Sermon Tone Analysis

On a dark night about a hundred years ago, a Scottish missionary couple found themselves surrounded by cannibals’ intent on taking their lives.

That terror-filled night they fell to their knees and prayed that God would protect them.

Intermittent with their prayers, the missionaries heard the cries of the savages and expected them to come through the door at any moment.

But as the sun began to rise, to their astonishment they found that the natives were retreating into the forest.

The couple’s hearts soared to God.

It was a day of rejoicing!

The missionaries bravely continued their work.

A year later the chieftain of that tribe was converted.

As the missionary spoke with him, he remembered the horror of that night.

He asked the chieftain why he and his men had not killed them.

The chief replied, “Who were all those men who were with you?”

The missionary answered, “Why, there were no men with us.

There were just my wife and myself.”

The chieftain began to argue with him, saying, “There were hundreds of tall men in shining garments with drawn swords circling about your house, so we could not attack you.”

These were all angels sent to protect the missionaries from harm.

In my preparation for this sermon, I came across many such stories of the wondrous works of angels.

Elisha also experienced such angelic deliverance.

Protecting Elisha at Dothan from the Syrians, it was shown to his servant a great multitude of angels on the hills around the city. 2 Kings 6 records the event, “So the Lord opened the eyes of the young man, and he saw, and behold, the mountain was full of horses and chariots of fire all around Elisha.”

We could be forgiven for falling at their feet if we came face-to-face with them ourselves as many saints through Scripture have done.

We can also sympathise with the temptation that the Hebrews were facing, that the angels are the powerful ones and should be worshipped.

In the face of all these things we find the rebuttal of the author.

Christ is the one to whom all worship and honour is owed.

He is the righteous King over all whose kingdom will not end.

It is my hope and desire that this morning we will see Christ for who He is, the only begotten Son of God who is ruler over all, who was here yesterday, is here today and will forever be.

He is the Immanuel.

He is the King.

The One who was worshipped by angels at His birth and who continues to be worshipped now and forever more.

This Christ is our God and Saviour and there is none beside Him.

It is my hope that as we behold Him, we would live in light of that.

This morning we will look at it under three headings:

Christ the Son

Christ the Ruler of Righteousness

Christ the Everlasting King

(Repeat)

Christ the Son

Read vs 4-6

Head

Having proceeded to claim that Christ’s name and position is superior to that of angels, we find these words:

“For to which of the angels did God ever say?

‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you.’”

The answer is a resounding, none of them.

Yet, these words are perhaps some of the most debated words in all of Church history.

What does it mean that God has begotten Christ?

What does it mean for God to be Father and Son?

Is there a sense in which one is superior to the other?

Was there ever a time when the Son was not?

These questions have perplexed many and continue to perplex to this day.

Some claim that Christ was the literal first born, that He is pre-eminent because he was first in order.

Others, claim that Christ is inferior and subordinate to the Father in some form.

This is a drastic misunderstanding of what is being said of the Son in these passages.

What is being spoken of here is what is called the eternal generation of the Son.

That is, the Son comes forth from the Father’s essence.

Let me give a quick example.

I’m sure most of us in some ways have experienced the joy of a new born baby.

Either your own or someone else’s.

The exclamations, “Oh he’s got your nose.”

Or “she’s got your eyes.”

We say these things because children are produced after the physical essence of their parents.

“He’s his Father’s Son,” we may remark.

The origin of the children is in their Father’s and Mothers.

Their physical features, their character is “generated” from their parents.

Now, though this falls far short of the eternality and complexity of the Trinitarian Godhead, for God is eternal, and we are finite.

We may struggle to grasp the depths of what it means that the Son is eternally generated from the Father as we can only think in created terms.

But, we can use it in some way as an analogy for the generation of the Son from the Father.

God has accommodated Himself to our created minds in order that he may in some way impart the beauty of Himself to us.

Pause

We say, and Scripture testifies, that the Son is begotten of the Father because they share the same essence.

Though the language may seem strange, unfamiliar, and old to us, it communicates something theologically beautiful.

For the Son to be begotten of the Father is to say that the Son is generated from the true God.

This is not something that at one point was not, and now is.

For, if that is the case then the essence of the Father is not Father, and the Son, not Son because there was a point when they were not Son or Father and therefore, are not God and we have no saviour.

As Matthew Barrett says,

“If the Son’s generation did fall within time, then not only is there a time when the Son was not, but there is a time when the Father was not Father.

And if there was a time when the Father was not, then there was a time when the Trinity was not.”

Instead, as the Nicene Creed says,

“the Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds… very God of very God (that is, they share the same nature entirely), begotten not made, being of one substance with the Father.”

This is the foundation of all that we believe.

Christ, having completed His work in this world has entered into the fullest sense of Sonship,

“after his suffering had proved the completeness of his obedience, he was raised to the Father’s right hand,”

says F.F. Bruce.

As Romans 1:4 says, Jesus “was declared with power to be the Son of God by his resurrection from the dead.”

The Son has always been the Son, and the Father always the Father.

Yet, as Paul proclaims in Acts 13, “And we bring you the good news that what God promised to the fathers, this he has fulfilled to us their children by raising Jesus, as also it is written in the second Psalm, ‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you.’”

For it was Christ’s exaltation to the Father’s right hand that proved His superiority over angels as the Son of God, as the name he inherited, Son, is more excellent than theirs.

Heart

Christ is the Son in human flesh.

He is perfect God and perfect man.

He is not two but one without any confusion but completely unified in the person of Christ.

He is the Only Son of God who took on the form of man, our form, and humbled Himself, even to the point of death on a cross.

He did this so that we may now be called Sons of the Living God!

Michael Bird says this,

“One cannot believe in the Father without believing in the Son and the Spirit.

One cannot cleave to the Son without cleaving to the Spirit and the Father.

One cannot receive the Spirit without receiving the Father and the Son.”

And so, we experience the full benefits of the Trinity as Father, Son and Holy Spirit through Christ the Son taking on our form.

It is only because of the absolute and full divinity of the Son that we have this.

Christ had to be the Son in order for all these benefits to be applied to us.

That we can know God as our Father, have the redeeming work of Christ applied to us through the sanctification of the Spirit.

No angel or created being could ever confer onto us the full fellowship with God in Trinity.

Hands