Many years ago, there was a man in Wales, who worked very hard to win a certain lady’s affection. She was his neighbor; and every week for 42 years, the shy, but persistent suitor slipped a love letter under her door. They had had a fight, and she simply refused to talk to him.
Then after writing 2,184 love letters without any kind of a reply, the single-hearted old man eventually got up enough courage to go to her in person. He knocked on her door and asked for her hand in marriage. To his delight and surprise, she accepted and they became “Mr. and Mrs.”, both at the age of 74. (Richard Armstrong, Make Your Life Worthwhile)
For centuries, God tried to communicate with His creation: He communicated in dreams and visions; He inscribed 10 commandments on tablets of stone; He spoke through human prophets many times and in many ways.
However, not many of us were listening. We had had a fight! Our sin had separated us from a holy God, so God decided to come to us in person. If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn with me to Hebrews 1, Hebrews 1, where the Bible describes what God did to woo us into a relationship with Himself.
Hebrews 1:1-2 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. (ESV)
When all else failed, God spoke to us in a Son. He came to us in person. That’s what Christmas is all about – God coming to us personally to get our attention in a way we could not ignore, to invite us into an eternal relationship with Him.
Literally, God spoke to us in a Son – in Mary’s Son, which was His Own Son, conceived by His Holy Spirit. Now, when we think about the baby Jesus in a manger, He seems so weak and frail, but look at who He really is!
JESUS OWNS IT ALL.
God “appointed Him the heir of all things”, vs.2 says. That is to say He has inherited the universe! Everything belongs to Him. That includes your house, your car, and your bank account. That includes your children, your friends, and even your own body.
Pastor Ed Young, in Dallas, Texas, took his family to a high school football game, where during the third quarter, his daughter Landra said, “Dad, can I have some money to buy some candy?” He gave her a 5-dollar-bill and told her, “Go and buy some candy.” She came back with a sack full of Skittles. And as her dad watched her eat them, he asked her for some Skittles. She told him, “No.” So her dad said, “Landra, just give me a couple.” She said, “They're mine.”
Now, there were several things Pastor Young’s little daughter failed to grasp. Number 1, He had bought the Skittles for her. Number 2, He was strong enough to take the Skittles from her and eat every one of them if he wanted to. And number 3, He could have bought 300 packages of Skittles and given her so many Skittles that she couldn’t have eaten them all in a year.
Sometimes, we fail to grasp the same thing when it comes to Jesus. Everything we have, He bought for us. It’s all actually His, and He could take it all from us if he wanted to. But He could also give us so much, we wouldn’t know what to do with it all. (Ed Young, from “Skittles,” a sermon given at Fellowship Church, Dallas, Texas, 11-13-04; www.PreachingToday.com)
So when Jesus asks for something – some money, a child, or even your life – don’t be reluctant to give it to Him. He owns it anyway, and He can always give you back so much more than you could ever use. Jesus owns it all, because…
JESUS MADE IT ALL.
He created everything there is. Verse 2 says, “Through [Him], [God] created the world.” Literally, He made the ages. That is to say, Jesus not only made the physical universe; He created time, as well.
It’s all summarized in the first verse of the Bible, Genesis 1:1. In the beginning – that’s the creation of time; God created the heavens – that’s the creation of space; And the earth – that’s the creation of matter. We live in a time, space, matter continuum, and Jesus Christ made it all!
For more than half a century, Antony Flew was the most noted atheist in the world… until he shocked the intellectual world in 2004 by publicly announcing that he had changed his mind. Then he began professing faith in God, a faith that he professed right up until the day he died in 2010. As a philosopher, Flew was always prepared to go wherever the evidence led him, which toward the last six years of his life led him to believe that atheism is not logical.
In his book There Is a God, Flew reflects on the naturalistic argument for life on planet earth The argument runs like this: given enough time and chance, life on planet earth could have just happened without God's design. Researchers tried to provide an example of this “time + chance = life” theory with a well-known experiment that posed the following question: How long would it take for an infinite number of monkeys pounding on an infinite number of typewriters to compose a sonnet by Shakespeare? (Believe it or not, this argument was based on an experiment conducted by the British National Council of the Arts.)
A computer was placed in a cage with six monkeys, and after one month of hammering away at the keys… the monkeys produced fifty typed pages – but not one single word. This is amazing, considering that the shortest word in English could be a one-letter word such as the letter a or I. But a one-letter word is only a word if there is a space on either side of it.
Flew pointed out that if these attempts could not even result in one one-letter word, the possibility of getting just the first line of one of Shakespeare's sonnets, let alone a whole sonnet, is next to impossible.
For Flew, the entire universe (which of course is infinitely more complex than a Shakespearian sonnet) couldn't have just happened. You will never get a sonnet – or the entire works of Shakespeare, or the entire universe, for that matter – by just allowing enough time + chance. And yet, Flew (quoting a contemporary scientist) said, “Some people still contend that the monkeys can do it every time.” (Ravi Zacharias, Has Christianity Failed You? Zondervan, 2010, pp. 52-53; www.PreachingToday.com)
No they can’t! It takes more faith to believe in time + chance creating life than it does to believe the simple yet profound declaration of Scripture: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” God created it all through His Son, Jesus Christ.
A little girl climbed into the lap of her great-grandmother, looked at her white hair and wrinkles, and asked, “Did God make you.”
“Yes,” said the elderly lady.
Then the little girl asked, “Did God make me too?”
And Grandma said, “Yes.”
“Well,” said the little girl, “don’t you think He’s doing a better job now than He used to.” (Bible Illustrator)
I don’t know about that, but the truth is God made us – wrinkles and all – through Jesus Christ, His Son.
In these last days, God spoke to us through a Son! Not just a baby in a manger, not just any Son, but through Jesus, HIS Son. And what a Son He is! Jesus owns it all. Jesus made it all. And…
JESUS IS LORD OF ALL.
He is above all in the place of the highest power. He is over every other authority or ruler in the universe.
Jesus is God Himself!
Hebrews 1:3 He is the radiance of the glory of God –
That is, the outshining of God’s brightness. In other words, Jesus is not a reflection of God’s glory; Jesus is the light of that glory Himself! More than that, according to verse 3…
Hebrews 1:3 [Jesus is also] the exact imprint of his nature. That is, the stamp of God’s essence, or the precise representation of God’s being.
The Greek word for “imprint” is the same word used in Bible days to describe the imprint on coins, and sometimes to describe the instrument itself that stamped out the coins.
Several years ago (November 1994), on a family vacation in Colorado, we toured the Denver Mint. It was quite a sight where we saw sheets of metal being fed into big machines, which stamped out pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters by the thousands.
It was all automated except, every once in a while, we saw a human inspector come along and inspect the quality of the coins. The inspector was looking to ensure that the image on those coins was an exact imprint of the stamp in the machine. And if there was the slightest variation, they stopped the machines and discarded the coins. Those coins had to be exact, or they were no good.
So it is with Christ. He is the exact imprint of God Himself. In fact, He is not the image made by the stamp; He is the stamp itself!
Jesus is Lord of all, because He is God Himself.
More than that, Jesus is Lord of all, because He carries it all. He upholds everything that He created. He sustains the universe with simply a word.
Hebrews 1:3, “He upholds the universe by the word of his power.”
When I was growing up near Baltimore, Maryland, my grandparents lived about an hour’s drive north in York, Pennsylvania. Now, to a little kid, those hour-long drives to see grandma and grandpa were tedious, but I could always tell when we were getting close, because we always passed a big building with a huge statue of Atlas mounted over the main entrance. His muscles bulged as he strained under the weight of the world, which he carried on his shoulders. The building was the York Barbell Company, and I’m sure they put that statue there to create the impression of strength and power. Well, let me tell you; as a young boy, I was impressed!
But that’s nothing compared to what Christ is doing. He is NOT straining under the weight of just the world. He is carrying the entire universe “by the word of His power.” He but speaks a word, and His whole creation is sustained.
Tim Keller, a pastor in Manhattan, New York, once said that a Sunday school teacher changed his life in 1970 with a simple illustration.
The teacher said, “Let's assume the distance between the earth and the sun (92 million miles) was reduced to the thickness of [a] sheet of paper. If that is the case, then the distance between the earth and the nearest star would be a stack of papers 70 feet high. And the diameter of the galaxy would be a stack of papers 310 miles high.”
Then Keller's teacher added, “The galaxy is just a speck of dust in the universe, yet Jesus holds the universe together by the word of his power.”
Finally, the teacher asked her students, “Now, is this the kind of person you ask into your life to be your assistant?” (Timothy Keller, from the sermon "The Gospel and Your Self"; www.PreachingToday.com)
No! You let Him run your life and become HIS assistant. Jesus is Lord of all, because He is God Himself. Jesus is Lord of all, because He carries it all.
And Jesus is Lord of all, because He cleanses us from all sin. He purifies the sins that plague us all. He washes them all away by the blood of His cross.
Hebrews 1:3 After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on High”
To sit at the “right hand of majesty” is to sit in the place of all authority. The right hand for most people is the strong hand, the hand of power. So the “right hand of the Majesty on High” is the place of ALL power. And that’s the place that Jesus occupies. There is no one higher than He. He, and He alone, is in the position of absolute authority over even the angels themselves.
Hebrews 1:4 …having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs. (ESV)
His name is higher, higher than any other name! He is Lord of all, because He provided purification for the sins of the world through His death on the cross.
Philippians 2 puts it this way: “Jesus, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped (or held onto), but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name” (Philippians 2:5-9).
Because Jesus humbled Himself to the lowest point He could go, God exalted Him to the highest place in the Universe, the place of all authority and power. Jesus is Lord of all, because He died for all to cleanse us from all our sins.
An orphaned boy was living with his grandmother when their house caught fire. The grandmother, trying to get upstairs to rescue the boy, perished in the flames. The boys cries for help were finally answered by a man who climbed an iron pipe to get to the boy. He came back down that same pipe with the boy clinging tightly to his neck.
Several weeks later, a public hearing was held to determine who would receive custody of the child. A farmer, a teacher, and the town’s wealthiest citizen all gave reasons why they felt they were the best qualified to give the boy a home. But as they talked, the boy’s eyes remained focused on the floor.
Then a stranger walked to the front and slowly took his hands out of his pockets. They were severely scarred. As the crowd gasped, the boy cried out, recognizing the man who had saved his life. His hands had been burned climbing up and down the hot pipe. The boy leapt out of his seat and threw his arms around the man’s neck and held on for dear life. The other men silently walked away, leaving the boy and his rescuer alone. Those scarred hands had settled the issue. (Leslie B. Flynn)
And for us, Jesus’ scarred hands settle the issue, as well. They prove that He, and He alone, has the right of custody over our lives. He, and He alone, has the right to rule. Since He loved us enough to die for our sins, He can be trusted to direct our steps; He can be trusted to take charge of our lives.
In these last days, God has spoken to us in a Son. And wow, what a Son He is! He owns it all. He made it all. And He is Lord of all. Trust Him to be YOUR Lord. Trust Him to rule YOUR life today.
