Listen To The Son
- Details
- Sunday Morning Service
- Pastor James Richards
- Copalis Community Church
- 08 February 2026
- Hebrews 1:2-3
- Revelation 1:12-20
- John 5:16
At the end of it, Paul was talking about that and he compares the Christian walk to an athlete. Verse 24. Do you not know that in a race all runners compete but only one will receive a prize Run that you may obtain it. Every athlete exercises and controls all things. They do this to receive a perishable wreath, but we are an unperishable one.
So I do not run aimlessly. I do not box in the air, but I discipline my body and keep it under my control. After preaching to others, I myself should be not disqualified. I think that's really interesting when we talk about our Christian walk. That as compared to the football players who will be playing today is that life is a journey, but there's a path to excellence.
And that what the scripture emphasizes that we need to be dedicated and disciplined as Christians. And sometimes that's a thought, but it's not an action. And I think sometimes we need to be past action competition. Paul states that all run, but only one receive a prize. He illustrates that it's extremely important on our Christian journey to run that journey for the prize to do our best, not our second best.
The purpose for a living is he encourages them to run in such a way to gain a prize. Suggesting that Christians should live with intentional and commitment. We're committed to the prize that has set before us. We should live with intent for that. He talks about training that an athlete goes through with rigorous training.
Obviously the players that will be on the field today have done that their whole life. They've gone through vigorous training to get from pee wee football to the Super Bowl. Christians are called to exercise self control and disciplined lives. That's a choice. We make those choices ourselves.
Either to do it or not to do it. That we can either exercise self control and discipline in our Christian walk or we can see the world and please ourselves in what the world has to offer.
But including sacrifices also in that faith. Sometimes we have to sacrifice things in order to walk the walk and talk the talk. First Christianity, we're going to run that race. Sometimes it requires something we don't want to do. Doing a study on fasting right now and the biggest question in my mind is why would I want to intentionally not eat?
That sounds like a horrible thing to learn how to fast. But that's our thinking sometimes. But Paul talks about, you know this today they're going to whoever wins the game will get a ring. But that's all they're going to get is a ring, not eternal life. Our prize is much bigger and we need to focus on our prize, he also talks about avoiding aimless acts.
He's boxing in the wind. So many things in our life are just aimless. We believe that we're doing good or we're doing great or whatever. We're really not benefiting the Lord or serving God in our actions. We may be pleasing people, but we're not pleasing God.
We need to benefit ourselves in such a way that we always strive to please Christ. We put Christ first in our lives and our walk, for he holds the price. In summary, I encourage believers to approach their faith and laying on their faith, to focus on the reward and the gain in the end. And I do have to share, actually, both. The other day, I had the privilege of being at Jim's house on Wednesday.
And what was Jim doing on Wednesday? Well, I know what I was doing on Wednesday. I was at his house. But what Jim was doing on Wednesday when I showed up, he was teaching the gospel to the caretaker. He was trying to tell the caretaker what God's life really is.
And I know that, we all know that Jim's closer to heaven than a lot of us, but I'm not so sure that I would like to believe that. When I get that close, I'll be preaching to my caretaker. I'll be teaching my caretaker what it means to share the gospel, what it means to have eternal life with God above. Shall we pray? Lord?
Father, thank you so much for every individual here. Lord, we thank you, especially if they've dedicated their life to you, if they see that the prize is greater than the work, that the prize is what we're looking for, Lord, to be someday with you in heaven. Lord, I thank you that we, as brothers, sisters in Christ, can come together and encourage each other and help press on to the goal that's before us, Lord, not as individuals, but as a group, as a body, as a church. Do this now and be with Jeremy as he leads the service. In Christ's name we pray.
Amen.
Okay, we're going to move right into Romans.
Oh, yes, I forgot to mention. So after service, choir practice.
So Obadiah just. Micaiah just mentioned his arm. Obadiah wasn't the only one who wrestled yesterday. Micaiah wrestled also as an eighth grader, and he was one match away from making it to state, but his arm hurt and he's like, I don't want to wrestle. It hurts.
No, I can't wrestle. And he decided to wrestle. And he wrestled through three whole periods, and he won in the last two seconds and made it to State. So he did.
I think the moral is, don't ever give up. Don't ever give up. Okay. Hebrews. Hebrews, chapter one.
And so we've been looking at Hebrews. The Son possesses a unique right, a unique position to speak to people. He has things which are inherent to him as a person that no one else possesses. And because he possesses these things, he has a right to speak into the lives of people. We looked at them a little bit before.
It says, he is appointed. In chapter one, verse two, it says, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son. He has a right to speak because he has been appointed heir of all things at the right time in history. At the correct moment in his life, he encountered the devil and defeated him on the cross and inherited all things. He became King of kings and Lord of lords.
We having become and having dominion of all things, both physical, spiritual, in heaven and on earth. He has a right to speak to us because of his position. He also has a right to speak to us. In verse two, it says, through whom also he made the world because he is the Creator of all things. He made all things out of his own ingenuity, his marvelous artistic beauty, his astounding nature, his power and his intelligence.
He brought everything forth. And we are responsible to him because he is Creator. And so we're going to look in verse three that are not the only reasons. If they weren't enough reasons, if they weren't enough for us to stop and say, I want to listen to the Son, he's going to give us even more reasons to listen to the Son. In verse three, it says, who being the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his power.
So we're going to have three more reasons why you and I should take the time. When we hear that slow knocking on the door and Jesus is calling to us, open the door and I will come in and dine with you. I will speak with you. I will engage with you. I will reveal my heart to you and hear your heart's cry to me.
I will be that person to you. So the goal of today, absolutely I pray, is for you to hear the voice of the Son of God and welcome it into your life. These are reasons you should. Number one, that there were other people who spoke in times past. These had some wisdom, some holiness, some words of God for us, but they did not compare to the sun.
It says, who being the brightness of his glory, the brightness of his glory. He has a Unique right to speak to us because he is the brightness of God's glory. So you have to understand that we are in a unique position on Earth. That we are in what's called the Goldilocks zone, the habitable zone. Not too hot, not too, too cold, not too much of this.
Everything is just right. And they say, well, it was just a coincidence that everything turned out miraculous. So no matter where you look, where we are in our solar system, everything about it is unique. One of those ways that it is unique is regarding the two great lights. And he made two great lights, one to rule the day and the other to rule the night.
If you been looking up, that is the sun and the moon. The sun and the moon are different, but they are interesting. From the Earth's perspective, they are the same size. That's interesting. That is a marvelous engineering.
It is an amazing feet for this to happen. The Earth, the moon and the sun are not the same size. Anyone recognize that? But from our perspective, they are exactly the same size. When the moon on that rare events that it happens when it covers over the sun and creates that shadow upon the Earth, the moon exactly covers the sun.
So it is like even though the sun is some 300 some thousand times farther away than the moon, the moon is also three hundred and some thousand times smaller than the sun. So they exactly cover each other. But even though they are both lights to the earth, they are not the same, right? One is a reflection and the other is a source of light. The moon reflects the light from the sun, which is visible to us in the correct position upon earth.
Now here we have to look. In verse three, it says, who being the brightness of his glory, you and I are called to be a reflection of God's glory upon the earth to hold up the light of Christ's gospel to the world as a reflection. But Jesus is the light of Christ's glory. He is that glory. It's interesting.
When Moses was at the foot of the mountain, you know, he got tired of dealing with 6 million complaining Israelites in the desert. And finally comes to the point, it's like, lord, show me your glory. I've been in the valley long enough. I want a mountaintop experience. And the Lord says to him, you know, I'll put you in a place and you can see this part of it, because no one can see my face and live.
No one. The brightness of his glory is all consuming. The angels in Ezekiel and Isaiah are giving special coverings because they exist in the presence of God. They use wings to cover their face because they cannot endure the trendous ferocity of God's glory. This is Jesus.
Isaiah gets a picture of it himself and he says, woe, and me, I am undone. I have seen something. He's given a special cure so that he might live and see that glory. Jesus. We see he went up on a mountain and he was transformed before two of his disciples.
And the different versions give it a little bit direct, different perspective on it. One says that his face was changed and his garments came glistening. The other says that his face shone white and he became like the sun. Others that his clothes became laundered white, such as no laundress could make them. He became and displayed and is the glory of God.
He gave this perspective, this. When one of the disciples said to him, show me the Father and that is enough for him. He said, how long have I been with you and you not known me? When you see me, you see the Father. Jesus.
Is the display of God's glory made available, made seeable to you and I. That which is glorious about God, which cannot be perceived by us as people looking directly at his presence, we can see in the face of Jesus Christ. If you want to know what God's glory looks like, we can see that in Jesus. I'm going to give a in Revelations chapter one and have a little bit of picture of that.
In chapter one of Revelations, verse 12.
Then I turned to see the voice that spoke with me. And having turned, I saw seven golden lampstands. And in the midst of the seven lampstands, one like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band. His head and his hair were white like wool, as white as snow. And his eyes like a flame of fire.
His feet were like fine brass, as if refined in a furnace. And his voice as a sound of many waters. He had in his right hand seven stars. And out of his mouth went a sharp two edged sword. And his countenance was like the sun shining in its strength.
And when I saw him, I fell at his feet as dead. But he laid his hand on me saying, do not be afraid. I am the first and the last. Jesus is the expression of God's glory. He is God's glory.
But even though that is something tremendously terrifying to human beings, Jesus lays his hands on us and says, do not be afraid, do not be afraid. I want to reveal God's nature to you. And as such, you and I, though at times we're looking to the ends of the earth for a word. He has a right to speak to us because he is God's glory. Verse 3.
We're going to keep moving who being the brightness of his glory and number. And the second thing we're going to talk about the express image of his person. He is the exact representation of the Father. It says mentioned again in that he said that he who has seen the Father, he who has seen me, has seen the Father. It's interesting as we look through the back through the Bible, starting in Genesis, we see unique pictures of an individual called the angel of God.
And these instances in which this angel of God appears leaves an impact on the people who have an interaction with him. The first place we see that is Jacob. Jacob has been sojourning for a season with Laban and now has escaped for him and comes back and he's about to meet his brother Esau. And he has an encounter, a wrestling encounter with a man. And this man is wrestling with him.
They wrestle until the breaking of day. And the man touches Jacob's hip and it comes out of socket. The muscle shrank there. And the angel wins and the section is done and they move on. But Jacob says, I have seen God.
Face to face. I have seen God. We see this happen over in Judges. We see that Gideon is being called by an angel of God to accomplish something. And he is told to cut down the pillar of BAAL and then offer a sacrifice.
And he offers this sacrifice to the Lord. But they recognize that they have seen God and they offer the sacrifice and it is accepted. We see that in Samson's life, in Samson's parent, that they feel like they should die as a result of seeing this individual. They feel like they have seen God. In the New Testament we see that picture taken up clearly in Colossians.
I'm going to give another insight into this. It says In Colossians chapter 1, verse 15, it says he is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. The we see in John several different places. I'm going to turn to the book of John and read one real quick. He has three interactions with the Jews and with these interactions, the result of these conversations is always the Jews want to kill Jesus.
Kill Jesus. So I'm just going to turn to one in John and read it. Give me just a second here.
In chapter eight of John.
And in these three amazing sections where Jesus describes who he is by nature, we get an astonishing picture of who he describes himself to be as he converses with the Jewish leaders in chapter 8, verse 54. Jesus answered, if I honor myself, my honor is nothing. It is my Father who honors me, of whom you say that he is your God, yet you have not known him. But I know him. And if I say I do not know Him, I shall be a liar like you.
But I do know him and keep his word. Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad. Then the Jews said to him, you are not yet 50 years old, and have you seen Abraham? Jesus answered them, most assuredly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am. Then they took up stones to throw at him, to kill him.
He was in their minds committing blasphemy because he assumed the covenantal name of God. He said, before Abraham was, I am. You. Remember at the burning bush, Moses asked, who are you? Who shall I say to the Israeli leaders who you are?
He says, you shall say that I am sent you. We see this happen two other times in the Book of John. Going to go to both of them just real quick. So.
In chapter 5, verse 16 of John also, and we're going to start on this in chapter five, verse 16, it says, for this reason the Jews persecuted Jesus and sought to kill him because he had done this, done these things on the Sabbath. But Jesus answered them, saying, my Father has been working until now, and I have been working. Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill him because he not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was his Father, making himself equal with God. Here we see that Jesus is adamantly saying that he has the same nature as God as a result of claiming to have the same. Same nature, the same authority, the same power, the same right to be worshiped as God, that you and I should take his claims very seriously, examine them, and if he meets those claims, if they can be upheld, the idea is that you and I should listen to his voice.
The last one in chapter one of Hebrews that we're going to. We're going to look at the last one in Hebrews chapter one, Number one, who being the brightness of his glory, the express image of his person, or the exact representation of his person and upholding all things by the word of his power. Jesus claims that all things are held in existence because of Himself, that it is because of his own power that he holds all things together. It is interesting physically, that no one really knows what holds things together. You think about it, if you were.
If you have, you know, the fun thing to do is if you have a bucket of water and you Tie a string to it, right? And you swing that thing around as fast as you can. What holds the bucket in place? The string does. Right.
And what holds the moon in place around the Earth?
Well, I believe it is gone. But what holds that in place? The same power that holds you and I to the Earth, that keeps us here on Earth rooted and able to move function in is the same power that keeps the moon from flying off into space. Strange, it doesn't crush us, but it holds the moon in place. The same power that holds the earth in place from not flinging into space off of the sun's orbit keeps us here.
No one knows what this force is. We do know it's associated with gravity, that the bigger the mass an object has, the greater gravity, but no one knows what gravity is. We kind of know what a magnetic field is, but no one knows what gravity is. We cannot stop it. We can identify it, we can measure it, but we don't know really anything about it.
There's something holding things together in a very molecular level also that the electron travels around or the rings of electron travel around the center of of an atom and yet do not fling out into space unless they are broken. Anyone know what happens when they are broken? Something either very good, causing a lot of good power or very bad power. That something is holding these things together and it has more strength than this. Jesus here, or the Book of Hebrews here claims that Jesus is the one holding all things together, that he possesses all these attributes.
The thing that you and I should recognize is that because he holds these attributes, because he holds these positions, because he has this power available to him, he possesses a right to speak to people that no one else has, has.
No human can claim one of these positions as their own. No prophet, no religious person, they cannot claim them. No, no, no TikToker or YouTuber or any other conspiracy theorists or a book author you might have read can claim the same things that are being claimed rationally for the person Jesus Christ. And yet at times, the voices we are most open to are not accurately reflected by the information we see here. Everyone kind of track with me sometimes.
We're moving because of the voices we're bringing into our lives. But those voices that we are bringing into our lives do not possess the significance, authority that Jesus Christ has. My belief is that the book of Hebrews is designing you and I to open up our hearts to the voice of the Son of God, to open up and be willing to listen to it. I'm going to close with a Bit of an invitation for my personal life at 18, I believe that I was given an invitation to listen to Christ's voice and hearing it, that there was a result that came from it. Number one is that there are different voices in the world.
There are different voices and at times we think that the voice of the Son of God is going to be like the voices that are in the world. Number one, the sum of the voices that we hear is the law. The law gives us an idea of what's right and wrong from God's perspective. And we're hearing that our conscience bears witness with the law, that we are guilty, right? Anyone have their conscience affect them lately?
Right. And then on top of that we have the devil. And the devil is trying to bring the guilt of the laws we have broken that our conscience knows is true. And he is hammering us, he is driving us, he is pushing us down. He brings us before God to make us guilty.
And we feel way down. And somehow we think that Jesus voice is going to be added to the other three. It's like one of those big dog piles, right? One guy gets a guy down and then the second guy jumps on top. And then the third guy, before he can get up, come and jump.
And right behind the devil we think Jesus is there, big, like, you know, jump on top of us also to make us guilty. His voice is not like the other three. They do those things are what condemn us. But Jesus comes to rescue those people who have already been condemned, those people who are under the pile. His voice is to rescue them from out from under that load.
My hope is that you would recognize that Jesus Christ is a perfect gentleman. He doesn't come into a room brashly or ugly or undivided. He stays outside with a soft knock on your door, waiting to be invited to your house. Anyone ever had a house guest that came in uninvited? Before you could lock the door, they had got their foot and it had come inside.
And then it was very difficult to get them to leave. That's not a gentleman. Jesus is a gentleman. He never comes into a house or speaks to a person unless invited to do so.
You and I, yes, all these reasons exist why Jesus should be listened to. But he won't be listened to unless you invite him into your heart. Unless you're willing to say to him, jesus, I would like you to speak to me. I would open the door for you to have an entrance into my life to speak to me. I know that he speaks in different ways, but the way in which he wants to speak into our heart.
He has to be invited to do so. My earnest desire in recognizing the nature of Jesus Christ, who He claims to be and who he is by nature, my earnest recommendation is that you would ask him to speak to your heart.
I have to say something about this, though, based on what the Bible says and my personal experience and the experience of many other Christians, that when he does speak to us, he says things to us. Those things he says, he says, repent. He says, turn from the ways that which you have been walking in and walk in a new way with me. Take my yoke upon you. Learn from me.
He says, I want to be someone to you. I want to lead you. I want to take you from the direction you've been going in, and I want to lead you in a different way.
That is what a Christian is, an individual who has invited Christ into their heart. And after hearing his voice, and I believe that there is no one after hearing the voice of the Son of God that doesn't recognize the worth of it. And when we recognize the worth of his voice, the call to follow him, leave the things that you had, put them aside and follow me. My hope as an individual that has the opportunity to minister the gospel to you is that if you have never made that commitment, that asking that you would do it, that I feel like what Hebrews has given us, that you would say yes, okay, I will ask and I will look to see who Christ is and to hear his voice for me. And I will take and make a decision to follow Him.
So we're going to close right now, and Tim's going to go up. But if you want to communicate with someone, a sinful person who, just like you, was confused and burdened and ugly, but heard that voice and followed it, there are people, including me, who would love to. Love to talk with you about that. So that's my goal today. And as we go through Hebrews, I hope that you're excited about hearing the voice of the Son of God, because he who hears the voice of the Son will live.
Let's pray.