Lord's Day 19 in the Heidelberg Catechism focuses on the sitting at the right hand of God. Lord's Day 18 was the Ascension, and they're not the same. There is a distinction between the two, and the Ascension happens only once, and the sitting at the right hand happens for all of eternity. And he sits at the right hand of the father, having completed his work, as the book, as the writer of Hebrews tells us in Hebrews chapter one, that in these last days, he has spoken to us in his son, whom he appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the world. And he is the radiance of his glory, the exact representation of his nature, and upholds all things by the word of his power, When he made purifications of sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high, having become as much better than the angels. And then the list of scriptures, primarily Psalms, but not exclusively, a tolerance about the excellence of his name, including, as we saw from this morning, Psalm 45, quoted there in verses eight and nine. Your throne, O God, is forever. And so this sitting at the right hand of the father has to do with his majesty, his authority. The ascension was part of the salvation in terms of completing the work, completing the cycle in terms of his death, resurrection, and ascension. And his death was for us, of course, in terms of our sins, His resurrection was the proof of our justification that sin and the power of sin and death had been broken. And his ascension was that he would be able to sit at the right hand, but be able to send the Holy Spirit and show that he in fact was God. And so now we want to focus specifically on this right hand and question 50 in the catechism is, Why is it added he sits at the right hand of God? The answer, because Christ is ascended into heaven for this end, that he might appear as the head of his church by whom God governs all things. And Ephesians 1.20 specifically says, which he wrought in Christ when he raised him from the dead and set him at his own right hand in heavenly places. coupled that with the passage that we've just read from Colossians, we see that the ascension of Christ culminates in the sitting at the right hand and the finishing of all things, but the beginning of his reigning and ruling as the authority. And so I wanted to focus on this primarily. There's multiple questions in Lourdes Day 19. We might look at some of them, but I wanted to focus on this partially as a follow-up to this morning's sermon, and talk about the excellencies of Christ. We have a wonderful Savior, but he is the most glorious of beings, as we heard this morning, but let's look at what we have here. In Colossians chapter one, Paul is broken into a prayer, and as he says in verse nine, if not cease to pray for you, that we would be filled with a knowledge of his will and all spiritual wisdom and understanding, that we would knowledge of his will, the will of the one who has this authority, the one who is the head of all things, especially the church. And it's not just a knowledge in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, but it's a knowledge that is full of spiritual wisdom and understanding. You might remember in 1 Corinthians 1, the world and its wisdom could not come to understand God. And God saw fit in his wisdom that it would be so. The wisdom of men does not accomplish the will of God. The wisdom of man is not like the wisdom of God. And the wisdom of man, the things of God are foolish. And we have to embrace that. not just to those who are outside the faith, but those who are inside the faith. As I tried to point out last week in terms of the worship in heavenly realms, what does New Testament worship look like? It's not, you know, we are not the final arbiters of worship. We saw that the Pharisees had violated worship, made their worship and empty because they exchanged the commands of God for their own traditions and rendering their worship empty and vain. We saw Saul in 1 Samuel 15 who in zeal did not fulfill the will of the Lord, the word of the Lord, and therefore his worship was rejected. We saw Nadab and Abihu who worshiped according to God's will but added things. and according to their wisdom. And I suggested to you, this goes back to Adam himself, where Adam had these conflicting truth claims. God said no to the fruit. Satan said, go, do it, fine. And Adam exalted himself above the Adam and the devil to decide for himself by gathering his own empirical data and concluding that since the tree was good for food, good to make you wise and delight to the eyes, it must be okay to eat. And how'd that turn out? And this is a thing that happens to us all the time. Even those of us who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and have put our hope and trust in him, those of us who affirm the scriptures. And I was having a conversation this, the beginning of last week when I was in Boston with a good dear brother that I would, and no, I will not use his name, because I believe he is a dear, dear brother, and we were having a good conversation just about worship, and he totally rejects the idea of the Psalms are sufficient. And we had a good back and forth over lunch, and it was friendly and wholesome and noble, my new word, and it was good, but I said to him, He wanted to argue for the, to sing hymns and other things. And so I asked him on my departing, I said, here's two things I want you to think about. Our confession states explicitly that the scriptures are the sole sufficient authority for all of faith, practice, and obedience. So I don't want you to give me an answer that will defend your position or attack mine, what I want you to do is take a month and just meditate on what does your position of being able to sing whatever you want in good taste and good doctrine, of course, what is your position, what are the implications of your position on the sufficiency of scripture? And then I want you to meditate on what is my position's implications on the sufficiency of scripture? And then the second question is, I know you and I both believe in the sovereign grace of God. What is your position on worship? What are the implications on the sovereign grace of God with your view of worship? And what are the implications of my view in terms of the sovereign grace of God? And just think about that for a while, just meditate on those things. And of course, you know what I'm hoping will happen But my point is, you and I are not any different than this good and wonderful brother. We all want to bring to our understanding of God, Christ, church, worship, Christian life, our understanding and our wisdom, rather than resting totally on the sovereignty and headship of Christ. And that's why I want to focus on this. We are, because of the sin that we inherited, we are spring-loaded to, like Adam, to look for another authority other than the will of Christ. Just know that about yourself. Know that about me. This is why we want to have study the Word. This is why we want our kids to learn the catechisms. This is why we want to have a confession. because we know without the guardrails of these things, church history shows us that we are apt to be driving off in the weeds. I had the privilege to play golf at the country club the other day and experienced something I'd never ever seen in any golf course I'd ever played in. When I rode in the cart, they actually have built into the ground some type of sensor. So if your cart goes, too close to the green or too far off, it actually stops and slows down to a snail's pace. And the big sign comes up on the screen, you are in restricted area and you have to creep back to the restricted area before the golf cart will start to go somewhere again. And we are like the guy driving the golf cart, we want to go where we want to go. And if there isn't some type of way of restricting us, we will drive too close to the green and mess it up, or we in areas we shouldn't be. And that is true spiritually. So Paul's praying that we would have the spiritual wisdom and understanding so that we would walk in a manner worthy of who? The Lord, and to please him in all respects. That is, Paul will say elsewhere, my ambition, that in all things I'd be pleasing unto the Lord, he'll say to the Corinthians. And that's a good rule for understanding, even discerning the will of God. Is this pleasing to our Lord? Is this pleasing to our Lord? Now, the only way to really answer that is from the scriptures. But it's not a matter of whether it's pleasing to you or pleasing to me, pleasing to the whole, Is it pleasing to our Lord? For he is the sovereign one. And skipping down, it says in verse 13, he rescued us from the dominion of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved son. We were, prior to salvation, under the dominion, under the authority of darkness. We were slaves to sin. enslaved to sin and the didness of our transgressions. And Paul will say also that in terms of the, like in 2 Timothy 2, it talks about the Lord's bondservant, verse 24 through 26, the Lord's bondservant must not be quarrelsome, but kind to all, able to teach, patient when wronged, with gentleness correcting those who are in opposition, Perhaps God may grant them repentance, leading to the knowledge of the truth, and here's the key verse, and they may come to their senses and escape from this snare of the devil, having been held captive to do his will. Prior to coming to the Lord, we are held captive to do the will of the devil. And because of that, we are not in our senses. Luke 15 in the parable of the prodigal son, the son who claims all his inheritance and goes off and ends up in the feeding the pigs. And I've always appreciated why he's standing there. He comes to his senses. Here, Paul says, prior to salvation, you are not in your proper senses. You have to come to your senses because Prior to Christ, you are ensnared of the devil and held captive by him to do his will. But salvation is described back in Colossians as having been rescued from the dominion of darkness, from that authority of darkness. In fact, the word dominion, the Greek word is ekousia, and it's out of the being, out of the authority that generates from itself. A general in the army can tell his troops to get up and to go and to run into battle, and no private gets to say, who assigned you the authority? Well, and that's being held in the darkness, in the dominion of darkness, into the snare of the devil, and the devil is working in us as sons of disobedience, children of wrath, even as the rest. We follow along with him quite well. And you see this, especially in children. As adults, it's still there, but as adults, we've learned more sophisticated ways to cloak our sins. But children, remember the terrible twos, you know, and the freak outs that kids will have, the temper tantrums? They're only acting out according to the flesh, ensnared by the devil to do his will, and selfishness becomes their thing. And then it comes back in the teenage years. You know, mom and dad, you just don't know. Yeah, we do. You know, it's like, was it that saying by Mark Twain, you know, that he was amazed how much his father learned between him, Mark Twain, being 15 or 16 and becoming 21. His father learned so much. His father didn't learn anything. Mark Twain did. Or what did he say that when a child becomes a teenager, put him in a pickle barrel. Lock them up in a pickle barrel, and when they turn 18, plug the barrel. You know, there's these, our fallen nature really is quite ugly and self-asserting, just as Adams was in the garden. We want to do our will. You are spring-loaded for that. I am spring-loaded to that. That's where selfishness comes from, outbursts, anger, resentments, all of those things. come from that self-sovereign will that we have. And the devil plays into that, the devil uses that, the devil manipulates that. But we have been rescued from that, even though we still struggle. It says we were rescued from this dominion, this authority that the devil has in who he is in the redemptive purposes of God, and we were transferred to the kingdom of the beloved son. The kingdom. Christ is the king, and we saw something of that this morning. And he is the great king, the one who is fairer than all of the sons of Adam, the one whose lips have been anointed, the one who rides on into victory and subdues his enemies in his wars for truth and righteousness and meekness. Here, we've been transferred into that one's kingdom. What an amazing thing. And with it, the forgiveness of our sins. The forgiveness of our sins. We're not just placed into this kingdom randomly. We have been purchased by redemption and have been forgiven our sins. Now it tells us, Paul tells us this about the son, this beloved son in his kingdom. Who is the son? Verse 15 unpacks this title, the beloved son in his kingdom. He is the image of the invisible God. Remember what Jesus will say in John 14, if you have seen me, you have seen the father. He's the firstborn of all creation. Unlike the Aryans and the Jehovah false witnesses and others, this doesn't mean that Christ was the first of all creation. The image, he is the firstborn of all creation, meaning he's the position of authority and a position of honor above and beyond all of creation. He is not created. And this idea of the firstborn of creation is explained that in the heavens and on the earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones, dominions, and rulers, authorities, all things have been created through him and for him. All things that have been created have been created by him and for him, whether it's visible or invisible, thrones or dominions, rulers or authorities, there isn't anything that exists that does not exist. There's nothing that was created, that was not created, maybe it's a better way of putting it, that was not created for the sole purpose of the exaltation of Christ as King. That's who he is. And therefore we are to walk and to live in a manner worthy of that. The Apostle Paul, I'll sum up some of these things in the book of Romans when it reminds us that everything has been made for him and by him and to him. He says in Romans 11 verse 36, for from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be glory forever. And so we have been rescued, we have been delivered and transferred into this kingdom of this one who's called Lord, who is in fact over all authorities, whether visible or invisible, because everything that exists in terms of the created realm does so in reference to him, either created through him and created for him. Why? That he is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Or as the writer of Hebrews puts it, that he holds all things together according to the word of his power. And I always like that phrase, word of his power. We might have written it, his powerful word. But the word of his power is the fact that his word, when he speaks, it is accomplished. When he speaks, his word of power is able to accomplish that which is intended. Like Isaiah will say, his word will not return to him void. It will accomplish what it's intended to do. When God said, let there be light, the light had no chance of not shining. That which did not exist starts to shine. When Lazarus is in the tomb and Christ says, come out, there was not a chance that he would not come out of that tomb. When he says to the wind when they're in the storm on the Sea of Galilee, be still, there's not a chance that that wind would continue to blow and the waves would continue to risk the swamping the ship. He speaks and it is done. And this is into his kingdom that we have been transferred. It's in his kingdom that we have found the forgiveness of sins and it's in his kingdom that we are to walk in manners all respects to be worthy in a manner pleasing to Him. Therefore, Community Baptist Church, your family, your life, you do not have the freedom to define for yourself who and what we are. Now, things that make me laugh may not make you laugh. Things you think are odd may not be things I think are odd, but I like to watch people I've enjoyed watching people most of my life. I like to watch the way they walk and say, can I learn anything from their personality by the way they walk? You know, you see some people, you know, and, you know, and you watch the way people dress, you know, and I assume that most people want to dress because they think it's cool, right? Maybe you know some people. I never really know anybody who says, I dress this way because I want everybody to think I'm as uncool and weird as possible. And these guys wear their ball caps. They look like Gomer to me on Andy of Mayberry. That's all I see. Now, you may see it differently. I'm not saying anything about that. I'm not giving you the biblical position on hat wearing. I'm simply saying that when I see someone got their hat, I'm going, or all the way to the side, or even worse, on a sunny day, all the way to the back, So the bill doesn't block the sun at all. I'm looking at God, that's weird, you know. And why I say that? Because you're free to wear your hat any way you want. Please do not say pastor was talking about the way I wear hats or whatever. But, you know, or how I should dress. But we're all, everyone wears their hat, their clothes, they walk, they talk. They do something because they're trying to express themselves, and usually they're trying to express their identity to be somewhat unique, except again for teenagers. Teenagers is a weird lot. If you go to the local high school, you'll see a group of four or five guys or gals walking, and they're all trying to be independent of mom and dad, right? They don't like mom's and dad's rules, but they get to school, and they will dress exactly like their friends. They'll wear the same sunglasses. If one wears a jersey, they all wear a jersey. They all wear ripped jeans. Then everybody's got to get ripped jeans. Who wears ripped jeans? I've never understood that. I want to look like I don't have any money, so I'm going to wear jeans that look like they're about to fall off. I just don't get it. But again, that's not the point. The point is that we all like our self-sovereign expression of who we are, what we think is cool, what we think is right, what we think is wholesome, or to pick up on this morning, what we think is noble. It's noble to look like, you know, a guy wearing his hat off to the side, you know, just like, all right? But the point is, our lives are not to be defined by ourselves. Paul says, again, that we are to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, to be pleasing him in all respects. Why? Because he's the Lord, because it's his kingdom. We are to do his will. We've been freed from the doing the will of the devil to doing the will of the Lord Jesus Christ. And he is the one who is the firstborn of all creation. All things in heaven and earth, visible and invisible, thrones and dominions and rulers, all of that exists through him and for him. And then he adds verse 18, and he is also the head of the body of the church. That's us. So what's pleasing in how we live and how our conduct ourselves is ought to be always the Lord. He is the point of reference, whether it be your individual life, your family, the church, your involvement in the community, or however far out you want to draw the circles. What is pleasing to the Lord is always the end game, because He is the glorious bodily image Or as Paul will say in chapter 2, verse 90, all the fullness of God dwells in him in bodily form. Who he is as the head and ruler of everything, your life only makes sense in connection to him. Nothing else. Nothing else. I have this little game on my phone that I've kind of got addicted to where you get a set of six letters and you have to figure out how to spell up to a dozen words with those six letters. And I look at them. I go there. I start looking. There's no words there. There's just no words there. And as long as I'm thinking in terms of who I am and what I think is cool, I can't see things. But as I start to rearrange, there's a little button I can push, and I'll rearrange the same letters, put them in a different order. And eventually, I'll start to see things. And so getting in a different reference point, I begin to see words. Oh, there's word. And I connect the dots and the word shows up. That's like you and I. There's all sorts of points of reference in our life. We're young, we're old, we're male, we're female, we're married, we're single, we're parents, we're children, we're grandparents, we're grandchildren. We're employed, we're unemployed, we're students, we're not students. There's a thousand points of identity for you, but your life will make no sense as long as you're looking at your identity through those things primarily. Your life only makes sense to the degree in which it's linked to the one true North Star, the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything else will be confusion. much like the sailor at the sea in the North Star, right? He might be able to pick out all the different constellations, but if he can't find the North Star, he doesn't know which way to turn. And how do you know which way to turn if you don't even know which way you're facing? And so he is before all things, and in him all things hold together, and he is the head, the body of the church. As the Catechism says, Christ ascended to heaven for this end, that he might appear as the head of the church by whom the Father governs all things. He governs all things. He's the ruler. He's the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he himself might come to have first place in the religious things. Right? Is that what it says? in the religious things? No, in everything. Well, what does everything pertain to? Well, you might skip down to the end of verse 20, that through his blood on the cross, he has reconciled all things, whether things in earth or things in heaven. So he is to have first place in everything, whether it's in heaven or on earth. Remember, Jesus will say in Matthew 28, all authority has been given to me in heaven on earth. And so back to my comments I made about this other brother, what is the argument for wanting to sing something other than psalms? Well, I like them, or it will seem meaningful to me, or I think it might help other people. And I have nothing against singing hymns. Hymns are great. Hymns are wonderful. Sing them all you want. But when we offer them to the Lord, if we're going to do that, which is pleasing to him in all respects, well, what would we sing? Maybe the Holy Spirit inspired Psalms in which we hear about the triune conversation between the Father and the Son and the Spirit, that prophetically reveal Christ, that proclaim Christ, that reveal to us things of Christ that we never would have known if Psalms hadn't said them like Psalm 110, show me in the book of Genesis to Malachi, other than Psalm 110, where Christ is both king and priest. There's nowhere to be found. And yet some will suggest, I'm not totally convinced they're right, but some will suggest that the book of Hebrews is nothing more than a sermon expounding Psalm 110. I'd kind of like to think that's what it is, is a sermon, because then I could expand my sermons. Just think, try reading through the book of Hebrews as one sermon. Yeah, now we're talking good sermons. But anyway, I adjust there, of course. But he has this authority. Now, I stress this, because I know everyone in this room believes these things. I don't know there's a single member of our church would ever, ever dare to say, I don't think Jesus is really in charge of everything. But I say this to remind us who he is because, as I said earlier, what is resident inside of you and me as sons of Adam and daughters of Eve is to do the exact opposite of this passage. We want the final say in something. Later in this Lord's Day, we'll talk about him coming in judgment. Question 52, what comfort is it to thee that Christ shall come again to judge the quickened and the dead? Did you know that there are conservative evangelical teachers Bible-believing, hold to the infallibility of Scripture teachers, deny eternal damnation? They're all for eternal life, but not eternal death. Well, where would they get that? Well, you ask them, say, well, I just have a hard time understanding how God could be glorified in the eternal judgment of somebody. Well, fine. But why are we limiting God by what you can understand? Some of you may have heard the story. I'm pretty sure I've used it before. But somewhere I remember listening to R.C. Sproul when he first heard John Gershner speak on eternal damnation in terms of election and the unelect going to hell. And this is the first time that Sproul, raised in a Presbyterian church, had ever heard of such a doctrine. Interesting right there. But he says, he argues with Gershner and follows Gershner all the way out to his car, arguing about this, and finally says, and he says something to the effect, I'm paraphrasing, he says something in effect to Dr. Gershner, you know, how is it that God is glorified in the death of my grandmother in eternity of hell? I mean, old grandma, she was a good lady, right? And Gershner just said to him, he goes, you are not sanctified enough to understand how God will be most glorified. in the eternal judgment of the unbelieving grandmother, your unbelieving grandmother. So why should we limit the glory of God and the power of God by our imaginations? It makes no sense to me why he would do this. Well, how much do you even actually know compared to other humans? And how much does even the greatest human, most informed and educated human know compared to an infinite transcendent God? So he has first place in everything, end of verse 18, which extends to everything on the earth and things in the heavens, end of verse 21. That's Christ. And so in this last year as we've considered our ecclesiology, it's important for us to remember that it's really not about us being Baptist or Presbyterian reformed or unreformed or, you know, or whatever thing or anything else. As important as those things might be, it's really Christ has been given the full authority and he will come in judgment as we confess every Lord's day, he's at the right hand of the Father, and he shall come again to judge both the living and the dead, and his kingdom will have no end, that by saying he's been exalted through the ascension to sit at the right hand of the Father with all authority, to reign and to rule over heaven and earth, and that he will come to judge that which is contrary to doing of his will ought to put a certain amount of reverential fear into our lives. This isn't just religious speak. Judgment will come. And it will come at the hour in which you least expect it. Sometimes when I'm watching the news and there's, you know, recently there was that plane in Washington, D.C. that collided with a helicopter. Everybody got on that plane and everybody got in that helicopter had no idea that they were about to perish. They all had a place to go. They all had people waiting for them to get home or to arrive. They had packed their bags as if they were planning to stay for a certain number of days or maybe coming home permanently. They had no idea. But in a moment, they were all gone. And just as they had no idea or anticipation of the coming of Christ in terms of the temporal passing, so when he comes in the fullness of his glory, we will be no more aware. He will arrive according to the appointed moment, and the world will be startled. And how have we spent our life? As Paul says, to walk in a manner worthy of the Lord to be pleasing to him in all respects? Or do we walk in a manner that is pleasing to the flesh? In a manner pleasing to our own ego? Walk in a manner pleasing to other people? So we can fit in? So we can belong? Jesus says this to the Pharisees, understand who I am, because you are more concerned about the glory of men than the glory of God. It says that, Gospel of John. You cannot comprehend what I'm saying. You can't even begin to get what I'm talking about, because you're more concerned about the glory of man, the approval of man, than the approval of Christ, or the glory of Christ. Who is Christ to us? So when the catechism tells us about his death, his resurrection, his ascension, sitting in the right hand of the Father, these aren't to be quick answers that we have so we can say we've been catechized. These are things that ought to rearrange and shape how we think, how we feel, how we live, how we relate to one another, how we conduct ourselves in all things. Apostle Paul speaks this way repeatedly in his writings, and he reminds us that we are to walk in a manner that is worthy of the gospel, as he says in Ephesians chapter 4, therefore I, as a prisoner of the Lord, implore you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called, with humility, gentleness, and patience. He says similar to the Philippians when he reminds them that they are to walk in a manner worthy of the gospel. He'll say it to the Corinthians. He'll say it to the Romans in Romans chapter 12 when he says the great verse, after finishing the doctrine, I urge you therefore by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice acceptable to God which are spiritual service of worship, and do not be conformed to the world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, so that you may prove what the will of God is, that which is good, acceptable, and perfect. And why do we do these things? Out of some cold, legalistic view of religion? No. But out of love? for our Savior and for His glory and honor. Because He's loved us, He's redeemed us, He's forgiven us. As we learned this morning, He's embraced us as His bride. He is our groom. I live, my life only makes sense as it's connected to Him. It's the only identifying point that will make sense of my life or your life. And a life well spent will be a life lived. I'll say this one last thing. I forget the man's name. I didn't want to say it. It's Chalmers. But there's a famous sermon that he preached on, you know, the natural affections of love for the world that we have. And the only way to replace a love of the things of the world is to replace it with a greater love. And that's the love of Christ, the love for Christ. As Paul will say to the Corinthians, for the love of Christ constrains me. His love for Christ was so deep and so real and so profound. There's just certain things Paul would never do again. He'll say elsewhere to the Corinthians, you know, all things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. Yes, I can make a case why I can do this, that, or the other. But my love for Christ is more important than the argument I can make for doing this, that, or the other. My love for Christ is what controls me, not my argument about this or that or the other. My love for Christ, the one who has dominion over all things, the one who has been given the first place, the one who has created everything and all things were created either through him or for him. In my love for him, I live my life. And as we say so often here, when Jesus is asked in Matthew 22, what's the first and great commandment? It's to love God with all your heart and mind, soul, strength. The fact that Jesus is the right hand of the Father Again, there's no empty religious speak. He is there with all the authority. He will come again, but he's already rescued us. Why would we want to walk in a manner, anything less than what is pleasing to our most wonderful and majestic Savior? Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you so much that you have not left us alone. You have not left us to ourselves. You have rather caused us to be born again, delivered from the dominion of darkness, rescued, placed in the kingdom of the Beloved Son. We pray, Father, for the grace to have a right view of Him, that we might love Him, that we might be enthralled with all that He is, and that our love for Him would outweigh all other loves. to the glory of his name, in which we pray, amen.