The Modern Church's Sissified Jesus

Our view of Jesus matters, our Christology matters. It matters because it affects everything that we believe and do as Christians. And in this culture in which we live, we have a view of Jesus that is more than slightly askew. We think of Jesus not as a very masculine character. For example, when you think about the pictures that we have of Jesus, and just full disclosure, I have a problem with that, just in general because of the Second Commandment. But the pictures that we do have of Jesus are pictures of a European metrosexual with the hair of a shampoo model, hands that have never seen a hard day's work, and feet that have never walked a mile. That's the visual image that we have of Jesus, this sissified, feminized, European gorgeous picture. Isaiah said that we wouldn't have been attracted to his form, but he's gorgeous, which also, by the way, says something about the way we really think about people. We equate righteousness with attractiveness. We prize beauty above all, and not even in the right sense of the word. But what we believe about him theologically is closely aligned with what we perceive about him visually, because we do think of Jesus as soft. We do think of Jesus as one who does and confront people. We do think of. Jesus as the God who comes along on the right side of the Bible to apologize for what the guy did on the left side. We see him as a kinder, gentler administration. And as a result of this, when we encounter people, our evangelism is affected by our view of Jesus. When the church writes songs, our worship is impacted by our view of Jesus. We sing like we're singing to a beautiful European metrosexual shampoo model with flawless hands and flawless feet. When we work throughout theology, what's the biggest reason or the biggest problem that people have with the doctrine of election. It's just not nice. And it's one thing to have these opinions and ideas in isolation. It's another to have these opinions and ideas in direct opposition to what we see in scripture. That's what's problematic. That our Christology is completely askewed, and as a result of that, all of the rest of our practical theology is worked out in a way that is demeaning to the Christ of Scripture. So with that in mind, let's look at Jesus. Open your bibles to the first chapter of the last book in the Bible, Book of Revelation, and it is all. As is always my practice, I have to I have to. I have to. I know people don't want to wax professorial when they open up Revelation, but I have to wax professorial for just a moment. You have to have at least one moment of me being a professor and giving you a lesson that you have to have. Is that all right? Just for one moment, here is the lesson. The Book of Revelation has no S on the end of it. You just hold onto that, all right, wherever you go for the rest of your life. Just hold onto that right there. Okay, it's just one revelation, Okay, revelations. Sometimes when I tell people that, the next thing, next time I mentioned the book, I put an S on it. As we're there, I want you to see something here. I love this letter. I didn't. I didn't love this letter. Actually, it was the first letter that I read as a new Christian. The first one I read as a new Christian. I just kind of went to the end trying to figure some stuff out. Probably was well, I know, it's no. Probably it just wasn't a good idea. This wasn't a good idea to start there. But yeah, it was the first book that I read. I didn't grow up in George. I didn't grow up around the Gospel. I was raised in you know, in south central Los Angeles, California, by a single teenage Buddhist mother. First time I ever heard the Gospel was my first year in university, and the first thing I ever read as a new believer was it was Revelation, so that it was kind of it was. Traumatic for me. Poll after poll after poll, you. Talk to Christian people about the one book that they would love to hear taught in church, and at the top of the list it's Revelation. Poll after poll after poll, you talk to pastors about the one book that they don't want to preach at church. At the top of the list is Revelation. And so many people never hear anything preach from Revelation, and if they do, it's only from the first five chapters. And we're finishing revelation this in the next several weeks at church when chapter twenty one right now, and I just regret the fact that I haven't spent more time in my ministry in this particular book. It is absolutely magnificent. And one of the things that I love about it is I love I love the literary style of revelation. This book is written beautifully, and I just want to give you a flavor for that. As we begin here, we're gonna look mainly at that second paragraph beginning of verse four, but I want to back up so that you can get a flavor for the rhythm of what I call the revelation waltz. There are numbers in this book that are important, right And we're aware of the numbers and the numbers that are important. And we know that the number twelve, for example, is important because it's the number of the people of God. We know that the number of ten is important. That's the number one of the numbers of completion, although it's usually a number that is reserved for the other side, for the beast and the false prophet and so on and so forth. We know the number seven is that number of perfection or completion. We know that because number seven is very important, that there's another corresponding number three and a half that's a broken seven. That's also very important. And if you understand that three and a half is perfection and completion, and that seven is perfection completion, and three and a half is a broken seven, there are a number of things in the Book of Revelation that just open up to you this time period of three and a half years. For example, that you see over and over and over again. There's the number four. Number four is this number of the earth and particularly the people of the Earth, or the four corners of the Earth. And then there's that number three, number three that serves a dual purpose and revelation. The number three, of course is a reference to our God, the trying God, but it's also a reference to what I like to call the revelation waltz. There's a rhythm in this letter. There's a one two three, one two three one two three rhythm, and so many things that you see in threes. And I believe that it is a sort of. Mnemonic device to help the early Church remember this book, because when you have things that come in a rhythm like that, it is much easier to remember them. But listen, if you will. The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him, showed up his servants the things that must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John. There was a one, two three. God gave it to him. He gave it to his angel, gave it to his servant, who one bore witness to the word of God, and two to the testimony of Jesus Christ, and even three to all that he saw one two three, one two three. Here's another one. Blessed is the one who one reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed to those who to hear, and three who keep what is written in it, for the time is near three threes. Now come to the next paragraph, John, to the seven churches that are in Asia. How many of you know there are more than seven churches at this time in Asia, But he picks these seven churches. That number of seven is a number of completion. He's speaking to all the churches seven churches that are in Asia. Grace to you and peace, peace from whom one him who is and was and is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before the throne. Now we get the number seven thrown in there. What's that though, we'll answer that question in a moment, and from Jesus Christ stop there. I think when you understand the pattern and you understand the use of numbers, you understand the identity of the seven spirits who are before the throne. There's a picture of the throne room here being foreshadowed this throne that we're going to see in chapters four and five. And the picture here is a picture that will make a lot more sense when we understand this lamp stand for throne and the oil in these lamps stands. We understand that this is language that is used to refer to the Holy Spirit, that number of seven being that number of completion or perfection. We also understand that this is a presentation of the Trinity. There is the Father, the one who was and is and is to come, and there is the Son Jesus Christ. And in between those two there's these seven spirits. So are we talking about a Trinitarian reference to the Father and the Son and angels or the Father and the Son and some other spirit or the father and no, it's a father and the Son and the Spirit. Why is this significant, Well, because the first thing that we see about the identity of Jesus Christ is that he is a member of the god Head, not just that Jesus is God. Not just that. And I really believe I've become convicted myself that we are not nearly as trinitarian as we ought to be. But there is a clear trinitarian picture here. It's not just that Jesus is God, but that he's a member of the Godhead. It's not just that Jesus is divine, but that he is a member of the Trinity. That he has existed eternally as God, that although he took on a human nature in his incarnation, he did not come into existence in the incarnation. And although he relates to his Father in the economic trinity, there being sent by his Father and powered by the Spirit. Even while he is here in his human nature, he nonetheless has this divine nature as well, that hyposthetic union that we heard of earlier. That he is fully God and fully man. It's one thing to say that Jesus is fully God and fully man. It's another thing to say that he is part of the Godhead, that he has existed eternity in perfect union with the Father and the Spirit. Always in perfect union and perfect harmony with the Father and the Spirit. Completely and utterly equal to the Father and the Spirit, he is God. This is significant for a number of reasons. Number one, it's significant in our worship. We worship the Father in the name of the Son and the power of the Spirit. We pray to the Father and the name of the Son and the power of the Spirit. Our worship is trinitarian. When we baptize, we baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Our baptism, it's trinitarian. But here's another thing, on a very practical level. You remember I told you that this affects our worship, that yes, it does, but it also affects our witness. How does it affect our witness? Let me give you one example. It is very very common for people to say, especially for example, in relation to all of the recent you know, hooplah over same sex marriage and so on and so forth. If you've had a discussion with someone about this issue, you have run into people who have said, yes, but Jesus never said anything about homosexuality. Well. Number one, that's not true. Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount talks about Pornia. He talks about sexual impurity, which is a reference to the Pornia code in Leviticus eighteen, which clearly upholds the idea that homosexuality is sinful. Because and if that's not what he's doing, we've got a huge problem because Leviticus eighteen also talks about incest, and you know, we get some beastiality in there and some other stuff in there. So if our new Christian ethic is only if Jesus talked about it specifically, then homosexuality is the least of our problems. But Jesus did address the issue of homosexuality because he addressed the issue of sexual impurity, He addressed the issue of fornication. He also addressed the issue of marriage and the nature of marriage. But here's the other problem. In doing this, We divorced Jesus from the rest of the Bible, and we let people do that, We let him do that. Well, Jesus never said anything about it. I mean we just start scratching our heads and going, oh, well, well when people say that and just look at him and say so, you can't divorce him from the rest of the Bible. You can't do that. And the reason people continue to do this is because it works. But here's the other issue. Well, Jesus never said anything about homosexuality, and I'm just I'm just gonna go ahead and be honest. I may have told you all this last time I was here. There's this guy kind of lives on the inside of me. Name is bad voting. Everything is cool as long as I'll let him out every once in a while, you know, go to the gun range or jiu jitsu tournaments. We're cool. But you know, sometimes when I'm when I'm dealing with people like this, he wants to talk to him, and I just really have to try to not let him do that because I hide him. Sure that brother saved some time, but at any rate, bad voting. It's excited when people bring us up, you know he does because they're like, well, Jesus never talked about home sexuality. Dear friend, Jesus is a member of the Godhead. Jesus has existed eternally in perfect union with the Father and the Spirit, which means when rocks of fire and brimstone were coming down on Sodom and Gomorrah. He was not absent, nor was he in disagreement. He is a member of the Godhead. Tell the truth. When people bring that up to you, you don't think about that. We don't think about the fact that Jesus is a member of the Godhead. He's a member of the Trinity. And as such, you can't divorce him from the God on the left side of the book, because he is the God on the left side of the book. Perfect union, perfect agreement, no disagreement whatsoever. In fact, he raises the stakes. You have heard it said, don't commit adultery. But I say to you, you look at a woman with lust. It committed adultery already in your heart. He raises the stakes. So again there is this perfect union unity. This affects our worship, and it affects our witness. We worship the one who is God. We worship the one who has always existed as God. We worship the one who is in perfect unity and perfect harmony with the Father and the Spirit. We worship the triune God. Jesus is worthy of worship because he's God. But even beyond that, watch what he says to him who was and is and is to come from him who wasn't his and is and is to come from the seventh spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ. Now he's going to describe him. Now he's got the three. We've got the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. There's a three on the Father. We got another three was is to come. Now we're gonna get two different triads on Jesus Jesus Christ. First, the faithful witness, the faithful witness. Intrinsically the faithful witness. He is the witness who can only be faithful. He is the Way, He is the Truth, he is the Life. He is the faithful witness. He is the one who bears witness faithfully because he can only bear witness faithfully. He is the faithful witness who communicate to us faithfully who God is. And he is the only one who can communicate to us faithfully who God is, because he is God, and God has taken on a second nature so that in that second nature he can live as the god Man and bear faithful witness to God. So he is the faithful witness in that regard. But he is the faithful witness in another regard, because remember there are these two natures. So in the one sense, he is the faithful witness who brings to us the truth about God. He is the faithful witness who shows us in the flesh who God is. But in the other sense, as a man who lives, as a man born under the law, he is the faithful witness who kept the law. Now, saying that he's the faithful witnesness, this doesn't happen in a vacuum. Saying that he's the faithful witness puts him in the line of redemptive history and demonstrates his superiority to every other witness who's come before him. He is the faithful witness. There are other witnesses who have not been faithful. He is the faithful Witness. Now this goes in both directions. It goes backwards to all of those witnesses who came before who were not quite faithful, and it also goes forward because the rest of the Book of Revelation is about those witnesses who are faithful even unto death, and about Christ the faithful witness, eventually avenging the martyrdom of his saints. So on the left side, as we go backward, he is the faithful witness. And this is incredibly important. By the way, this is what Matthew's gospel is all about. People are again another way, this is another one of those areas where our witness comes into play. How many times do people come to us and you know when you get all these gospels and they don't as see, the exact same thing, and they don't have everything in the exact same order, and da da da da da dah da da dah, and we go into all these kind of convulsions. Again bad mode. He just likes that. I gotta like hold him back because he really does. He says, y, hey, you got you got different gospels because you've got diferent people right into different audiences. And when you speak to different audiences, we have different understandings. You communicate different things. For example, Matthew is communicating to a Jewish audience. And when Matthew communicates to this Jewish audience, he communicates that Jesus is faithful Israel. How does he do that? Well, if you just go backwards and look on the left side of the book. God creates man, and man sins, and when man sins, God brings judgment. But he also brings hope. He brings hope. In Genesis chapter three and verse fifteen, I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. Here brews your head. Your bruise is healed. So there is one who is going to come from the woman who's going to crush the head of the snake. This is going to be dealt with. That's the thesis statement of the rest of redemptive history. For the rest of redemptive history, we are looking for the seed of the woman who will crush the head of the snake, or the faithful witness. And there are many in that line, but ultimately they all fall short. We go through that line, and eventually we get to these people who become Israelites, and Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and these twelve tribes who eventually go into Egypt. Interestingly enough, Matthew begins as gospel with what genealogy why tracing Jesus as the promised Seed. Well, then after you identify him as the promised Seed, what happens, Well, what happened to Israel? Pharaoh wanted to kill all the male children, and they had to be protected while they're in Egypt. Herod wants to kill all the male children, and Jesus goes to the same Egypt to be protected. There, not only is he the promised seed, but he's the protected seed. Eventually he comes out, and then he goes through baptism where in the Jordan, same place Israel had to go through before they came into the land of Promise. He goes into the wilderness, kind of like Israel went into the wilderness. They were there for forty years. He's tempted there for forty days. Now. While he's tempted, he's tempted in three very specific ways. Us to the eyes, thus of the flesh, and the boastful pride of life, the exact same three things that led the first atom to eat the fruit. But the last atom is the faithful atom, not like the first atom. He's the faithful witness. Then he goes up onto a mountain and starts teaching, kind of like Moses, and he says, you have heard it said, but I say unto you. After he teaches for a few chapters, he comes down and starts healing and casting out demons, kind of like the Conquest. Eventually he goes to the cross as Isaiah's suffering servant and then raises from the dead. In other words, Israel became a people, but they were unfaithful. They had a law, and the law couldn't save them. They had judges, judges couldn't save them. Eventually they got kings, and the kings were unfaithful and couldn't save them. Eventually came prophets, and eventually they were taken away from their land. Christ comes as the faithful witness, the prophet, priest and king, who is faithful where Israel was not faithful. He is the last Adam. He is the promised Seed. He is faithful Israel. He is the faithful Witness. This is who are Jesus is. He is connected to all of redemptive history and even going forward. He is the faithful witness who will vindicate those who die at the hands of the unholy Trinity. Not only is he the faithful witness, but he's a faithful witness. He's the first born from the dead. I love that he's the first born from the dead. Doesn't say he was the only one resurrected from the dead. Says he was the first born from them, which means that there are going to be others resurrected after him. Amen. So Jesus doesn't just conquer death, but Jesus conquers death on behalf of all of those who are in him, so that we have hope that we will conquer death as well. This is of great significance. So again, what does the world want to say? What does liberalism want to say? Liberalism wants to say the resurrection may be true, it may not. It really doesn't matter why, because ultimately we just need Jesus for his moral example. No, we don't. We need one who can conquer death and the graves. And that's precisely what Christ has done. Because death is the last enemy. We will all face this last enemy, and Christ is the one who has been victorious over this last enemy. Sorry, got a little rest, I'm bogging on, let me out, all right, all right, we got it, all right. The faithful witness, the first born from the dead. All of the religions basically say this, you need to have a religious experience from that point on, do more good stuff than bad stuff, and hope for the best when you die. Is that an oversimplification only slightly, Only slightly. Christianity does not communicate that the Bible does not communicate that death is real. It is the last enemy. We will all go there unless the Lord returns first. But as we go there is one who anchored death. We don't hope that death can be overcome. We know that death has been overcome by whom, by the faithful witness, and because he's the faithful witness, by whom by God himself. That's who he is, the faithful witness and the first born from the dead. We serve a risen savior. We worship Christ in our midst We don't just memorialize Christ who was. We worship Christ. We are in Christ. We have union and communion with Christ. Christ is seated at the right hand of the Father forever making intercession for us. He has overcome death, he has overcome the grave. He has won victory, and not only on his own behalf. He is the. First born, the first born, which that means that there are those who follow, and then lastly and the ruler of the kings of the earth. I love that. By the way, when you put this in context, you have to understand we see the kings of the earth a number of times in revelation, especially as we get towards the end, because what happens is the adversary, the harlot, the beast, the false prophet, the dragon. They rally the. Kings of the earth, and the kings of the earth come to fight against God. But when you read that at the end of Revelation, you're supposed to remember that in chapter one you've already read that Jesus is the ruler of the kings of the Earth. Amen. That means there is no human authority that stands over an above his authority. He is the ruler of the kings of the Earth. That means that there is no human authority that is going to thwart what it is that Christ has done and is doing. Fret not, saints. It's one thing to be active in our community. It's one thing to be active in our culture. It's one thing to be active in politics. It's another thing for us to sit around in the corner afraid because some decision came down or some man got elected that we think is going to thwart the plan of the ruler of the kings of the earth. Help you if you're scattered at folks, God is not running for God. Christ is the ruler of the kings of the earth. You did not hear me say our political life is unimportant. You didn't hear me say that. That's not what I'm saying at all. What I am saying is our hope is not there. Why would I put my hope in rulers of the earth when I serve the ruler of rulers of the earth. My hope is not there. Newsflash, America and then New Jerusalem are not synonymous. Just saying now it will be set up somewhere near Texas, but as for the rest of the country, Okay, But sometimes we think that way, and we think, oh, what's gonna happen to America now? And not in the sense that you know, I love my country, I love the people here, I love the freedoms that we have here, but really almost in the sense of we believe this is the new Jerusalem. We believe that this is the new heavens and the new Earth. We believe this is as good as it gets. And if something happens here, then God has fallen off of his throne. Let me give you two reasons why that's problematic. Number One, that's problematic because this is not our home. Number Two, that's problematic because it's arrogant, egocentric, and ignorant. How every time you say that, you say to the Conrad and Bayways of the world, we have more freedoms here because we're more godly than you, and if y'all were just as godly as us, y'all would have a better country. No, we would never say that, well, yes you would, because you think when things don't go well here, it's because the church has stopped being what she's supposed to be, and if the church was just a little more godly that things would be better here. By extension of that very same logic, every country that does not currently enjoy or has not historically enjoyed, the same liberties that we enjoy, it is directly because they lack the kind of godliness that we have. Shame on you, Shame on you, and anybody who's walked into a church outside of American soil knows exactly what I'm talking about. Some of the godliest people on planet Earth have chains put on their church doors and have the place set on fire where they're killed. Some of the most godly saints in the history of the world have been martyred for their faith in places where they do not enjoy the liberties that we enjoy. Some of the most godly men and women in the world today are in prison somewhere, with churches praying for them in ways that you ain't never prayed in your life. How dare we? How dare we? Jesus is the ruler of the kings of the earth, all of the kings of the earth, and they will answer to him. This does not. Mean, and it can't when you read the rest of the revelation. It can't mean that if the people of God are just godly enough that the kings of the earth will love them, Because you keep reading, and the kings of the earth are the ones who killed the people of God because of their godliness, because they hate Christ. So the great irony is because of this unbelievable, completely abnormal experience that we've had here. The rest of the world, the rest of the Christian world, and the rest of the history of the Church people have not experienced what we've experienced here. It's a complete anomaly. And it's not because we're prettier than everybody else. The fact of the matter is, we're so spoiled and arrogant and egocentric that we can't even lift up our eyes and see what godly brothers and sisters are experiencing and recognize one that it's not because because we're more godly than they are, and two that we're not nearly grateful enough for what we have we ought to be grateful. Ze Christology affects more than we think. Thirdly, but those a third one. Now we get from the objective to the subjective. First of all, there is this picture of Christ being worthy of our worship because he's God, because he's a member of the Godhead. We see this picture of him and his Father and the Spirit, and this union and communion within the context of the Godhead. We see then that Jesus has taken on another nature, that he is the god Man, and as the god Man, he is the faithful witness, both the faithful witness as God to man and the faithful witness as man to God. Both the faithful witness passed because he has accomplished with all of the witnesses could not, and the faithful witness future because he will vindicate all those faithful witnesses who are faithful under death. He is the first born from the dead, because he's the faithful witness. And he's the ruler of the kings of the earth. And because of all of this, he's worthy of our worship. Because of all of this, and as we witness, we witness to him in this way as objectively worthy. And all of this is true. And we need to experience and receive and understand the weight of all of this. We need to understand the weight of his majesty. We need to get this picture in our minds. But just when we began to get this picture in our minds, and just when the weight of his majesty almost becomes too much for us to bear, just when we begin to say, I can't even better look at him, maybe I should come into his presence. Back words, John says, to him who loves us? He is God. Bow to him. He's the faithful witness. Honor him, he's the firstborn from the dead. Revere him. He is the ruler of the kings of the earth. Fear him. He loves us. I know we over use the word, but that is awesome. He loves us. Love is significant and direct relation and proportion to the magnitude of the one doing the loving. It's one thing to say, my dog loves me. They just do that to another thing to say my children love me. Still, another thing to say, my wife loves me. Again when you have my dog. My dog is a dog. He's gonna love me because I feed him. He's gonna love me because I feed him, because he's not a cat. Amen, somebody, they just do that. That's what dogs do. You know. There was this cartoon there and there was there were these dogs, and these dogs are sitting in front of their bowl and they're going, Man, these people feed us. They take care of us, because they must be gods. Next caption there's some cats and these people feed us. They take care of us. We must be gods. Some of y'all got cats. You know exactly what I'm talking about. But again, my dog loves me because because because I'm the one who feeds the dog. My children that's different. They have a completely different understanding of who I am. That's different. My wife that's different still because my children think I'm superman. My wife knows I'm not, and yet she loves me. Jesus knows me better than my wife, and he loves me. So now, not only is he worthy of my worship and of my adoration and of my reverence. But on top of that, he loves me. And this makes me yearn to give him the worship and the adoration and the praise and the reverence and the fear and the honor and. All of it that he deserves even more. Because he loves me. Nor is this some sappy, sentimental love. What's being said here is not that Jesus gets a warm feeling in his heart when he thinks about me. That's not what's being said here. John is clear on this picture. And again this is important. Here's where it comes into our witness again, because how many times do we confront sin and people say, oh, we just need to be more loving. What does that mean? What does it mean. You just need to be more I don't know. It just didn't sound very loving, do you know? Sometimes love doesn't sound very loving. If my kid is getting ready to run in front of a car, my love will not sound sappy and sentimental. It may even sound violent. My neighbor's house is on fire and he's in his house sleep, My love for neighbor will kick his door in, break it down if I have to, and drag him out of his house. Now you take that on the context, that may not look loving, but it absolutely is. You See we've confused love with sentimentalism. Well, that just needs to be more loving. It's not loving to tell people who are sinners in the hands of an angry God that they're okay. It's not loving. So there needs to be some context here. What does it mean that he loves me? Does that just mean that he's sentimental towards me? To him who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood, there's his love. Christ died for say, and once for all, the just, for the unjust, in order that he might bring us back to God. God demonstrated his love for us in this and that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Greater love hath no man than this than he laid down his life for his friends. Husbands. Love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her with a washing of water, with the word, that he might present her to himself. See, that's love. It's not just sappy sentimentalism. Love acts. It's an act of the will accompanied by emotion that leads to action on behalf of its object. He loves us, and there is a demonstration of this love. He loves us. He loves us. Christ is loving, and he loves me. When he looks me in the eye and says, go and send no more. He loves me. When he runs me out of the temple with a whip. He loves me. He loved Peter and looked him in the face and said, get thee behind me, Satan. How about that? You see? This is love here again. This is important for her witness, but it's also important for her worship because see, sometimes I don't feel very lovely, and sometimes I don't believe that Jesus loves me, because sometimes I'm looking through the lens of my own emotions, and so here I am, and I don't feel very worshipful. I don't feel very lovely. I don't feel very loved because of ABC and XYZ, I just don't feel loved. And of course, if I don't feel loved, that means Jesus must not be loving me right now, because if he was just loving me right now and pouring his sentimental, sappy love all over me, then I would feel loved right now. When you want to know whether Jesus loves you, do not look in your own heart. Look to the cross. I just don't feel very lovely. Look to the cross where he died. And here's a news flash, he did not feel like doing that. Father. If there is any other way let this bitter cup pass from me. Is you want to run past that? We want to run past that quickly. And we don't want to look there into the humanity of Jesus. We don't want to look there and a man agonizing before he dies, knowing that the cross stands before him. We don't want to pause there and recognize that he did not want to. But you got to pause there in order to appreciate the next line. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours be done. By the way, what do we have there? Number one? We have a picture, a proper understanding of the love Jesus has for us, which is based on the fact that he freed us from our sins by dying for us on the cross. But you also have another picture of the trinitarian demonstration of love for us because the son is there, agonizing, yet he yields to his father. How are the power of the spirit. That's how. Told you there was a triad and made us a kingdom of priests to his God and Father. He loved us, he freed us from our sins, and he made us a kingdom of priests. I've turned back to the left real quick. I want you to get this. Turn back to the left and look at first Peter. First Peter, Chapter two, and then we'll connect our christology again to our worship and our witness. Watch this first pet of chapter two, beginning of verse four, as you come to him, a living stone, rejected by men, but in the sight of God, chosen and precious you, yourselves, like living stones, are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Again back to our text, He loved us, freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us a kingdom of priest to His God and Father, a kingdom of priest who offer acceptable sacrifices. So Christ is worthy of our worship objectively because he's God, the second person of the Trinity. Christ is worthy of our worship because as the god Man, he's the faithful witness he's the firstborn from the dead, and he's the ruler of the kings of the earth. He's worthy, He's worthy, He's worthy. Christ is not only worthy of our worship and our witness, but also we yearn to give to him our worship and our witness. Why because he loved us, and because he freed us from our sins by his blood through the cross. He freed us from our sins. And then thirdly, he made us worthy to worship him. Understand something. Christ is worthy of the worship of every human being who has ever lived. And every need will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God, the Father everyone. He is worthy of our worship. We owe him. And so the God of the universe stands there and says, bow the knee, and worship my son. Worship my son, because he's God, he's the second person of the Trinity. Worship him. Worship my son because he's the faithful witness. Worship my son. You owe it to him as the firstborn from the dead. Worship my son. He's the ruler of the kings of the earth. Worship him and worship no other worship my son, and the rest of the world does this. They either offer worship to idols, to which the father responds that is unacceptable because it's going in the wrong direction. Or, as Conrad just shared with us, we try, as unregenerate men to obey God's command to worship his son because we owe it, and he says, that's unacceptable. But we have to. Yes, you do. You have to. You have to. You have to. You have to. It is not optional. You must worship Christ. Okay, well, here's my worship. It's unacceptable. How does it become acceptable? Christ loves you, frees you from your sins by his blood, and makes you a kingdom of priests who then and only then can offer acceptable worship before God. He makes us worthy to worship. He makes our worship acceptable in spirit and in truth. He alone makes our worship acceptable, makes us worthy to worship Him. Again. This affects. This affects our worship. This affects our worship because our worship now, our worship always has to be cross centered. We offer cross centered worship to the Triune God. Our worship also has to be rooted in redemptive history. We worship God because of who he is and because of. What he's done. And we also worship God in light of the Cross. Why because it's the Cross that makes us worthy to worship when we witness. Same thing is true. We witness because there is a God who demands worship. And we look at a lost, hurting, and dying world and say, you owe God, Worship, worship him. How do we tell them to worship him? By painting a picture of a metrosexual shampoo model with pretty hands and pretty feet and hope that he'll be beautiful enough to elicit some heartfelt emotional response from them, or by pointing them to the second person in the Trinity, demonstrating that his faithful witness preaching the resurrection. He's the firstborn from the dead, challenging all human authority, he's a ruler of the kings of the earth, and then sharing with them that out of his love for his people, he takes their sins to the cross. He dies, he's resurrected on the third day, and we are, in turn, through repentance and faith, raised up with him and made into a royal priesthood, offering imperfect yet completely acceptable worship to the one who is worthy to receive it. This changes our worship, this changes our witness all by changing our view of Christ. Our culture believes that what we need is a soft, feminized, non judgmental Jesus. Do you know why, Because when you say to sinners, God says, worship my son, you owe it to him. Sinners look back at us and say, I don't like that. That's rude. And instead of coming back with the rest of the story, we come back with, well, you know, actually he's not like that. Let me give you another picture. How do you like that one? As one old preacher said, whatever you want him with is what you win him to. And if we win people to a Jesus made in their own image by taking away aspects of his character and person and work that they don't like, we will spend the rest of our ministry doing the same thing. But if we understand who Christ is, and that he is objectively and subjectively worthy of our worship and our witness, then we will not fear, and in following the faithful witness, we will be faithful witnesses as well, some even under death. Even so, Come Lord Jesus, let's pray. Father, We bow before you in the name of your Son, and in the power of your Spirit, acknowledging you as the one, true, Holy and living, Righteous God, one God and three persons existing eternally in perfect unity, harmony and communion. We bow before you in the name of your son, whom you sent to be our redeemer, Your son, the faithful Witness, Your son, the first born from the dead, Your son, the ruler of the kings of the earth, Your son who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, Your son who has made us into a kingdom of priests. For you, o God, so that to you might be the honor, and that to you might be the glory forever. Grant by your grace that our worship and our witness would be conform to these truths, reflective of these truths. Grant that we might offer you that which your due, and Grant that we might witness to it, so that Christ might have the fullness of the reward for which he died. Help us Lord, not merely to object to the images of Jesus in our culture, but to insist on biblical accuracy, not solely because we want to be right, but because we desire to worship You in spirit and in truth, because we desire to know you as you have revealed us to yourself and your word, because we desire to worship you in ways that you have deemed appropriate. Because we recognize our own limitations and weaknesses, We recognize our own short sightedness and selfishness, and so we yield to you. Grant now that even the prayer of our hearts and the words of our mouths might be acceptable in your sight, that Christ might be magnified in us and through us and by us more than he ever has, that we might rest in him, abide in him. He in us. This is our prayer, and we ask it in that name that is above every name, that name at which every knee will bow and every tongue will confess that he is Lord to the glory of God the Father, and the name of Jesus, who is the Christ. Amen