Better Revelation

Jesus is better.

Jesus is better.

I wonder, could life be described as the slow pursuit of the answer to the question of why?

If Jesus is better, why is this so?

Today we begin a new series.

Lord willing will be for the month of April in the Book of Hebrews.

And this will include Good Friday and Easter Sunday.

And the title of this series is Everlastingly Better.

Jesus is a better revelation.

He's a better priest, a better sacrifice.

He wins a better victory.

And he promises a better covenant.

Jesus is better.

If I was to say to you, I've found the better coffee shop.

It's the best coffee shop.

Is this, can I do anything with this?

Bend it out a bit.

It's going to be popping a lot.

Yeah, I find this coffee shop and I say, it's got the best beans.

You might be quite within your rights to say, John, I know that's a nice thought, but I think it might be subjective, isn't it?

That's what we say.

Like, I've found the best.

I found the better beans, the better coffee.

And you might say, well, that is subjective.

Can we objectively say Jesus is better?

I fully believe we can.

And I think Hebrews, which although written by an unknown author, we just don't know who inspired, we know who inspired the writer.

That was God.

But we don't know who it was.

But Jesus is better from the Book of Hebrews, objectively, on any scale of comparison.

He's better than any other belief that you could possibly find in another savior.

He's better than a belief in humanism.

He's better than the pursuit of wealth, even the pursuit of happiness.

He's better than what you could ever find in religion, in idols, in the pleasures of this world.

Hebrews says, Jesus is better.

Did I mention?

Jesus is better.

And he's from the text, firstly, the better truth.

He is a better truth.

Hebrews 1.

In the past, God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways.

But in these last days, he has spoken to us by his son.

The title of the book gives away the type of people that the letter is written to.

It's people who know the Hebrew scriptures.

We don't know when, as I said before, when it was written or even exactly to whom, but what we do know from the book is they were very familiar with the detailed Jewish sacrificial practices.

So, we also know from Hebrews 2.3, this salvation which was first announced by the Lord was confirmed to us by those who heard him.

So, confirmed to us by the apostles.

So, the writer is someone who knew the disciples of Jesus.

If they are Jewish, they know that God spoke through the prophets, don't they?

God in the Old Testament spoke through prophets like Moses, Isaiah, Daniel, Elijah.

And God frequently confirmed the genuine authenticity of the prophet through miraculous events that they were able to pray for God to do.

Elijah called down fire from heaven.

Daniel survived the time in the lion's den.

Hebrews says, although the Old Testament is awesome, clearly, it's God's word, it's God's story of salvation, Jesus is better.

It's what we see in the Mount Transfiguration wonder, isn't it?

Caesarea Philippi, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up on the mountain, and he is transfigured before them.

He becomes shining, glorious, something divine, something different, something more.

And the weird thing is, with him, turn up who?

Moses and Elijah.

And normally, we think Moses represents the law, and Elijah represents the prophets.

And there's this voice from heaven, when you've got the great two prophets, the law and the prophets, Moses and Elijah, and Peter, James, and John here.

This is my son.

Listen to him.

God the Father is saying, Jesus is better.

He's the better truth.

He's the more full revelation.

So there are Jewish people reading a letter to them.

Interacting with their specific context.

A group of people who hold the prophets of the Old Testament as highest truth.

So what about 2025?

What is Jesus competing against?

Meghan Markle is one of the people he would be competing against, who said famously not to hassle her out in any way.

But she was interviewed by Oprah.

Does anyone remember?

She was interviewed by Oprah and she said, I'm just telling my truth.

Now, of course, she does have a subjective approach to her life, and it is her life, and she is telling the truth about what she has experienced.

But often the way it's phrased is, truth is relative, isn't it?

I'm telling my truth, you tell your truth, we all do our truth.

I would put it to you that Jesus is better, a better truth than Megan's personally constructed truth or my personally constructed truth.

It's better because Jesus is the truth, amen?

Jesus is the truth, John 14, 6, Jesus answered, I am the way, the truth and the life.

Jesus is the better truth because he is truth and he is the smarter guide.

He is the smarter guide.

I bumped into a guy last night at the wedding, towards the end.

Well, he bumped into me and then I turned around and he said, oh, sorry, mate, sorry.

And he shook my hand and then he sort of, he knew that I was doing part of the service at the front, so he knew that I was a bit religious, but he also knew he was a great mate of the guy getting married.

They're in the Navy together.

And this guy, he just wanted to say, I want to respect people that are religious.

I don't want to disrespect, so help me just respect you people that have faith.

And that got us into a conversation.

And I said, look, it's okay, you can just be yourself, because Josh, the main thing about Josh is, he takes his main guidance from Jesus.

He follows Jesus as his Lord and Savior.

He's like, yeah, right, and I said, and you follow someone too.

There is someone telling you a good news story about how to live your best life.

You may just not know how to articulate who it is that you follow.

Isn't that true?

That we're all being influenced by truth tellers and gospel guides.

I've noticed over the years, sometimes quite conservative people over the years have had really strong opinions I've come across.

And then I find out later they really love Sky News.

I'm not criticising it.

But, and then I find out the gospel teller was one personality.

I can't even think of his name now.

Who's the main?

Oh, it doesn't matter.

Isn't that funny?

The Lord's going, I don't want you to mention his name.

It has come to me now, but I won't mention his name.

But it's just funny that people get a real flavor about their opinions, don't they?

Of course, we're all getting guided by the algorithm of what's coming through our phones, I guess.

But I just want to point out and remind us all that we listen to truth, whether it's our favorite influencer, podcaster, author, newsreader, family member, or friend, and they are telling us something that they claim to be the best way to live.

In these last days, God has spoken through his Son.

There is such a thing as truth, hallelujah.

And his name is Jesus, he is a person, and he is the better truth.

And he also, Hebrews tells us, provides a better cosmology.

By cosmology, I just mean origin story.

Jesus is the best origin story.

Hebrews 1, 2 tells us, Jesus, whom he appointed, God appointed, heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.

I can't help but smile, because is that an objective statement of truth, or a fanciful idea in the Judeo-Christian tradition?

Because that's full of full-on stuff, right?

How do you say so much craziness in a few words?

Appointed heir of all things, and through whom also made the universe.

God, who is Jesus, the son of God, is attributed in scripture the prestigious honour of being the one who made the universe.

Let's just say that together.

Jesus made the universe.

It's easier to say in a church, but when you're with a bunch of non-believers, and you just say it, Jesus made the universe, it's a full-on thing.

But look, it's certainly in scripture, John 1, there's some text I'll show you, through him all things were made.

Scripture says it in other places, Colossians 1, all things were created through him and for him.

All things.

And we could look at pictures of the microscopic, the beautiful, the animals, all the stuff that's on this earth, and that just blows our mind.

But who remembers the Hubble Telescope and the time that they focused, this is the shot on the left, they focused, I think it was 11 hours, they opened up the lens, did it in 11 hours, slow shot, of a pinprick in a black sky.

And they were like, what would have come back?

And that's what came back on the left.

They're not, if you don't know this, this is crazy, and I'm sorry the resolution is not good, but look up the Hubble Telescope.

They're galaxies, like the Milky Way.

They're not stars.

The one on the right is the James Webb Space Telescope, which is far more detailed than the Hubble one.

Check out some of these James Webb photos.

These are massive galaxies, planets, stars.

Jesus made that.

I find it, it's, I've got to recalibrate my brain and heart often, to go, do I believe that?

Because that's, I don't know, there aren't words, are there?

Extraordinary.

But it certainly would make sense that if he was the one who breathed that all into existence, the creative utterance of God, who walked around on earth, but before that was part of the eternal Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the Word, the Logos, it would make sense that he is the heir of all things.

And Christians, the New Testament used titles like King of Kings, that guy, Lord of Lords and Lord of Creation.

Amen.

Lord of Creation.

When we speak Cosmos and its beginnings, most of us just logically think there probably was a first cause.

There is sort of something that knocked the first domino.

It just makes sense to most of us people trying to work out what makes sense in the story of the beginning of the universe.

But you don't have many options.

You either have eternal matter that was just there, or the Bible teaches there is a being, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the triune God who has always been there.

And eternal personhood.

Happy and enough within himself, a community of love, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

It's extraordinary what the Bible teaches and Hebrews is telling us that there is a better story, a better origin story, and it's all about Jesus.

Now you might wonder, like I do, if I can get to a place of appreciating that revelation that Jesus is the one who is the best truth and he teaches me all sorts of stuff about how to live and he's the one who created it all, I ask myself the question, why on earth do you disobey that guy?

Why do you not do everything he says?

Why do you substitute him as your gospel guide for other people that are so less filled with truth?

Does anyone know that question?

Of course, all of our hands should go up because it's the problem of sin, the problem of sin.

We just do really stupid things.

We disobey the one who created everything and who is the truth, he's a better truth, he's a better origin story, a better cosmology, and he's the better God.

Hebrews 1.3, the sun is the radiance of God's glory and the exact representation of his being, sustaining all things by his powerful word.

Whoever wrote Hebrews knew how to be punchy.

When we say better God, it's a little bit tongue in cheek because there's only one living God, capital G, but there are plenty of other competing small g gods.

The writer of the Hebrews tells us that Jesus is the radiance of God.

You can't separate him from God.

Like the sun is felt by the rays.

It's the sun we're feeling in the rays, and it's a bit like Jesus is the rays.

He's the radiance of the father.

We're also told that this God, son of God, as he walked around, is and was the exact representation of God's being, sustaining everything all the time.

So which God is he better than?

I think in our day and age, certainly in the West, you could summarize it.

It has been summarized by a lot smarter people than me, and they have said it's probably deism and epicureanism that are the biggest voices in Western civilization when it comes to understanding who God is.

So deism is a belief that there is a God and he created everything, but he was like a watchmaker.

He sort of twisted the back of the watch and set it in place and let it go.

He's a long way away.

The deist God is not connected to us really in daily living.

So miracles, prayer, revelation, they're unlikely and even unnecessary.

Morality for a deist may still be grounded in God, but the personal relationship, it's not really even expected.

Do you think that there are some of us Christians who unintentionally live as functional deists?

Yeah, there's a God who created things, but, you know, He's a long way away from me.

And then you've got epicureanism, which is this belief in an indifferent universe.

The gods, if they exist, are completely uninvolved, and there's a lot of random chance going on.

And basically, if you summarize epicureanism, it's the belief that the universe doesn't care, so you should, and avoid pain and seek pleasure.

And people like NT.

Wright have put this together and said, I think that in the current 21st century expression of faith, even within the church, it's often a mixture of the two, deism and epicureanism.

There's a belief that there could be a god, or maybe there is a god, but he's not involved.

And so what are we meant to do?

Well, our best bet is to seek to be happy.

And seek to be happy.

In contrast, the Biblical World View offers a present and personal God who walked the earth and demonstrated love and compassion everywhere he went.

He cared deeply, he wasn't epicurean, he wasn't a long way off.

Jesus is the better God, because he's the only God.

I'd put it to you, seriously, go on, look for these answers to this.

Can you find another God that's anything like Jesus' God?

Humble, sovereign, august, supreme, can do anything he wants, but he expresses himself as a servant who would go to a cross for humanity, the humanity that he created, who rejected him first.

He's the better truth, the better cosmology, he's the better God, and that leads us to the fact that he's the better saviour.

Amen?

He's the better saviour.

Hebrews 1, 3 to 4.

After he had provided purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the majesty in heaven, so he became as much superior to the angels as the name he has inherited is superior to theirs.

He's a better saviour because we need to be saved from our sins.

Martin Luther lived at the turn of the 14-15 hundreds, and he was a German monk, theologian, and professor, and he was a Roman Catholic believer, and he believed with Catholicism that faith plus good works plus the sacraments, and that means communion and baptism, and maybe paying some money with indulgences leads to salvation.

But he struggled with this.

He struggled with the guilt and the fear that he still felt trying to do these works, these good works, but never feeling enough.

Even though he was strictly devoted in his religious attitude, he once while he was lecturing on the Bible at the University of Wittenberg, he was studying Romans, Galatians, and the Psalms.

Around 1515, he's studying Romans 1-17, and he read, the righteous will live by faith.

And he had this incredible experience.

He writes, I grasped that the righteousness of God is that through which the righteous live by a gift of God, namely by faith.

I felt I was altogether born again.

He realized that salvation is a gift that God gives us by grace, not earned in any way.

On October 31, 1517, anyone have a birthday October 31?

Just wondered?

Because you might not have known that.

Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door at Wittenberg.

And he basically said, I believe that salvation is by grace alone through faith alone.

And it sparked the Protestant Revolution, the Reformation, which was a revolution.

And he taught that it is by grace alone, sola gratia, sola fide, by faith alone, and by scripture alone, sola scriptura.

And this became the foundation for reformed theology.

So Luther discovered that Jesus is the better Saviour, his life, his death, the blood that he shed on that Roman cross is sufficient to save a person when they receive him by faith alone.

The context of the Book of Hebrews is offering that story in the midst of a belief in animal sacrifice.

So we're going to come to that Lord willing at Easter, at Good Friday.

But can I just ask you, if you have ever believed or still believe that becoming right with God is achieved through your own merit, good works or religious acts, baptism or communion or giving money, there's a better way.

Hallelujah.

There's a better way.

It's called the good news.

And here are some of the texts that are really concise that wrap up this incredible truth.

Ephesians 2, it's by grace you have been saved through faith and this not from yourselves.

It's the gift of God not by work so that no one can boast.

No one's getting into a perfect relationship and eternal life through being good enough.

It's only Jesus.

Titus 3.5, he saved us not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.

Do you have Titus 3.5 locked away if you're a Christian?

That's so pithy, isn't it?

It's so clear.

He saved us not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.

And then in Galatians 2.16, a person is not justified by the works of the law, but by faith in Jesus Christ.

We all need to be saved because we are all sinners.

We need a Saviour, but it's not received this salvation.

This forgiveness is not received by works.

Purely by faith in Christ, we are saved.

And this is the good news.

In whom do you put your trust?

In whom do you put your trust?

Now, in this season of your life, maybe you had a different approach to trusting God in years gone by.

What's happening right now?

Do you know a better truth than Jesus?

Really?

Do you know a better truth than Jesus?

Do you know a better cosmology, a better origin story than Jesus, who is the truth?

Have you really found a better God than our God revealed in the New and the Old Testament?

Do you know a better Saviour?

I've been asking people for about 35 years, don't let me waste my life if this isn't true.

And no one's ever given me a compelling reason to not follow Jesus and in my case, be a full-time pastor of Christianity.

Because I've said to people over the years, don't hold out on me, let me know first, please.

I'm doing this with my life as a pastor, but no one's come close to that.

I can honestly say, I mean, it's just my subjective opinion, I'm telling you.

No one has ever given me another possible alternative that makes any comparative worth for me to look at seriously.

If you're one of those people, let's talk afterwards.

But I would put it to you, Jesus is the better truth, the better cosmology, he's the better God and he's the better Saviour.

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