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're listening to part three of a message first preached on December 1, 2024 at Grace Bible Church in Winston-Salem. And in the form of flesh, you have the exact imprint of the very nature of God.
It's a phenomenal concept. Everything that God is like became visible and present in Jesus. As Paul again said in Colossians chapter 2 verse 9, in Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily.
How on earth? In Him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily. This is why John says, and I think in a very clear way, no one has ever seen God.
The only God who is at the Father's side, He has made Him known. That word there that is used in the Greek, has made Him known, is the word from which we get the word exegesis. And we use that when I'm studying in my office or teachers are studying, right there, they're taking the text and they're exegeting the text. They're drawing the meaning out of the text using the proper rules of hermeneutics, the rules of literary language.
And you draw out the meaning from the text. And so what Jesus has done is He is a representation of who God is. He explains God. So the idea of the word here that is used is to tell fully, to describe, to explain, to make known all of that. Jesus shows and explains God to us as fully as it can be done.
That's who He is. That is why Jesus, the man who walked in history, said these words when someone asked him, one of his disciples, show us the Father. What did Jesus say? Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father. Listen, you can't just say that unless you want to be certified and carted off in a white jacket.
You can't just say that unless it's true. Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father. John 14, 9. Because He came to take us to the Father.
This is the point that the writer of Hebrews is getting across to us, the supremacy of God's Son. Do we realize who this man was and is? So what does this mean for us? Okay, good.
I get it. What does this mean for us? Well, first of all, you say I get it, yet it requires your contemplation. Think about this, because this is profound. There's nothing else like it in the universe of faiths.
There's nothing else like this. That God would do this. So what does this mean for us?
Five things I want to share with you this morning. Number one, God cares about us enough to make Himself known to us in person. He cares enough about us to make Himself known to us in person. The gods, the demigods of mythology, the gods of human imagination, they stand aloof.
And there's a good reason for that, because they don't exist, right? But our imaginations are very powerful, because the belief in a supreme being is a part of the fabric of being human. And if we don't know God in the way that He's made Himself known, we will worship the God of our imagination.
And He will look way too much like us. Not the God of the universe. Second Corinthians, chapter 5, verse 19, God in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself. Second Corinthians 5 19. And so He made Himself known to us in person, so that, get this, He gave us someone to follow. Not a creed, not a concept, a person to follow. A person to look to, a person to observe, to study, to follow. So that we could know Him, so that we could walk with Him, so that we could love Him, so that we could recognize that we were created not just to follow a code, or not just to manifest certain behaviors, but we were created to know Him, and to walk with Him, and to love Him, and to delight in Him. So He gave us His Son. Helping us understand that it is the highest human function loving God is. The very highest human function. And following Him is the light that you need for your path.
You have a person to follow. Let me just stop and think about this. What is your perception of Christianity and living the Christian life, whatever that means to you? You know that's a phrase I love to hate. What is that, what comes to mind when you think about that? Do you think about all the things that you have to do?
Do you think about the rules that you have to follow? Is that what comes to mind when you think about the walk of faith? May God rescue you from that. Because what it is, is God coming to us, and rescuing us, and redeeming us, and reconciling us, so that we will walk with Him, and love Him, and delight in Him, and thereby realize our highest good and our deepest satisfaction. That's the gospel of grace. That's why God came to us in person. I'll never forget, those of you who are here who remember Kyron Brown, he and Margaret were members of the church for a while. They now live out in New Mexico.
I believe they're still there. But Kyron had experienced a very debilitating stroke, and I would meet with him every Friday for lunch. We'd get together and go have lunch, and he struggled sometimes. He really struggles, like, is this really happening to me?
Or am I just dreaming? He would really struggle with some of that. We would talk about that, and the Lord would give him strength and insight, and told him, Kyron, your success is you can be successful, just love God and walk with Him, because that's what you were created to do. And he got so much encouragement from that.
But he would always use this, and yeah, I think he gave it as a living picture in this, a while back, several years back. But he would go, in his younger years, he would go what's called spelunking. It's like caving. But you go in a place, and you have to have a leader. You have to have a guide taking you through the cave, right, because you don't know where you're going.
You very easily get lost or die, right, in the cave. And so he says, he was always remember this guy he went spelunking with, his name was Tom. And he says, you know, it's dark in there, but as long as Tom is in front of you, and you're following him, you have confidence that you know where you're going.
Because at least Tom does. So just follow him. He told me that over and over and over again. And I said, you know, Kyron, you're in a blessed state.
Because we, who think we're self-sufficient, we keep forgetting that, don't we? The Lord came to us in person. He gave us his son to follow him. What this also means for us, number two, is that there is hope. There is hope. John makes it clear the forces of darkness cannot, have not, and cannot overcome him in his light. There is hope. We can feel so surrounded by darkness in our chaos in the world today. But there is his hope. He came to us and it's his grace, his redemption, his goodness, and the forces of darkness cannot overcome it.
So there's a very definite, confident hope. Number three, what this means for us is life. We can have life. You're sitting here this morning, sitting in the chair, looking at me, listening to me. What do you mean, Rich? I have life.
What are you talking about? Well, there's existence, and then there's life. 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 satisfaction in him, the one who is infinitely good. We hope you'll join us again on weekdays at 10 a.m.
