Who Is Jesus- Part #1

Nakita Kolov, the Russian nightmare.

No, the devil's nightmare here. From it's time to man up. Challenging men to step into their true manhood. Your chosen Truth Network Podcast is starting in just a few seconds. Enjoy it. Share it. But most of all, thank you for listening to the Truth Podcast Network. This is the Truth Network.

The following is part one of a two-part program. Do you feel like you're on a religious treadmill? Do you feel like Christianity is just a system of rules and regulations?

I can do this, but I can't do that. Do you feel like your efforts to reach God, find God, and please God are futile? Do you feel like your faith is dead or alive? Today, Pastor Russ Andrews will walk us through Scripture to answer these questions. Join us on Finding Purpose, glorifying God by helping men find their purpose for living.

For more information and to connect with Russ Andrews and Finding Purpose, you can visit us online at findingpurpose.net or connect with us on Facebook. Now let's listen to Russ Andrews as he teaches us how to be a Christian without being religious. I've entitled tonight's message, The Supremacy of Christ, and we're going to be looking basically at two main texts in Luke chapter 6 verses 1 through 11. But I want you first to turn to Hebrews chapter 1. It's near the end of the end of the Bible. Get a revelation and turn back until you get the first large book, and that'll be Hebrews. And beginning with verse 1, we don't know exactly the right of Hebrews was. Many believed it was the Apostle Paul, but regardless the Holy Spirit was the one who who guided the writer to write exactly what God wanted to share with us. And right here in chapter 1, God is sharing with us who Jesus is, okay? If that's what I really want you to grasp tonight, who is Jesus? So look at verse 1. In the past God spoke to our forefathers through the prophets at many times and in various ways. But in these last days, the last days would be from the the ascension all the way to right now and then until He comes back.

Those are the last days. So for the last 2,000 years. But in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son, whom He appointed heir of all things and through whom He made what? The universe. The Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of His being. Sustained all things by His powerful Word. After He had provided purification for sins, that's a reference to what?

The cross. He sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven. So He became as much superior to the angels as the name He has inherited.

It's superior to theirs. For to which of the angels did God ever say, you're my Son. Today I've become your Father.

To none of the angels. Or again, I will be His Father and He will be my Son. And again, when God brings His firstborn, by the way, that does not mean that Jesus was created. The firstborn is like the firstborn son. He is the, He's the preeminent one.

He's the most important one. He's the supreme one. So this is pointing to Christ's supremacy. Again, when God brings His firstborn into the world, He says, let all God's angels worship Him. You only worship who? God. And speaking of the angels, He says, He made His angel spirits and His servants flames of fire, but about the Son, He says, to catch this.

It's so important. What does God the Father say about God the Son? And He's talking about Jesus. He looks at Jesus and He says, your throne, O God. So God the Father is calling God the Son. What?

Who? God. Your throne, O God, will last forever and ever and righteousness will be the scepter of your kingdom.

That scepter is the staff of a ruling king. When Jesus comes back, He's coming as Lord of lords and King of kings. Now what I'm praying for, and now you can turn over to Luke. I'm praying tonight.

Here's what I'm asking God to do for you and me. That God will give us eyes to see the supremacy and the glory and the majesty of Jesus who is the Christ. So what does it mean to be supreme?

Well, according to Webster's dictionary, it means it's a reference to the highest in rank or authority or the greatest in degree or quality. The idea of the supremacy of Christ is that there's no one and no thing superior to Jesus. Nothing in all creation. Jesus is superior to everything in creation. He is the highest being in existence. He is literally God incarnate, God in the flesh. Emmanuel, God with us. The entire written Word of God has as its chief subject the Son of God who is the lofty and who is the loftiest idea in the universe.

When I wrote that down, I thought of the late great Dr. S. M. Lockridge. He says this about Jesus. He said, Jesus is the miracle of the age. He's the superlative of everything good that you choose to call Him. He is the almighty God who guides and keeps all His people. He heals the sick. He cleanses the leper. He forgives sinners.

He discharges debtors. He delivers the captives. He defends the feeble. He blesses the young. He serves the unfortunate.

He regards the aged. He rewards the diligent, and He beautifies the meek. He's the Prince of princes. He's the King of kings, and He's the Lord of lords. His goodness is limitless. His mercy is everlasting.

His love never changes. His grace is sufficient. His reign is righteous. His joke is easy, and His burden is light, and He goes on and on and on for about five minutes. Lockridge says, I wish I could describe Him to you, but He's indescribable. And he says, that's my King. He's incomprehensible. He's invincible, and men, He's irresistible.

Let me ask you a question. How do you perceive Jesus? When somebody says the name of Jesus, what's the first thought that enters your mind? Who really is Jesus to you?

Is He just a historic figure? Thus far in this Gospel of Luke, we've witnessed the supremacy of Jesus in the following ways. He spoke to the people with authority. He healed the sick. He delivered the possessed. He received a worshiper at His feet.

He forgave sinners because of who He is, the supreme God of the universe who came full of truth and grace and mercy. This is who my King is. Do you understand this? Do you really comprehend this truth in the depths of your soul? When you're praying to Jesus, which is fine to do, because He is our what?

Starts with an eye. He's our intercessor. I had a minister one time say, we don't pray to Jesus. We pray to God.

You know what? I did not argue with him, although I know this. When I first came to know Jesus, I talked to him every night in my bedroom as a 12, 13, 14 year old. Jesus is God. This brings us to Luke chapter 6, where here in this chapter, He's going to reveal us that He is the Lord of the Sabbath. So look at verse 1 in Luke chapter 6. One Sabbath, Jesus was going through the grain fields and His disciples began to pick some heads of grain, rub them in their hands and eat the kernels. Some of the Pharisees asked, Why are you doing what is unlawful on the Sabbath? And Jesus answered them, Have you never read what David did when his companions were hungry?

What are you saying? Have you ever read the Old Testament? He entered the house of God and taken the consecrated bread. He's talking about David. He ate what is lawful only for priests to eat.

And He also gave some of His companions. And then Jesus said to them, The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. You know, there are three very important truths that arise from this incident that occurred on a Sabbath. You notice Jesus gets into a lot of trouble on His day.

Think about that. It's His day, and He's the one getting in trouble. Here's truth number one. God, not man, rules over the Sabbath.

You agree with that? God the Father, and we know this from Scripture, has entrusted has entrusted all authority, power, and dominion to His Son, Jesus. And God, His number three, God is more concerned about being merciful to hurting people than obeying rules and regulations and traditions.

So what was the big problem here in this chapter? Well, to understand this, we need to turn to the Old Testament. The Jewish legal code, which basically God gave to Moses for the nation of Israel.

It had ceremonial laws and moral laws and civil laws. The Jewish legal code allowed for a poor person, if they walk in my field, to grab something to eat if they were hungry and had nowhere else to go. Deuteronomy 23 verses 24 and 25 says, if you enter your neighbor's vineyard, you may eat all the grapes you want, but do not put any in your basket. If you enter your neighbor's grain field, you may pick kernels with your hands, but you must not put a sickle to this standing grain. In other words, anyone could pick enough food to satisfy their hunger. You just couldn't harvest it. You weren't supposed to be making a profit off of it.

So this, you see, this law was established by God because He cares about the poor and the needy. And by the way, this is all the disciples were doing, picking a little food from somebody's field because there was no McDonald's nearby. They had nowhere else to go. So what was the problem?

Well, the problem was not what they were doing. It was when they were doing it, on the Sabbath. So what did Jesus do?

How did He respond? He responded with righteous anger because He is righteous. In Matthew's account, He sheds more light on what Jesus actually said to the Pharisees, who once again, all they were trying to do was to catch Jesus in some violation of the law. So they were using God's law against Jesus.

They thought they had Him trapped. In Matthew 12, verses 3 and 4, Jesus answered them, haven't you read what David did when he and his companions were hungry? He entered the house of God and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for them to do.

It was only lawful for the priest to eat the consecrated bread. And so here's what's going on. Hopefully, you went back and read 1 Samuel chapter 21. It's a fascinating story because here we find David along with a band of brothers. These are fighting men who were siding with him to support him against King Saul. You may remember that Saul was jealous of David because David had defeated who? Who did he slay? Goliath. And he was off battling for Saul and the people would say, David is killed, excuse me, Saul has killed his thousands and David has killed his ten thousands. Somebody told me one time, I think it was Sam Simpson, he said, he was comparing me to Joe Knott.

He said, yeah, Joe's reached his thousands and Rush has reached his tens. That's fine, you know, I can take, I need to be humbled every now and then. I need to be humbled every now and then.

Just ask my wife. Anyway, so David, so Saul was actually trying to kill David, even though David was his son Jonathan's best friend. This is why David fled from Jerusalem and told his men to meet him in this little town called Nob, which was just a little bit northeast of Jerusalem. And when David comes, you know, running into Nob, he goes straight to the priest.

You know why? He knew the priest had to have some food and his men were starving. They were famished and the priest's name was Ahimelech. Ahimelech told David that the only food that he had available was the consecrated bread. There was only to be placed in the holy place before God.

No one else was supposed to even touch it, this bread. Ahimelech offered to give some to David on one condition. He said, have the men kept themselves pure? Now what he meant by that, have they not had sexual relations with women? And David responded, quote, indeed women have been kept from us as usual whenever I set out to go do war. The men's things are holy even on missions that are not holy.

How much more so today? So the priest gave him the consecrated bread even though he knew that it violated God's law. So why was he willing to do this? Because Ahimelech understood the heart of God.

That God cares more about human need than about laws and traditions. So back to Matthew 12, Jesus is blistering these Jews. Matthew 12 verse 5 he said, well haven't you read in the law that on the Sabbath the priest in the temple desecrated today and you're the innocent? See the priest every day had to make sacrifices on the altar and so they had to light the fire, kill the animals, pick up the dead carcasses and put them on the altar and all that involved what?

Work. But on the Sabbath they had to make double sacrifices and so they had to do twice as much work. John MacArthur says the most legalistic Pharisee considered the priest who ministered in their temple as innocent of breaking the Sabbath despite the fact that they worked twice as hard as they did on the other days. So Jesus is pointing this out to these hypocritical religious Jews and when he did this you know what he was doing when he pointed this out to them? Do you think he had a smile on his face?

No. He was declaring war against their religious establishment because the religious establishment that they had set up was actually preventing people from coming to God who were seeking God. It's like a stumbling block.

It's like a closed door. Pharisees stopped them from coming to Jesus. They stopped them from coming to God and you know what Jesus did right in front of all those people now all these people are watching this and listening to what Jesus is saying. He embarrassed and humiliated the religious leaders right in front of the people and they were furious. They were angry but their anger was getting ready to turn into rage with what he said next. Look at verse 6 again when I'm in Matthew 12.

I tell you that one greater than the temple is here like right now. If you had known what these words mean I desire mercy not sacrifice. You would not have condemned the innocent for the Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath. That's what he's saying to these men who are dressed in robes and clerical colors and they they've got phylacteries up on their fords which they carried around the Ten Commandments.

They wanted to make sure they didn't break the Ten Commandments so they always kept it on their mind right here. Don't break the law. Don't break the law. Don't break the law. Don't do this.

Don't do that. See that's what religion is. It's just rules and regulations and traditions that have that do nothing but put a burden on people. When Jesus said this these were fighting words. Jesus was accusing these religious teachers that they didn't understand the Word of God. Do you remember when Nicodemus came to Jesus at night?

Do you remember that story? And he said you're Israel's master teacher and you don't understand what it means to be born again. Just like many religious leaders don't today like the man who said Jesus never said that to Nicodemus really. Here's what he was saying.

Now I make these words up. This is what if Jesus elaborated on what he was saying. This is what the Pharisees really understood him saying. He was saying if you understood Hosea chapter 6 verse 6 that's what he was quoting. Hosea chapter 6 verse 6 one of the minor prophets that God desires merciful compassionate responses to the hurting and needy rather than ritual observances.

You would not have condemned innocent men. Wake up you blind gods. When you get to Matthew 23 or 24 he's going to say woe to the shepherds. He calls them blind gods. You don't even understand God's Word.

Ahimelech did. He understood that God first and foremost is a God-man of mercy which is why Ahimelech gave the bread to David whose men were in great need. Moreover Jesus said you fail to see that the one standing here in your presence is the prophesied Son of Man who's not only Lord of the Sabbath but he actually is the Sabbath.

You see he's the only one that can give rest. He is the Sabbath. I mean Jesus is declaring himself the Lord of Sabbath and when in doing that he's claiming to be co-equal to God. He's also claiming to be God himself in the flesh. I've had men right in here who've been coming to this prophecy over the years tell me they don't really believe that God that Jesus is equal to God. They don't really grasp that Jesus is God.

When we get to heaven how many gods we're going to see? One. When it says he sat down the right hand of God that's not physically. It's positionally. It's like your right arm is typically your what?

Your strong arm. Jesus is the strong arm of God and whenever God reveals himself in the flesh it's always through the second person of the Godhead. So we get to heaven we will see that what the the Israelites were saying in Deuteronomy 6. Here O Israel the Lord our God is what?

One. But he is a God who exists in three persons. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And the way I the only way I can understand in my mind is God the Bible says God is Spirit.

I think that's a reference to the Father. The Holy Spirit is what? Spirit.

You cannot see Spirit. When we get to heaven we will be worshiping. We will follow the feet. We will follow the feet of Jesus. Now Luke's primary goal in writing this Gospel. Remember he set out to give an orderly account from eyewitnesses. Correct?

Remember that? And what he's trying to show us in the entire Gospel of Luke is who Jesus is and what he is like. Look at Hebrews 1, 3, and 8 again.

I think it's in your outline. Verse 3 says the Son is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being. And then in verse 8, and then in verse 8, but about the Son he that is God the Father says your throne O God will last forever and ever. Do you remember when the prophet told David that from his seed would come one who would sit on his throne and it would be an everlasting what?

Kingdom. David died. His kingdom is gone. But Jesus came from the line of who?

David. And when he said many times in the Gospel he says the kingdom is here. He's the one who ushers in this everlasting kingdom. And he's inviting us men to be part of it. To be part of it.

But you have to get by this major hurdle. You have to believe that Jesus is who he claimed to be. God in the flesh. Colossians 1 15 and 16 says he is the image of the invisible God the firstborn the supreme one over all creation for by him all things were created things in heaven and on earth visible and invisible whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities all things were created by him and for him he's before all things and in him all things hold together do you know that our bodies are being held together by the Lord it's actually something i can't remember the name of it there's some i should that therefore i should be bringing it up but there's some chromosome or something in there a cell that actually is the glue that holds your body together it's in the shape of a cross they can isolate one it's in the shape of a cross you'll not find that interesting remember God has left his handprint in all of creation it's everywhere you look there's evidence that God exists here's what we've learned about the supremacy of Christ Jesus Christ is supreme in his authority no one ever taught the way he did Jesus Christ is supreme in his power that's because he could heal the sick and forgive sinners Jesus Christ is supreme in his righteousness what that means is he is the author of righteousness and he is righteous therefore he is the one who sets the standard of what is right and wrong in this world and Jesus Christ is supreme in his very essence in his being Jesus man is the great i am of the old testament of the old testament when he stood before those pharisees later in john chapter 8 he said before Abraham was born i am they picked up stones to stone him accusing him of blasphemy some people a lot of theologians say well Jesus never claimed to be God oh yes he did why do you think they crucified him why do you think they were going to stone him because they knew what he was they knew who he was claiming to be when he says i'm lord of the sabbath he's claiming to be God and he is raising the ante he knows that he's headed for the cross this brings us to luke six verse six on another sabbath he went into the synagogue i love this one i see i don't y'all love a good fight good boxing match that's what we're watching right here this is a great boxing match says on another sabbath he went to the synagogue and was teaching and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled the pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse jesus so they they watched him closely to see if he would heal him or not to see if he would heal on the sabbath god forbid please don't feel whatsoever but jesus knew what they were thinking being a christian is not about being religious but about having a dynamic alive relationship with jesus christ you've been listening to finding purpose with pastor russ andrews glorifying god by helping men find their purpose for living you can discover more about finding your purpose in life by checking out the resources at findingpurpose.net or connect to finding purpose on facebook pastor russ would also like to extend a special invitation for you to join him and over 300 other local men to study god's word together every tuesday night at 7 p.m in downtown raleigh find out more at findingpurpose.net this is the truth network