Welcome to Delight in Grace, the teaching ministry of Rich Powell, pastor of Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. Dark rooms are a little scary. Walk into a dark place and you want to get the light on as soon as you can, because you need to see what's around you and where to go. But humans want more than just seeing. We're unique in creation because we long to be part of something greater than ourselves, and we believe that there should be ultimate good. That's because we were created in God's image. He made us for Himself. Within each of us is a longing that only God can satisfy.
This is why Christmas is a deeply meaningful holiday. We celebrate the time that God directed His light into our darkness. When Jesus came to us, He was the radiance of the glory of God. This series from the beginning of the letter of Hebrews unpacks all that that means for us. You could turn in your Bibles to Hebrews chapter 1.
There should be some Bibles in front of you if you do not have a copy. Beginning in verse 1. Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets. But in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed the heir of all things, through whom also He created the world.
He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of His nature, and He upholds the universe by the word of His power. After making purifications for sin, He sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much superior to the angels as the name He has inherited is more excellent than theirs. For to which of the angels did God ever say, You are my Son, today I have begotten you. Or again, I will be to Him a Father, and He shall be to me a Son. And again, when He brings the firstborn into the world, He says, let all God's angels worship Him. Of the angels, He says, make His angels winds and His ministers a flame of fire. But of the Son, He says, your throne, O God, is forever and ever. This scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom.
You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness. Therefore, God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions. Let's pray. Father, we are thankful, grateful for the gift of your Son, who was made a little lower than the angels and dwelt among us. Father, may we continue our worship now through the hearing of your word and through the shaping of our hearts in obedience to your will. It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. For these Sundays of December, we will be in the first chapter of Hebrews. The Supremacy of God's Son is the title of this series.
The title for this morning is The Radiance of God's Glory. Let me give us some human context here. Among humanity, we as humans, and includes all of us, there is a general fascination with being able to connect with something or someone greater than ourselves. It's a part of being human. Well, how do we see that in our human community?
Well, let me give you some common examples. Let's take athletics fandom as one example. We buy the merchandise. We want to wear the jersey, right? We want to identify with our team. And when our team wins, we say, we won, right? You had nothing to do with it, but you want to identify with it because it's your team and you are emotionally invested in that team. Emotionally invested in that team.
Not only that, if your team loses, it's a bad day, right? Because you are a part of the experience of what that athletic team does. But there's also another example I could look at.
We could look at the celebrity focus. It's so common among all of humanity, right? And we all do it. We all participate in it.
I don't think there are any exceptions to that. It could be an actor. It could be a musician. It could be an author. It could be a politician.
It could be an influencer. What do we want? We want to know the details about this. We study the details.
We love it when we find out details about this individual's life or their routine or whatever. But not only that, we often want to look like them. We wear the clothes they wear. We do our hair the way they do their hair. We want every opportunity we have to be near them, to be in the same room with them, to be in a crowd that's seeing them in person.
We would love to be a part of that. What's even better is if I could speak to them and, what if I could touch them? You can identify with this, can't you? Say, mm-hmm.
If you didn't, you're lying. You know, we're also drawn to, people are drawn to energy. There could be energy in any movement, and people are drawn to that. It could be social.
It could be political. It could be spiritual. We've seen it happen, and people are drawn to that. And that's because there is this fascination of wanting to be able to connect with something or someone greater than ourselves.
There's nothing like it in any other part of creation. The devotion to a group or a movement or a person, the emotional attachment that comes to that, you don't see that in the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, you don't see that anywhere else, but it's in humans. And I think this speaks to human uniqueness in a way to which the Bible speaks. What does it mean that we are created in the image of God?
Among many other things, it also means at least these three things. The fact that I, that you and I, are created in the image of God is that we inherently pursue a greater purpose, a higher purpose greater than ourselves. Now that seems almost like it's contradictory to the age in which we live where there's the rise and triumph of the modern self. But that's the whole problem with it, that the self becomes the greatest and most important reality. We see ourselves as the supreme being, but we want to pursue a higher purpose. A second one is that we look for, we long for, every one of us longs for an ultimate good.
I don't think there are any exceptions to that. And so this higher purpose and this ultimate good that we long for, within each one of us, there is a craving to have a part in it, and to experience it. That's part of being created in the image of God, of bearing God's image. The reason why we crave it so much is because there is also another knowledge that we have, and it is a common knowledge among all humans, and it is the knowledge of ourselves. We know that we are limited. We know that we have limited abilities. We know that we have, I personally, have limited knowledge.
I understand that. Not only do we know our limits, but we also know our brokenness, our imperfection. Every one of us grapples with the problem of evil.
I don't think there are any exceptions to that at all. We know when something's not right. And, may I say, it's much easier to discern that in others' brokenness, isn't it? The very idea of there being a supreme being, whether a person believe it's one or three hundred million, the very idea of there being a supreme being or supreme beings is ingrained in the fabric of what it means to be human. Because we are image bearers. And, as it has been revealed to us, not only were we created by that supreme being, but we were also created for that supreme being. That defines purpose. That defines meaning. It defines the direction of history.
It's his history. It's his universe. So, through history then, what we have observed through history is that there have been many metaphysical encounters. Mankind, frail, limited, human, temporal mankind encountering something that is beyond the natural physical realm. Agents of the divine or of the spirit world. It's been a common experience through human history.
Someone in the physical world and in the temporal realm encountering something from what they believe is outside the physical realm. Thanks for joining us here at Delight in Grace. You've been listening to Rich Powell, the lead pastor at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. The Delight in Grace mission is to help you know that God designed you to realize your highest good and your deepest and your deepest satisfaction in him, the one who is infinitely good. We hope you'll join us again on weekdays at 10 a.m.
