Jesus Is Superior

My name is Pastor Geoff Bradford. If we have not met before, we want to welcome you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to Christ the King Presbyterian Church. So glad you're spending this Sunday with us.

Many Sundays we do a prayer, and this morning I want to do a particular type of prayer for our church that is called a lament. Laments are found all over your Bible, and there are ways that we express our sadness as God's people and cry out to him. And so I want to lead us in a lament prayer this morning.

The way this is going to go is I'm going to lead us, and I'll pray, and then I'm going to end each paragraph with the phrase, "Father, have mercy." After I say that, I'm going to invite you to say that together with me. So you're going to have to pay attention. But if you can repeat after me, "Father, have mercy"—that's what we'll pray through the prayer. So will you join me as we pray for our city, our state, our nation, and our church? Let's pray together.

Father in heaven, we know that you love to hear your children praying. Your ear is ever bent toward your children, so we come boldly. We run to you together this morning in prayer. Father, we cry out for our world. Lord, you see. You know. We pray over the war that lingers both in Ukraine and in Gaza. We pray for an end to both conflicts, an end to needless deaths, to needless suffering. Father, turn the hearts of those in leadership to lay down their weapons. Protect the vulnerable.

Father, have mercy.

Father, we pray for our nation. The political situation in our country is frightening to so many people. We are on course for another difficult election season. Many are fearful for a repeat of 01/06/2020. Father, deliver us out of this time of fear. We pray for a peaceful election this fall. Bring us righteous leaders.

Father, have mercy.

Father, we pray for you to honor the name of Jesus in our country. We pray that you would separate and clarify the real Christian faith from American politics. We see the way the gospel is confused and confusing to many people. We see how this is leading many people away from you and your church. Lord, we beg for you to heal our land, bring revival.

Father, have mercy.

We pray for our church this morning. We pray for our sister Elizabeth Alexander as she suffered for a year and a half with a very aggressive form of cancer. We pray that you would cure her. We pray that you would relieve her pain. We pray for her family and particularly her husband, Graham, and their three children, that you would encourage and strengthen them. We pray for her friends who are carrying a heavy load and caring for her. Encourage and strengthen them. Lord, we lament this morning on her behalf. We cry out to you against cancer that hurts, destroys, and robs.

Father, have mercy.

We pray for the next generation, the children of our church. We pray that you would raise up the next generation to surpass their parents in their love and zeal for Jesus. We see the many ways that they are confused and battered around. We pray for our youth group to be one of those places where youth can come and feel safe. We pray that they would live out their faith in all the places that you have put them.

Father, have mercy. Father, now meet us as we open your word. Open our hearts, our ears. In Jesus' name. Amen.

Thank you for praying with me. We're going to turn our attention to the passage on which I'm preaching this morning. This is in Hebrews chapter one. We're going to read verses one through four, and as our practice, we're going to read this out loud together. So I'll read from my Bible. You'll read from the screen behind me. Would you join your voices with mine?

Long ago, God spoke to our ancestors by the prophets at different times and in different ways. In these last days, he has spoken to us by his son. God has appointed him heir of all things and made the universe through him. The son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact expression of his nature, sustaining all things by his powerful word. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. So he became superior to the angels, just as the name he inherited is more excellent than theirs. — Hebrews 1:1-4

This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.

Introduction to the Series

So today we're starting a new sermon series that will take us through the summer, the book of Hebrews. Some of you know I'm a planner, so I have things planned out a year in advance for sermons, and I was all prepared to do a series in the book of Judges, and I felt like the Holy Spirit just called an audible, and so punted that to the fall. If you're interested in lots of crazy, come back in the fall for that. But we'll see what the Lord has for us and the Spirit has for us this summer as we go through this book of Hebrews. A couple of things about Hebrews.

I don't like to do long sermon introductions to books because I feel like nobody remembers them anyway, but I'll give you a couple things as we open up this book. Three weird things about Hebrews.

First, nobody knows who wrote this book. Some scholars say it's Paul or Apollos or Jude or Barnabas or Clement or among many others. We know it's a guy. I'm not assuming the gender. There's one place in Hebrews where the writer refers to himself as a he. But otherwise, as the saying goes, only God knows who wrote Hebrews.

Second, we don't know who it was addressed to, what particular group, where they were living when they received this book. Only that it was written to a group of people who had grown up firmly in the Jewish tradition, people who had grown up knowing the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, people who had gone regularly to synagogue, who were used to the pilgrimages and sacrifices in Jerusalem, the capital. People who knew the Jewish religion. And these Jewish to Christian converts are in a really hard place. We know that part. Because the book of Hebrews is meant to encourage them not to go back. Don't go back to the life you had in Judaism before. Hang on. Hang in there. This book is all about encouragement.

Finally, nobody knows what Hebrews is. Now, that's a weird thing to say, but you're like, yeah, it's in the Bible, Jeff. But this isn't like any other part of the New Testament. It doesn't read like a letter. There's no introduction. There's no salutations to somebody, from somebody else. It just sort of jumps in. Some people think it's a sermon. We don't really know what we're reading.

But one pastor, Joe Novison, in our denomination, his son Matt and Michelle, they used to go to our church. He calls Hebrews, this book, the emergency room of the heart. Now, want you to think about the different ways that you can enter a hospital, and the different types of reception that you will get as you enter the hospital. If you enter through the main entrance of a hospital, you're going to get a certain type of reception. If you show up and walk into the ER, the emergency room, you'll get a different type of reception. But if you arrive in an ambulance in the emergency room, you get a very different reception.

Nobody in the ER staff, when an ambulance arrives, nobody says, how are you doing today? How's it going? How was your week? Nobody even really asks your name many times. They cut the pants leg off if there's dire bleeding. They pull out the paddles. There are no formalities. There's no niceness. There's no, hey, here's what we're going to do with you. Can we have a few moments to talk about the procedure that's coming up? It's get going fast. Why? Because we know when somebody comes in an ambulance to the ER, it is serious. It's life and death. It's urgent.

And that's how Hebrews starts. The book of Hebrews starts like an ambulance arriving at the ER room of the Bible, where it's like, we gotta give you life-saving measures right now. You need this right now. And so the book of Hebrews doesn't have salutations, no formalities. Wham. Jump in. Jump in because this is urgent. This is immediate. This is the one thing that you need.

Now what is that one thing? It's Jesus. The book of Hebrews, everybody agrees that this is the main theme of this book. Jesus is better. Jesus is more. Jesus is superior. And the writer of Hebrews is like, this is the lifesaving message that you need. This is what you need to know. This is who you need to know. This is who you need right now to survive.

So this morning, as we look at this first sermon in this series, this first passage, I want you to think about this under these headings: a superior hearing, a superior word, and superior to everything.

A Superior Hearing

This is verses one and two. Hebrews starts off and says this, God speaks. God has spoken in the past. God is speaking now. That's really important. Our God is a speaking God.

Now, that may not be news to you, but I want you to think about what that means about who God is. It tells us what God wants with you. Speaking is the currency of friendship, of relationship, of building love and trust and intimacy together. This is not an employee receiving a work order from the boss. This is not a robot being given code to carry out. This is not a soldier in an army being given marching orders. This is our God speaking because God wants, above everything else, a relationship. God wants a relationship. He's not good vibes. He's not a ghost. He's not the force. He's not coming to give you just feelings. He wants intimacy, relationship.

And notice something more. It says, God spoke in the past, and God has spoken now. Now, this is referring to God speaking in the past in his word, the Old Testament, and God has now spoken through his son, Jesus. And it says two things about God speaking in the past.

It says in different ways and in different times. Now, different times covers the scope of this whole period of the Old Testament. But the word "therefore" in different ways is the Greek word where we get our word "piecemeal" from. Piecemeal means little here, little there. God spoke a little in this time, and a little in that time, and a little in another time. But now, the writer of Hebrews is saying, then it was all fragmented. Now God has spoken through his son, and in a definitive way, in a big way. He's not stuttering. He's shouting. It's not piecemeal. It's perfect.

Now, this confronts us with really two questions, very simple questions. First, do you know where you are? And second, are you paying attention?

When I ask this question, do you know where you are? I don't mean in Oberlin Middle School. I don't mean in Raleigh, North Carolina. I assume you all probably are pretty good for that information. But do you know where you are in history? Lots of people, when they open the bible, they're like, man, if I would have been there back then, I would believe. You know, if I'd been there and seen the parting of the Red Sea, then I would really believe. If I could see the plagues come upon Egypt, then I would really believe. If I could see the giving of the law at Mount Sinai, man, then I would really believe. But listen to Hebrews.

Hebrews 11 tells us that all those who went before us in the faith are like the people in the stands at the Cain's game, and you're on the ice. You got skates on. You're in the game right now. And they're all looking at you and saying, man, I wish I were you because where you stand in history, what was fuzzy to me is now clear to you. What was fuzzy to Abraham—God, what are you doing—is now crystal clear to the weakest believer who opens this book. What was ambiguous to David is now perfectly made plain to us. What was unsure to Moses is now solid to us in Christ.

It's like an old VCR, an old knob and tube, the big fat TVs. Some of you all remember those before TVs were really flat. Watching a movie on that versus watching the newest OLED, HD, everything clear quality. We have a better place in which we stand. We stand at a point in history where they are saying of us, I wish I were you, those who went before us.

Second question: Are you listening? Are you paying attention? Do you hear what God is saying to you? God is speaking to you. This is who God is. God speaks. God speaks to you. Are you listening? Are you paying attention? If you've heard, do you keep on paying attention?

You know, recently I was on a transatlantic flight, and I watched a movie that probably many of you watched years ago—Interstellar—and it's a movie that's about aliens and space travel and a lot of physics that I didn't understand. It stars Matthew McConaughey and Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway, and they're trying to save the planet, but it's really about communication. The movie is all about communication. Aliens try to communicate with us, a family that can't communicate with one another, a way that we're going to communicate about how the world's going to be saved. And I thought about that. I'm like, man, that's so hard to watch. It's like a big puzzle. It's all complicated. Don't know what people are saying.

But not with God. God is not like this. He doesn't speak to us in puzzles. He's not trying to trick us. He's not spoken to us even in his piecemeal communication. That's not all we get. God has spoken. Are you paying attention? Are you listening to what he has to say?

A Superior Word

What is God saying to you? What's the content of what he's saying? We know this. He's saying Jesus to you. Jesus is what God is trying to say to you. Jesus is that superior word from God that explains so much.

And the writer of Hebrews gives us a little catalog. I think this was probably an early confession of faith, what we read here in these verses about who Jesus is. And listen to these things. We're gonna walk through them really briefly.

He is, number one, heir of all things—the one whom everything was made, everything was created. That's a mouthful. But it means Jesus was at the beginning, and Jesus is at the end. Jesus was there before everything started, and everything was for him. It's like a family who puts together a will, a couple who put together their will. They're like, we're gonna leave all of this to our children. Well, all of this—all of this universe—was designed to be left to Jesus. He is the heir of all things.

One writer who I appreciate, a guy named Michael Reeves, he says, this is a problem, kind of like in your software, a background virus that runs in sort of our understanding of the gospel for so many people. It's not easy to spot, but it has a way of kind of eroding away your confidence in God over time.

And it's this. It's the sneaking suspicion that, yeah, Jesus saves. That's what the cross is for. But he's not really the creator and heir of all things. Now why does that matter? Because you could come in a place like this, and you could sing songs on a Sunday morning, and you can nod when the pastor says things, or we read along with confessions and creeds, but you can drive home then. And on your way home, you pass through the streets of our city. And you're like, oh, all of that. That's where real life is happening. That's where the real action is. That's what's really going on. And it doesn't feel like at all that this is Jesus' world. It feels like real life is what happens out there, and we say some good words about Jesus in here.

And you know what happens with that? It dulls this sense in us. It gives us a sense of like all that Jesus is is a little nibble of chocolate to us. Little nibbles, little comfort, an imaginary friend who saves souls but nothing else. It's like Christianity is just something smeared on top, like a little spread on top of real life, but it's so thin. It's so weak.

The Bible knows no such laughable Jesus, no such cartoon Jesus, no such trifling Jesus. He is the one through whom all things were made. Everything was made. Every sea urchin. Every star that we can now see through the benefit of the James Webb Space Telescope, every wheat of grain, every molecule, it all belongs to him.

Older generations had a word that they used to describe the stars in the sky that we don't say anymore. They called them the heavenly host. And it was an idea that the stars in the heaven were like a chorus, and they were singing back to you the praises of God. All this is his. All this belongs to Jesus. All of it.

But more, he's also the radiance of God, like the sun in our sky. You know, the sun is something we have to be really careful about. Some of you, like me, more than others. In the last couple weeks, we've been reminded about the radiance. Many people traveled to that stretch of land between Maine and Texas to watch the eclipse, the solar eclipse. You had to buy the special goggles to see it. Did you think about the fact that even when the sun is blocked, you have to have special goggles to look at it? It's that dangerous. It's that powerful even when it's being blocked out. That's incredible. That's radiance.

The sun doesn't just give us light. It gives us heat and radiation and vitamin D. It gives us gravity that holds our planet in place. It creates our sense of time. It demarcates for us all the days, and then also the seasons. The sun is much more than light. It is radiance. It's power.

Think about what we say about what the sun does to us. You go out on a nice day, not like today, but like a couple days ago, you're guaranteed almost a sunburn. You have to put sunscreen on. And when we go out and we go out in the sun like that, we don't say, "Hey, got too much sunlight today." What do we say? "I got too much sun." The sun itself, we know it's both helpful to us and also dangerous to us.

In the Bible, God's presence was demonstrated by the cloud and the fire—this big cloud of God's glory, this big pillar of fire, God's Shekinah glory in Exodus and in Numbers. When it came down on the mountain where Moses received the law, people were scared. They knew: don't go near that. That's God's radiance. It's dangerous to us. Even Moses said, don't even touch the mountain.

Who is Jesus? What do we read here? Jesus is the radiance of God. He doesn't just have radiance. He's the radiance of God. All that power, all that holiness, all that glory, all that beauty, all that concentrated into one person, Jesus.

When John and Peter went up on the mountain with Jesus, they saw him transformed. They saw him unveiled. Who he really is. And what was the word that was used? Radiance. Blindingly white. Like looking at him with special goggles. That's who Jesus is.

But again, that's not all. He's also the exact expression of God's nature. That means that Jesus is what God is like. Jesus is what God is like.

Now, I know you know what it is to get an impression of something. You sleep too hard on the sheets, and you wake up and you got wrinkles all over you. And you know that from sleeping too hard, you get an exact imprint, exact impression of what your sheets look like on your face. You take a quarter and you mush it into Play Doh, you mush it into Silly Putty, and you pull off the quarter, you get an exact impression, exact imprint of your quarter.

Well, the Bible doesn't use the word impression to describe Jesus. It uses the word expression. It's like turned up to the tenth power. Jesus is not just kind of what God is sort of like. Jesus is the embodiment of everything that God is.

The exact representation of who God is in human form in a way that's possible to be near and to touch and to see. There is no god in heaven who is unlike Jesus. Jesus is a chip off the old block of his father. Jesus said, "If you've seen me, you've seen the father."

I love how one writer puts it this way: "There is in fact no god behind the back of Jesus. No act of God other than the acts of Jesus. No God, but the God we see and meet in Jesus. Jesus Christ is the open heart of God, the very love and life of God poured out to redeem humanity. The mighty hand of power of God stretched out to heal and to save sinners."

All things are in God's hands. But the hands of God and the hands of Jesus in life and death are the same. Hallelujah. Jesus is what God is like. The exact, precise, complete, fullest expression of what God is like.

And what else? He's the one who sustains all things by his powerful word. I looked up some astronomy facts, so if I get these wrong, you can correct me. Our solar system has a diameter of about 7.5 billion miles. If I got in a car today and could drive across the diameter of our solar system at sixty-five miles an hour, it would take one thousand four hundred and twenty-six years. That's just our sun and the eight planets.

Astronomers tell us there are 3,916 and counting solar systems in the Milky Way galaxy alone, and between 200 billion and 2 trillion galaxies in the whole universe. Jesus is sustaining all that right now. Everything. From the stars at the furthest reaches that we haven't seen yet to the hairs on your head. Everything.

Nothing is out of place, out of control. It looks like chaos sometimes here. It looks like it's all falling apart. We get really frightened about how this world is going, how our country is going, what's happening in our lives and the lives of people we love. But even when chaos seems around every corner, Jesus has everything in his hands. As the song goes, he's got the little bitty baby. He's got you and me, brother. He's got you and me, sister. He's got all things, the whole world in his hands.

The Seated Victor

And finally, he's the seated victor. Having made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God. The sitting down is the place of rest. Jesus has completed the work of redemption for us.

I love how one long dead theologian describes this. He describes Jesus like the conquering king, touring the top of his castle, looking out over all the land that he's conquered. He says it this way: "Nothing of God looks terrible in Christ to a believer. The sun has risen. The shadows are vanquished. God walks upon the battlements of love. Justice has left its sting in the savior's side. The law has been disarmed. Weapons out of hand. This is life eternal, to know God believingly in all the glories of his mercy and justice in Jesus Christ."

Jesus is the best expression, the fullest expression of what God is saying to you. He can tell you the full truth because he is the truth. He is the most full expression of God's word to you.

Superior in Every Way

This is why we can say: he's superior in every way. As I said at the beginning, every commentator agrees the theme of this book is no mystery. They all say "more and better," and I say superior, but all of those are comparative words. I'm using superior because it appears here in verse four, and also because I like the word super, which is in superior. Jesus is super. He's the best.

I'm a big fan of the movie Nacho Libre. It stars Jack Black as a monk who grew up in an orphanage and took orders to become a monk himself. He wants, more than anything else, to be a luchador, a Mexican wrestler. He's obsessed with this particular luchador named Ramses, who is a walking muscle with a gold mask that he wears, and he is the champion.

There's a great scene where the trainer is describing Ramses, and this is what he says: "Ramses is number one. His arms are number one. His legs are number one. His eyes are number one. Ramses is number one."

I think that's a lot of Christians. You might be here and be a Christian, and yeah, Jesus is number one. You believe it. But the truth is that you and I live in a world all the time of comparison, measuring.

We compare things all the time, mostly other people's lives to our lives. And the heart of doing this sermon series on the book of Hebrews is for us, for each of us, to be able to come to this book and say, do we really believe this? Are we sure that Jesus is better than, and more than, and superior to? I mean, we can sing all the songs, and pray all the prayers and nod, but is it a daily reality to us that Jesus is not just number one in a general sense, but he's better. He's more. He's superior.

The reality is, I think that most of us, we're not so impressed. There's a desire to sort of move on. Something else is more interesting. Something else is clamoring for your attention. There's always more stuff to do. You're busy. You're tired. You're stressed out. Lots of things on your mind. Your day is consumed with your worries and your schedule and your longings and your hungers and your priorities and the people who need you and your desires and your hopes and all the things, and Jesus becomes another thing.

Here's my hope for us. We remember Jesus really is superior. You know, this is my flashlight I take camping right here. I mean, it's impressive in a dark room like this. But I looked it up this week. You can buy a tactical flashlight that makes this look Mickey Mouse. You can buy a tactical flashlight that is way high power, 3,200 lumens, indestructible. You can drive your Jeep over the top of it. It's blinding. It's got a distance that you can shine it of up to 1,600 feet. Now that's kind of awesome, a tactical flashlight like that.

But you take a tactical flashlight outside on a sunny day in Raleigh, and it's a joke. I mean, compared to our sun, you can't even see it on a bright day. And it certainly doesn't give you vitamin D or radiation or provide for photosynthesis for plants, provide heat, or regulate the seasons, or separate our time. It doesn't do any of those things. It's just a little metal flashlight. It's superior in every way to this one, but it's such a joke of a comparison. And I feel like that doing this series on Jesus.

C.S. Lewis portrayed the Christian's growing experience of Jesus in his book series for kids, The Chronicles of Narnia. And in one of those stories, Lucy, caught up in her own spiritual quest, she sees the lion Aslan, who is the Christ figure of the series, and she hasn't seen him in a while. And he's shining, white and huge in the moonlight, and in a burst of emotion, she rushes to him and throws her arms around him. And then she gazes up into his face, and she's surprised. He says to her, "Welcome, child."

"Aslan," she said, "you're bigger."

"That is because you are older, little one," he answered. "Not because you are? I am not. But every year you grow, you will find me bigger."

May it be so for us—expanding souls, ever discovering that there is better to Jesus, more than we know, better than we had hoped, superior to everything, more to love, more to cherish in every way.

In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.