So as I said throughout the service so far, we are starting a new sermon series, Simply
Irresistible, where we are going to look and kind of journey through the entire book of
Hebrews.
Now to do the entire book, verse by verse, justice, would take a year and a half.
So we, like we do a lot, we're doing a 10,000 foot view of the major themes that we see
in the book of Hebrews.
One of the reasons how and why I like to preach this way is for you to do further study throughout
the week.
So we're going to hit a part of chapter one and throughout the weeks the different chapters,
but for you to really dive in and dive in how each chapter connects to itself.
But there's a theme throughout the entire book of Hebrews and we're going to come back
to it time and time again that Jesus is just that, simply irresistible.
Now irresistible is a funny word, and a word that I really struggle spelling.
I don't know why, but it was always wrong when I was typing it out, so I had to autocorrect.
But in life, what do we find, and if you're new or a guest to Munster Church, I like to
kind of engage a little bit.
A, it keeps you awake because I may call on you, and B, it's helpful to kind of see where
you guys are with some of these concepts that we find throughout the Bible.
The word irresistible, now keep it appropriate, what do you find is irresistible in your life?
Your wife, good job, alright, way to go, Laird.
Did Nancy pay you to say that?
No, okay, well you didn't answer, but that's okay.
So, okay, our spouses, that's okay, right?
To say that my wife is irresistible is fine, right?
Knowing that they are and having that kind of interaction is great, what else?
Now that Larry's pretty much gone to the top, I don't really know how we can answer any
other things, but Teddy, go ahead, what do you find, oh, what do you find irresistible?
Stuffed animals, okay, so things like stuffed animals, so especially as a child, they can
attach to these things.
Is there anything else in life, I've already said Jesus, so that's off the table, anything
else in life that we find irresistible?
Okay, addiction, that's a very interesting answer, okay, that could take this sermon,
that would be, wow, I only have 30 minutes, okay, so, but yeah, that is true, the addictiveness
that we have inside ourselves or those that struggle in addiction, that's part of the
addiction, that whatever they're addicted to is irresistible, man, that was a good answer,
wow, and then someone said chocolate, not nearly as good, but okay, irresistible, right,
chocoholics, all of those kind of things, right, that could be, friendships, absolutely,
yeah, hand over there, yeah, coffee, yeah, absolutely, coffee, sweet water, oh, food
and water, okay, maybe even sweet water, I don't know what that is, but okay, food and
water can be irresistible, anyone else, Jack?
Chocolate chip cookies, okay, we could just kind of say all dessert foods, fair enough,
God's word, someone give Dolores a high five, that was a great, no, I didn't say give her
a hand, I said give her a high five, we don't want her to become prideful, right, good job,
Dolores, and that's really where we wanted to go, that do we think of God's word as irresistible?
The funny thing is the word irresistible is a heavy theological term, especially in Reformed
churches, this understanding of irresistibility, if you will, comes out in one of our confessions,
okay, now our confessions, help me out, the three confessions that we hold to are Dan
you can't answer, no Dans can answer, right, we have a lot of Dans in this church, no Dans
can answer, the three confessions we hold to that are not above scripture but help us
understand scripture, without scripture the confessions would mean nothing, but what are
the three confessions?
The Belgian confession, my favorite one, okay, what was that?
Heidelberg catechism and it's the canons of Dort that brings us to this understanding
of irresistible grace, so the canons of Dort can easily be understood by the word tulip,
a lot of you are catechized under the understanding of the Heidelberg, of the canons of Dort,
and the acronym tulip, okay, and that's all well and good, but the tulip has some verbiage
that we don't really use a lot, right, I don't know how many of you just go up to other people
and go, wow, you're really depraved, you may think it, I doubt you say it, but there's
some heavy theological terms and in the mid-90s Jim Osterhaus out of Grand Rapids came up
with another acronym that I actually like a little more, sorry elders, sorry Dan, is
the acronym faith, it has a little more living language that I like to kind of work through
and I want you to remember this because this is what we're gonna go through and walk through
in the season of Lent next year, we're gonna walk through this understanding of grace and
that's really what the canons of Dort is about, it's about a lot of things, but understanding
and receiving God's grace in our lives, why?
Because we are fallen, we need to understand that we are adopted by God, that there is
an intentional atonement, that Jesus' work on the cross means something very specific,
though broad, very specific, that we are transformed by the Holy Spirit and that we are held by
God and you will see side by side what we're gonna look at this sermon series is what's
highlighted, this irresistible faith or if you're gonna take the faith, excuse me, the
faith acronym transformed by the Holy Spirit.
So let's read from the canons of Dort today.
So this is from the canons of Dort, we don't have that in there, okay, we don't have a
slide for the canons of Dort, so I will read it.
When God accomplishes his good pleasure in the elect or works in them true conversion,
he will not only cause the gospel to be externally preached to them and powerfully illuminated
their minds by the Holy Spirit that they may rightly understand and discern the things
of the Spirit of God.
It's so powerful and then here are these words, oh, just lost my place, but by the efficiency
of the same regenerating Spirit pervades the inmost recesses of the man, meaning the Holy
Spirit is constantly at work in us, he opens the closed, he softens the hardened heart
and he circumcises that which is uncircumcised, infuses new qualities into the will which
though here for dead he quickens of being evil and disobedient, he renders good, obedient
and strengthens us.
So where there is deadness in us, where there is depravity in us, the Holy Spirit breathes
new life into us.
Remember, your salvation was never your idea.
The idea of wanting to be saved is a concept depraved people can't get to on their own,
it is impossible.
But the Holy Spirit regenerates, grows in us faith and that faith opens our eyes and
the kind of church we are, Muncie Church being a part of the Christian Reformed Church denomination,
the way that we see this play out, and I'm going to use Lincoln as an example, that Lincoln
four or five months, it's debatable, how old he is now, that maybe in 12, 13, 14 years he
may have been regenerated by the Spirit that this understanding, seeing mom, dad, grandma's,
grandpa's, aunt's, uncle's, youth group's, Sunday school, all these things come to play
in his life where Jesus is going to make sense to him.
And he may come to me, Lord willing, and say, Pastor, I want to make profession of faith.
Following what the book of Romans says, that if we confess Jesus as Lord and believe in
our heart that God raised him from the dead, you shall be saved.
That he will come on his own conscience, his own understanding of the good news of Jesus,
but it goes up more than that, the bad news of his sin.
That's why you don't have a lot of four, five, six year olds make profession of faith.
Though they understand that Jesus died for them because we celebrate that on Good Friday,
Monday, Thursday, or Monday, Thursday, Good Friday, we celebrate that at Easter.
It's understanding the weight of your sin.
To understand the good news and the irresistibleness of the gospel, you have to understand the
bad news.
Because if you don't understand that, the good news isn't saving you from anything.
That's the difference.
And all along the way, as you see through all of those, you will see that the Holy Spirit
is guiding.
The Holy Spirit is doing the work.
And so the book of Hebrews starts off in a very specific way that I hope we would understand
that Jesus is the irresistible one.
That the Holy Spirit is waking those that are asleep, bringing to new life those that
are dead.
To who and what Jesus is.
Why Jesus is supreme.
Why as the title shows, he is the period at the end of the sentence.
You can't get any better than Jesus.
Though people try, though people want to substitute Christ for other things in their life, he
is better.
And the writer of Hebrews, we don't fully know who it is.
Some scholars believe it was Paul, but there's some real non-Pauline writing that happens
in the chapters of Hebrews.
Some people think it's Apollos, one of the disciples we see in the first century.
They place it written anywhere between 50 and 70 AD, but we don't have any really other
writings of Apollos to liken it to.
Some people think it's John, because he talks, as we're going to see, about angels and kind
of more the apocalyptic, like the book of Revelation.
But the author, it doesn't matter at the end of the day.
What matters is how he is going to describe for us in the coming weeks the who, what,
when, where, why of Jesus and why Jesus is the supreme being.
Like I said, you don't get any better.
So let's jump in.
So we start with verse five.
I'm going to read really quick.
I'm going to read, no, we're going to start with verse five.
For to which of the angels, because in the first four verses, the writer of Hebrews introduces
us to the understanding that Jesus is higher even than the angels.
So he's starting in the spiritual realm.
He could have said Jesus is higher than all mankind, but trust me, he'll get there.
For to which of the angels did God ever say, you are my son, today I have begotten you?
But before we do this, let's do a little bit about angels.
Because angels, for a lot of people, and a lot of you have come and talked to me about
this topic, this understanding of angels is weird, right?
The supernatural, the spiritual realm, it can be scary.
There's a lot to it.
And it's a sermon series we'll probably get to in 2037.
And that's fine.
If you don't think you'll be alive by then, study it now.
That the understanding that angels are real, because we see it in God's word.
We see angelic beings.
The word angel or angelos occurs in 34 of the 66 books of our canonized Bible.
We see it in the Old Testament 108 times.
We see it in the New Testament 165 times.
So angels, what God wants us to understand about angels is something.
There is something of sustenance.
That we're scared, because how many of you in the last five years of your life have gone
to any of your friends and go, you know what, I believe in angels?
No, we don't.
Because in some ways we're like, well, we can't really back it up.
No, you can.
You can back it up.
And God's ways are higher than our ways.
And he has an angelic, heavenly host that their primary job is to worship.
God sends them to help protect and guide.
We see that throughout the Scriptures.
And that one day we will be with them.
Now, we can do a deep dive, but I don't have time for that.
On angels, I would encourage you to do that.
Hebrews 1, 14, as we're going to see, describes them as ministering spirits.
Now, some people may say, I don't believe in Christianity because I don't believe in
angels.
And to me that doesn't hold a lot of water, because the idea and understanding of angels
are not salvatic.
When we baptized Lincoln today, I didn't say, and may you believe in angels with all of
your heart.
It's a rough, it's hard, it's confusing at times.
But what I'm telling you, it is an open-handed issue.
It is not something you need to grasp in order to find salvation in Jesus.
But what the writer is wanting us to understand as he or she starts is that Jesus is even
higher than the angelic beings.
Jesus was not an angel like Lucifer or Michael or Gabriel.
He is higher.
He is better than that.
And so we see in verse 5, or sorry, go back to verse 4, for which of these angels did
God say, you are my son?
We see this throughout the Scriptures.
We see this in very specific places.
We see it in the birth of Jesus.
We see this in the baptism of Jesus.
That God is calling Christ his son.
That the Trinitarian understanding, Father, Son, Spirit is engaged and active.
And if we are to be sons and daughters of the King, right, then you have that same label
on you that you are part of your father's family.
We do this with our own kids.
We've talked about this before.
Both, all of my boys, right, they bear mine and carry his name.
That when people see them, they go and said in two very different ways, oh, that's a
Holland donor.
But also said with, oh, that's a Holland donor.
And insert yourself there, too.
I guarantee the same thing will be said about the Nadelberg boys.
They'll be like, oh, that's a Nadelberg.
Oh, that's a Nadelberg.
I could hear it in Lighthouse right now.
May the Lord bless and keep all of our Lighthouse teachers and leases as they do that.
But what about it is the good part that we represent a family of faith that God has organized
and set apart, and the angels are not in that.
Jesus is higher than the angels.
Let's continue.
For which of these angels did God, or again, I will be to him a father and he will be to
me a son that Jesus is the son of God we see in the book of Luke that Jesus calls himself
the son of God or the son of man.
It's one of the reasons why he was almost killed in the beginning.
Because to say that you are the son of God means something.
No other messianic figure, because there were other messiahs, lowercase m, that were all
in the first century.
Jesus was the capital M messiah, capital S, son of God.
I don't know about you, but that's pretty cool.
That's almost irresistible to not want to believe in him.
Because Jesus was not fallible, though he was fully God and fully man.
He did not sin because of his royal, holy lineage.
And he invites you into that family.
We don't follow anybody else.
We don't say, well, I'm a Paulian.
I don't believe in Jesus, I believe in Paul.
Or I believe in Apollos.
Or I believe in these.
No, we believe in Christ.
Because all of them pointed to Jesus.
Did they do it perfectly?
No.
But they point to Jesus.
Hopefully, you're getting the understanding early on that everything we do should point
to Jesus.
And that should excite us and convict us at the same time.
Because everything we do should point to someone that is held higher than the angelic beings.
Let's continue.
And again, when he brings the firstborn into the world, he says, let all God's angels worship
him.
We talk about this at Easter.
Who were the first ones to engage the heavenly host?
The shepherds.
Oh, you know, they were watching over their flocks by night and lo and what happens, behold,
the angelic heavenly host is there singing.
Now, you say this out loud.
I get it.
You sound like a crazy person.
Because the world doesn't believe it.
But I'd say go ahead and be crazy then.
Because God is setting up an understanding for those shepherds and for you today, September
10, 2023, that the angelic host is worshiping the newborn savior of the world.
And after the sermon series, we're going to go right into Advent.
And we're going to talk about that more specifically.
But this is setting apart who Jesus is.
Let's continue.
And of the angels, he says, he makes his angels wins and his ministers a flame of fire.
That angels are useful by God, but God and Christ are connected.
The angels are not.
Now I see in a lot of your face, like, Jim, we get it.
Jesus is higher than the angels.
Move on.
But we will in time.
The writer of Hebrews wants us to understand and get this placed right in our lives.
Don't overlook it.
Because if you believe in Christ, then you need to believe that Christ is higher than
the cosmos.
He's higher than creation.
That he is the son of the living God, which came down to die for you.
To die for me.
For the sins that were, the sins that are, and the sins that will be.
That, my friends, is the gospel.
Short and simple.
But it means so much.
And the reason, as we're going to see, why the writer of Hebrews is going to be so specific,
is because the writer of Hebrews knows, even in the first century, middle to late part
of the first century is when it was most likely written, that temptation and other things
are going to want to take that place of Christ in your life.
Let's move it to 2023.
That's time travel, by the way.
What is trying to take the place of Christ in your life?
God is telling you, Christ, right?
The Spirit is telling you, you've got to place it higher than even the angelic beings.
Even more than your understanding, you put your trust in Christ.
The understanding that Christ is the highest.
Let's continue.
But of the Son, he says, your throne, O God, is forever and ever.
The 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.
There's a lot there that to believe in Christ is to believe and to live in the righteousness
given to us by Christ at the cross.
What does that mean?
Theological terms, it means imputed righteousness, that on the cross, Jesus gave us his righteousness
because in of ourselves, we can't stand before God on the last days or whenever our last
day is and say, God, I did enough to get into these gates.
When we get up there, we cannot show our spiritual resume and say, I taught lighthouse, I helped
with catechism, I had a trunk at the trunk retreating the fall family night at Munster,
I was an elder twice, I was a deacon, I was a committee leader.
No.
All of that is filthy rags to God.
Though it is good for us here, the call has been to be holy as Christ is holy and on the
cross, his righteousness bathed us.
Whether you like it or not, if you claim Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, you are living
in his righteousness and there's the rub, there's the friction, there's the conflict.
Because rarely do I have office hours where someone comes in and just tells me how good
at Christianity and how good at Jesus they are.
In 16 years, I've never had someone come in and go, you know, pastor, I'm pretty holy.
Nor have I ever had anyone come in and say, you know what, I think I'm perfect.
A, that's never been the call and B, it's not attainable.
So when people come in and we share in that time of grief and mourning, it's usually over
the active sin in our life.
The things that are distracting us from God's word.
The thing that are distracting us from living out the gospel.
Relationships, lust, alcoholism, not being able to forgive.
That's one of the biggest ones, that people come in and say I'm so mad and I'm holding
this grudge.
What can I do about it?
That's where I tap into frozen theology.
Got to let it go.
Thank you for laughing, Nikki.
But it's true.
You've heard that, I don't know who said it, but holding a grudge is like drinking poison
expecting the other person to die.
It doesn't work.
For as a believer, we call to hold grudges.
How dare we hold grudges?
Because if we ever ask for forgiveness, and guess what, he gives it when we ask it, how
dare we hold a grudge and not forgive other people?
For little things or big things.
Some of the best, most fruitful time in the pastorate is sitting down with family members
who haven't talked for 15 years over something that in hindsight is pretty dumb.
But seeing those relationships restored.
Having someone sit in my office or myself spending all of the time and the energy not
forgiving.
If you're here this morning and you're in that, how exhausted are you?
Because that takes an active work to not forgive.
I don't want to minimize your hurt and your pain.
Christ doesn't want to minimize your hurt and your pain.
But Christ says, I have forgiven you, therefore you ought to forgive.
Forgive as the Lord has forgiven you, Colossians.
Go and sin no more, the book of John.
That we're living as living sacrifices that live out who Jesus is.
Jesus is the embodiment of justice, mercy, and forgiveness.
But all too often we live lives the opposite of that.
We live lives of injustice, we live lives of hatred, and we live lives of evilness.
How dare we call ourselves believers then because someone who has been held in such
high authority by God himself and we're going to claim that and live that way?
As we're going to see throughout this sermon series, that cannot happen.
Let's continue.
Well done.
And you, Lord, laid the foundations of the earth in the beginning and the heavens are
your work of your hands.
They will perish, but you remain.
They will all wear out like a garment, like a robe, you will roll them up.
Like a garment, they will be changed.
But you are the same way and your years will have no end.
Now I know that in a couple years my oldest is going to be taller than me.
And that's not much of an accomplishment.
Okay, I get it.
But we are learning now that he is growing at a rapid rate where the pants we bought
him six months ago, he wears them.
I'm like, where's the flood?
And so we had to go and buy more.
All those things, those clothes will be worn out.
Anybody that believes in things other than God and Christ will be worn out in the end.
I love the imagery here.
He'll be rolled up, right?
And we can't even give it over to Teddy because he's on the same track.
The nice thing is Jack is not.
So he'll be fully clothed for the rest of his life, right?
And we will roll all of these up, we will put it in a box, and we will give it to him
when he gets there, hopefully.
But the same will go with anything that has not put, anybody who has not put their hope
and their faith in Jesus.
Do you want to be rolled out and put away like a garment?
I don't.
But at the end, this is going to happen.
So where are you with your beliefs?
You may be here this morning and you may struggle with them.
I get that.
Some of you here this morning may flat out not be okay with Jesus right now.
Guess what?
You're still loved.
But it's time to work it out.
Maybe you're harboring a grudge against God.
You took someone too early.
This relationship has not ever been restored.
What are you doing about it?
Nothing.
Huh, interesting.
And maybe you're here and you're just exhausted by the faith.
The book of Hebrews is going to speak to you.
You have my permission, go and read the whole book today, this afternoon.
It won't take long.
We're going to get to all of those things.
And really the only reason why I think the writer of Hebrews is going to put all of these
things in there is because whoever that was, was feeling the same things.
Do you not think that the writer is warning about being worn out like a garment or rolled
up and put in storage because they've never felt that way?
I guarantee you they have because every believer did in the first century because it was hard
to be a Christian in the first century.
What about 2023?
Some ways it's hard, but in some ways we've made it hard because we've messed up.
We've built systems of religion that has done nothing but hurt, nothing but cause harm and
pain.
We have not loved God with our whole heart.
We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves and for the sake of Jesus, come in and cleanse
us.
Iron out the wrinkles.
Let's keep going.
And to which of the angels has he ever said, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies
a footstool at your feet.
And there's one more, correct?
And they are not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who inherit
salvation.
And that's the word I want to end on today.
Though I would like to preach for another hour and a half.
Inherit salvation.
Now inherit is a weird word.
Because inherit, you're like, oh, I can't do anything to get it.
You're right.
But just like when a loved one dies and you inherit something, it may be money, it may
be a car, it may be a pocket watch that doesn't work, it may be land, whatever it is, it was
given to you as a gift thought out by someone who went before you.
What does that sound like?
Salvation.
That there was a plan put out before the beginning of the world, right?
Genesis chapter 3, we see sin enter the world and right there salvation is there.
You will strike his heel and he will crush your head.
Jesus.
But today, you may be trying to find salvation in other things.
You may be trying to work your way through all of this salvation stuff.
You know, pastor, I'm going to earn salvation.
Good luck.
That is a hamster wheel you'll never get out of.
But God puts Jesus in such a place in our lives.
And I love how he starts with angels and I'm landing the plane right now.
We don't fully understand angels.
Anyone that comes into my office, say I'm an expert on angels.
I'm just going to slowly close my door, get in my car and drive away.
Because we don't understand it and that's okay.
Jesus trumps our understanding.
He is higher than our understanding.
We don't need to fully understand it if we're inheriting it as a gift.
When you get it, you need to do something with it.
When that grace is afforded to us by the death and resurrection of Jesus, we ought to do
something about it.
Do something with it.
It's tangible.
How do we know?
We celebrate it the first Sunday of every month and every time someone's baptized.
A visible means of an invisible grace that is, oh, and this is going to hurt me too,
that is and should be irresistible.
So as you live out your life of faith, your family, your friends, do they look at your
faith?
Not your church, right?
Not your pastor.
I know I'm not irresistible, right?
I get it.
But the faith you're living out, do people see that and go, that's what faith is.
Man, I want some of that.
Where can I find that?
Where can I get that?
But unfortunately, all too often they're going, that's what that is?
Why bother?
That's what it means to be a believer?
Over it.
Done.
No.
We're going to journey together.
My hope and my prayer is that we can take off all of those things that can cause the
irresistibility to be resistible.
Because we're in a world today that resists Jesus, resists the Spirit, resists grace,
because they think they have something better.
The writer of Hebrews is going to say, no, you're doing it wrong.
Let's pray.
Father, for this moment we give you thanks for the words that were shared today.
May it not be of me.
May it be of your Spirit.
If there's any offense in me, God, that that would be called by the elders, that that would
be talked through, repented of, Father, that we would understand that you have given us
this gift, a gift you don't give the angels, the gift you don't put in creation except
for us, those created in your image, co-image bearers of you.
Forgive us if we're not responsible with it.
Help grow in us a responsibility of that grace.
We love you.
But that pales in comparison to how much you love us.
We pray this in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
We all agree and said.