Jesus' Legal Ministry
- Details
- Sunday Morning Service
- Pastor Jeremy Richards
- Copalis Community Church
- 01 February 2026
- Hebrews 1:2-5
- Colossians 1:13
- Jeremiah 10:12-14
Let's go to Hebrews then. Let's go to Hebrews. And so we are still moving through this important book here.
So Hebrews 1.
Hebrews is a book about the ministry of Jesus Christ. There was a legal work that had to be accomplished to satisfy the justice of a righteous God and his relationship to rebels who have sinned against him. This is a picture of Jesus legal ministry and we're going to be looking about this. The introduction into the book of Hebrews brings us starting, if you remember back that God spoke in times past through the prophets. These were individuals who spoke most clearly on the behalf of God.
This was culminated in the life of John the Baptist, the greatest of the prophets. But we see that he who is least in the kingdom of God is greater than John the Baptist because he has a unique perspective of the life of Jesus Christ that John the Baptist did not have. That perspective on Jesus. Life is so much more valuable than the prophets of the past. That perspective of any earthly person pales in comparison to the words that Jesus is still speaking today.
And Hebrews is going to tell us just how valuable the Son is. First of all, we saw that it is valuable. In verse 2 it says, has in these last days spoken to us by his Son, who he has appointed heir of all things. Because the fullness of time had come. Because Jesus being at the correct age of a priestly ministry, because he overcame Satan, because he willingly offered himself upon the cross, because he lived a pure life, because he was willing to walk wash his bride with his own blood, because he raised from the dead, he was given a unique position by God the Father becoming heir of all things.
You and I are now a direct possession of Jesus Christ. He owns all things. He's been given a name which is above every other name. And because he holds that position, his voice is uniquely qualified to be listened to.
That's true. God forbid it ever happens. But I think, you know, at the jblm there is at least some preparation to an attack by China upon the Pacific coast. Yes, that they are preparing for that and do not want to be surprised that one day they think that if there is a war that determines the course of the future events of America, it will probably come from China. And so there's preparation.
I'm sure in some way, if that ever did happen and China became directly responsible for Washington State, we would answer to a new authority. I'm not saying that's something we want in any way. But in a similar way, Jesus having become heir of all things, holding all Responsibility. Having been given everything by God, we are now uniquely responsible to him as a person. And therefore his voice should be listened to carefully.
We should open our ears because he has been appointed heir of all things. But there is another reason why we should carefully listen to to the voice of the Son of God. And that is also in verse two and what we're going to talk about today. It says in chapter one, verse two. I'm going to read all verse two again.
Has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through Whom also He made the worlds. One of the reasons we should pay careful attention to the voice and to the ministry of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, is because it is through him that all the worlds were made. This can mean ages or eons, but he is the Creator of all things. Because of his position as Creator, he owns a unique spot to be listened to because of his work in creation, because he made us, because we are his creation. He holds a position that we should pay attention to, his voice.
So we're going to look at that a little bit deeper.
In Colossians.
We're going to start looking at Jesus as creator. Creator, a position he holds as making everything. If anyone has ever been around me long enough, you'll understand that I much enjoy a creation and at times the debate, the creation and evolution debate. But we're going to look at this idea here in chapter one of Colossians, in looking at the ministry of Jesus Christ. In a different book, it says, in chapter one, verse 13, it says, he has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins.
He is the image of the invisible God, the Firstborn over all creation. For by him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers or. All things were created through him. And for him he is before all things, and in him all things consist. And he is the head of the body, the Church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he might have preeminence.
He is described here as an individual who created one all things. That there is nothing that is, that he has not created. As a result of his creating all things. He is placed in a position in the Church where He has preeminence. The Church should respect Jesus Christ because He created all things.
Because he created all things. We are responsible to him. So we're going to look at this idea a little more. Jesus as Creator. In John, it says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God.
And the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. All things were created through him. And without him, nothing was made that was made.
So in his office of creation, first of all, we see that he is an active participant with the Godhead. He is God, and He was with God. But you see that he made all things. Number one, all things that were created were created through Him. And second, just to make sure that envelope is complete, there is nothing made that was not made through Him.
So we have a positive and a negative both coming together to say the same thing, that Jesus is the active creator of everything. If we go back into the beginning, we see that that relationship that Jesus has with God the Father is one of cooperation and unity as one. In the beginning, in Genesis, we see that those great words, it says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth, that he made everything. Later on, we see the indication when it comes to mankind. It says, then God said, let us make man in our own image, in the image of God.
He created them, male and female. He created them. That mankind is made in the image of God. But we see that God here exists what Christians believe in the Trinity, three persons existing as one God, working together, were one purpose. This is Jesus Christ.
We're going to get into a little bit about what he created just in a minute, but I'm going to go to Jeremiah. I want to bring this into our current society, our current belief system in America and around the world here pretty fairly soon. But I have to let you know that there is a difference in believing in Jesus as creator and believing in something else. So let's look at that. We're going to go into Jeremiah 10:12.
So in Jeremiah 10:12, this is another bit of a long scripture, but I'm going to hammer through it. Here. It says, he made the earth by his power. He has established the world by his wisdom. He stretched out the heavens at his discretion.
When he utters his voice, there is a multitude of waters in the heavens, and he caused the vapors to ascend from the ends of the earth. He makes lightning for the rain. He brings the wind out of his treasuries. In a scripture absolutely referring to God, we see that the there is God's involvement in creation, that he made the earth by his power. By his power.
This is power that exists in Him. Before creation, he established the world by wisdom, that there is an understanding. Not only does he hold a power, but he also holds wisdom, a storehouse of knowledge. In verse 12, we also see he stretched out the heavens by his discretion. Whenever the Bible talks about the heavens, we see that he routinely, all throughout the Bible talks about the stretching of the heavens, which is absolutely a scientific principle that people are beginning to understand today.
The great expanse of the universe, that everything is traveling away from everything else at tremendous speeds right now. Okay? And then we see the physical canopy, the environment made at his hand. That is in comparison to a different view of the universe. In verse 14 it says everyone is dull hearted without knowledge.
Every metalsmith is put to shame by an image, for his molded image is falsehood. There is no breath in them. They are futile, a work of errors. In the time of their punishment, they shall perish. The portion of Jacob is not like them.
For he is the maker of all things and Israel is the tribe of his inheritance. The Lord of hosts is his name. We belong to God because he is our creator. And as a creator, he has the right to place laws upon his people. A creator has the unique right to expect something from his creation that no one else possesses.
Not only does he have the right to expect something from his creation, he has the right to reward or punish that creation at his discretion based on whether they have kept his commandments. So we're going to look just a little bit if you know that creation, physical creation, special creation is not the majority viewpoint in the United States today. This is where someone's got a gasp, right?
There is other viewpoints in the world today, except from the viewpoint we're being indicated here as special creation by an all powerful, all wise God who manipulates the environment for his purposes and puts it into action. It says that other viewpoints other than this one that Jeremiah talks about is dullhearted and without knowledge. So I would like to talk about creation just a little bit today out of Hebrews because it is one that is not necessarily just a theory you hold. It's not just an amount of information that you contain in your mind. It has an implication of your relationship to a person.
If Jesus is creator, he has a specific right to speak to you individually that would not be his if he were not your creator.
Track with that just for a second. We become morally accountable to Jesus when we recognize him as creator. The furthest a society can distance themselves from their creator, the less morally accountable they feel to that person. They become accountable for their own desires. There is a huge push in America Right now to promote a view of thinking that removes us from the responsibility of, of an all powerful God where we dictate to ourselves right and wrong.
We determine for ourselves the course of action when we want. But the moment we become and recognize a creator, we have to submit ourselves to his viewpoint for our lives. So number one, as we go, I'm going to get back to Hebrews here.
The idea of a creator is nice, it's good, it's easy to understand. But associated with the idea of a creator is creation. A creator is only valuable as his creation. No, that's not quite right. The view of a creator is only as valuable as in the people's eyes as the creation that he has made.
So I'm going to look here, it says back in chapter one of Hebrews, verse one, verse two, it says, through whom also he made the worlds. As a creator, he is responsible for bringing into existence creation. He is either an active or a passive contributor to this. And we're going to look at this for just a second. So if anyone has not been alive in America, there are two major viewpoints in America.
One is special recent creation or evolution. The differences of this are fairly simple to describe. Creation, like we talked about earlier is an all powerful God, an all knowing God. A God who puts engineering principles and makes things actively and Christian believe. Many Christians believe that is a picture of Jesus Christ.
Evolution is a different picture.
It says that no power, with no mind, over lots of time made everything, not made everything, because it doesn't make that everything, without any thought, without any direction, without any engineering or ingenuity came about what we have. And I'm going to say that there is within the Christian community definitely individuals who subscribe to that. They feel that God got this started, spun the top and let it go. And then naturally the breakdown of rocks and elements and energy all one day formed a piece of life that we couldn't look. We don't know what it could look like.
And somehow through a process, we have no understanding of what it could look like, developed, mutated somehow, which we've never really seen, and spontaneously gave birth to not only what we see on earth, but also must have happened millions of other places in the universe also. So two different, very different viewpoints on life. I would like to say that the Christian message is one of active participation, that Jesus claims to be the Creator, that from him comes all things. And so I'd like you to look at this with me just for a minute. One of the greatest travesties in I Believe in modern culture is the removal of basic scientific resources from our society.
Now, today, where do you get information from?
TV TikTok. Right? And we see things that we're just like, wow, this is great. Can you believe this? These smart people figured this out and this is where our information come from.
This is not good. You and I were created to be scientists. We were given the ability to understand, confront our environment with the senses we have. Now we are depending upon people we don't know. We don't know about them.
We don't know what kind of people they are. And they are feeding us information. And we say, I relegate or I turn over the responsibility I once had for my beliefs. Through my ears, through my eyes, through my senses, and I turn it over to something scientists. And now I trust their opinion over my own.
This is not good. This is wrong. Now, I'm not saying that science is necessarily bad. Science is good when used in a good way. But for us to give up the right to research for ourselves is wrong.
And so I would like to look at this just for a minute. First of all, we know that in the beginning it says God created the heavens and the earth. We see that the answer for all materials comes in the beginning. God creates everything. If we were to look at that from an evolutionary perspective, where does everything come from?
But how can nothing give birth to everything? It cannot. Number two, it says God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was out form and void. I'm maybe going to turn there.
And then in verse three, we see, then God said, let there be light. And there was light. Jesus actively engaged in creation. Here we see a picture of energy, energy developing, energy coming into existence that was not there before. You ask evolutionists, where does energy come from?
No, the Big bang is the display of energy. Where does energy come from?
That's matter. And definitely you can turn matter into energy. But where does energy come from? Where does. First of all, the question, where does matter come from?
And there's only silence. They don't know. Where does energy come from? They don't know. But it says that God made these things.
And then we see that in verse five, God called the light day, and the darkness he called night. We see time springing into existence. If you would ask an evolutionist, where does time come from?
They don't know. They say, okay, if there was a big bang, where did the big bang come from? And where did that Big bang come from? And where did that big bang come from? And if they've been coming Forever.
Why isn't it done yet? Why isn't it done banging? If you take a ball and put it on a string, it's going to bounce, right? But each time it bounces, it bounces less. Here we see that time is created by God.
He is called the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. He existed outside time. He is above time. He made time. And then we see that God creates life and he begins to.
Or he creates the firmament, first the atmosphere and the stars. And then we see he creates life. And if you ask evolutionists, where did life come from?
They have just so stories in a warm pond lots of years ago, billions of years ago, there was a little bit of static electricity. Yeah. And those are nice stories, but why can't you make life then? They don't know where life comes from. Here we see that Jesus made life.
Life is an interesting thing. And we are asked. What I'm asking you to consider today is to use your senses to understand the environment around you. If you saw a piece of art, for example, has there ever been any art that was ever made without an artist?
How come when we see art that astounds in beauty, surpasses in marvelousness, and any art that was ever created, we can assume that that art was made by no power. No power, no understanding. When we see engineering, we always know we can recognize. You would tell me I was foolish if I said this amount of engineering in this car actually came about with no engineer, you would laugh at me. You'd be like, jeremy, you're stupid.
And if I would tell you if there is engineering million, billions of times, no, no billions of times more complicated than any engineering you have ever seen. And I told you all of that engineering came about with nothing, no mind, you would say, yes, that's true. That's true. If I were a linguist, right? And I said to you they didn't experiment.
And it's always been said that given enough time and enough monkeys and enough typewriters that eventually that amount of monkeys with that amount of typewriters in that amount of time would actually rewrite Shakespeare's complete works. And so some smart individual said, let's try this.
So they got some monkeys. This is true. This is true. And they started them typing.
When they said the results of this experiment, even evolutionists said, that's ridiculous. They shouldn't have even tried that. They did get a few letters out, but they didn't even produce one. Shakespeare's word. What they did start doing is using it as a toilet they didn't even start to produce.
But the truth is, if I would tell you that language was an accident or Shakespeare's works were actually an accident, that really it was monkeys walking in and out of their pen that tiptoed on the typewriter and produced Shakespeare's work, you would tell me I was stupid. But if I told you there was a language that is so much more complicated than the English language, that holds so much more information than the English language, that this language can be read front word to back and make sentence make sense, it can be read backwards to front and say something different. It can read, you start as four letters in this language and if you start on a different letter in this language, it says something different. That which room this language is read in makes a difference in what this language says, that if you read it in this room, certain letters are blotted out and it means something. If it read in this room, it's blotted out and means something different.
If I told you that that language was made by a super smart God, most people would look at me and say, jeremy, you're stupid. That came about by accident.
The engineering, the language, the beauty of what we see around us. I believe if real people put their minds to it, you would see that there is something given to us that indicates we have a super wise, super powerful, super compassionate creator. That creator, I believe what the Bible teaches is the person Jesus Christ. And as creator we are indebted to him because of his creative qualities. We are responsible to that person.
I hate to say it, and I hope I'm not trampling on anyone's integrity or mental ability, but one, I believe the greatest hoax and damage to people has come about as the belief in their minds that God does not exist.
That we were created as the random chance that that has had an impact on us as people. If I were to ask you there were ever people groups who embraced evolution more than other people groups, would you have an answer? Does what you believe have an impact on how you act? If you took a society and you removed them from the understanding that they have a creator God, and instead told them absolutely no, God is a fable. You were not created, you evolved.
Would that have an impact on that society? Has there been societies that we are aware of that have taken that position and as a result of that position acted in a certain way?
Yes, they have been by far the most corrupt, the most damaging, the most harmful societies that have killed more of their own people in this last century than the history of humankind in Russia, how many of their own people did they kill after embracing an atheistic in a society based on evolution? In China, in different South Pacific, in I can't remember Albania. When God as Creator is removed from us, it opens a door that ends up ugly. But when people embrace Jesus as their creator, we become responsible to Him. My goal in this though, I do love to talk about evolution and creation and if anybody wants to talk with me and says, Jeremy, you're the stupid one.
I am a very available, stupid person and I love to talk about stupid things and. Okay, but my point in this, if Jesus is creator, you as a person are uniquely responsible to that Creator. And as such, my hope, my calling out to you is to listen to his voice, to hear Him. And I believe that he will speak to you in a beautiful way.
I just want to say that that way, that ability to speak to him starts with just acknowledging who he is and welcoming him to speak into your life. Millions of people will today testify that their life has been changed by a simple invitation of Christ into their hearts. For me, that was when I was 18 years old in this church. Just a confused, sinful young man. And God changed my life.
And I'm grateful that not only did he change mine, but now I get to see him changing other people's lives also. Let's pray together.
O Father, we do come to you, Lord. Just a mess at times, Lord. Sinful? Yes, Lord. But a people that you not only created, but you also love, that you care for and that you want to speak into our lives.
God, I pray in our hearts that you give us a willingness, Lord, to accept that which you have for us to come to you, Lord, I just ask in Jesus name, Amen.