Hebrews chapter one. The sermon this morning especially emphasizes that Jesus is God and so much of this chapter will prove that. Hebrews chapter one. God who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son, whom he hath appointed heir of all things, by whom also he made the worlds. Being the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high, being made so much better than the angels, as he hath by inheritance obtained a more excellent name than they. For unto which of the angels said he at any time, thou art my son, this day have I forgotten thee. And again, I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. And again, when he bringeth in the first begotten into the world, he saith, and let all the angels of God worship him. And of the angels, he saith, who maketh his angels spirits and his ministers a flame of fire. But unto the sun, he saith, thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. A scepter of righteousness is the scepter of thy kingdom. Thou hast loved righteousness and hated iniquity, therefore God, even thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. And thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the works of thine hands. They shall perish, but thou remainest. And they all shall wax old as doth a garment. And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed. But thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail. But to which of the angels said he at any time, sit on my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool? Are they not all ministering spirits? sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation. So far we read God's holy word. Based on that and many other passages is the instruction of the Heidelberg Catechism in Lord's Day 13. We consider this morning question and answer 33. Why is Christ called the only begotten Son of God since we are also the children of God? And the answer, because Christ alone is the eternal and natural Son of God, but we are children adopted of God by grace for his sake. That's how far we'll read the Lord's Day. Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, the confession, I believe in Jesus Christ, God's only begotten Son, our Lord. That confession is what the Heideberg Catechism is expounding. This brief sentence gives four names of our Savior, which indicate who he is and something of the work, the part that he plays in our deliverance. We are in the second section of the catechism, our deliverance, and Jesus is our deliverer. The confession, I believe in, already indicates that we are confessing Jesus to be very God. You can believe many different things. You can believe this is true or that is true, but as soon as you say, I believe in, that's a different kind of confession. That we may say only of God. I believe in Him. In him is my salvation. So we are saying Jesus is God. He is the one who delivers from sin and death and ushers his people into eternal life. Thus far, the names that we have considered, Jesus and Christ, have not explicitly dealt with the question of whether he's God or not. though it clearly is implied. The name Jesus, for example, Jehovah's Salvation, the fact that Jehovah would be applied to him already indicates he is God. It's not merely a name that he has, he is Jehovah's Salvation. The name Christ, the Mediator, he could perform his work in all three aspects of the Mediator's office, only because he is God. As prophet, he revealed God perfectly. And he could only do that because he is God. No mere human being could explain God accurately and without any exaggeration. Jesus could because he's God. His work as priest. could only be done because he is God, the divine nature sustaining the human nature as the wrath of God is poured out upon him. If Jesus were not God, he could not atone for the sins of his people by bearing that wrath until it was finished. As king, he rules over the world, over every single creature in land and air and sea. Over every individual life, he is directing it. Over 8 billion people, he's directing the life of everyone. Clearly, he must be God in order to do that. The devil has attacked this truth that Jesus is God throughout history. Some of the earliest history heresies that the church faced was exactly on the deity of Jesus Christ. Men asked, is this man, Jesus, born of Mary, truly God? Is he God as much as the Father is God? All the scriptures clearly indicate that the Father is God. That could hardly be gainsaid by anyone. But is Jesus the Son, God, as much as the Father is God? That was the question Satan tried to instill into the minds of the church. Others said maybe there are two gods. The Old Testament God seems to be very different from the New Testament God. And now the New Testament God is the one that brought forth Jesus, the Savior, over against the Old Testament God. That was another heresy the church had to face. And then questions arose concerning the Holy Spirit. Those who denied that Jesus is God also denied that the Spirit is God. Many did not see the Son as being co-equal with the Father or of the same divine essence as the Father. They argued that if God is one, and he is, and that there is only one God, then Jesus must be something less than God if there's only one God. Athanasius is a name, a church father, whose name ought to be well-known to every single one of us, Athanasius, an amazing man, the minister, the bishop of the church in Alexandria in Egypt, which at that time had a huge Christian population. By the grace of God, Athanasius stood in the gap and defended the truth. He boldly stood for the truth that Jesus is very God, very God. For this, he was put out of office five times. And many of those times he was sent into exile. But he continued to insist, no, We must absolutely maintain Jesus is very God as much as the Father and the Spirit are God. His unshakable conviction was this. If Jesus is not God, we have no salvation. That's the crux of the matter. And that's essentially the viewpoint of the Heidelberg Catechism as well. In this section on deliverance, it is absolutely essential that we say, the one who is our deliverer, Jesus, is very God. And so with that in mind, we consider this Lord's Day under the theme, Confessing Christ, God's Own Son. Well, notice in the first place, the one natural son. Secondly, the true God. and thirdly, the glorious Savior. Jesus is the one natural Son of God. The catechism approaches this in kind of an indirect way, doesn't it, when it asks, why is Christ called the only begotten Son of God, since we are also the children of God? It introduces that question, what's the difference between our being children of God and Jesus being the son of God? And then brings in the matter of adoption versus begetting. The differences between the two are fairly obvious, but let's just consider it for a moment from an earthly point of view, the two concepts of adoption versus begetting. A child begotten of the father is one to whom the father has given, communicated some of his own being, his own life. his own characteristics, his own attributes are given to his child. And that not completely, of course, the child is not identical to the father, but nonetheless, some of the father has been given to that child. When a father adopts a child, that's not the case, obviously. The father selects a child and then goes through the legal process of making the child to be his own child and then takes the child into the home and makes the child to be a part of his family. The catechism points out the obvious that all God's people are called children of God. The scripture speaks this, first of all, as regards God creating man, creating man. God created Adam in his own image and likeness. In Luke 3, in the genealogy of Christ, which goes all the way back to Adam, When you get to the end of that list of names, it says concerning Adam, which was the son of God, which was the son of God. Now the words, the son are in italics because they're not there literally in the Greek, but that's true throughout the whole list. So that, If I can give you some sense of what the list is like, literally it is David, thee of Jesse, thee of Obed, thee of Boaz, all the way down to Seth, thee of Adam, thee of God. So as all of them are in that line of succession, the beginning of that is God himself who formed Adam as it were as his own son. But Adam fell and Adam lost the right of sonship. Nevertheless, God's plan was Not only that that would happen, but God's eternal plan was that he chose Adam and Eve and all of the multitude of the elect, chose them in Jesus Christ. In Ephesians 1 said, they were predestined unto the adoption of children. Predestined, predetermined. that they would be adopted as children, children of God, for Jesus' sake, through Jesus. So they are chosen as his children, then the legal process of making them to be his children, that's the cross, the legal process was sealed in the cross because the elect, which were rightly with the race given to Satan to be under his power, his control, citizens of his kingdom, they were redeemed by Jesus, not by paying Satan, but by satisfying the justice of God. They are freed, therefore, in the cross from the legal status of being slaves of Satan. They're freed from that legal status, and now they legally belong to God. So in adoption, there's the choice, then there's the legal process, and then there's the making that child to be a part of the family. And God does that in an amazing way. The spirit comes into that child chosen and redeemed in Jesus and frees that child from the chains of sin and Satan. He's no longer ruled by Satan and sin. By the grace of God, that child now is able to serve God. Not perfectly, but able to choose to serve God. In fact, the Spirit gives the very life of Jesus, the resurrection life of Jesus that raised his body from the dead, that life is given to each adopted child at regeneration. They are then renewed in the image of Christ in righteousness, holiness, true knowledge, so that they begin to resemble Christ from a spiritual point of view. This is all part of God making those adopted children be a part of his family. The spirit pours out the love of God into the heart of that adopted child, so that he not only knows God loves him, so important for an adopted child to know the father loves the child, but then that child with the love of God in his heart is able to respond and love God. And the spirit comes into the heart of that adopted child crying, Abba, Father, so that that now resounds from the heart of that adopted child. He responds. Thou art my Father. That's adoption. We are adopted. We are also begotten by God from the point of view that the Spirit gives us the life of Jesus Christ. We're begotten again unto a living hope. How is Christ different from that? Christ is the second person of the Trinity, who is united to human flesh from Mary. Christ is the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, eternally begotten by the Father. In this begetting, the Father begets, now remember, gives of himself. gives of His own essence to His Son. The Father in the Trinity gives of His essence to the Son. And because the Godhead cannot be cut up into parts, it's complete and undivided. The Son is as much God as the Father. He has the whole of the divine essence as the Father has the whole of the divine essence. Very difficult for us to comprehend. We really can't. But Jesus has the complete divine essence. That is, Christ, as the Son of God, has the complete divine essence. Eternally, the Father does this. Continuously, the Father is begetting His Son in His own image, with His own divine attributes, with His own essence. Thus we rightly say that Jesus is the eternal and natural son of God. There never was a time, so to speak, when the son was not, otherwise the father would not be eternally father. Eternal and natural son he is according to his divine nature. Now that raises the question, what about his Human nature. Is God also the father of his human nature or only of the divine nature and maybe the human nature is something that God adopted as a son? That also is a heresy that the church faced early on and rejected. insisting that God, the father of Jesus Christ, is also the father of his human nature. And that because, now understand, there's a difference here. The divine nature of Jesus is eternally begotten by the father. The human nature is not eternally begotten. The human nature is begotten at a moment in time when the Holy Spirit took from the Virgin Mary and conceived in her womb Jesus. Nonetheless, because God the Spirit is the one who conceived in the womb, the human nature of Jesus is also part of his sonship, not an adopted human nature. But Jesus, according to his divine and human nature, is Son of God. Son of God, begotten, not adopted. That's the testimony of Holy Scripture, isn't it? John chapter one, twice, it speaks of Jesus as the only begotten Son of God. The modern translations that change that into only son are perverting this and contradicting not only scripture but the Heidelberg Catechism which says, why is he called the only begotten son? Romans 8.32 concerning God says this, who spared not his own son. That's what Jesus is, God's own son. Now, one more note for clarification on this. God's begetting of his people is an act where God gives life to them. The life that he gave to the human nature of Jesus is also the life that he gives to us. But that act of God begetting us again is not an act where God gives some of his essence to us. We do not become somewhat a partaker now of his essence and become God. No. That's when he begat his son. When he begats his son, he is giving him of his own essence. But when he begats us, he's only giving us of his life, the life that he gave to Jesus, human nature. We remain fully and completely human, even though we are given righteousness and holiness and a true knowledge. Some of the communicable attributes that we talk about in catechism but we remain adopted children with the life of Jesus. Jesus is the only and natural son of God. We are adopted, then amazingly, even begotten by God with the life of Jesus. That's why we insist As we turn to the second point, Jesus is the true God, the true God. I want to explain some of the things that Satan raised up as he ferociously attacked this doctrine that Jesus is the true God. We'll go back in church history a bit and explain some of these things partly so that we can understand why the church says what it does about Jesus, and partly to guard our own minds so that we will not stray into that thinking as we think about Jesus, the one only true God. One attack early in the church's history was that Christ is not a different person from the father. That within God there are not three persons. One God who simply puts on a different face. Sometimes he appears as father. Sometimes he appears as son. Sometimes he appears as spirit. but it's not because there are three persons in God is just one God who puts on three appearances father son and spirit the Bible is very clear that Jesus is a separate individual person distinct from the father and from the son let me demonstrate that At baptism, the father said, this is my beloved son. And the spirit descended upon him in the form of a dove, three different persons. Jesus is a person who says, I, I come to do the will of my father. John 17 is a lengthy prayer that Jesus addresses to his father. So when Jesus says I, it's not the father saying I, it's not the spirit saying I, it's the son. He's an individual distinct person, distinct from father and spirit. More serious is the attack that came through a theology of a man named Arius that many of our high school students have learned about, who denied that Christ is very God. He lived about the year 300, so about 300 years after Jesus. And he taught that God created Christ in eternity So that Christ would be the one who would create the whole creation. God created Christ who created all things. That's what Arius taught. Therefore, he said, Christ is not eternal. There was a time, so to speak, in eternity when Christ did not exist, and then a time, a moment, when God brought Christ into existence. Darius said, why is he called God? Well, it's because he does works that are so marvelous they are like the works of God, and because He is above all creatures, God, Christ, all creatures. So therefore, as creatures, we look up to him and say, well, he's God, even though he's not truly God, as the father is God. That's Arius. Jesus is not of the same essence as the father. After a lengthy controversy of about 60 years, the church completely rejected this heresy. It adopted the Nicene Creed in 325, but this was not universally accepted. There was still almost 60 years of conflict. until the church came together in Constantinople and adopted the Nicene Creed with some additions and modifications to make it clearer. And I want to read that. I want to read part of that. It's found in the back of our Psalter, page 642. 642. called the Nicene Creed, though technically it's also Constantinopolitan Creed. Now, we'll read the section that has to do with Jesus, and you can see the language and how emphatic the church was on this point. We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God. So that starts right out right there. The only begotten son of God, begotten of the world of the father before all worlds. So in eternity, God of God, that's as clear as you can make it. He is God of God. light of light, true God of true God. They just had to hammer home this truth. And then notice, begotten, not made. Over against Arius who said God created Christ? No, He's begotten, not made. being of one essence with the Father. And that was the biggest battle of them all. Is he the same essence as the Father? And the fathers here said, absolutely, Christ is the same essence as the Father, by whom all things were made. And then notice this, there's where you see athanasius influence, who for us men and for our salvation, for our salvation, came down from heaven, was incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made man. You see that the church had to face that error in order to have a statement so clear about the deity of Christ, true God, of true God, same essence of the Father, begotten, not made. That's our creed. That's really the basis of the Hatterberg Catechism, which we Yet confess. Now. Today, there are still those. Who want to pretend they're Christians? Who deny that Jesus is very God of the same essence, same essence as the father, the modernists, of course, who just believe Jesus was a an ordinary man. Jehovah's Witness, who are willing to say that Jesus is Son of God, but not God. The Mormons or the Church of the Latter-day Saints who have a very perverted doctrine of God, they claim that they are Trinitarian. They claim that. But in their theology, the Father has a body, and the Father begat the Son, through Mary, the way any other father begets a son. That's their theology. It is important for us to know how much the Bible stresses the deity of Jesus Christ. There is no question about it. Let's start with the fact that the father begets the son. The father who is not human, the father who does not have a body, the father who is pure spirit begets the son in his own image, of his own essence. Jesus has to be God. When a human father begets a child, that child is human. He's human. When God begets a son, that son is divine, as God is divine, the father. That, first of all, But now let me address the children here for a moment. Think about Jesus' life. And if you saw a man that was full of sores, leprosy he had, bleeding sores, ugly sores, stinking sores, part of his face was falling off, part of his fingers were gone, and then you see this man, Jesus, who comes up to this leper and touches him and suddenly all his skin is fine. No more sores. It's perfectly healthy skin. Would you say, wow, what an amazing doctor that must be. Is that what you would say? And then you see this Jesus and a blind man comes up to him. And you knew this blind man, he's been blind since the day that he was born. And Jesus takes some dirt from the ground and makes some mud and puts it on his eyes and tells him to go wash, and that man can see. Would you say, wow, amazing mud that he can make that man see? Is that what you would say? And then you see a funeral procession. where there's a young man in a casket, and behind the casket that's being carried by some men is a poor old woman crying because her son, her only son, is there. And Jesus stops the procession, and He raises that son back to life. What would you say about this, Jesus? And if you followed him for a couple of weeks and you saw him heal every single malady of things that people came to him with, sickness, blindness, maimed, every kind of affliction, he healed them. You would say, this is not an ordinary man. Only God can do these things. The whole life of Jesus was a testimony to the fact that he is the only begotten son of God, very God. All his power revealed that. But if there's any question about that, the Bible will not allow there to be any questions about that. So what else does the Bible say about Jesus? It says five different things. Let me point to five things that the Bible gives us that clearly show He is God. Number one, if you go in the Old Testament, there are things that are ascribed to God that in the New Testament says it's Christ. In the Old Testament, Psalm 95, the Israelites tempted God in the wilderness. 1 Corinthians 10 says they tempted Christ in the wilderness. In the Old Testament, Psalm 103, which we sang, it speaks of how God laid the foundations in the beginning. And in Hebrews, which we read, we read, Thou, Lord, verse 10, in the beginning has laid the foundations of the earth. Christ, Christ laid the foundations of the earth. So that, first of all, specific activities in the Old Testament ascribe to God. In the New Testament, it says it's Christ. Second, he has the attributes of God. The attributes of God. He is eternal. Hebrews 1.8, thy throne, O God, is forever and ever. He is eternal. He is omnipresent. He said, where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them, wherever two or three are. He's omnipresent. That's God's attribute. He's omniscient as Peter confessed, thou knowest all things. He is omnipotent. He has all power. He said, my father, which gave them me, is greater than all, and no man is able to pluck them out of my father's hand. I and my father are one. He's omnipotent, and he is immutable. Hebrews 1.12, as a vesture thou shalt fold them up, and they shall be changed, but thou art the same. Thou art the same. Unchangeable is Jesus. The activities of God in the Old Testament, Christ in the New, the attributes of God. Third, when you look at the works of Jesus, they are clearly the works of God. He created, Hebrews 1 verse 10. He upholds all things, Hebrews 1 verse 3. He raises the dead. He said, that's why I've come here for everyone that God gives to me. I will save and I will raise him up at the last day. John six, verse 40. He forgives sins. He sanctifies, he glorifies his people, all the works that only God does. God's attributes. are Jesus attributes. Fourth, he is called God. He is called that. John 1, the word was God. The word that became flesh was God. Thomas said, my Lord and my God. And 1 John 5 verse 20 says specifically about Jesus, this is the true God and eternal life. 1 John 5 verse 20. And finally, the Bible says, honor Jesus, worship Him as you would the Father worship Christ. Paul, in all of his letters, when he calls for a blessing upon the church, calls upon Jesus and God because he has that honor. We are baptized in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. He deserves that honor. And Hebrews 1.6 says, when God brought his First born into the world, he said to all the angels, worship him, worship him, because he's God. Without any question, Jesus is true God. And that's why he can be such a glorious savior, because he is true God. That's what we consider in the third point. Glorious Savior. Only God can save. If you consider for a moment the sinner that is saved, dead in sin, corrupt totally with the stinking leprosy of sin. blind and lame and vile and corrupt. Who can take such a creature and save him, heal his spiritual leprosy, cleanse him from every evil, make him whole again, even give him a life that will never die? Only God could do such a thing. Consider man who is a mere creature, flesh and blood, and we fit here on the earth. This is where we belong. We're of the earth and we have air and we can breathe and eat and enjoy this life. But heaven, this body can't go there. Heaven is spiritual. It's for spiritual beings. Who can take this earthly body with all of its weaknesses and all of its defilements and make it to be a body that is fit for heaven? Only God. Who can take this earthly creation, defiled with sin, and cleanse it with fire and from the molten Mass that is left to create a new heavens and a new earth, which will last forever. Only God. But that's the work of Jesus. He redeemed his people. He earned a righteousness that is eternal. He gives the Spirit so that the Spirit cleanses His people, sanctifies them from corruption and death. And He is coming back to complete His work. He really, in principle, He finished the work on the cross, but He will come back and raise the dead, transform the bodies of His people into bodies that are like His, holy, spiritual, fit for heaven. and he will create an entirely new and glorious creation. Only God can do all of that. With God, nothing is impossible, nothing. Jesus is our glorious savior whom earth and heaven adore. But now think of what that means for those who are adopted children, what they get as they are brought into the family of God, made to be a living part of that family of God. It is an amazing and beautiful salvation, which we have now already in principle We've been given faith. We know God. We have absolutely great confidence because we're connected to Jesus by faith. His blessings are already coming to us. And we know, therefore, that someday we will have the completeness of all of the blessings that he earned for us. We've already been renewed in the image of Jesus Christ, righteousness, holiness, and true knowledge. We've been justified by faith, and therefore we have a righteousness standing before God that cannot be lost, that will never be diminished. We are forgiven. God declares that to us every time we confess our sins to Him. You are forgiven. And part of our justification, don't forget, is that we are adopted. That's part of our the great work of justification. We have a new life, the life of Jesus that already seeks the things that are above, not the things here below. And we have the hope, the sure hope of salvation. Christ is coming back. We absolutely are convinced of that. We will have the complete salvation of our body and soul. And we look with confidence for a city that has foundations. We have an eternal salvation which eye cannot see, ear has not heard. It's too glorious for us even to grasp what that will be like, but we can look forward to it. We look forward, in fact, to the final judgment, the day when the enemies of God and of his church are judged, when all of the wicked, ungodly, and when Satan himself is condemned to eternal hell, terrible, but absolutely righteous. But we will hear God declare publicly, publicly, my people are righteous in Jesus Christ alone. We don't go to the final judgment, worrying a little fearful that maybe God will not say that. Is there something that I should have done in order to be sure that I'm justified? No, nothing of that. A righteousness is only in him because you belong to him. You can go to the judgment day without fear. You will be declared righteous. Then we will see the creation of the new heavens and the new earth as Jesus marvelously builds this new world, a magnificent creation where the glory of God so fills it that there will be no need of the sun because the glory of God will be the light of that new kingdom. Christ will continue to be our mediator, our priest, through whom we can worship God and approach Him, our prophet who will teach us forever and ever, unfolding the infinite glory of God that has no end, and our King, who will rule over His kingdom in love and in grace. Very God, and yet, Our elder brother, very approachable. He loves us. He's our brother. And there we will enjoy the blessings of covenant life with God. That's the purpose. Ephesians 1 said we were chosen in Jesus Christ, predestinated unto the adoption of children so that we would be sinless, without blame, without any corruption, living within the sphere of God's love. That's what God has determined for his adopted children. The holy, the covenant God will dwell with his people. We will enjoy the infinite goodness of God and the perfections of that one only God. A covenant that can never be broken because it was established with Christ, who is God, and He will never fail. Adam failed. We fail every day. Christ never, because He's very God. All those blessings and surely so many more that we cannot even imagine now will be ours Because Jesus is very God. He's the only one that could accomplish all this. The only one that can give all of this to us. Without him. There is no salvation. But he is. God's only begotten son. That's our confession. Amen. Let us pray. Father in heaven, we thank Thee for Thy word of truth and for the glory of the Savior and the fact that He cannot fail because He is very God. He has not failed. He will finish His work. How we long for that eternal glory that is earned by Jesus, which will be given us by Him. We thank Thee again. for our savior, in his name we pray, amen. We sing Psalm 90D. 90D, the fourth selection of Psalm 90. We will sing the stanzas 1 through 4 and 6, 1 through 4 and 6 of Psalm 90B. Angels rise to our hope for years to come. Our shelter from the stormy past and our eternal home. ♪ States have felt secure ♪ ♪ Some nations design our novel ♪ ♪ And our defense is sure ♪ ♪ We coil the hills in our wisdom ♪ ♪ Our word we seek to bring ♪ ♪ Oh, that with us he now might come ♪ ♪ To endless years of stay ♪ ♪ For a thousand ages in thy sight ♪ ♪ Thou my heavenly King come ♪ O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? And the rocket's red glare, the bombs bursting in air, ♪ Our eternal home ♪ of his triumph, for he alone has won this town, and he's in Thus sent be his glorious name, Long as the ages shall endure, O'er all the earth that sent his name, Love and love, and forevermore. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all. Amen.