davidic covenant, verses that were reiterated by the prophet Isaiah, saying, “I want to tell you about this little baby you’re going to have. Your little baby, He’s going to sit on the throne of David, his father.”

Jesus steps on the scene with the announcement of angels saying, “This is the King.” And the Magi responded and they worshiped Him.

Number two on your outline. People who have this kind of power, this kind of résumé, they’re kings. Jesus is our king. And the book of Hebrews will show us that He is the ultimate authority. And God has said, “Here is the representative of power.”

And you know, all the meleks, all the kings of the old covenant, they were rough representations, not exact representation. They were kind of dim, blurry, imperfect pictures of the representation of God’s ultimate power. I said, is David perfect? You said no. You know, there was no ancient oriental text about kings that would show the bad side of their kings. No text that would do that. Read the Assyrian annals of history or any other ancient history of oriental Mesopotamian leaders and see if their books that record their reign are going to show things like adultery and murder in their life. Not going to do it.

God wanted to make it really clear. Every king, every human king, is a poor representation of the supreme power and perfection of the ultimate king of the universe, which the Bible constantly said is God Himself. And yet in this text, look at it, verse number 3: “He’s the radiance of God’s glory, and He’s not a dull reflection or a poor representation or a halfway representation. He is the exact representation of God’s being.”

And go back up to verse 2. He’s the heir, H-E-I-R. Circle that, the heir. What’s an heir? An heir is one who inherits.

I went and opened up a little safety deposit box. Not that I needed one, but they said they’d give me one for free, so I went and I got it. I didn’t know what to put in it, so I went home. I went through my stuff. I said, “Well, this is probably important,” a couple passports or whatever. So I take stuff that I thought was halfway valuable. It’s probably worth all about $200. But I brought everything I had that I thought was expensive, and I brought it down there to the safety deposit box.

My two boys were with me. They started asking me all these questions. “What is this? What’s going on? What’s that box?” So I start going through all this stuff I’m putting in it. “Well, here, I got this. I got that. I got these papers. These are important. I got my high school ring. I don’t know. I don’t wear it. It’s probably worth $30. But I’ll put it in there.” And then I looked at them, hopefully, like, “Well, you know, when I die, you’re going to get all this.” So then they start looking through it with a little more interest, right? Not really impressed. But the point was, I’m saying, “Listen, when I’m gone, these are my valuables. This is what I own. This is the representation of the stuff I have. The pink slips on my cars or whatever. This is going to be yours because you’re my heir. You get what I have.”

This text says that Jesus, the great authoritative representation of the supreme power of the universe, is heir of all things. You know what that means? He owns it all. He is leader by virtue of ownership. He’s not only that. Look at the last phrase in verse number 3 that we’ve covered so far: “sustaining all things by His powerful word.” He not only owns it, He keeps it running. And He not only keeps it running—what’s the second phrase in the middle of verse 2? He’s made it all. He made it, He owns it, He sustains it.

I went on a brief little trip, and I visited this guy who was gracious to invite us out to his place. He bought a piece of property, his dream piece of property, and he built his dream house. He did it. He designed it. He got it the way he wanted it. It’s the most unique place. And the guy had had a very lucrative career. He’s retired now, and this is his place.

And I walked onto his place, and he’s got a great place. It’s a great piece of property and this house. And he starts showing me all these things that he’s built in his house, and he’s one of those fix-it guys. Not only did he have a lot of money in his career, but now he’s got this place just completely tricked out and customized the way he wants it. And he’s the guy who’s always fixing stuff. His garage is bigger than his house that he built. And he’s in there and he just—he sustains it all. He owns it all. He made it all.

I walk into his house and I watch him slip off his shoes. You know how people do that when they have nice carpets? I did it. I did it for the first month I had my new carpet. But I watch him do that. Do you think I took my shoes off? You bet. Got this great sound system, great high-def TV, all this stuff. And, you know, before I reached for the remote control—which I waited a long time before I actually asked to do that, for me at least—and do you think I asked permission to do that? Oh yeah. And if I were to reach for the other remote that I saw there that had more buttons than the one I touched, and if I started to reach for that and he said, “No, no, don’t touch that one,” do you think I would have touched that one? No way.

See, because as long as I was there in his place that he owned, that he built, that he sustains, I do what he says. Now, if I want to go, you know, buy my own piece of property and build my little pup tent out across the way, I can do what I want. The problem with this in this text is the Bible wants to make it clear: He owns how much? Everything. He’s the heir of all things. God owns it and He gave it to His Son, through whom He made the universe. Oh, by the way, the Son even made it. Oh, and He’s the exact radiance of His glory and the exact representation of God’s being, and He sustains everything.

Now, here’s the problem. We can’t leave His house. You’re stuck in it. Therefore, before you reach for the remote, or if you see Jesus kick off His shoes—do you see what I’m saying? Do you follow His example? Oh, you’d better, because He is in charge. And you ought to give Him the respect He deserves as the one in charge. Because kings, and people who got this letter initially, who knew what monarchs and Middle Eastern, Oriental, Mesopotamian kings were all about—you better do what the king wants. You better give him deference and respect.

Jesus is the ultimate king. Upshot of that, next to this little pointy finger under number two, jot this down. We need to honor Him more. Honor Him by the way we live. If He says don’t touch that, then don’t touch it. If He says follow My example, and when you come into the living room take your shoes off, then you do it. If He says you don’t conduct business that way, you don’t do it. Why? Because He’s in charge. He owns me. He sustains me. He bought me. He’s the King.
You know when Nadab and Abihu—remember those names? The reason you’ve never thought about naming your children Nadab and Abihu is because they were—that’s like Jezebel. It’s one of those really bad examples in Scripture. There’s two in the Old Testament and two in the New Testament, Ananias and Sapphira, and we don’t have any of those in the nursery either. Nadab and Abihu and Ananias and Sapphira show us the cohesiveness of both Old and New Covenants in showing us that when you approach the king, you better approach the king with honor, respect, and deference. And if you don’t, you do it to your own peril.

Now, here’s the thing. God is a God of grace, which means that sometimes when we make the mistakes that are worthy of death, He holds back the sentence of death and gives you a chance to get it right. Because both of these happened at the very beginning, one at the very beginning of the worship in the Old Testament, the formalized worship. Nadab and Abihu were Aaron’s sons. Aaron was the first person going to approach God, and Nadab and Abihu were the second-generation priests. And they were supposed to go and represent the people to God. And they were to approach the king with reverence. And the Bible says they got kind of lax on this thing. And all of a sudden, they now wanted to approach God the way they wanted to. If they want to touch the remote, they can touch the remote. And if they don’t want to take their shoes off, they don’t have to.

You remember what happened to Nadab and Abihu? If you want to jot the reference down, you can read their story in Leviticus chapter 10. And it’s not a fun story. Because the head leader there is Aaron, and Aaron has to watch his children be killed in a worship service and stand back, and the Bible says Aaron was silent, because he realized we are approaching the great King of the universe. We’d better do it with honor and respect and deference and care.

And if you think, well, that’s just the God of the Old Testament, He was really mean, but He kind of got softened up by the New Testament, then read Acts chapter 5 and you’ll find our other pair, Ananias and Sapphira. Do you remember them? They came to a worship service too, and during the offering time, when they were passing the bag, they just kind of fudged a little bit on the numbers and kind of, you know, “Well, we’re going to approach this our own way here.” And for approaching worship in the New Covenant in a casual, non-deferential way, they didn’t honor God with their gift. They tried to deceive people. What? Killed.

Now, do you think we’ve ever approached worship that way? Do you think we’ve ever kind of high-fived our big buddy in the sky when we should have bowed in reverence to the great King of the universe? Do you think we’ve called Jesus kind of our friend when in reality, oh, He’s friendly toward us, but He’s more than a friend. He’s the monarch of the universe who owns me, sustains me, and bought me.

Oh, I’m sure we have, but God is a gracious God, and in His grace He doesn’t want you to continue in your lack of reverence or honor for Him. He wants you to have more. And that’s why He starts the worship in the Old Covenant with one of these death sentences of people who approach God in a lax and casual way, and He does it the same in the New Testament so we’ll learn the lesson. God is to be honored. He is a great God, and He will be honored. And that’s His whole bottom-line resolve: You’re going to honor Me.

You don’t want to walk the road to Emmaus with Christ and not stop all the time and say, “I want to just recognize that You are the great King, not only in my life, but in the world.” And the sad thing is we hang out with a bunch of people, don’t we, all week long who don’t have the same perspective on the great King? And therefore, it’s easy for us to slip into the pattern of not recognizing the great King.

Problem is, God is a God of grace and patience, but one day He’ll take all your co-workers, all your friends, all your neighbors, all your relatives, and He will force them to recognize the greatness of the King. Philippians chapter 2—we don’t have time to turn to all these passages, but don’t forget that one. He says, one day, God, after exalting Christ to the highest place and giving Him a name above every name, will make every knee bow in heaven, on earth, and under the earth, and every tongue will have to say it, Jesus Christ is Lord. Just another name for king, the one in charge, the great powerful one. Not a dim reflection of the greatness of the supreme invisible King of the universe. He is an exact representation of Him. He’s not the imperfect Davidic king. He’s the real messianic King.

Jesus is our King. We need to honor Him more. In Hebrews, we’ll get to that. Matter of fact, it’s one of the punchlines of the book. In Hebrews chapter 13, verse 15, it says we ought to offer up continually our sacrifice of praise to God. And I don’t know if for you it’s just a Sunday thing with a few songs, but it ought to be a daily thing for you. I don’t know what you’re doing to worship the King in your life, but man, we ought to get at it. What can we do every single day to give Christ honor? Because a lot of people can treat Him as less than king, but He is king, and one day we’ll see it.

Matter of fact, in the book of Revelation, it’ll say there on His thigh—you ever see those motocross guys who got all the writing on their thigh because they’re riding their butt? He was riding a horse, and He’s kind of got His leathers on, if you will. And here He’s got a name, an appellation on the thigh of Christ that you can see as He rides His white charger. And it reads, King of kings and Lord of lords. And I’ll tell you what, if we get to the end and have our eyes open and realize the person we prayed to every day was the King of kings and Lord of lords, and we didn’t give Him that kind of honor in our prayer, just like those guys on the road to Emmaus, we’re going to go, “Wow, we missed out. We didn’t realize how great He was. We should have worshiped Him more.”

Let’s honor Him more. He is our King. The book of Hebrews is really clear. He’s the great King. He’s the heir of all things. He made the universe. He’s the radiance of God’s glory, the exact representation of His being. He sustains all things by His powerful word.

There’s one more job that Jesus fulfills that the book of Hebrews is going to unpack for 13 chapters. It’s one of the things that we’ll see over and over again throughout this book. It says, in verse number 3 at the bottom of Hebrews chapter 1, if you still have it there, it says, after He provided purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty in heaven. He was done with His work. He sits down. And what did He do? What was His work? He made purification for sin.

Now there was a great respected job in Israel to be a prophet. There was a great respected job in Israel to be king, but there was also a great and respected job in Israel, and that is to make purification for sins. And it was only done ceremonially in the Old Testament. But this whole book will tell us it’s been done completely and in a real sense, a concrete sense, by this One.

There’s prophets and kings, and there’s one more very important role to play: priest. Number three on your outline is Jesus is our priest. Not only our priest. The Bible calls Him in Hebrews the great high priest, the greatest high priest. Oh, there were a lot of high priests in the Old Testament. There were a lot of important things that they did to atone for sin. But there was no one like Christ who didn’t ceremonially atone for sin. He really atoned for sin.

You know what the word atonement means? The Hebrew word atone means to cover, to purge, to get rid of. The priest, and especially the high priest—now you’ve got to know there are weekly, daily, monthly sacrifices, and then there was an annual sacrifice that took place in the month of Tishri on the Hebrew lunar calendar. It ends up in September, October every year, and you still see it on your Hallmark calendar somewhere in the middle or late part of September. It’s called Yom, which is the Hebrew word for day. Yom. What’s the next word? Kippur. Yom Kippur. Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Kippur, to cover, to purge.

Now every day they did daily sacrifices, weekly sacrifices, monthly sacrifices, and then once a year in the fall they would have this great Day of Atonement. And this was a very special day where the priest, the high priest, was to tell everybody in the nation to fast. No one eat today. You deny yourself food. And then what we’re going to have is we’re going to have a worship service, which, by the way, is always characterized by the fact that we have God’s physical presence here—I should say symbolic presence here—physically demonstrated in the middle of this worship center.

And it was there in what was called, in between the covering of the Ark of the Atonement, this box of the promise. And in that, it was housed in a room called the Holy of Holies, which was housed in a place called the Holy Place, which was housed in a place called the inner court, which was housed in a place called the outer court. And by the way, depending on your credentials, you couldn’t get past whatever court you couldn’t get past.

The whole point of Old Testament worship is we’re going to symbolize God’s presence here with this glory in this room on top of this box here called the Ark of the Covenant, and God is going to be symbolically represented there by this physical presence that’s shown. And here’s the thing: you can’t get close to it. And as a matter of fact, the priest can’t get close to it. And as a matter of fact, the high priest can only get close to it once a year on Yom Kippur.

And then what we’ll do after he does all these elaborate ceremonies and he kills the bull and he sprinkles blood everywhere to show that God is going to cover our sins, he will go and represent us before the holy presence of God in the inner room, inside the outer court, inside the inner court, inside the temple, inside the Holy Place, inside the Holy of Holies, right there in front of the box. Now he’s going to walk in on behalf of us after doing all of this blood atonement. And he’s going to walk in and represent us and say, “God, please accept us. Not just me. Accept our nation. Forgive us of our sins.”

And on Yom Kippur, the high priest would walk in there. And you know, you’d find things in there, the censer and the incense altar and you’d find the Ark of the Covenant and all that. But you know one piece of furniture you’d never find in there? A chair. Because the high priest is never going to sit down. You don’t sit down. There’s not only a chair not there. There’s no chair in the Holy Place. There’s no chair in the temple. There’s no chair in the courts, man. You don’t sit down.

We go there to represent ourselves and the people before God. And if I’m a priest, if I happen to be the high priest in all my garb, what I do on the Day of Atonement is I lay that all aside. I sprinkle blood everywhere and I say, “God, please accept our sinful nation and please just be good to us. Don’t destroy us. You’re a great King. And if we’re going to come before You, we need our sins forgiven.”

And the thing about dealing with the great monarch of the universe is the more you get to know the great King of kings, the more you realize you got sin in your life. And the problem is, how do I deal with that? It needs to be covered, atoned. And the problem was in the Old Testament, you do all these ceremonies and the Bible says it’s never really atoned. It’s never covered. Until, of course, the great high priest comes, who no longer ceremonially goes through the motions of covering sin. He actually does it.

And the way we know He does it, even in the opening verses of Hebrews, is He sits down at the right hand of the Majesty on high. “I’m done.” “No, I’ll finish.” All done. “I’m going to sit now.” Why? Because I did it. Doesn’t He have to do it next week? No. Next month? No. Next year? No. It’s finished.

That’s why, by the way, when the great high priest had finished the sacrifice, which happened to be His own body, He hung on a cross and He cried out, “It is finished.” It’s done. All done now. Sin is covered.

And here’s the problem with people like you and I. Here’s the problem with modern religion. Here’s the problem with ancient religion. We like to hope that we can help to cover our sin. And the Bible’s really clear. The great high priest did it for us. Our responsibility is not to add to it. Our responsibility is not to contribute to it. We can’t do anything about our sin but trust the great high priest.

Our responsibility, number three under the third point, is that you and I rely on Him completely. He said He finished the work. Is it done in your life or not? If it isn’t done, then you got some penance to pay. You better write a bigger check and put it in the offering. You better help more old ladies cross the street. You better go to Tijuana and build some more houses for the orphans. You got a lot of work to do to work off your sin, man. Unless, of course, on the cross, He said, “It’s finished.”

Your job is to trust Him. Did He finish it or not? If He finished it, stop thinking that you got anything to add to that. Your check in the offering bag, your volunteering for ministry, your building houses in Mexico, all your good works are a response to this one phrase: “It is finished.” That’s what you’re doing. You’re just responding to that. It isn’t about earning it. The great high priest sat down. It’s done. He took your sin and covered it. As a matter of fact, it’s more than covered. He took it and with His blood, He washed your sin white as snow. It’s done.

So what do we do now? We’re hit with a pang of guilt because yesterday we did something we shouldn’t do, and we know it, and we feel that guilt. What do we do? 1 John 1:9. We confess our sins. He’s faithful and righteous to forgive our sins, cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Just go putting it back on the cross. Is that a license to sin? Because grace has overwhelmed our sin? What does Paul say in the book of Romans? We’ll soon find out. May it never be. As a matter of fact, our response to that grace ought to be trying to walk the narrow road as best we can. Response to the grace. We don’t add to it.

You know the problem with your religious friends? They’re trying to earn that covering. Can’t earn it. The high priest did it for you. You got to trust in it fully.

When I was growing up in Long Beach, I had a lot of aspirations as a child for what I would do when I grew up. Of course, these old people, parents and adults, would always ask you, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” And I was always quick, just like the other kids, with an answer. I had things I wanted to be. Of course, I went through the phase, “I want to be a football player, baseball player,” all that. I got into a phase where I wanted to be a stuntman. Seriously. I was going to go and I was going to be a Hollywood stuntman. I was going to jump out of moving cars and roll down the hills. That’s got to be great. That’s what I want to do. Of course, I had friends that just wanted to be rich business tycoons, and I even had a friend that seriously wanted to be the President of the United States.

Because growing up in our culture, we look at those things and say, well, that’s what I want to be. You know, if you were to travel back 2,000 years ago and walk through the streets of Hebron or Joppa or some village in Galilee or Nazareth, and you just ask people, “Hey, little kids, what do you want to be when you grow up?” Oh, their eyes might light up and say, “Wow, man, you know, one day I’d just like to be someone that carries that gold scepter in his hand, sits on these thrones with royal robes. I’d love to be a king of Israel. Wouldn’t that be great? Just like David and Hezekiah and Josiah, the child king, and look at his reforms, and Solomon with all of his riches.”

And you go to another town, you ask another little kid, “What do you want to be?” “Well, you know, I just love to do miracles like Moses and speak authoritatively for God. I could be a prophet like Isaiah or Elijah or Elisha. Oh, wow, yeah, that’d be great.”

You ask another little kid in the village, “What do you want to do?” “Well, you know what? I want to be at the center of that spiritual work that God wants to do in our nation. And I’d love to be someone like Aaron or Phinehas or Ezra, be a great priest before God.”

And the interesting thing about all these little kids, if you asked them in the dusty streets 2,000 years ago in Israel what they want to be, none of them would ever imagine that they could be all of them at once, because these were three separate and very distinct jobs. And they were the greatest jobs, the hailed jobs. They’re not the movie stars and presidents. In their day, that was it. Prophet and priest and king, that was big.

But just about 2,000 years ago, there was a bunch of little kids in Jerusalem who started to get the feel of what this was all about. Matter of fact, light bulbs came on because there was something taking place in Jerusalem that started to blow their entire paradigm right out the window. Turn to this last passage, Matthew chapter 21.

It was a week before Passover. Children were playing in the streets. Their parents were excited. There was someone special in town, and they’d heard about Him for years. And they picked up palm branches, and they laid their clothing down in the street. And it says in verse number 9 of Matthew chapter 21, it says, crowds that went ahead of Him and those that followed, they shouted out, “Hosanna.” Now note this carefully. To who? “Son of David.” What’s that? That’s a regal reference to the ultimate king, the 2 Samuel chapter 7, the Isaiah chapter 9, the Gabriel announcement, the one on whom the government would rest, who would reign on the throne of David. Man, Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is the one who comes, the great king, in the name of the Lord. The Son of David is here. Hosanna in the highest. Man, You’re king. That’s great.

Verse 10, and when He entered Jerusalem, the whole city was stirred, and they started asking—and these little kids standing next to their moms and dads, they were hearing this conversation take place—“This Jesus, man, who is He?” And they said, “Well, this is the prophet. He’s the prophet from Nazareth in Galilee.” Well, that’s odd, but wow, that’s amazing. He’s a prophet, a great prophet.

And then don’t stop there. If your Bible kind of separates these paragraphs, don’t let that happen. Go quickly to the next verse, verse 12. Jesus, after strolling in as the great King, Son of David, and the great prophet, where’s the first place He goes here? He doesn’t go to the royal palace. Where does He go? He goes to the temple.

Jesus enters the temple. “This is My place. Get out of here, all you guys just trying to make a buck off the worship here.” He turns over the tables, the money changers. He drives them all out, and He says, “As it is written,” He says, “This is My house and it’s going to be a house of prayer.” Well, the house of worship was not the king and it wasn’t the prophets. It was the priests. The priests hung out. He says, “You’re making a den of robbers. This is a house of prayer.” His passion for the priesthood.

These little kids in the street started to see that Jesus on the scene now was coming as king, as prophet, as priest. That was unique. I mean, the convergence of those three. I mean, it’s one thing to be the prophet, the priest, and the king. In the Old Testament, there was a way to designate those. As a matter of fact, every single one of those jobs, the only three in Israel, to be designated that, they would come with a flask of oil and would pour it over your head. Thursday night Bible study people, what’s that called? Anointing. They would anoint you. They would anoint the great prophets. They would anoint the great kings. They would anoint the great priests. They would all be anointed.

That’s why, by the way, Jesus has this name: Jesus Christ. You know what Christ means in Greek? Christos, the anointed one. These kids in Israel watching this, man, wow, what a mind blower. Here is the anointed one, the anointed one, the prophet, priest, and king.

And God’s saying to us, hear Him, listen attentively, honor Him. He’s the great King. Oh, and by the way, you better trust Him because He is the payment for your sin. Prophet, priest, and king. Hear Him, honor Him, trust Him.

Let’s pray.

God, we’re being introduced to one of the most amazing books in all the New Testament, a book that’s going to call us to understand a little bit more, I hope a great deal more, about this person that we say we walk with every day. We don’t want to come to the end of this road and have our eyes opened and see Him face to face and realize, “Wow, He really was a great, great prophet, the prophet, the great King of kings, and the great high priest.” We don’t want to realize that then. We would like to realize it now.

So God, in our study, please, we call upon You now to be actively involved in our minds and in our lives to invoke the kind of response that we need to the information that we will learn in the book of Hebrews. That Jesus Christ, from the dusty streets of Nazareth to the paved cobblestone streets of Jerusalem, had lived His life as the Father had directed as the great prophet, priest, and king.

May our lives reflect that we are walking today in our hearts and in our relationship with the prophet, priest, and king. Make us attentive, make us worshipful, and God, make us filled with faith and trust in the One who took care of our sin problem permanently.

God, we love You this morning for this good introduction to this great book. God, may it change our lives, we pray, in the weeks and months to come. In Jesus’ name, amen.